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Windows 11's Weather app uses 5x the RAM of macOS Weather, because Microsoft has forgotten how to make native apps
Windows Latest • • technology
Key Points:
- Windows 11’s built-in Weather app is essentially a web-based MSN adware wrapper that consumes over 1.2GB of RAM, about five times more than macOS’s native Weather app, while displaying ads despite the OS being paid software.
- The app provides detailed and accurate weather data from multiple licensed sources, including live radar, hourly forecasts, and severe weather alerts, but intersperses this information with sponsored ads styled similarly to weather data.
- Unlike Apple’s ad-free Weather app, Microsoft’s version relies on web technologies (WebView2) resulting in high memory usage and multiple sub-processes, highlighting inefficiencies compared to native applications.
- Microsoft is focusing on modernizing Windows 11 apps with WinUI to replace legacy and web-based apps, but Weather remains an MSN-branded web wrapper with no native redesign announced yet.
- The Weather app also requires users to sign in with a Microsoft account, reflecting Microsoft’s ongoing push for account integration despite user resistance.
