A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

bradleyankrom wrote: post #27

bmitc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by cauthon » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

tyrfing wrote: post #72

jameshart wrote: post #40

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. Basica…

Disagree. Dark Sky was fantastic in the PNW, where the main concerns are just how rainy it will be that day, and the approximate high temperatures coming up. Nothing accurately forecasts (here) whether it will be freezing or whether precipitation will be snow/slush/hail/rain, but other apps like Apple's are absolutely horrific at forecasting precipitation even a few hours out. Stuff like showing 30% chance of rain in…

Post by duanem » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

dczot wrote: post #45

egypturnash wrote: post #9

I have moved from Dark Sky to Weather Strip: https://www.weatherstrip.app It does a really nice job of showing me most of what Dark Sky showed, in a similarly easy-to-glance-at format once I spent a little time learning to read its graphs. I think Carrot Weather has a lot of graphs directly ripped off from Dark Sky but the constant attempts to upsell me to a subscription plan while I was playing with it really turned…

Nice thanks for the iOS rec. I've been a big fan of FlowX ( https://flowx.io/ ) on Android which has had a similar graph/visualization with the addition of also having a radar view.

Post by chordalkeyboard » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #89

screamingninja wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free to create a similar app Only if you sign up for the Apple Developer Program, comply with all their rules and expectations, and not be surprised if they ban you from using it with no explanation whatsoever.

Yes because out of the millions of app submissions that happen every year, you are likely to “be banned” for some arbitrary reason that is not spelled out. That must be why developing iOS Apps is so unpopular with developers…

Post by syntheticnature » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

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…