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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

#111

Post by dmje »

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.

I live in the UK. In Cornwall. By the sea. So there's nothing whatsoever predictable about the weather round here :-)

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

#112

Post by dmje »

burkaman wrote: post #23
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.

Sure. All the time - I'm a runner, a walker, I have teen kids who like walking, we have a dog. But is any of this really changed by knowing it's going to rain? Nope. I stick my nose out on a morning - if it's cold, I put on a warm coat. If it's going to rain, I put on something rainproof. No need for an app. Or, sadly, a chart or a graph...

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

#114

Post by dmje »

uptown wrote: post #24
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?

All of that, apart from the transit system thing - we don't have a lot of infrastructure where I live :-)

But - am I affected by the weather? Nope.

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

#115

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Companies solve their own problems. Outlook is one of the classic examples of that - it was an app that was a cultural snapshot of Microsoft.

In the case of Apple, Cupertino is a pretty boring weather locale. Sometimes you need to zipper your coat and once in awhile it rains.

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

#116

Post by withinboredom »

InitialLastName wrote: post #55
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.

Not really? A 10cm change in elevation at sea level results in a 0.0001% change in atmospheric pressure [0]. On the other hand, weather-relevant pressure changes operate on scales of ~0.1% [1]. By my math, a small weather-relevant pressure change would be equivalent of someone changing their elevation by 100 meters. Additionally, on a modern phone the barometric data can be adjusted against the accelerometer and GPS…

Why say "not really" when you can simply test this yourself with a sensor dumping app. Planes have been using this technology for about a hundred years with accuracy down to the foot.

It isn't the GPS or position of the device you need to correlate, its trustworthy data. Is the device on an elevator, or did the pressure actually drop?

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

#117

Post by tshaddox »

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…

It's interesting you say that, because I have been under the impression that weather apps always show daily low temperatures based on the calendar day (midnight-to-midnight). I've always thought they could be improved by showing the overnight low, which you're saying is the case for some weather apps. Which ones are those?

It's also worth noting that the midnight-to-midnight scheme is a lot more well-defined than the alternative we're both advocating. What do you show as the low temperature for today if it's currently 3am and the temperature isn't going to drop until 3am tomorrow? If that temperature drop is displayed as today's low temperature, then I won't be able to discern whether it will get cold during this night (i.e. today between 1am and 7am) or the following night (i.e. between 7pm today and 7am tomorrow). Not to mention that cold systems can move in at any time, and it may be much colder at noon tomorrow than 3am tomorrow, so in many case "overnight low" isn't even what you care about.

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

#118

Post by tshaddox »

brewdad wrote: post #60
nonethewiser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused why the daily minimum would include times outside the day. That doesn’t seem like a daily minimum by definition. The way Apple does it is exactly how I assumed it would work. Is the alternative you described standard?

It becomes useless when it was 32 degrees at midnight. But now, as I sit here on a Thursday morning, it shows the low for today as 28 degrees and tomorrow as 40 degrees. What will I need to wear Friday morning when I go out? Will it be closer to 40 or continue dropping and be closer to freezing? Is it safe to put my sensitive plants back outside? Perhaps it shows 28 again but is that for early Friday morning or late…

> In almost all cases the coldest part of the day is right around dawn.

Probably true, and yet the counterexamples are when the temperature forecast is particularly important when I'm choosing what to wear. Any simplification of the temperature forecast into daily lows and highs will fail certain use cases, so I think it's very reasonable to make the daily lows and highs as well- and simply-defined as possible and provide an hourly forecast so that people can also check for the potential edge cases.

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

#119

Post by nonfamous »

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…

And even then, it's often plain wrong. A couple of weeks ago it was raining in my area at noon (a flood watch was active!) but the precipitation screen showed 0 rain that day, in the past and the future.
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