Doesn't seem that way to me. The predicted rain over the next hour looks the same as it did in DarkSky, and you can view the scrub the predicted clouds map timeline and see that it's predicting the same stuff. And the real-life quality where I live has shown no change, nor is there any obvious reason why there would have been. I presume Apple bought DarkSky for their tech rather than their userbase, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to reduce its computational quality.
> and not even close to feature complete.
To be honest, I don't really remember what else was in DarkSky, I just used it for its main feature -- rain over the next hour. But the Apple Weather app has a ton of features. Is there one or more specific features you're missing?
I think it sucks for Android users that Apple bought it. But for iOS I've been totally happy to have it integrated, rather than dealing with 2 separate apps.
I am a regular runner. The accurate micro-forecasts on Dark Sky were a huge help for me to plan ahead so I wouldn't get caught in the rain. Apple Weather mostly fails at this.
Additionally, I really dislike the Apple Weather dataviz for the day's trends. This time of year, the my local weather can wildly change from early morning to late afternoon, and I want to plan what to wear. I could glance quickly at Dark Sky and see the trend almost instantly. Apple Weather requires this awkward tap and drag gesture to see actual temperature values through the day.
Apple weather puts all sorts of weather data at the same level, despite the utility being wildly different. I need to know the temperature trend for the day, or rain chance. Wind speed isn't very useful to me day to day, yet they are at the same "level" of UI access. It doesn't feel very driven by user needs, but perhaps there are a lot more sailors using the app than I realize.
> Apple Weather requires this awkward tap and drag gesture to see actual temperature values through the day.
You mean scrolling horizontally to see the values?
It's not an awkward tap and drag, it's just scrolling.
But if you don't like scrolling (which I understand), then just tap without dragging, and it'll show you a full-screen graph with a curve representing the temperature throughout the whole day. It's fantastic.
The interface doesn't make it clear that it's tappable, I'll certainly admit. But I hope that helps you. The graph view only got added maybe a couple of years ago, and I think a lot of people maybe still don't know about it.
I miss the visualization, but IMO the biggest feature loss is the history feature. You could select any day in the past, even going back decades, and get historical weather information.
The hyper-local rain forecasts were always accurate for me with DarkSky. The "rain starting in 3 minutes, stopping in 10" was accurate. But right now, Apple Weather is telling me it's cloudy and raining where I'm at, and I'm looking outside my window to clear skies and dry ground.
> I miss the visualization, but IMO the biggest feature loss is the history feature.
AFAIK this is still in the API (although it wasn't at launch). Apple is fine with third party weather apps that provide all the information within WeatherKit.
> The hyper-local rain forecasts were always accurate for me with DarkSky.
DarkSky didn't magically rectify the difference between the macro predicted weather and hyperlocal forecasting either. One is a legitimate weather model, one is vectoring based on the last few radar maps.
Apple just still puts the macro predictions up front, and treats hyperlocal as short term badging/alerts.
> But right now, Apple Weather is telling me it's cloudy and raining where I'm at
Does it say "rain will continue for the next hour", e.g. a hyperlocal forecast?
> But right now, Apple Weather is telling me it's cloudy and raining where I'm at, and I'm looking outside my window to clear skies and dry ground.
Huh, I definitely haven't experienced that with the chart that shows rain over the next hour, the part that comes from DarkSky.
What happens when you look at the rainfall map timeline from the past couple hours and the prediction over the couple next?
Are you just on the very edge of rain/sun? Or is it all super spotty? Or is it totally and completely wrong regionwide? And is the historical data from the previous couple hours accurate at least?
Just curious where the problem is coming from. Because it's visually pretty obvious how it works when you look at it.
> And sometimes it’s bizarrely off, like saying the UV index is 1 on a cloudless June afternoon. There’s no sanity checking to speak off.
That sounds like weather data that hasn't updated for hours because you have a bad connection or something.
It does drive me nuts that all weather apps I've ever used always show you the previously loaded data, even if it's 5 days stale. I absolutely despise this "optimistic" UX model where it assumes that the most recent data is "good enough" until new data is fetched. Especially since it never even tells you how stale the data is.
Like, if weather data is more than two hours old, I'd rather you show me nothing, because then at least I know to go outside and check, rather than be deceived by the app lying to me.
It happens after multiple refreshes, and it’s just a specific example I chose out of many cases… though it may be possible that the backend server just ignores all that and sends me old data anyways…
Apple Weather is still missing some of the data that Dark Sky exposed, like cloud coverage percentage and other niche info. I also find the UX a little worse, as I like more data at a glance. But you can tell they're using the Dark Sky backend, as it has the same bugs that Dark Sky had, like slowing loading map tiles which sometimes fail altogether. And there was the time they accidentally reenabled the Dark Sky API after an Apple backend deployment. :D
I was (selfishly) happy with the acquisition because DarkSky didn't support where I live. Now I have hyperlocal rain notifications I didn't get before.
> Apple Weather is less reliable than DarkSky
Doesn't seem that way to me. The predicted rain over the next hour looks the same as it did in DarkSky, and you can view the scrub the predicted clouds map timeline and see that it's predicting the same stuff. And the real-life quality where I live has shown no change, nor is there any obvious reason why there would have been. I presume Apple bought DarkSky for their tech rather than their userbase, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to reduce its computational quality.
> and not even close to feature complete.
To be honest, I don't really remember what else was in DarkSky, I just used it for its main feature -- rain over the next hour. But the Apple Weather app has a ton of features. Is there one or more specific features you're missing?
I think it sucks for Android users that Apple bought it. But for iOS I've been totally happy to have it integrated, rather than dealing with 2 separate apps.