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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#181

Post by qqqwerty »

maliker wrote: post #80
joncp wrote: post #63

Let's not forget that, at least in the US, weather data is publicly funded and excellent forecasts are available at a very granular level. For example, here's the weather at Apple Park: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-122.009263237... ... And here's the graph for up-to-the-minute detail: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.3367&lon=-1... It ain't pretty, but it works and you've already pai…

Ain't pretty matches my experience. My team pulls a lot of weather data for utility engineering work we do, and the NOAA APIs have proven very hard to navigate. Some data only available via FTP, lots of different weather station networks with different metrics (e.g. lots of variety in the cloud/irradiance data). Darksky provided a nice clean interface, but I guess we'll go back to cobbling things together directly fr…

While I agree that the NOAA data is hard to work with, these more 'polished' api providers come with their own set of risks. For example, Dark Sky is forecasting a snow storm in my Bay Area coastal town[1]. That seems unlikely. Also, there is another paid service that I am familiar with that had a nice clean API with consistently formatted data, but it turned out their data was wildly inaccurate.

[1] https://darksky.net/forecast/37.6021,-122.4775/us12/en

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#182

Post by airstrike »

dstaley wrote: post #78
joncp wrote: post #63

Let's not forget that, at least in the US, weather data is publicly funded and excellent forecasts are available at a very granular level. For example, here's the weather at Apple Park: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-122.009263237... ... And here's the graph for up-to-the-minute detail: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.3367&lon=-1... It ain't pretty, but it works and you've already pai…

My primary use of the Dark Sky API is for minute-by-minute forecasts. I've yet to find another API that can answer the question "Do I have enough time to walk my dog before it starts raining?"

AccuWeather has MinuteCast which does the same thing

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#183

Post by jdminhbg »

rrix2 wrote: post #163
nxc18 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its very hard to maintain an Android app to the same quality that people expect from Apple. I can see why they'd want to shrink that headcount or redirect to a more productive endeavor. As a bonus, Apple devices get a better weather app than the competition. The API part doesn't make as much sense, since they could make a pretty penny reselling that data without as much support burden.

apple has 100 billion dollars in the bank, funding a world-class android team should be possible if not desirable for them as they transform more and more in to a services company

It's not about money, or else Google's YouTube app wouldn't be a massive pile of failure on iOS, tvOS, etc. It's about being able to manage teams and maintain direction.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#184

Post by airstrike »

huhtenberg wrote: post #36
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Et al - maybe, but Dark Sky built their own near-future "hyperlocal" forecasting engine and they were the first ones to do that. They basically invented the whole genre. Perhaps they expanded into repackaging NOAA data now, but that's not what Dark Sky is about.

> they were the first ones to do that.

AccuWeather has been doing that for ages with MinuteCast. Dark Sky just looked more 21st century and was better marketed, probably

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#185

Post by airstrike »

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.

They could have just bought the developers to work on Product X at Apple and don't want them wasting their time on something else. That's how a lot of Tech M&A is done...

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#186

Post by k9quaint »

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…

Crap. I liked Dark Sky. I actually downloaded it because Apple Weather predicted 50 degrees F and it turned out to be 30degrees F with another 30 windchill. Grats Dark Sky founders.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#187

Post by floatingatoll »

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…

Apple consistently shuts down Apple apps, Android apps, and/or APIs as part of their terms of purchase over the past decade.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#188

Post by abrowne »

dstaley wrote: post #165
abrowne wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, for the website. I actually find their forecasts beyond a few hours pretty bad¹, so I use weather.gov, but I haven't found anything as good at telling me whether it will rain in the next 20 minutes. 1: Both seemly wrong more often and more importantly unclear whether they mean a greater or lesser chance or amount of rain or snow, which makes a big difference when you are, say, biking to work.

If you're not consuming the API, AccuWeather's MinuteCast is pretty nice!

Thanks, it does look like a good replacement.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#189

Post by airstrike »

adambyrtek wrote: post #13

I'm sending an email to tell them how disappointed I feel as a long-time subscriber about them maliciously (since there is no other more generous explanation) shutting down the service for Android users: https://darksky.net/contact

> since there is no other more generous explanation

How about "Apple just bought a really talented team of developers and want them to work on the Next Big Thing at Apple rather than spend their time on a product that doesn't do anything for Apple's strategy?"

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#190

Post by rapind »

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…

This is a systematic problem with crony capitalism. It will always be with us so long as lobbying and corporate campaign donations are a thing.
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