Orbis App Reviews

Was looking forward to this update. MenuWaather was my favorite menu bar weather App, until the hangs started. Finally, moved on. . .but was excited to see that it was coming back and had my fingers crossed. Sadly, crashes at launch launch for me most of the time. If it does run, it always crashes when accessing the Preferences. I hope others have better luck and I’ll keep watching. I’d really like to see this App working!

……I really liked the option in the “old” Menu Weather that allowed you to change the text color and size. As it is right now, the black only option is boring to say the least.

MenuWeather was one of my favorite Mac App Store apps. So I was definitely missing it while Orbis was being developed. It’s a point zero release, and I’ve had a few random quits. I’m sure with a bunch of users reporting bugs, it’ll get sorted out as well as additional features and customization options. But this developer really deserves praise and recognition for not charging for existing MenuWeather owners! This was a free update for us for what looks like a complete rewrite, renaming/rebranding. When was the last time you saw that happen? Its amazing, and I am grateful.

Overall I like the improvements, but it is still very buggy. Popups remain open and just stay on your desktop. Also would like to see the 10 day forecast on the drop down, like it was in previous versions.

Unfortunately the update rendered the app useless.

Significantly improved, but still some work to do. Thankfully, the update seems to have eliminated the freeze and process lock problems that plauged the previous verison and has also improved the interface draw issues.However, there are still some obvious bugs to fix: 1. the (-) does not seem to remove a location (intermitent; sometimes works, sometimes does not) . A must to be able to reduce extra alerts see bug 2 2. Often grabs focus and displays the full menu to alert you even with all of the alerts turned off on the appropriate prefences tab 3. When adding locations (+) some significant menu drawing bugs (solid blue boxes and transparent gaps; however they correct themselves the next time you click the icon to paint the menu 4. Occasional process crash after clicking the x in the about orbis box. Kudos to fixing the most significant issues; hopefully minor bug fixes will add polish in the near future. Old version:This app presents itself wonderfully when it works, but for the last 6-8 months it has been prone to locking up repeatedly (guaranteed to), failing to update weather information, or pegging CPU. It is poorly behaved or has not been updated to function properly with 10.8. The developer awknowledged the problem to me some time ago in an email, but doesnt appear to have made any progress resolving it. Money wasted. You will have to open terminal and kill the process once it locks up. Here is a quick line to grab the correct process number and whack it for you: (note the marks before ps and after the $2] are the ones next to the one key (with tilde). kill -9 `ps -aef | grep eather | grep -v -e grep | awk {print $2}`

Radar is ugly. I use Radar Live pro when I need a radar. Other then that I’m pretty happy with it.

I prefer to not have location services activated. Usually I can manually enter a location, but nope, this app went from useable to completely worthless with version 5.

Immediately on launching the program, I get a dialog that it unexpectedly quit. That is all. That is enough.

mediocre, it does not work all the time

i’m a hard one to convince that a complete rebranding (new name, new icon, new unalterable dark slate + "Google blue” look) is for the better. What’s wrong with MenuWeather 5.0? The old name said it all. Orbis sounds latin and geography-esque, but doesn’t really connect with “weather." I really want to go back to the higher contrast light look though, the new dark look is too low contrast and kiddie-pool looking. Also, as a Little Snitch reverse firewall user, none of the existing exceptions for MenuWeather were valid for Orbis, so i had to allow new exceptions and also allow Orbis to use location services. So the upgrade wasn’t seamless out of the box. Also, now “Current Conditions” floater is sitting there stuck with no menu selected, hovering over everything on my screen. Hard to complain too loudly at $1.99 and with a free upgrade, but it’s definitely a work in progress, needing some more love!

The screenshots above are a vast improvement over the previous app. Unfortunately, the screenshots are all I have to go on. On my home computer, the app insta-quits on startup, repeatedly. On my work computer, I get an error: “The operation couldn’t be completed. (kCLErrorDomain error 0.)” Well, at least it doesn’t quit.

