Apple acquires Dark Sky • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#171

Post by 3JPLW » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

notthemessiah wrote: post #52

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 the…

How is this anecdote at all analogous? I'm not seeing it.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#172

Post by mortenjorck » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

It's a genuine shame that the API has to be shut down as part of the transition. With Apple's pivot toward services, why couldn't a rebranded Apple Weather API join the ranks of the Apple Maps API?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#173

Post by big_chungus » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #136

big_chungus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark sky is not a public good, it's a for-profit business that puts a shiny interface on the same information available to everyone. It also added user reporting and analytics, so added material value. The app cost money. Why don't you lobby your congressman to have NOAA develop a better app instead? You can't make a privately-developed program a "public good"; citizens can't just "demand" that dark sky remains indep…

You might re-read my comment. Nowhere do I say Dark Sky is a public good. I do lobby my congressperson for NOAA to have more open data practices and better funding for app development. Citizens can demand products from government be at parity or better than private corporation products, and government has the funding to do it. So why not do it?

I'll note that you edited your comment after I posted my reply, and are now making it sound like you didn't. It originally included something to the effect of, "This shouldn't be allowed to happen."

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#174

Post by pergadad » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

sauwan wrote: post #140

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot begin to say how much IBM ruined Weather Underground. The app was _perfect_! I was thrilled to pay for it. Now it's probably the worst app on my phone and I should just delete it. It takes forever to start, more than half the time it loads no data, and even if it is loaded the UI redesign has made the whole thing slow and useless. Would love suggestions for another app on Android.

Totally agree. I find I have to load it, close and reopen the app about 95% of the time. Hugely bummed these two apps are going into the wastebin. Certainly leaves a huge void for us Android users.

I've been using this one since underground stopped being useful.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

Sadly at some point they weren't able to pay for the dark sky API anymore and since then the quality of forecasts is a bit less convincing. I'm still rather shocked by the low reviews though, for me it works well and I love that you can add a dozen cities and see the forecast.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#175

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #173

toomuchtodo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might re-read my comment. Nowhere do I say Dark Sky is a public good. I do lobby my congressperson for NOAA to have more open data practices and better funding for app development. Citizens can demand products from government be at parity or better than private corporation products, and government has the funding to do it. So why not do it?

I'll note that you edited your comment after I posted my reply, and are now making it sound like you didn't. It originally included something to the effect of, "This shouldn't be allowed to happen."

I made no such edit, and at no time made such a statement. I take no issue with Dark Sky being acquired (EDIT:) and my comment is only to vocally advocate for government-run services that cannot be acquired (to provide continuity of quality service and delivery of data products to citizens and the systems and apps they use to consume said services and data products).

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#176

Post by Someone » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #146

notthemessiah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

> "...suicide by defenestration..." as an aside, my first thought at this phrase was that "he died by removing all the windows ?" it took a second to process that properly. but to the point, that's the kind of anti-competition we need to root out quickly. compete on merits, not on demerits. i'm sad about the embark app, but i'm hoping that the dark sky integration means no more sending data (however "anonymized") to…

For those who wonder: it’s not a neologism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague:

The Defenestrations of Prague (Czech: Pražská defenestrace, German: Prager Fenstersturz, Latin: Defenestratio Pragensis) were three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which multiple people were defenestrated (thrown out of a window). The origin of the word "defenestrate" ("out of the window") is believed to come from the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of the castle window and wrote an extensive Apologia to this act.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#177

Post by capableweb » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

3JPLW wrote: post #171

notthemessiah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

How is this anecdote at all analogous? I'm not seeing it.

It's in general putting Apple to like with the company and finishes with the statement:

> For companies like Apple, these acquisitions are more about killing competition than they are about improving their own services or user interfaces

You definitely see this with not just Apple but any big tech company. Either they acquire a company for their tech, for their people who work there (talent), for their data or finally, just to be able to kill their company/product.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#178

Post by vikramkr » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #114

vikramkr wrote: post #85

This seems like the type of acquisition that would go unnoticed by the authorities in terms of anti-monopoly regulations, but probably should be. This is a less expensive way of building a moat than trying to merge with samsung or the like, but bit by bit you can build a huge amount of lockin by taking complementors to your competitors off the market.

So what would be the difference if Apple just built all the features of Dark Sky into the default Weather app and crushed Dark Sky leaving them with no market? And as far as they would still have Android, we all know that the Android market isn’t nearly as profitable for app developers as the iOS market. They wouldn’t have received any money. Why would you want the government to tell developers who you could sell you…

I didn't impute that the anti-monopoly regulations are necessarily a good thing or a desirable thing. Just that, if you want to stop monopolies, you're overlooking one of the most powerful ways that they can get built. Anti-monopoly regulations should be investigating this, but they don't. Whether or not we should have anti-monopoly regulations is a different question (and I don't think monopolies are a moral evil inherently and are if anything essential in some areas to drive innovation) But if you want to fight monopolies, you need to be looking at things like this.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#179

Post by rodiger » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #154

thisisbrians wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any clue how hard it would be to create an open-source alternative to the DarkSky API? My company needs one, too. Maybe we could band forces and organize an open-source alternative. I know it won't be as good, but I'm curious what other people in our position think...

I'd be interested in working on this.

Same!

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#180

Post by jakebasile » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

Losing the website sucks. I use it on my Mac since there is no Dark Sky macOS app. Of course there's also no default Weather app on iPad.. I don't see that changing either.