On Dark Sky and Apple's Weather

A Eulogy for Dark Sky, a Data Visualization Masterpiece

The design of Dark Sky was so wonderful that I could understand the shape of the weather at a glance, even from a zoomed out view of the app.

Great analysis of the now-defunct Dark Sky weather app. I’m a bit late on that one. I don’t remember using Dark Sky because I think it wasn’t working in Canada. I’m not sure about this. Once Apple took over and brought the redesigned weather app with iOS 16, we could visually feel the Dark Sky’s influence on it. But Apple being Apple, they dropped a few things here and there and made a few things their own. I tend to use Carrot Weather more, but recently, I deep-dived into Apple’s Weather, and frankly, they did a good job. Yet, there was something unique in Dark Sky that I don’t feel in Apple’s offerings. Is it too close to the Yahoo Weather look & feel? Maybe.

Learned Something New Today

Today, while reading this blog post, I found out that we could have a “popup” note inline in a blog post. I was curious and asked the author, who gladly responded with all the required information to do the same on my blog. A plugin is required, which I gladly installed in a snap1. This blog post is a test of that feature2. The day I learn something which in turn helps me improve one of my things, is a great day. 😊 I love this community so much! 🫶🏻

  1. You can find it here, on Gitbub. ↩︎

  2. Thanks to @dandycat for your help. ↩︎

Craft Docs vs CleanShot: two different apps in different categories and two philosophies of asking for user feedback. Craft is closed, and opaque while CleanShot is outgoing and openly asks for “what we should work on next”. I’m a subscriber of CleanShot Cloud, and yes, I want a few improvements. If only Craft would change their mind…

Pilot Episode #2 — Testing, Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

This is the second pilot episode of my brand-new podcast (“Thoughts & Tribulations of a compulsive creator”). I made many changes to the recording setup. I like the results. 😊 My support templates are ready (one in Screenflow, Things and Craft) for the first real episode that should be coming soon. One last note: I discovered yesterday that Microblog will automatically generate a transcript of each episode. This is so cool! 🤯

As a subscriber to Pocket Cast, I would love to be able to use the iPad version on my Apple Silicon Mac. It’s currently not possible. Yes, there is a web version, but an app is much better. Overcast, a very popular alternative, is available for the Mac but is not native. But I’m ok with that; it’s better than nothing. How much effort does it require to make an iPad app available on the Mac without having to depend on Catalyst? 🤔

Glass questions at 2 years

There are effectively no success stories for Glass’s current business model. Small clones of Instagram and Twitter usually fail. To break out, there has to be something fundamentally different. For Micro.blog, the answer is simple: we are a social network but our business is blog hosting, a proven model. For Glass, the answer is less clear: they care deeply about photography, community, and design. I think the founders deserve a lot of credit for creating something beautiful. Is that enough?

My recent enthusiasm for Pixelfed comes down to being a good alternative to Instagram, open and not afflicted by a toxic business model. It might become a good alternative to Glass too if the latter doesn’t open up a little bit more to the modern world, post Meta-as-we-know-it.

I’m back with a new video about Micro.blog. This time, I explore the use of Categories and Tags. I hope you find it useful to better make use of Micro.blog features. Enjoy. Comments welcome, here or on my YouTube channel. Next up, something about… podcasts 👀. Stay tuned. 😀