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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#51

Post by ngngngng »

What a shame. Dark Sky was the best option for me. I live in a small town that shares a zip code with a larger neighboring town. Most weather apps report the weather of the neighboring town, the big problem with that is that I live 2000 feet higher than the neighboring town, causing drastic weather differences.

Dark sky was the best I had found, but not perfect, nearly once a week I would report the weather since Dark Sky reported that it was partly cloudy when really it was snowing.

Unfortunately since I'm on Android, I'll have to find something else. It's a shame since I've been paying for their upgraded service as long as I've had the app.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#52

Post by notthemessiah »

untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. I mean, congratulations to the founders of Dark Sky. It’s a wonderful app and they deserve all the money they’ll get from this and they deserve a lot of credit for not selling user data when almost every other weather app does. But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. And I hope we actually see a good improvement to the Apple weather app as a result of this. I remember a…

> I remember a few years ago Apple bought a fantastic public transit app (Embark?), shut it down and I still don’t think their Maps app comes close to the original transit app.

When Edwin Howard Armstrong invented FM radio, he was working for RCA, which had everything invested in AM radio, an incompatible technology. RCA chose not to invest, and used their political clout to lobby the FCC to cripple FM radio, and their lawyers to drive Armstrong into debt in a protracted legal battle. This drove Armstrong to suicide by defenestration. For companies like Apple, these acquisitions are more about killing competition than they are about improving their own services or user interfaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong http://www.free-culture.cc/

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#54

Post by cannam »

tony101 wrote: post #45

> "Android and Wear OS App" > "The app will no longer be available for download. Service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are still active at that time will receive a refund." That's unfortunate. I have been using it for years. Any recommended alternatives?

Same here. I'm afraid my first, vocalised reaction was not a charitable one.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#56

Post by c54 »

Congrats to all part of the Dark Sky team!

There’s a lot of gloom in here about the death of the android apps, which is sad to be sure, but there’ll be more good apps.

Anyways, an exit and aquisition by Apple is exciting and worth feeling good about!

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#57

Post by qzx_pierri »

Aneurysm9_ wrote: post #24
jdminhbg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how being acquired by Apple helps further that goal. Removing support for non-Apple devices seems to drastically lower the number of people who you are helping. I would imagine that DarkSky will become the basis for the default weather apps in iOS and macOS, and the number of people who use those defaults is drastically higher than the number of people who use DarkSky iOS/Android as a third-party…

That thoroughly misses the point. They could do both. There is zero reason to shrink the addressable market other than Apple not wanting to play with others.

But then how will the original creators get rich?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#59

Post by kevindong »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
geddy wrote: post #23

> Our API service for existing customers is not changing today, but we will no longer accept new signups. The API will continue to function through the end of 2021. And yet another functional API shut down and privatized. This is the way of the web now, a few companies owning the data, and nothing cool left to mess around with. I can't be the only one who has noticed this trend happening for years. You used to be abl…

> a few companies owning the data The data are public [1]. Dark Sky et al process and repackage those data, along with their own analytics and UI. [1] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/webservices/v2

As someone that's tried using the weather.gov API, let me just say it's atrociously bad. I'm sure the data is accurate and all, but the API is actively hostile towards developers.
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