I’d been using my Mac for the past few days and didn’t realize Microsoft had updated the weather app in Windows 11. This is actually a surprisingly comprehensive and handsome-looking app, showing the kind of taste that Steve Jobs said Microsoft never had.
The updated version of the app is terrible. It’s pretty much exactly what Steve Jobs said about Microsoft having no taste–cluttered, ugly, and on top of that, it now has a large ad stuffed into it. It’s a built-in app, so it would be nice to escape ads while I’m using it. What next? Calculator sponsored by Crest? Terminal with a 10-second rolling ad before you can type anything?
Fortunately, I used my internet smarts to do the following:
- Uninstall the odious new app
- Download the old version and re-install it
- Disable auto-updates in the Microsoft Store, hopefully insuring the new app will not come back on its own
- Provide feedback through Microsoft’s handy Feedback Hub to tell them to stop stuffing ads into every corner of Windows
It’s like Microsoft has resigned itself to most people just switching to Macs, so they’re going to squeeze the remaining few for everything they’ve got with ads and monetization.
Bah. Bad Microsoft!
Here’s a shot of the new version:
And here’s the lovingly restored old version:
