Orbis App Reviews

I tried at least five different menuweather apps before finding the original “MenuWeather” app. It was the only one that worked consistently, never crashed, and gave me the simplicity that I desired. This new version? None of that. Now this app is just a knock-off of so many of the other menuweather apps out there, and works just as well as they do, in that it doesn’t work reliably at all. Since the update I have seen that stupid red exclamation point in my menu WAY too often without any way to trouble shoot the problem. Restarting the app does nothing, hitting retry does nothing. Oh, when it -does- work? Yeah, sure it looks cool, but like I said, I could’ve gotten the fancy UI with the other weathermenu apps that, as I said, DO NOT WORK RELIABLY. If you want to make a brand new UI and everything, fine, then sell it as another app. Don’t get rid of one that was already working fine, and by fine I mean perfect. Now I’m back on the search for a menuweather app that will work.

This upgrade was definitely a step back. Forcing an update to the weather does nothing, it finds itself days behind (I am looking at it right now on a Thursday night, but it’s still reading Tuesday’s info), and having multiple cities doesn’t work, as they all just display the same temperature as the first city you set up. Will replace it the moment I find something even remotely better.

good desktop weather program but often fails to load on start up. Left with only “!"

Not a bad reincarnation of MenuWeather (if you forgive the cryptic name change). Biggest objection is that the font size is almost unreadably small, especially in the flyout windows when you mose over a particular day to view details of the extended forecast. Preferences need to include some color/contrast options as well as a way to include extended forecast details inline at the main window level rather than in a flyout or odd crawler text. Lost in translation: selectable icon sets, and the highly useful option to customize displayed forecast items. Also: We now have Facebook and Twitter icons adding clutter to the otherwise nicely minimalist interface (fix: you can delete these in package contents/resources if you know what you’re doing). These social icons serve no weather function and should be hidable in the preferences. MenuWeather users waited a long time for this promised new version. I’m glad it’s out and seems to be working, but its still not up to speed. That said, not a bad start—assuming we don’t have to wait months for the next version release and that that release addresses the issues cited here. FOR THOSE GETTING RED EXCLAMATION MARK IN THE MENU BAR AND CRASHES: Make sure you don’t have Little Snitch, firewall, or other network filter denying Orbis access to the weather server.

After upgrade from Menu Weather to Orbis, the app does not start up on my iMac 5K, it crashes with “kCLErrorDomain error 0.” message.

I liked MenuWeather a lot. Mine hasn’t worked since the name changed. A delete and reinstall didn’t help. I always get a “timed out on find location” message. Sad.

…. and is a better name for this app. I finally got Orbis to work (so far) by eliminating the “current location” location in the preferences. Up until now all I saw was a red exclamation mark in the menu bar, just like other users have reported.

New version is pretty annoying. Every 10 minutes, on it’s own, it pops out and displays and interrupts whatever you were doing. Why in the world would I want that to happen? The whole point of having it tucked nicely in the toolbar is to allow me to easily open it and view it when I want to.

What happened? Now instead of a nice little weather icon with the temperature in my menubar I am greeted by a red exclamation point and an error code when I click on it. I wish this app was never updated. PLEASE FIX!

As others have said, it’s not quite as nice as it used to be, lost some options.. Also, will not work behind a corporate firewall anymore. They must be connecting to different servers now on ports other than 80443...

Agree with others- used to work great- now just get red exclamation mark and cannot get it to work on current OS. Please fix!

The old App worked, this replacement doesn’t keep the Maps updated. Personally the original App was better.

Overall, the new “look” of the app isn’t bad as it seems clean and somewhat reminiscent of an iOS feel. However, the interface is a bit goofy and not intuitive. For example, to go back to the daily view from the hourly, there’s no arrow or indication that you click the forecast. Also, the cloud and gear icons to bring up the submenus strikes me as a bit odd. My biggest complaint, though, is the removal of some of the more granular settings that allowed me to control what information was displayed in the current, daily, and hourly forecast. You can also no longer choose how many days to include in the forecast. Oh, and I too agree with others that the new name is mystifying. If you want to use a Latin word, it would seem more logical to use one somewhat more connected with the point of the software. “MenuWeather” may not have been very creative, but it’s the principal reason I found the old program in the first place. EDIT: Since updating to “Orbis”, this app routinely no longer loads weather. Instead, I get nothing but a red exclamation mark and error that it couldn’t connect. This has gotten progressively worse and now it rarely actually loads anything. Unfortunately, this formely good app has now been relegated to the worthless category at this point.

