Apple Pushes Dark Sky Users to Revamped Weather App as Shutdown Looms

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

I’m especially going to miss the Dark Sky Apple Watch complication. I wish Apple would add that as an option to their weather complications.

Apple Watch does need an Apple Watch complication strictly for stock weather app as they have it for the iPhone. Apple currently offers astronomy, lunar, and so on.

Why can't we have it for the most important thing? Weather!

 

[nutmac]

Carrot whether on iOS is best weather app out there. https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/

CARROT Weather is indeed amazing, with customization engine that is second to none. But to make it really sing, be prepared to pay $14.99/year to $49.99/year for subscription.

This is largely because the developer has to pay for weather data, but since Apple Weather does provide a great deal of features (although not as customizable nor fun), it is something to consider.

 

[StandingGoose]

New Apple weather have nearly everything except percentage chances of rain next 10 days, I always use that in Dark Sky check next few days weather is like. Apple Weather app just show mm of rain instead. At least it do show percentage chance of rain next 24 hours though, better than nothing.

If there is a chance of rain/snow, the icons in the 10-day forecast show the percentage chance.

 

[ieatcake]

What Dark Sky got right was the vertical view of weather and the ability to jump between various data forecasts (I.e. wind, UV, etc). Apple Weather has horizontal graphs of the data (after tapping for detail) and the graphs’ x axis only labels 12 am/pm and 6 am/pm. I can drag my finger along the graph to see each hour, but you’re doing so many taps in a little graph to see what the forested weather is for 1pm or 2pm or 3pm.

Also where’s the hour by hour forecast of feels like temp?

Terrible downgrade. Closest thing is Carrot weather, but not the same.

 

[StandingGoose]

Apple Watch does need an Apple Watch complication strictly for stock weather app as they have it for the iPhone. Apple currently offers astronomy, lunar, and so on.

Why can't we have it for the most important thing? Weather!

Apple offers six Weather complications:

AQI
Conditions
Rain
Temperature
UV Index
Wind

Dark Sky had one that (as I recall) combined Conditions and Temperature or something along those lines. The lack of a combo complication is (somewhat) alleviated by newer watches having faces with more complications.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Apple offers six Weather complications:

AQI
Conditions
Rain
Temperature
UV Index
Wind

Dark Sky had one that (as I recall) combined Conditions and Temperature or something along those lines. The lack of a combo complication is (somewhat) alleviated by newer watches having faces with more complications.

Agreed! I'm sorry I think I got confused. I meant to say Apple needs to offer a Weather Watch face for Apple Watch. You know how we have it for Astronomy we need it for the live weather as well.

 

[diggy33]

I feel Apple took a great app, and overcomplicated it. I loved Dark Sky for what it was - just show me when its going to rain or snow. Weather app is good, but its no where near as a "look and see" GUI like Dark Sky.

 

[jayducharme]

The Weather app is quite useless here as it doesn’t use the local data and always provides wrong results, making people unprepared for the real situation.

Yeah, it's no better in my area. There are days where the app shows it raining, and outside it's sunny. And vice-versa. Precipitation percentages continually change, not by small increments but from, say, 10% to 80% and then to 0%. It's as if the forecasters are simply rolling dice. So I agree the app is pretty. But I want it to be more accurate.

 

[shenfrey]

Haven't looked back since Carrot

 

[Piplodocus]

Dammit! I'm finally gonna have to replace my iPhone 6S or switch weather app!

Actually I found out today I think work is getting me an SE, so I basically get an almost identical replacement phone, but far faster and with iOS16 for free! 🤔😁

 

[JM]

I agree it's a well-made OG weather app but it stopped getting the updates. It still has a lot of potentials. I love the UI weather data it shows.

Yahoo Launches Standalone iPhone Weather App, Brings Dedicated Mail App to iPad

Yahoo has launched a new standalone iPhone weather app called Yahoo! Weather, along with an upgraded version of its Yahoo! Mail app that brings the...

www.macrumors.com

Whoops I meant ads. They introduced ads and ruined yahoo weather.

