Apple shocked us with its acquisition of the Dark Sky weather app and dev team yesterday leading many fans to wonder how the app and its tech will be integrated into iOS in the future. And thanks to Parker Ortolani’s quick Apple Weather concept, we already have a good idea of what that could look like.
It will likely take months or even a year for Dark Sky to be integrated into the iOS weather app, but Ortolani’s concept shows how the acquisition could dramatically alter the app’s UI. New elements like a Map Radar view and precise rain notifications could turn the weather app from an after-thought into a crucial tool for everyone.
Take a closer look at some of the features:
Photo: Parker Ortolani
Ortolani’s concept imagines a redesigned UI that puts everything you need to know about today’s weather projections all on one page. The layout still looks similar to that of the current Weather app so that it still feels familiar to iPhone users.
There’s a map icon in the bottom right corner of each location’s page that allows you to toggle the Map Radar View, which would be one of the biggest additions to the app. Dark Sky specialized in giving precise and accurate rain predictions for specific areas and we expect Apple wanted that feature more than any others. At the top of the map there’s a scrubber that lets you move forward and back to see weather throughout the day.
My only complaint about the concept is it looks like you’re trading more specific data for the daily view and tossing out the week-long view of weather predictions for a city. Apple could still offer a toggle for that though. Hopefully, we’ll see a few of these changes when Apple unveils iOS 14 at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
