alt Hacker NewsDark Sky was a marvel, and when it first came out, its ability to say rain will start where you are in 2-3 minutes was a marvel.
The information design argument is 100% valid, but I also marvel that, having bought the company, Apple's weather app still isn't as precise or accurate. I don't know whether Apple's privacy focus prevents them making the same precise predictions, or if there is some other reason they don't, but it's sad that in 2025 we don't have the same level of performance as we did twelve years ago.
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Yes! The ability to be outside, pull out your phone, and get an almost-to-the-minute awareness of when it was going to rain felt magical, right out of Back to the Future 2. I used this countless times.
So much of weather forecasting, at that time, was about trends and probabilities. DarkSky was about events, certainty, and action.
It was truly ahead of anything else and forced a new standard.
Agreed, that’s what won me over to Dark Sky. Now I use Carrot Weather and like that a lot, the “it’s going to rain hard in XX minutes” notifications are awesome, especially with a dog. I’ve gotten that notification close to a normal time I’d take the dog out and been able to run him outside before it pours rain for the next hour.
Kind of feel like watching Spiderman tonight and I don't know why hehe.
In all seriousness I heard some good things of dark sky. My current weather app is windy.com and I believe it's more built for surfers and such (??) - not sure what the best android weather app is.
I've never understood why Apple didn't adapt Dark Sky's design lessons. Apple Weather is functional, but dull.
> Apple's weather app still isn't as precise or accurate
Is it not? The rainfall-per-minute over the next hour on iOS seems about the same accuracy as Dark Sky had -- I used Dark Sky for years. It wasn't perfect but it worked well enough, same as iOS did after. You can even scrub the precipitation map predictions and they look the same to me.
I know the Dark Sky prediction accuracy was greatly dependent on where you lived -- this is something that was widely discussed back in the day. If you've seen a drop in accuracy, did you simply move?