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Their new weather forecasting service is also intriguing. They will soon have millions of thermometer-equipped Apple Watches in the world (IIRC the Series 8 and
by gnicholas 4y ago
Their new weather forecasting service is also intriguing. They will soon have millions of thermometer-equipped Apple Watches in the world (IIRC the Series 8 and AWU will have these), allowing them to create an incredibly detailed mapping of temperatures around the world (or at least places where people can afford expensive watches...).
- anamexis 4y agoWouldn't they only be able to make a detailed mapping of the temperatures of people's wrists?
- traceroute66 4y ago> Wouldn't they only be able to make a detailed mapping of the temperatures of people's wrists? Unless you're sick, most people's body temperature is within a fairly tight range. So they could compensate for that ...
- anamexis 4y agoIs there any correlation between your body temperature and the outdoor temperature?
- egman_ekki 4y agoDepends on if you're a lizard or a bird :)
- gnicholas 4y agoIt would be hilarious: the temperature worldwide is roughly 98.6° F, except in NYC where the marathon is being run and it is somewhat warmer. /s
- traceroute66 4y ago> except in NYC Or, ahem.... "cold winter evenings". ;-)
- mwint 4y agoAren’t those thermometers pointing the wrong way (towards the wrist)?
- idle_zealot 4y agoNo, they have two thermometers, one for ambient temperature and one for body temp.
- gnicholas 4y agoThe new Apple Watches will actually have two thermometers, one facing inward and one facing outwards.
- frankthedog 4y agoThere are two, one inward and one outward facing. This was highlighted when talking about taking water temp readings when swimming or diving.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ryeguy_24 4y agoI would bet that the internal sensor is used in a model with the skin sensor to remove the effects of the internal temperature of the watch and get a more accurate skin temp reading.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoThe barometers combined with GPS and temp is an incredibly powerful sensor network. Its a shame that it is locked up inside of apple.
- tash9 4y agoIt's not that much better than the normal network of AMS sensors. For one, it doesn't give you wind speeds at various levels (critical for predicting weather). Second, it doesn't give you any additional readings over oceans, which is where the data is lacking in the current network of data. It does give you more robust surface temperature readings in cloudy areas but that doesn't really help you predict the weather significantly better. Source: degree in atmospheric sciences
- labster 4y agoYeah, but maybe Apple will take all of this private data, and then build their own GCM, and solve data assimilation for their new model … yeah right. Let’s pretend that data from user portable devices isn’t garbage (it is): then what do you even do with it? In cities you’ll have thousands of readings per voxel none of which are more valuable. Then you have to clean your data, excluding data from inside or vehicles or hot pavement or heated patios and so on. Apple won’t go to the expense of running their own GCM, and I doubt even mesoscale models. All I could see is some sort of correlative AI, doing microscale adjustments to government sponsored models. So all of this work, and maybe you get one degree better at forecasts and a bit of nowcasting. And because it isn’t physics-based, you might occasionally get something very wrong happening. The oceans are a data hole (technical term, really) as you mentioned, but the real missing data is above the surface. It’s too bad about Project Loon, because that would have been much more helpful to forecasting than a million monkeys wearing watches.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoI glide quite a bit, so I'm VERY interested in low level micro climate. Is there a really no use in having higher resolution for modeling the boundary layer? It seems like having a mountain covered in tiny barometric and temp sensors could at least validate a lot of what we think we know about the boundary layer. I personally would love to be able to see what the temperature at the bottom and top of a given topographic feature is, as well as how atmospheric pressure is deviating from pure altitude differences. I build instruments for gliders so I know that the sensors in our phones are capable of incredibly fine resolution. Is there really no use for billions of high resolution data points in climate science?
- robszumski 4y agoI'm not sure what happened but Dark Sky went from awesome to awful in recent months after the Apple acquisition. Is it just me? Going from "no rain all day" to actively raining with a huge storm 2 hours later. The app does update with this info, but very close to the actual storm.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago> Going from "no rain all day" to actively raining with a huge storm 2 hours later. Honestly, that's about right here in Florida. :)
- wsatb 4y agoIt's not just you, but this started well before the Apple acquisition. I "sold" many copies of the Dark Sky app to family and friends just by showing its magic but that magic died awhile ago. I don't think it's been very accurate for 3-4 years now.
