Apple claims that Dark Sky’s features have been integrated into Apple Weather which the company says offers hyperlocal forecasts for your current location, including next-hour precipitation, hourly forecasts for the next 10 days, high-resolution radar, and notifications. So, why is Apple’s Weather app still so reliably wrong?
Apple claims that the Weather app “provides the most important weather information in a smart layout that adjusts to the current conditions,” but too often that information is just plain wrong.
Hello, Dark Sky, are you really in there? If so, where?
Michael Grothaus for Fast Company:
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say Apple’s Weather app is the most beautiful app the company has ever made. Its full-screen weather animation backdrops are nothing short of stunning. There have been times when I’ve spent an extra several seconds in the app simply gazing at the particulates flowing across my screen in the breezy animation or at the flakes every so gently falling in the snow animation. But unfortunately, that’s where my love affair with Apple Weather ends.
One of the reasons for this is that I’ve lost trust in the weather data the app is showing me. Sometimes the forecast is spot on, and sometimes it’s so wildly off, it’s comical.
The biggest issue that I and many others have had with Apple Weather in 2023 is that it can be hard to trust the data. There are times when the information it presents is not just off, but the opposite of real-world conditions at that very moment.
For example, when I was on vacation earlier this year, one… false forecast appeared for three days in a row. Each day Apple Weather said it was going to be sunny, yet each day it rained—or poured. And this wasn’t just an incident unique to me.
The rain is POURING DOWN!
The Apple weather app is useless nowadays. pic.twitter.com/ijZypi48xr
— 𝒜𝓃𝓃𝒾𝒸𝒶 🌸 (@luminousepinoia) July 31, 2023
https://twitter.com/chiefkizzy01/status/1684979349571678228
Go home apple weather. You’re confused. pic.twitter.com/cR8loNukDu
— Matthew Beldon (@mabeldon) August 3, 2023
Apple weather app never is correct about how much rain will or has fallen. It’s been raining all day! pic.twitter.com/uhSscUH7Hw
— john harvey (@pjyankeeedved) July 29, 2023
Why is the apple weather app so bad? It rained as hard as I’ve ever seen here for about an hour and it’s saying 0 precipitation in the last 24 hours. It was flooding. The app is the worst. Never close to being accurate pic.twitter.com/C1XenY8c6K
— Brandon Stokley (@bstokley14) August 1, 2023
MacDailyNews Take: Dark Sky was uncannily accurate. When it said told us was going to rain in 10 minutes, it rained in 10 minutes. So, if Apple integrated Dark Sky into Weather, why doesn’t Weather work even remotely as well as Dark Sky? Did Apple change the data sources that were fed into Weather when they turned off Dark Sky? Is this a GIGO case, Garbage In, Garbage Out? Or is something else broken inside Apple’s Weather app?
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