So I thought I’d give this app another look, after paying for it and having it not work… Anyway. Updated to “Orbis” and I must say the developer has certainly outdone himself. THE APP CRASHES EACH TIME IT IS LAUNCHED! And even on those rare occasions when it actually opens, IT CRASHES WHEN I TRY TO ACCESS THE PREFERENCES! Apple. Are you listening? This load of **** is ripping people off, taking our hard-earned money for an app that it absolutely worthless. I’ll bet a First Grader could write better code. MAJOR MAJOR FAIL. DELETED! —begin earlier review Ill not do that again! Had the app for five minutes and it ahngs up when calling up the main window. This was supposed to be fixed over a month ago, but nope. You know, apps should just work. Especially when you pay good money for them. I feel like a schmuck for trusting the developers when they write that the hanging bug was fixed. Do not buy. You will waste your money!

I’m starting with a new review since the name has changed. Not wild about the new name, but honestly, I really don’t care that much at all. Previously I was having so much trouble that I stopped using MenuWeather altogether. Now it’s been running great on both my iMac and my rMBP. I wish there was a bit more info available per user choice in the drop down menu, and maybe a few more preferences, but other than that it’s working great for me. One thing I would definitely like would be a dock icon option with information images like WeatherDock has.

I am glad to see this application has been updated, and I couldn’t be more happy! The old outdated UI and application was terrible. It locked up, didn’t update, crashed, ate up memory on my system…. to the point where I just had to uninstall it because it was too unstable for everyday use. Most issues I had with my machine stability could be resolved by Force Quitting MenuWeather. I completely removed the old version as a result while I waited for the new version to be developed. The development of Orbis took so long that I was not sure if it was ever going to actually release. I was happy to be searching my purchased list today and see that MenuWeather was missing from my list. At first I thought, maybe he just pulled it and the whole project was dead considering it took so long with not many updates, but then searching my purchased list for “MenuWeather” showed Orbis had been released. I eagerly re-installed the application and set it to start on boot. The new UI is very Yosemite, and also looks very light weight. I don’t need this application to tell me EVERYTHING. I just need it to tell me simple things, like current conditions and forecast for where I am or where I am going to be in the near future. If you need more detailed information beyond that, you really shouldn’t be relying on an application. This application attempts to give you some of that information in radar maps and stuff, but its buried in an awkward window I’m not really 100% sure how to really get to off hand without clicking around for a bit. Maybe a default map for your current location would be nice option to enable for the drop down menu, but it’s really not needed to add value. If you really need in-depth information, go to weather.com or whatever and dive more deeper into their dedicated analytics and predictions. This app is vastly more stable, beautiful and functional compared to previous versions.

Crashed when first installed, now crashes every time I try to set preferences. While it is working it is annoying (especially since I can not get into preferences to get back the multiple locations that I used to have or set the menu font size and color). Very glad that “Time Machine” allowed me to restore the original MenuWeather which actually seems to be working better now that the latest “Yosemite” update fixed network issues which were causing hangs. You should not Fix something Not broken!

as others have already complained about, my upgrade from MenuWeather now refuses to work complaining about “kCLErrorDomain error 0”. i have tried removing re-installing, removing old preference files and disabling/enabling location services, still no go. the two stars instead of one is because the app works on my home mac, just not my work mac.

I regret the change is all I can say. I have to agree with other reviewers that there are so many bugs that I can’t use this app any longer. However, I believe, or at least hope, that the developer is sincere and wants to establish a reliable app and brand so I’ll patiently wait for an update that works. Right now all I have in my menue bar is a big red “!” that wants me to either quit, retry, or set preferences, none of which work, other than quit, which is not what I want to do. Strangley, it worked initially, but has now gone useless.

I had no problems with the update to Orbis, although I HATE the new name. Orbis does not stand out when I am looking at my apps. The only very occasional problem I’m having is when I travel with my computer. The “Current Location” does not want to stay entered. I have been visiting a different place from where I live for 6 days, and have had to re-enter the location 3 or 4 times. Still, this is an app I have used for a long time, and I really like it.

I was looking for a simple menubar weather app, and found Orbis (which I only found because it was called MenuWeather, which was a much better name). I bought the app, but after using it for a few days, quit using it. The implementation seems a bit “goofy”… cilcking on the “cloud” icon opens a drop-down menu which opens another window? Strange. But the main reason I stopped using it was because I was getting weather alerts for things that were not part of an area I was in. They were in the same state, but not the same county. (I only had two locations definied: “Current” and my hometown city, and I didn’t have “Weather Alerts” for “Secondary Locations” enabled.) I’ll keep looking for a better Mac weather app.