Windows Weather

About

Windows Weather refers to an updated feature on Windows 10 that was sent out to all Microsoft computers in early June 2021, allowing users to see their local weather and news from the taskbar. While this new update was well received by some, it was received poorly by others, resulting in an influx of memes and reactions online shortly after release.

History

On June 7th, 2021, Microsoft released an update for its Windows 10 operating system that included a variety of new features for users.^[4] In the update, a weather widget was added to the bottom right toolbar that tells users the local weather conditions, and when hovered over or clicked on, will tell you additional news stories and information (shown below).

Highlights

Online Reactions

The first response to the update online came from a Reddit post discussing the weather widget. The post made mention of the new update adding news and weather to the taskbar, as well as making Microsoft Edge the new default browser choice. The Redditor^[1] /u/deepspacecat also alleged that it was done to make MSN, which is owned by Microsoft, get more clicks by having articles from the site be pushed to the new weather and news taskbar addition. The post gained over 52,000 likes and 2,700 comments in three days (shown below).

Reactions to the new update continued to spread on various social media platforms and subreddits. On June 15th, 2021, Redditor^[2] DebRC99 posted a Pawn Stars meme that said that instead of doing useful updates Microsoft would rather do Windows weather type updates. The post on /r/memes gained over 118,000 upvotes and 1,475 comments in one day, with the majority of the comments talking negatively about the new update (shown below).

On Twitter, there were two different reactions that were forefront in the discussion regarding the addition of the weather toolbar. There were Twitter users who were happy with its introduction and welcomed seeing the nearby weather, and there were some who were annoyed with either the concept, the way it was executed or some other facet of it.

This secondary hating of the weather app is well discussed in the Twitter^[3] post by @Cruftbox on June 15th, 2021, who tweeted that weather is very different in different parts of the country and sometimes requires more nuance to understand (shown below).

Additional Reaction Examples

Search Interest

External References