- verisimilitude 4y agoI too have noticed this. I believe the Dark Sky website and app will continue to become less accurate... I think the explanation is (somebody who knows more please correct me): Dark Sky's technology was acquired by Apple and integrated into the Apple Weather built-in app... and the decision was made that any improvements/updates/maintenance on the Dark Sky service itself are accessible exclusively through that Apple Weather app now. As a user of the Dark Sky website, I feel sad.
- xani_ 4y agoWell, there is a red banner on the site saying > Support for the Dark Sky iOS app will end on December 31st, 2022, and support for the Dark Sky API will end on March 31st, 2023. So basically them buying then closing the service to make their own seem better
- techbio 4y agoThey made their own actually better if that matters to you. The iOS weather app now has many of DarkSky's features.
- b3morales 4y agoNot so sure about this. There's going to be a ton of noise in this data from an outsider POV. At an absolute minimum, for this to be usable as weather data they will have to determine when it's measuring the actual outside weather, as opposed to the indoor, or in-car/-bus/-train temperature.
- gnicholas 4y agoGood point! During times when AC or heat is running a lot, there might be a bimodal distribution of reported temperatures. I wonder if they could use the ambient light sensor to determine if the person is inside or outside, or if they could use location data to figure out that 'this Apple Watch is in the middle of a large field, so he must be outside'. Then they could just ignore other data in that microclimate area, and create a weather mapping based on watches located in known open areas.
- MisterTea 4y ago> I wonder if they could use the ambient light sensor to determine if the person is inside or outside Maybe they are they next to a window or under a sky light. > or if they could use location data to figure out that 'this Apple Watch is in the middle of a large field, so he must be outside'. Could be in a tent or other temporary structure.
- gnicholas 4y agoYep, there will always be exceptions. But taking the median of a decently-filtered set could work. And Apple obviously has a team of folks working on this to come up with something smarter than some random HNer (me) who's just shooting from the hip).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hef19898 4y agoPlease tell me it is called "Genysis"!
- gumby 4y agoThose watches measure the temperature at the underside of the device, i.e. the temperature of the wearer not the air. And that data they claim stays on your phone, not in their cloud.
- anotherOneSound 4y agowhy would THEY pay to store YOUR biometric data when YOU could store it for THEM!
- dpicco 4y ago
- jamie_ca 4y agoThey called out in the presentation that it's also got an ambient temperature sensor just underneath the display, to help calibrate body-temp vs room-temp for the overnight "difference from baseline" temperature measurements. Agreed on the local-storage-for-health-data bit, but I'm sure they could argue that the ambient sensor isn't privacy-relevant.
- aaomidi 4y agoIt’s also very easily anonymizable
- nicce 4y agoThey claimed that data is encrypted on device and Apple never sees it.
- cookingrobot 4y agoThe temperature inside a winter coat though, not outside in the freezing air right?
- anotherOneSound 4y agothere is a lot of money [1] in harvesting location data from weather apps. apple wants that revenue [1]https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/09/30/theres-a-multibillion-dollar-market-for-your-phones-location-data https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/09/30/theres-a-multibilli...
- tatersolid 4y agoApple doesn’t need a weather app to obtain location data from users. If they were going to track and sell location data they would just do it invisibly through iOS itself. This (and other tracking opportunities) is the reason Google gives Android away for “free”.
- mc32 4y agoHow does the watch differentiate ambient temp from wearer's temp?
- lupire 4y agoEverything old is new again: PressureNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressureNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressureNET
- xani_ 4y agoAnd, well, are ouside at the time. Also need to consider location of the watch, easy to heat it just by sun (in summer) or by wearing long sleeves (when it's colder) Air pressure on the other hand...
- jhoelzel 4y agothats not forecasting though is it? its measuring. and only with total coverage its predicting too?