Blue Skies Weather App - Daily v. Weekly Mismatch

[Chris Sandiford]

I love Blue Skies, it's a lovely little weather app. Free, clean looking and the developer Rohit is a switched on guy, always willing to listen to a suggestion or correct a bug.

I have a problem though, that he is looking into, but I wanted to see if it was me or the app itself.

Today is Monday 12th May.
Here is a screen shot of the weather for London (place selected not location-based)

Overview and detail:



And now here's Monday from the 5 day view:



Note the difference. It's not just out by a bit because it was from a different time; it's a different day's weather - look at the sunrise time. I think the overview is yesterday's weather. I need to wait til tomorrow to see if the 5 day is the same as today!

This happens in either place-selected or location-based weather.

Does anyone else get the same?

 

[Pete]

I see the same behaviour here (also in the UK, but not London). I don't think it's a huge issue, but diagnosing this may prompt something else (if the time is wrong, maybe the forecast is showing incorrect data as well)/

I've generally been very impressed with this app though.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

True - it's great - but I needed to check if the detail was for the right day.
I'm just comparing the information with its source on forecast.io and bits are right but in the wrong place.
ie. the temps on the 5 day are out by a day.

 

[sp8y]

Yes I have the same discrepancy here (UK). It does seem to be a day out when comparing overview to 5 day forecast.

I only noticed because it said there was rain coming later today.

Thanks for notifying the dev (I won't waste his time reporting the issue as he is already aware) so he will hopefully come up with a fix.

*edit:
Just checked it against the source data on forecast.io & the current overview for today is correct.

The day labels on the 5 day forecast are as you say one day out so Sundays weather is showing under Saturday.

**edit:
OK so I have emailed the dev to mention this, no reply as yet but going by his twitter account there's an update submitted but I'm not sure if it fixes this.

 

[sp8y]

Yes I can confirm the update has fixed the mismatch with the five day forecasts.

*edit:
Has fixed the mismatched day but some info still incorrect.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

No it's still not fixed. Compare the sun times on the day view compared to the 5 day. Still out,

 

[sp8y]

Yes there does still seem to be a few discrepancies with data.

I didn't go into checking all the info & only saw that the five day view now starts with tomorrow whereas prior it showed the current day with the following days data it seemed.

When checking all the data in the five day view against forecast.io there are a few anomalies with sunset times on a couple of days being 1min out, min/max temps incorrect with wrong times for these temps.

I'll email the dev with the latest.

 

[sp8y]

@Chris Sandiford - just out of interest does the new time stamp toggle in the live tile settings work for you?

 

[hello_moto]

Hey guys,

Thanks for telling me about the discrepancies between the data from Forecast.IO and Blue Skies. There does seem to be some little differences between the two. I've emailed them to figure out what's going on. I'll keep you guys updated!

Thanks,
Rohit

 

[Slice313]

Blue Skys copies much of the 4castr UI... sadly

 

[Chris Sandiford]

I'll take that back, the 5 day view now works. It always worked really but the day labels are now correct so everything lines up!
@sp8y, no the toggle update still shows in the live tile after switching off. Maybe it needs to wait till the next refresh to switch off? But I'd suggest the word also should change to Off as well as the toggle changing colour..

 

[hello_moto]

@Slice313 Do you mind telling me how Blue Skies copies 4castr? I just checked it out and they look nothing alike

@Chris Sandiford Awesome! Glad to hear the 5 day's working for you. Yeah I just realized that I forgot to make the live tile refresh automatically after changing the setting. If you open up the app again or press the "Force Live Tile Refresh" button, you wont have to wait until the next live tile refresh.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

@Slice313 Do you mind telling me how Blue Skies copies 4castr? I just checked it out and they look nothing alike

@Chris Sandiford Awesome! Glad to hear the 5 day's working for you. Yeah I just realized that I forgot to make the live tile refresh automatically after changing the setting. If you open up the app again or press the "Force Live Tile Refresh" button, you wont have to wait until the next live tile refresh.

Yeah I tried this Rohit, it still remains on the live tile. Not that I'm bothered, I think its a valuable piece of info as far as tiles go. However it clearly needs a fix.

 

[sp8y]

Chris the quick fix if you want to remove the time stamp is to toggle the 24 hour to 12 hour option then the time stamp works.

 

[hello_moto]

Hi hello_moto,


I'm the developer of 4castr and I agree with Slice313. I believe in fair competition and respect your work; however, I feel that you've blatantly copied many elements of my app.


I've worked very hard to build an excellent weather application using fresh ideas and designs. I really hate to call people out, but when others start to notice ripped content I feel like I must take action. Here is a list of everything I believe you have copied:


1. App Design
4castr uses a panel navigation system to organize weather data. It also has navigation dots at the bottom to show which panel is being viewed. Blue Skies uses this same concept and also has navigation dots.


View attachment 66839


2. Theme/Colors
4castr allows the user to choose between 18 different app theme colors and allows them to chose to use white instead of their accent color. Blue Skies recently added both of these features.

View attachment 66840


3. Small Live Tile
4castr has had this small live tile style since launch. Blue Skies directly copied this custom style.


View attachment 66841


4. Live Tile Timestamp Option
4castr was updated last week with this option to toggle timestamp on/off (first weather app to allow this). Blue Skies was updated today with this same option.


View attachment 66842


5. Voice Commands
4castr launched as the first weather app with voice commanmds. Blue Skies was updated today with voice commands.


View attachment 66843


I'm not trying to be anti-competitive, but it's quite obvious that you're copying.

I really want to clear things up because I'm not looking to create any animosity and I can assure you 100% that I am not trying to copy your app. In fact, I had not even installed or opened your app until Slice313 mentioned it.

So to address the things you believe I copied from your app:
1. App design aka the navigation dots.
Your app wasn't the first or the only app to use those kind of navigation dots. It's pretty common in apps, more so in IOS apps than Windows Phone apps however. I tried out using pivot item headers but they were taking up too much space and I wanted a more minimal look so I went with the navigation dots.
2. Theme colors
Your app is not the only app that allows you to have an accent theme option or a dark or light theme option. These were actually features I included based off of user feedback and I can forward you the emails to prove it.
3. Small live tile
Again, since I hadn't seen your app until yesterday, I couldn't possibly have copied it. When I was creating the app, I was basically looking at what information I could include in the small live tile and obviously the only thing that can really fit is the temperature.
4.Live tile stamp
The live tile stamp option was another feature that I included based off of user feedback. Again, if you want proof for that I can forward you the emails.
5.Voice commands
The voice commands was again another feature that was included based off of user feedback. If you want proof for that too, I can send that to you.

The things that you claim I copied are kind of general windows phone things that apps tend to have and I try to listen to what features users are asking for and including that. I'm sorry if that happens to be features your app has as well but I'm not scouting your app to see what features to copy next.

I want to make sure I alleviate any of your concerns with this so feel free to reach out to me privately and we can talk about this further!

 

[Chris Sandiford]

The things that you claim I copied are kind of general windows phone things that apps tend to have and I try to listen to what features users are asking for and including that. I'm sorry if that happens to be features your app has as well but I'm not scouting your app to see what features to copy next.

This is the critical thing - Metro is a design language, there could be many instances of perceived "copying" across countless apps when in fact it is the design that ties all the apps in the ecosystem together. And ideas travel from app to app as users feed back.