A weird iOS bug means that your iPhone won’t be able to show the temperature as 69 degrees in the Weather app. Resulting in internet memes and inaccurate temperatures, this seeming bug has taken the web by storm.
We’re going to take a look at why your iPhone can’t display 69 degrees in the Weather app.
Wait…My iPhone Can’t Display 69 Degrees?
As first spotted by The Verge, some iPhones are having trouble displaying the temperature as 69 degrees in the Weather app. This bug is found on iPhones running iOS 14.6 or some earlier versions. Rather than displaying 69 degrees, the temperature gets rounded up or down to either 70 or 68 degrees instead.
Kinda hilarious pic.twitter.com/469ffcMHzC
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) July 13, 2021
Other users have reported this software bug has been fixed in the iOS 15 beta, but is still occurring in the newly released iOS 14.7 update. Even weirder, the Weather widget on iPhone the Home Screen can show 69 degrees, as can the weather website Apple takes you to.
Stranger yet, one Twitter user was able to see -69 degrees in the Weather app for Antarctica.
Displaying a temperature that’s out by a couple of degrees isn’t the end of the world by any standard. You won’t be dressing differently for the sake of one degree, and if the temperature was 69 degrees Celsius, there’d be bigger problems to worry about.
But the bug is funny, and it’s and created a lot of curiosity among iPhone users.
Why Can’t Some iPhones Display 69 Degrees?
So far, Apple has remained quiet on the subject. The company hasn’t provided any explanation for the software bug officially and hasn’t acknowledged the issue online either.
One possible explanation for the bug is confusion between the metric and imperial systems. When using the metric system, 69 degrees would be 20.55555 degrees Celsius. With 20 and 21 degrees Celsius rounding to 68 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively.
Of course, you can get half-degree temperatures in the real world, but iPhones only show the temperature to the nearest whole number.
It is also plausible, though unlikely, that the Weather app has a mistake in the code where some temperatures aren’t translated to the imperial system, and so won’t return a temperature when converted to Fahrenheit.
Is Apple Censoring the Temperature?
Another possible explanation is that Apple is fed up with 69 jokes. The internet is filled with dirty memes and jokes surrounding the number 69. So, perhaps Apple is trying to avoid using the number to prevent dirty jokes.
Since the Weather widget can show 69 degrees, it’s fairly safe to rule out the censorship explanation. It appears this is just a bug within the Weather app itself.
Apple Fixed the Mistake
Regardless of why the Weather app bug occurred, Apple appears to have resolved the issue in the iOS 15 betas. This fix is likely to carry forward to the general iOS 15 release in fall, so there’s no need to panic.
Everyone will be able to see the correct temperature soon enough, no matter how much it might make them laugh.