Hot take: cloud filter apps ruin real spotting

I dropped $12 on a cloud identifier app last month. It claimed to name every cloud type instantly. But it kept calling a classic cumulonimbus an altocumulus. Total waste of money. Did anyone else get burned by one of those apps, or do you actually use them?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_anderson26d agoProlific Poster

Oh come on, is this really ruining the hobby? I get that the app was bad, but that's just one bad app. You can't blame the whole idea of cloud identifiers because some developer rushed a half-baked product out the door. It's like saying all maps are useless because your GPS took you down a dead end once. Cloud spotting is about looking up and using your eyes, not staring at your phone screen anyway. Maybe just stick to the old field guide method and skip the apps altogether if they're gonna stress you out that much.

john64824d ago

I mean, I saw somewhere that even the old-school cloud spotters back in the 80s had some pretty terrible guides with mislabeled pictures, so maybe this is just history repeating itself with worse tech. Idk, maybe we're all just overthinking it.