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Comment by gcanyon | Hacker News Reader

Dark 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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> 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?

I used the Dark Sky app since it came out in 2012. I used to consistently get notifications about precipitation with Dark Sky, that were consistently accurate. The Apple weather application seems less motivated to send me notifications with any sort of regularity. I almost never get them now, even with fresh iOS installs. I haven't moved either.

And just anecdotally, Dark Sky was a delight to use. Apple Maps makes it a chore to extract the same utility from their app.

OK, notifications aren't the same as accuracy though. Neither is delight. I'm just talking about the supposed drop in accuracy that I just don't see.

(And Apple notifications are a mess generally. I constantly have notifications for something yesterday only show up today. I'm not sure that has anything to do with Weather specifically, their whole notification priority system is borked.)

I think the point was (and i'm certain my experience is) that with Apple Weather you just don't get the notifications at all (or rarely do) so it's very hard to get a feeling as to how accurate they are.

Yes, this is what I meant. I don't know what the notification thresholds are, so I use the fact that I'm getting a notification at all as a proxy for accuracy.

Got it. Yeah, where I am it's usually pretty obvious that it's probably going to rain in the next hour or two, so I look at the chart to see exactly when. I don't rely on notifications. So for me the accuracy seems the same. But if you're basing it on notifications then I could totally see why you could have a different impression.

I think -- and I might be wrong, since this is from over a decade ago -- that when I first used Dark Sky, I ended up disabling notifications because it would constantly warn me of precipitation, but then when I checked the graph there was none because the model had since updated, and I wound up turning them off. So notification thresholds are probably something hard to get right, and what is appropriate for one geographic area might not be optimal for another.

Back then (2010-2013ish) I was driving a motorcycle primarily so I was hyper aware of the immediate weather and Dark Sky was like magic in that use case.

Haven't moved for years, but yeah same over here. Darksky data seemed perfect and now no matter what source of data I use in places like Carrot or the ios weather app gives me the accuracy Darksky had. Is it just climate change? I have no idea, but I agree, accuracy seems lost now without Darksky proper.

checkout forecastadvisor.com and see what's the best for your area.

I've sort of transitioned to using Ventusky and Windy to checkout the big picture stuff, then I make up my own mind about precipitation. I live in the PNW of the US and our terrain is so varied that forecasting services are kind of meh in general. They're decent for "it might rain for a while today" but anything hyperlocal tends to get bad because of the terrain in Oregon.

Probably depends on where you are, but here in Europe I always joke that you should prepare for the exact opposite of what apple weather tells you. A lot of times I’m literary standing in the rain and Apple tells me the chance for rain is 0%

Right, but Dark Sky had that issue too. When precipitation has hyperlocal variation, you're always going to have that problem.

The Doppler radar that "live" precipitation comes from takes 4-6 min to complete a scan, and then obviously it takes a few minutes for that all to be ingested, update models, and push to devices.

The "live" weather from Apple (and when it was Dark Sky) has always been a prediction from about 10 min ago. And if it's raining where you are but dry six blocks to the north (as happens all the time), it's understandable why it gets it wrong.

Dark Sky almost always over predicted rain for my area. I think that was kind of their strategy. That said, I very much miss Dark Sky on android.

Also I really like a tool called Forecast Advisor. https://www.forecastadvisor.com/ . It shows you the accuracy of various forecasting services for your area.

I use it whenever I travel. I don't stick with one forecast site because depending on the terrain/location their accuracy changes drastically.

Certain models are better for certain geographical features depending on the location. I tend to hangout around a lot of mountains and the difference in forecast models makes a huge difference.

That is basically my impression here in the US PNW. If it tells me rain is about to start at my location, the one thing I know with 100% certainty is that rain is not about to start any time soon.

Dark Sky would say “Light rain staring in 4 minutes and ending in 17 minutes” and that’s what would happen.

Apple Weather is nothing like this.

I haven't done the stats, so I should probably have said "Apple's weather app still doesn't seem as precise or accurate"

That said, I'd still bet a dollar (that to be fair, I might lose) that Apple today is less accurate, and if they're just as accurate twelve years on, that's a fail as well.

Anecdotally, I agree with the parent comment.

Lived in the same general area (just outside a major metropolitan area) where I use DarkSky and now Apple Weather app.

DarkSky has better data vis and more reliable prediction. Apple Weather consistently over predicts snow fall amounts and many times I’ve had to use the Feedback to correct it on current conditions (e.g. raining when it says no rain or vice versa). I believe DarkSky had the same feedback feature but I never needed it this much.

Most of the time AW is fine but it’s less good to the point I’ve considered alternatives.

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.

> 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

But iOS has this now. It's the same thing. They integrated it from Dark Sky.

it doesn't work nearly as well. i'm not sure why, but the predictions are significantly worse than dark sky's were

I agree. One of the weird things is that the precipitation map will show rain coming that doesn't show anywhere else in the Weather app. Nearly every time that happens, the map is the one that's correct. And usually forecast.weather.gov will align with the map as well (and provide a better forecast than the app).

But that's the point. The map is based on the Dark Sky algorithm and only goes out an hour or so. And that's where the next-hour precipitation graph comes from -- and I've never seen them not match. Everything else is standard weather forecasts. Dark Sky itself worked the same way. It wasn't making 6-hour forecasts using its 1-hour algorithm. The results would have been terrible.

This is why I don't understand the complaints that iOS precipitation accuracy is worse than Dark Sky's. The map works the same way. The chart works the same way. Complaints about UX I get. But not the complaints about a supposed fall in precipitation accuracy.

I get that it's a common trope that products always supposedly get worse once they're bought. But in this case, in terms of accuracy, I just don't think it's true. And remember, Apple would have zero reason to worsen the quality. The whole point of buying it was to improve iOS weather. Which it did.

to each their own, but i used darksky for years as a daily bicycle commuter and found it to be profoundly accurate--to the point where i could use it to find clear patches of 15-20min to ride home in. there was a marked decline in the reliability & accuracy of the information provided to me once i was forced to switch to apple weather

I dunno. I literally use Apple Weather for that (can I run an errand in the next 25 min before the rain comes back) and it works the same as it did with Dark Sky. No decline that I've noticed. Like, it doesn't suddenly start raining after only 10 min when the app said I'd have 25 min.

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.

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