https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/06/finally-apples-ipad-has-a-default-weather-app/

Hell hath frozen over, apparently. Today, Apple addressed a longtime user complaint about the iPad with news that the device will finally get its own default weather app — some twelve years after the tablet’s debut, if you can believe it. Oddly, Apple had overlooked the addition of this key app, despite acquiring a weather app maker Dark Sky in 2020 and revamping the iOS Weather app with the launch of iOS 15. The company even went so far as to roll out a Weather widget for the iPadOS home screen, but instead of launching a native app, it linked users to The Weather Channel’s website.

This was a less-than-ideal experience, as the site (weather.com), is cluttered with ads and is not the sort of clean and easy-to-navigate experience Apple users have come to expect. Apple never explained its thinking here, but the fact that it had launched a Weather widget for iPad without an accompanying app made this whole thing feel increasingly bizarre. Did the IBM-owned The Weather Channel have an undisclosed traffic deal with Apple? Did Apple really think users would rather visit a website than a native app? Was this an antitrust thing? What was going on?!