App has been stuck at 57 degrees for more than a week. Deleted and reinstalled. Still stuck. Many menubar weather apps, even for free, report correct temperature and dont suffer from the hideous interface introduced recently. Look elsewhere.

This app has never worked well, it usually does not respond, where I have to force quit the application. Also experiencing server connection issues. Have tried this app on numerous OS X operating systems and different iMacs and MacBooks, and I usually receive the same errors. Stay away from purchasing, as there are fortunately more stable and honestly better weather apps at this price point.

I have loved MenuWeather for years, but this relaunch with the new name is a massive failure. It still works on my laptop, but I can’t get it to give me anything other than a red exclamation mark in my menubar. I have tried multiple re-installs of the app after various actions including checking my firewall settings, contacting Orbis support (without response after days of waiting), doing a clean reinstall of my OS, cleaning the screen, re-arranging my desk, crossing my fingers, and any other thing I can think of to get it to work. It still gives me cryptic weather alert banners which don’t tell me anything on the desktop. I have tried different cities, but no weather. I give this version five (red) frowny faces! Update: I went through all the negative reviews and found the solution to making the app work again: delete “current location" in the preferences locations tab. Now it works and has a nice look with great options and an intuitive interface. The developer could have prevented the initial negative rating with some communication. This app will be pleasant to use if you make sure to eliminate "current location” option. I hope the developer fixes this so people don’t feel they have to abandon a very nice app before it works for them. I went ahead and upgraded it to five stars because once it is working it is the best weather app out there. I would have deducted half a star for the lack of communication, but the app itself is great. Please fix it before users abandon it entirely; I want to see it stay and succeed!

update, 30 August, 2015: The App That Traded Its Good Name For A Stupid Name still seems to be sub-par. i’m looking for a menubar weather app again, launched Orbis to see how it was doing (since it was already on my computer), and it’s happy to announce that it’s 80 degrees and sunny where i am right now. in fact, while the estimate of 80 degrees feels about right, the “sunny” bit is totally inaccurate. the day is heavily overcast and has been for some hours. when i got home about an hour and a half ago i debated whether to cover my car because it looked like rain, and it still does. sunny is one thing it ain’t. =-=-= original review, from before the stupid name change: MenuWeather works well enough to have been my menubar weather app of choice for a year or so now, or however long its been since its ability to determine my location automatically was restored. my only complaint about the app that i can think of at the moment is that the interface is unintuitive. its always bugged me, for example, that when theres a special weather alert, you cant simply click the red "weather alert" text in the menu to go to the details (as would be intuitive), but instead you have to know to click "More Weather..." to get to the weather alerts, which is entirely unintuitive. similarly, the window that opens when you click "More Weather..." displays a list of your saved locations, but the list cant be edited there. this too is unintuitive, and not in keeping with the Mac UI principle that allows users to perform any given task in any of several different ways. the list of saved locations should be fully editable wherever it appears - not just in some places. those issues aside, i think the app works pretty well for me, and its ability to determine my location automatically is the clincher for my MacBook-based, travel-filled computing life. as of this writing, i dont have any crashing or CPU-cycle-eating problems with this app either. not sure whats causing that on other peoples machines. maybe that was a problem with an earlier version, or the people reporting it are experiencing a software conflict between MenuWeather and some other app. im running MW 4.2.5 under Mountain Lion (10.8.4) on a 17" Mid-2010 MacBook Pro and MenuWeather isnt even among my top CPU-hogging apps. it isnt hogging my CPU at all - it isnt even using it, in fact, when its in the background. Activity Monitor says MenuWeathers CPU usage is 0.0%.

Nice app. One bug I noticed. The menu pops open and comes to the foreground when the data is updated. Acckkk! That is horrible behavior. Please eliminate this or make it an option. Cheers.

On my system, which is kept up to date in all respects, the app has crashed on launch ever since transitioning from MenuWeather. With no updates in months and no fix in sight, this one’s a sore disappointment.

App is working well, but today when I switched out of Dark Mode the text would not revert to black. Restarting the app and computer did not help.