Author here!

There's definitely a taste / opinion component to any deep design critique. I think for many (for whom the post resonated), the ability to quickly glance at Dark Sky and understand relevant weather contextually was THE game changer.

It's a hard thing to discuss, because until you've felt the experience, it doesn't seem like a "big deal".

Some apps do use text to talk about the current / upcoming rain, but showing it visually makes it even easier. The ease of use is important because weather apps aren't meant to be that interactive (like a game). They're meant to be context-sensitive information graphics that let you drop in and out very very quickly.

http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#inferring_context_from_the_e...

As the author points out, text like that is inferior to embedding information in the graphic. The reason is that with text, I have to just "hope" that they've handled all the cases that I care about, and at the fidelity that is relevant to me. With a graphic, this information is always available, and combining multiple elements tells me more information than a single text snippet can. For example: "Oh, it's only going to be drizzly for like an hour, I'll be in a meeting around then anyways." That's a decision that 'rainy conditions expected around 3pm' does not help me with.