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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

#31

Post by athenot »

jwestbury wrote: post #14
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…

Can I just piggyback on this to shit on the iOS Weather app for a moment? Whoever designed it doesn't understand the concept of daily max/min temperatures, and the daily low presented in the app is the lowest during that calendar day, rather than the forecast overnight low following the day. It drives me absolutely mad, because I can never reliably determine how cold it will get overnight without going into the hourl…

They did the same for the weather on the Apple Watch. It used to show the next minimum temperature but sometime last year it changed to minimum within calendar day, which is just about useless.

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

#32

Post by scarface74 »

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…

Apple also made the underlying API available for both iOS and Android. Someone is free to create a similar app.

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

#33

Post by moneywoes »

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…

Any good alternatives since?

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

#34

Post by phailhaus »

doctoboggan wrote: post #28
vngzs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not good enough. I'm going to be out for the whole day: do I need an umbrella? I want to know that immediately. It's such basic information that it needs to be always at hand.

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

#35

Post by withinboredom »

cryptoz wrote: post #29
withinboredom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

Huh. This is why I love HN. I didn’t know about that but looking up these papers to see if this approach would be useful to some other stuff I’m working on with similar-ish noise problems that conventional algorithms aren’t working for.

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

#36

Post by adql »

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…

> 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.

"I hate them so I will only give them a tiny bit less money" is why it will never change

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

#37

Post by dhimes »

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 get you, but I'm a sailor and a race-committee co-chair. Weather is a good chunk of my life!

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

#38

Post by Steltek »

I'm a big fan of Weather Underground's 10 day forecast graph. Like Dark Sky, you can see the temperature ebb and flow, plus wind speeds, cloud cover, rain percentages (and amounts). One chart tells me every aspect of the weather that I need.

Instead of an app, I just have a bookmark on my home screen.

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

#39

Post by scop »

pcl wrote: post #30
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.

Indeed. When I lived in CA, I probably checked the weather twice a year. Now that I live in TX, I check the weather daily and often multiple times a day! It was a surprising, but obvious, change after living most of my life without seasons and dramatic weather events.

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

#40

Post by jameshart »

Dark Sky was okay. As detailed here, it does a great job of centering on the actual user needs of weather app users.

Unfortunately, it also demonstrated that which users you focus on matters a lot.

Dark Sky is great at answering the weather questions of people who live in places where rain showers are short lasting; where temperatures range from ‘cool’ to ‘hot’; and where storms are infrequent, special events. Basically people whose interaction with the weather hinges on ‘do I need a jacket?’

You know, northern Californians.

It was a poor fit for people whose weather landscape includes frequent storms; snowfall; temperature ranges that go down below freezing (seriously - dark sky’s temperature graphs never marked freezing temperatures for some reason); multiple types of precipitation; etc.

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