What is an app? Well, it's a program that you might have downloaded that's occupying some memory on your device. On Android, apps will run as a separate process, but that process can start up other processes (including other apps) and run other background services. I don't know about other operating systems, but I guess they do something similar.
For example, most weather apps will have a main process that displays the user interface. But in order to provide the local weather, these apps start or tap into an already running location providing service. These apps might also start up background services that periodically check the weather. Thus, your weather app auto-magically knows where you are. It can alert you when a thunder-storm is expected and it always has fresh up-to-date data waiting for you.
Of course, the convenience of an app comes at a cost. The app takes up some space on the phone, uses CPU which uses battery, and eats up some mobile data. All of these are rather small costs, but when it comes to a small device like your phone - every resource is limited and should be conserved.
In the case of a weather app, I've tried a few. Some use more resources, some had more customizations, some looked better, and some weren't free. And in the end, I hated them all. The solution that I like for now, is this:
I created a bookmark to - m.weather.com/36hour/12345 - (I changed my zip code to 12345) and placed it on my home screen. With this bookmark, the memory footprint is as low as possible, I'm semi-sure that it's not running rogue processes, and it gives me what I want. I'm thinking that this type of switch, bookmark to site instead of app, might be something to consider for a few apps I'm not happy with.
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