A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
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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
#2Oh man I miss Dark Sky. I have yet to find a weather app as good. briefsky[0] was recently posted on here and I think I'll try using it for a while. Also of note is Pirate Weather[1], a weather API in the same style as Dark Sky.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#3The 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?
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#4I really miss Dark Sky. Apple choosing to kill the app was a huge mistake IMO. Despite them "integrating Dark Sky features" into Apple Weather, I still dislike the user interface and layout of Apple Weather in general. Dark Sky was everything I needed for weather. Part of me wishes they would listen to complaints and bring back the service, but I guess that will never happen.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#5I really liked Dark Sky for the notifications and rain intensity charts. But for me in the central UK the map _never_ worked properly for me. Only fragments of the map would load, for some of the time range, and the extrapolation parts never worked properly.
Unfortunately the new apple weather version seems to have inherited exactly the same map flaws.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#6Well, 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 move with the map. So you would have a 2x scaling issue with how large the rain area was.
Also, they never provided confidence information. They often made predictions that were wrong, and never informed you of how confident their forecasts were. But they would always show a 'flawless' representation of the data so you would be convinced it was right.
Yes yes, it was pretty. But it was not backed by science, and the data was misrepresented I'd say 100% of the time. You can't have a masterpiece of data visualization where a major component of the vis is 'looking pretty' and the factualness of it is ignored.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#7It has some similarity to the weather overview graphs from weather.gov which are my daily driver.
Its just stacked graphs of temperature, humidity, wind, and precipitations for 2 days. Shows sunrise/sunset. Its so not pretty, but quite effective.
It took a few days, but I got quite good at reading the weather from these graphs at a glance.
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.3761&lon=-7...
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#8It 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 comparable.
I feel like I lost a friend that I consulted with daily.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#9I 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 me off, as did the "what political alignment would you like the sweary forecast to have" switch.
Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece
#10Oh man I miss Dark Sky. I have yet to find a weather app as good. briefsky[0] was recently posted on here and I think I'll try using it for a while. Also of note is Pirate Weather[1], a weather API in the same style as Dark Sky. [0] https://briefsky.app/ [1] https://pirateweather.net
Also Merry Sky[1], which uses the Pirate Weather API. Open-Meteo is also interesting.
[1]: https://merrysky.net [2]: https://open-meteo.com