Forecaster for Android shares some good ideas with this
A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
221–230 of 255 posts
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#222I'm not a phone user, so the presentation of weather for me always tends to look fairly different than anything you'd "typically" see on a phone. That said, I have a hard time imagining how I could improve on the data density, clarity and depth of this 10 day forecast, customized by me, from wunderground.com https://imgur.com/5PIiB1h.png You can see clearly: * 24hr temperature cycles * cloud cover vs. sun * wind spee…
I like that chart, though I wish there would be some uncertainty in the lines further out. Sometimes I want a sense of the trends, it isn't like I plan 10 days out based on precip numbers. Though a range would give me a direction to lean. Coordinating with friends who tell me about a chance of rain in a week as a reason to alter plans is frustrating.
It looks like the yr.no chart view that I've used on my phone for years. I appreciate having the pressure, precip, temp on separate but aligned charts to avoid too much density.
Weather representation is hard though. I care about different things at different times of year. In the winter: temp, freezing line, precip, wind speed/direction, and jet stream postion in 4-12 hour increments.
In the summer: temp, cloud cover, thunderstorm chance, precip on a 12 hour tto daily level. But I care about wind speed and direction on a hourly level for water activities.
In both cases I like an easy way to see the radar/satellite images and sometimes the model trends so I can see where precip or cloud cover is more or less.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#223The 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?
It is not. If you think it’s the same you never used Dark Sky.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#224The closing of Dark Sky was a tremendous loss. We went from having minute-accurate weather forecasts to having daily forecasts like the ones from a century ago. It was devastating.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#225Well, this is quite a detailed analysis and I don't want to take a dump on it because it's obviously a good analysis. BUT. Masterpiece? I don't think so. Dark Sky's data visualization was all shiny gold and not enough real science. Their radar map with all those pretty colors was super buggy, so much so that you couldn't trust it. If you move the map or zoom in, or pan around, the rain / radar data often would not mo…
Meteorologists seemed to feel that Dark Sky was a graphics processing tool, not a weather app.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/dark-sky-weather-app-ap...
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#226Carrot Weather added the "inline" view which replicates Dark Sky pretty well. [1] It's been an easy transition for me, although Carrot is more expensive. [1]: http://meetcarrot.com/weather/goodbyedarksky.html
Coincidentally carrot is down too
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
The app also tells you that. For example at the top of the app now I see a message “Rainy conditions expected around 3pm”
Author here! There's definitely a taste / opinion component to any deep design critique. I think for many (for whom the post resonated), the ability to quickly glance at Dark Sky and understand relevant weather contextually was THE game changer. It's a hard thing to discuss, because until you've felt the experience, it doesn't seem like a "big deal". Some apps do use text to talk about the current / upcoming rain, bu…
Thank you for taking the time to write this article. I was disturbed about the shutdown of Darksky because I really loved the features of that app and reading your article took me on a nice walk down memory lane. Raising the discussion here has been not only been cathartic in that I now know I have a lot of company for my thoughts, but has also provided some alternatives to try to recapture the experience. I'm not a big fan of Apple Weather and at least now I have some options to explore.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#228I'm not sure I completely see the authors point about "Preserving temperature magnitudes in ranges", could someone help me understand? Specifically, I don't understand this: "all temperature ranges are rescaled to take up the same amount of space in the app.", since it seems like both the Dark Sky and Weather.app views use pills that don't cover the x axis, as expected.
Author here! I think this image does the best job of showcasing the difference: https://i0.wp.com/nightingaledvs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023... In Apple Watch, the min and max values (the numeric values left / right of the pills) are all aligned vertically on top of each other. In Dark Sky, they aren't aligned because the horizontal position is driven by the min and max values themselves . This is subtle but CRUCIAL…
Wait, where is the Apple Watch in this? You mean iOS?
In both screenshots of that image, the horizontal position of the pills are driven by the temperature. I don't see the difference other than where the min/max label is placed.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#229I have not found a replacement for the 1 week precipitation map on any of the usually suggested apps.
Has anyone else found this feature elsewhere?
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I tried to install this on Android and was met with "unable to connect to server." I wonder if Carrot is using the Dark Sky API.
Carrot lets you pick your data source [1]. One of the options is the Dark Sky API which is still operating until March 31 [2]. [1]: https://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/ [2]: https://darksky.net/dev
I don't have an option to pick my data source. Theres just a "retry" button