Apple has always relied on Yahoo for the Weather app that comes pre-installed on every iPhone, but that's changing in with iOS 8, when Apple will ditch Yahoo for the Weather Channel. In a new report from Re/Code, we learn a bit more about how and why that happened, and it sounds like Yahoo is to blame. That looks pretty bad on CEO Marissa Mayer, who has worked to improve her company's mobile presence for the past several years.
"Yahoo had been renting ocean-front property for years and did not realize the lease was up, and the Weather Channel slipped right in and took it," one Yahoo executive told Re/Code. The executive described it as a "high profile loss" and suggested that it was Yahoo's fault for losing the contract because it didn't move quick enough to work with Apple. Instead, the Weather Channel got the deal, even though Yahoo has long offered a beautiful app that actually always pulled data from The Weather Channel. The end result is fewer viewers accessing Yahoo services by default.
The switch won't have any negative effects on Apple's Weather app, in fact it actually provides more data now than it did before, which is probably one of the reasons Apple ended up going right to the source of the data instead of through Yahoo. Of course, any diehard Yahoo Weather fans will still be able to download the company's official app if they prefer.
