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A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

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Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#21

Post by dmje »

My wife often asks me "but why would you care about the weather?" and I have to say that over the years I've either been ground down or simply come to understand her way of thinking. Yes it's sort of exciting to see graphs and charts and maps and stuff, but really - do I make any decisions based on what my weather app is telling me? No. Do I need an alert to tell me it's going to rain soon? No.

So, yeh, Dark Sky was beautiful but I'm not sure (for me anyway) a weather app is the necessity that many people claim it is.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#22

Post by vngzs »

ezfe wrote: post #3

The second complaint mentioned in the article: >Is there anything that has the precipitation graph similar to dark sky The precipitation graph is in the Weather app, so it's unclear why this is being included as a complaint about the Weather app?

To find it, you need to know that tapping on the hourly weather view gives you the temperature graph. Then you need to click the thermostat icon and switch it to precipitation. Only then is the information displayed. Once it's onscreen, the precipitation graph in the Apple Weather app centers on the full day view (with the current time in the middle) rather than just the future, which is what most users care about.

That's not the same as putting it front-and-center. Yes, the information is there, but the interface design is garbage.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#23

Post by burkaman »

dmje wrote: post #21

My wife often asks me "but why would you care about the weather?" and I have to say that over the years I've either been ground down or simply come to understand her way of thinking. Yes it's sort of exciting to see graphs and charts and maps and stuff, but really - do I make any decisions based on what my weather app is telling me? No. Do I need an alert to tell me it's going to rain soon? No. So, yeh, Dark Sky was…

> do I make any decisions based on what my weather app is telling me? No.

Do you not ever go outside? I can't imagine not caring about the forecast, I make decisions based on it every single day.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#24

Post by uptown »

dmje wrote: post #21

My wife often asks me "but why would you care about the weather?" and I have to say that over the years I've either been ground down or simply come to understand her way of thinking. Yes it's sort of exciting to see graphs and charts and maps and stuff, but really - do I make any decisions based on what my weather app is telling me? No. Do I need an alert to tell me it's going to rain soon? No. So, yeh, Dark Sky was…

Do you do anything outdoors? Sports? Hike? Drive? Own a home that is affected by storm systems? Commute on transit systems that are affected by the changing weather?

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#27

Post by bradleyankrom »

bmitc wrote: post #17
strict9 wrote: post #8

It was a masterpiece. Apple deleting Dark Sky something I will never forgive them for. Maybe not enough to make me switch phones, but enough to make me look elsewhere when needing peripheral items. The statement that Dark Sky features were incorporated into the native weather app was an insult. I know I sound dramatic talking about a weather app, but it was in a class of its own and nothing else is remotely comparabl…

And it wasn't just how it looked either. Dark Sky was a weather app that was actually accurate for what you wanted it for. It really frustrates me that Apple completely killed off the product. I don't know what their problem is, but it seems to me that it would have been no problem to allow the app to continue to exist as a standalone one while supposedly "integrating" it into whatever Apple's weather app is.

Whatever model the Weather app uses has been hopelessly unreliable and at times downright incorrect. Dark Sky wasn’t always accurate (no model is), but it seemed to match reality more often than not.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#28

Post by doctoboggan »

vngzs wrote: post #22
ezfe wrote: post #3

The second complaint mentioned in the article: >Is there anything that has the precipitation graph similar to dark sky The precipitation graph is in the Weather app, so it's unclear why this is being included as a complaint about the Weather app?

To find it, you need to know that tapping on the hourly weather view gives you the temperature graph. Then you need to click the thermostat icon and switch it to precipitation. Only then is the information displayed. Once it's onscreen, the precipitation graph in the Apple Weather app centers on the full day view (with the current time in the middle) rather than just the future, which is what most users care about. T…

If rain is forecast in the next hour they put the minute by minute graph at the top front and center in the iOS weather app.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#29

Post by cryptoz »

withinboredom wrote: post #19
cryptoz wrote: post #12

Another Dark Sky thread, another opportunity to ask the community if anyone knows about Apple doing research with the barometers in their phones. Dark Sky claimed they 'did' but they never expanded on what that meant for them. Did they actually use the barometer data collected from the app? Or did it just get sent to /dev/null as I suspect? And if Apple bought that code, did they use it themselves? Is Apple doing any…

I suspect barometer data from phones would be junk unless you can correlate it with other data. The phone’s barometer is sensitive enough to detect the pressure difference (altitude change) of a few cm. That makes it extremely noisy for detecting slow moving metrics like the weather.

Yes, but, significant work was done at an academic level between 2011 and 2017, researchers at universities, grad student projects, etc, that resulted in usable data being extracted. I worked on this problem for ~10 years off and on. It is absolutely doable.

Especially since you don't actually _need_ raw pressure data to be useful. Pressure rate of change over time is still useful and produces improved accuracy in some local forecasts.

But not only that, the researchers at UW under Cliff Mass found that you can do on-device ML to clean the quality of the data, remove errors, and live-adjust to MSLP on-device, without even needing the dense network of sensors nearby for error correction.

It's 100% doable, but it just takes some hard science and effort.

> That makes it extremely noisy for detecting slow moving metrics like the weather

Yes, but, the noise problem was solved half a decade ago.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#30

Post by pcl »

dmje wrote: post #21

My wife often asks me "but why would you care about the weather?" and I have to say that over the years I've either been ground down or simply come to understand her way of thinking. Yes it's sort of exciting to see graphs and charts and maps and stuff, but really - do I make any decisions based on what my weather app is telling me? No. Do I need an alert to tell me it's going to rain soon? No. So, yeh, Dark Sky was…

I think it depends a lot on where you live. Some places have predictable weather (rainy all day, or sunny in the afternoons, or whatever) but other places see random storms with no rhyme or reason.

In those latter markets, something that tells you it’s about to rain is super useful.

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