 

[JM]

I agree it's a well-made OG weather app but it stopped getting the updates. It still has a lot of potentials. I love the UI weather data it shows.

Yahoo Launches Standalone iPhone Weather App, Brings Dedicated Mail App to iPad

Yahoo has launched a new standalone iPhone weather app called Yahoo! Weather, along with an upgraded version of its Yahoo! Mail app that brings the...

www.macrumors.com

Oh that was so sad seeing the app again in screenshots before they introduced ads 😩

 

[ignatius345]

What I'm really going to miss is the great, unique alert sound Dary Sky has. The stock Weather app just uses that crappy generic "tri-tone" alert that could literally be anything.

 

[genovelle]

Dark Sky in its heyday was an astounding demo app, with very accurate hyperlocal precipitation notifications. But its accuracy gradually declined and the app's UI was neglected.

Despite few flaws, Apple's Weather app is one of the best built-in apps on the iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, with tons of details and snazzy UI. Its precipitation notification is not up to snuff and Apple really needs to improve and open up WeatherKit to high volume use.

The precipitation notification relied on local user participation

 

[nutmac]

The precipitation notification relied on local user participation

I don't think that's right. Their Kickstarter project page explains how hyperlocal prediction works. Users can further refine their prediction, but it does not rely on it as the primary prediction.

I was one of the early adopters and I was in a remote place (but with wireless service) and I was constantly notified of precipitation changes.

 

[ericg301]

I always found the interface lacking...and boring. As soon as Carrot came around, I made the switch and haven't looked back. Guess I was in the minority.

 

[iStorm]

Does DarkSky's precipitation map specify whether the precipitation is rain, snow, or a mix? Just curious, but guessing not since Apple's Weather app doesn't. Hopefully it'll be improved in the future.

 

[Larry-Bloom]

The weather app is greatly improved, but I still prefer Dark Sky

 

[Bustycat]

Yeah, it's no better in my area. There are days where the app shows it raining, and outside it's sunny. And vice-versa. Precipitation percentages continually change, not by small increments but from, say, 10% to 80% and then to 0%. It's as if the forecasters are simply rolling dice. So I agree the app is pretty. But I want it to be more accurate.

It brings a bigger misunderstanding: people complain about its inaccuracy towards our meteorological service but they don’t know that the weather app uses data from an American website.

 

[now i see it]

Prime example of how  buys a successful app company then ruins pretty much everything good about the app

 

[MallardDuck]

Yeah, well, it's not all there. The forecast data in weather doesn't match what's in dark sky.

It's also far less usable - takes a lot of clicks/touches to get to the same data. I might excuse that, but if the data is wrong, the whole thing is useless.

 

[VulchR]

Bad . 🤬

 

[R3k]

Hmm.

There are actually no weather apps I like using at the moment. I used to use Weather Underground but IBM half destroyed that. Went to Dark Sky but its become quite unreliable for my location over the last couple of years. Everything else I try the UI seems convoluted.

 

[Hareti]

Your article and Apples both miss a pretty massive hole. Weather was only introduced in iPadOS 16. If you have an iPad before then, you now have the choice of paying (again) for another app that has a privacy policy at least as strong as Dark Sky, or using a free 3rd party app that you know will sell location data to anyone who wants it.

 

[Stromos]

So maybe I can ask all of you. I never used the stock app and always used the Weather Channel app just for severe weather alerts alone. Now the Weather Channel app has been pure ads, buggy UI, and begging for money. I thought well the new Stock Weather app is supposed to be great let me switch to that. I get an alert from Weather Channel about severe weather click the banner and it doesn't open (been a bug lately with the weather channel app) but I get nothing from the stock app and when I open the stock app I see no severe weather alert.

Does the Stock app not do severe weather alerts? I feel like something so basic should be easy lately the only way I get a decent weather alert is Alexa if I'm at home.