Stormy times for MetService
MetService is taking its life into its own hands after daring to make changes to its weather forecast app. New Zealanders are obsessed with the weather, and fixated on talking endlessly about it. ‘‘That’’ conversation is an ice-breaker when at the bus stop, over a shop counter, or while on the phone exchanging small talk in a different location from your good self.
What the weather’s like in your neck of the woods is common ground chit chat between strangers, especially in spring with the changeable weather and the heavens unleashing upon young seedlings, stone fruit and tender shoots.
Yes, there’s a lot at stake . . . said the tomato plant to the bamboo stick.
Thunder and lightning (the two names that former Trump cuddles cohort Stormy Daniels gave to her augmented bosoms), hard hail, and holy tornadoes last week hit the south, as a meteorologist issued the comforting words – tornadoes are rare in New Zealand . . . but could happen at any time.
To give MetService credit, it gave us fair warning of the storms, but there was another storm gathering with its disgruntled app users cutting up rough over the new look.
I don’t know about you, but I’m surrounded by het-up friends directing ill-will toward MetService for daring to fix what wasn’t broke with its update. Most users of the app aren’t going on the bigger computer screen or a laptop but are perusing weather forecasts on their iPhones and Androids.
And they don’t like the shade of the new blue screen, or having to keep scrolling down through a tedious papyrus of page-after-page factoids they’re not interested in, such as humidity, wind and pressure, to get to the heart of the matter. And then there’s the ads, which MetService says it has had to bring on board in order to bring it in line with current technology and design to give us the service, which is now free to the taxpayer.
For a narrow, bordering on the anorexic, string of islands which are getting skinnier with coastal erosion that will eventually leave New Zealand looking like it’s had a Brazilian, as in a bikini wax, it must be tremendously difficult giving our thin little country, alone in the middle of the Pacific at the fag-end of the world, an accurate forecast.
I’m in awe of modern forecasting you can pretty much set your washing line to. I adore not having to rush home after the first raindrop to hurriedly strip the line of clothes before they become linebreakingly heavy and sodden.
When the app tells me what the temperature is aiming for, what it is at present, what it actually feels like, and how many layers I should be wearing, frankly, I am amazed by the detail. And I immediately start wondering what sort of layers – wool, mohair, possum, merino, cotton, nylon, or just your average hair shirt? That’s a lot of stuff I don’t need to contemplate.
What was so good about the old MetService app was its simplicity. What we want with information is adherence to the notion of KISS (Keep It Simple Silly).
We don’t want updates, or so-called improvements, just for the sake of them.
There’s a lot of job-justifying technological changes happening that are self-serving.
As Anonymous said: ‘‘The world is never short of clever men and women prepared to gamble with the fate of the powerless for a theory.’’
If you don’t like the new MetService app, then return to the old faithful, do something radical and buy a newspaper where, every day, the same page lays it all out in glorious simplicity.