Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 594 posts

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#241

Post by dsl »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #220
floatingatoll wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Extinguish" assumes they have no intention to replace third-party data harvesters with their own service. Apple currently redirects their platforms' weather data HTTP requests to third-party services like Weather.com, that are known for aggressively marketing and reselling user data as a primary revenue stream. Seems more likely they see this as a way to improve weather data for their customers without seeing their…

They could just get the weather data directly from the national bodies that provide it. It's not like they were hurting for money to staff their own weather division.

Companies like The Weather Channel (which owns weather.com) have been fighting open access to government funded weather data. What you can get now lacks the detail required to do serious predictions or building anything useful. Dark Sky kinda found a workaround by processing radar imagery directly.

To your point, it looks like they just spent their money to staff a weather division.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#242

Post by mousebirdc »

thisisbrians wrote: post #120
maliker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

Hi, I make the toolkit that Dark Sky (and others) use for their visuals. Been in the weather/aviation mobile space a long time.

I'd floated a Weather-Service-In-A-Box to my clients a few months ago, but got no takers. The idea was something you could set up on a small number of instances fairly quickly and leave running to harvest NOAA/ECMWF/etc data. Fairly simple front end to answer queries. Data tiles for the visuals. That sort of thing.

If people (with money) are interested now, hit me up.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#243

Post by Rebelgecko »

reaperducer wrote: post #232
Infinitesimus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things

Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. Is it? Did Shazam stop working on Android when Apple ate it? Honest question, since I don't have an Android device.

No. Although some apps like Apple Music on Android are clearly treated like redheaded stepchildren by Apple

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#244

Post by yepthatsreality »

fooey wrote: post #138
realityking wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. How's Dark Sky competing with Apple? I don't think they derive much, if any, revenue from the Weather app. More likely they're paying for the data.

Maybe this is the start of the Epic Games business model. Buy things and make them exclusive just so no one else can have them.

E^3 model[0], different parameters.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#245

Post by sbahr001 »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #198
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…

> But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things

This really sucks, I work for a stormwater environmental company and we were looking at darksky to replace our existing provider; DarkSky is one of the best providers of weather data.IBM also bought weather underground, I am really what these big tech companies want with forecasting/weather companies.

I just wish they kept the API running though.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#246

Post by thatcat »

cryptoz wrote: post #151
thatcat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC they built the models with user data, but stopped collecting from phones because so many different sensors are used for rH and temp in phones plus being in pockets, battery temp, etc meant the data had too much variance. Even though I hate that they did this bc it's my favourite weather app, it actually would make sense to just use iphones if they were going to start collecting that data again since all the hard…

The barometer data that comes from phones (both Android and iOS) is extremely resilient and there is a lot of value to be derived from it. Ongoing research by Cliff Mass and team (at UW) shows that machine learning can help bias-correct and error-correct barometric pressure data on the fly with very good results. That data can also be assimilated into WRF to make forecasts with higher accuracy. I work on a related ap…

Thanks for the info and link, it looks like All Clear is positioned well to pick up dark sky android users. I'm going to give it a try.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#247

Post by tw04 »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #198
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…

> But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things

>Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though.

I'd argue the exact opposite. They keep pronouncing they're now a services company. If that's TRULY their go-forward model, they should be selling services to the broadest possible audience. Shutting it down to other audiences tells me they're still a hardware company that can't see past their walled garden.

If anyone at Apple is listening, I'll say it for the thousandth time: Support Messages on Android and Windows and you will own the messaging market. If you keep kicking the can, someone will eventually take it from you. Just look at Blackberry and what you did to them... it can and will happen to you as well. BES was thought to be an impenetrable wall. Narrator: It wasn't.

This coming from someone who switched back to iPhone after the last round of goog privacy snafu's.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#248

Post by kvakkefly »

kyledrake wrote: post #33

> 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. IBM bought the Weather Underground app and ruined it, and now Dark Sky was bought by Apple and they're ruining that too. Now I will have zero good weather…

You can try Yr: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=e... It is an app made by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute afaik and works quite well all over the world. I'm curious on how well it works where you live! They have open API's as well: https://api.met.no

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#249

Post by Rebelgecko »

c0nsumer wrote: post #5

This is really, really disappointing. I've been pretty critical of Dark Sky at times for being mediocre for more than maybe 12 hours out, but for very short term forecasts it worked great. I spent a fair amount of time outdoors and getting a 30 minute heads-up for "drizzle" versus "heavy rain" was excellent and really let me time how long to stay outside for. I'd really, really like a replacement on Android. While Wu…

I've been happy with Weather Timeline although I haven't followed all the drama behind the app's changes in management

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#250

Post by joshstrange »

I'm surprised I didn't see any comments about Weather Nerd [0]. I used to use Dark Sky but switched to this for more (at least in my opinion) features. I've been using it for a couple years and quite like it. It also has a "is it going to rain in the next hour"-type feature I use a lot.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weather-nerd/id958363882

Post reply on HN