Dark Sky No More

My favorite weather app has been discontinued. Apple bought the app a few years ago and announced that they would discontinue it at the end of 2022. Nothing unusual really, that’s how it goes in the tech world. Apple did integrate some of the features in their official Weather app, and that app definitely improved greatly with the integration. But where Dark Sky shined (shone) was in two ways:

• It alerted me of incoming rain, often to the minute and often several times a day, if the weather asked for it.
• The app showed me the day and the week at a glance in a fast and intuitive interface.

As a trail runner knowing when it’s going to rain is pretty important. (I live in the Pacific Northwest, it rains often and a lot.) The new weather app has all that info too, baked into several other features that are also cool, but bloat the app and gum up the user experience. It just takes a lot longer to get to the info Dark Sky offered quickly at a glance. Full featured weather apps are fine, but allowing the user to customize a view or select certain features to focus on would be… nice. Will Apple ever understand that part of the user experience? I doubt it.