Apple weather app hides the ‘forbidden number’
TL; DR
- It turns out that the Apple Weather app that you can find on current iPhones doesn’t display accurate information.
- There is evidence that the app rounds up or down at a temperature of 69 degrees. Kind. Or rather, not pretty.
- This only appears to be the case with the most recent stable version of iOS, which suggests the possibility of a bug.
Update, July 13, 2021 (1:45 p.m. ET): Thanks to the twitter verse, we may have identified a possible cause of the Apple Weather app issue described below. It is possible for Apple to convert Celsius temperatures to Fahrenheit, which would result in some numbers always being rounded up or down.
For example, imagine the temperature is a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius. The conversion of this temperature to Fahrenheit would be 68 degrees. If the temperature rises to 21 degrees Celsius, that would be converted to 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit – which would round up to 70 degrees. This would result in the Apple Weather app never showing a temperature of 69 degrees.
While this makes a lot of sense, it still wouldn’t explain why iOS 15 doesn’t. It also wouldn’t explain why older versions of iOS don’t either. Why would that only do iOS 14.6? That seems to be the big question now.
However, it seems unlikely that the possible explanation that Apple intentionally hid the number 69 is incorrect.
Original article, July 13, 2021 (12:24 p.m. ET): It’s a time-honored tradition. Someone on the Internet refers to the number “69” and no matter how innocent this hint may be, someone replies: “Nice”. It has happened a million times over the years and it is now unstoppable.
However, the Apple weather app doesn’t seem to want to play along. According to some detectives from The edge, the latest stable version of iOS blocks temperatures of 69 degrees. Even if the temperature measurement source (usually Weather.com) says it’s 69 degrees in the area, Apple’s app rounds up to 70 up or down to 68.
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You can see an example of the phenomenon in the picture above. On the left you will see a phone with a beta version of iOS 15. On the right you will see an older iPhone with iOS 14.6 – the most current stable version. Both phones are in the same place (obviously), but the temperature readings are different. Obviously, something is wrong with the Apple Weather app.
According to The Verge’s Experiments on this subject, the iOS 14.6 version of the app will not display the number 69 anywhere. Note that the 10 day forecast on the right phone also doesn’t have 69, while the left shows the forbidden number. The edge also confirms that older devices with outdated versions of iOS display 69 without fear.
It may be a bug in iOS 14.6. However, we have never seen such a specific bug. It doesn’t block 79, 89, 59, 49 … just 69. The edge We asked Apple for a comment, and we will definitely update this article as we know more.
And to keep the tradition alive: Kind.
