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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#311

Post by thisisbrians »

Myself and a few fellow HNers are interested in discussing building an open source alternative to Dark Sky's API. I will have to find/build something that meets this need for my business (bractlet.com), anyway.

If you are interested in helping contribute in any way (by coding, providing requirements, etc.), or just want to lurk, please email me: `brian${'at'}bractlet${'dot'}com`

I'll get us into a discussion forum of some sort so we can confer.

I would clarify that I'm mostly interested in weather data for the United States right now, but am certainly not limiting this effort based on that.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#312

Post by shadowoflight »

adambyrtek wrote: post #197
airstrike wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?"

Sure, that's the classic "it's been a wonderful journey" scenario where the whole product is sunset, but shutting down just a single platform is not as obvious.

One could easily argue that Apple is sunsetting the Android app for one of the same reasons we can't install MacOS on a non-Apple PC (without violating the EULA): Apple doesn't like supporting unpredictable platforms, and doesn't want to be in a situation where people blame them for other people's bugs and unexpected under-the-hood changes.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#313

Post by abrowne »

SirLuxuryYacht wrote: post #202
dstaley wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

My go-to for this is an app called Radar Scope [0], which is the best $10 I've ever spent on an app. Its very easy to pull it up and look at the radar products with a useful color scale (as opposed to others which make light showers look like the apocalypse). Based on the quality I assume its target market is for stormchasers and weather professionals. Its fast and has most of the radar products, including velocities…

With NOOA/weather.gov you can even link directly to an animated gif for radar, such as this one for Minneapolis: https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/lite/N0R/MPX_loop.gif

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#314

Post by duanem »

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…

I develop Flowx, an Android weather app, and I agree, it is difficult to pull data from NOAA and other weather services around the world.

Depending on your needs, I may have data you can use. I only process forecast weather simulation data - not weather stations. I'm a solo dev so I can't offer high levels of service, etc... but feel free to contact me.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#315

Post by realityking »

turdnagel wrote: post #273
gregkerzhner wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that Google makes a ton of apps for iOS but Apple doesn't go the other way.

AFAIK there are two Apple apps on Android: one for Apple Music, and another for migrating your data from Android to iOS.

Technically five apps across two profiles:

- Move to iOS - Apple Music - Beats - Shazam - Shazam Lite

I'm actually a little surprised they didn't release Apple TV+ for Android.

Profiles - https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.&h... - https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple,+Inc.&...

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#316

Post by amoeba »

reaperducer wrote: post #284
minimalist wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure, NWS does a good job of interpolating for regions without a weather station, even taking into account coastal effects and elevation. In my experience (in a rural, montane environment) it works pretty well if you specify your coordinates, not just the zipcode. Have there any been any comparisons of the commercial services to NWS? That would be an interesting casual study. Edit: There are some additional i…

I'm not sure I am. Spend some time in the desert southwest, particularly on indian reservations. You'll find that NWS temperatures are regularly off by 10-20°. But that's still better than Weather Underground, which can be off by as much as 50°. One thing I will give the NWS credit for is the wind forecasts. Those things are spot-on at least 90% of the time. I've lived in 15 cities in a dozen states, and what I've no…

Opposite experience here. Services like Dark Sky and Wunderground are so inaccurate up here in Alaska that it's dangerous. NWS is also often pretty wrong but way less wrong than anything else. Interesting to hear your

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#317

Post by Godel_unicode »

tim58 wrote: post #230
capableweb wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 finall…

> 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. To make the list more complete I've seen large tech companies acquire another tech company for their users and/or their brand. Think about Microsoft buying Github or Skype.

It certainly doesn't seem like either of those examples further your point. Both GitHub and Skype still exist as essentially the same core product they were at the time of acquisition, plus lots of new features which are clearly the results of substantial investment in the product by Microsoft.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#318

Post by noxiousz »

mrrsm wrote: post #14
farisjarrah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windy is really great and they seem to try to foster a great community. They have weather apps for android or ios https://www.windy.com/

Thanks for the suggestion, at first glance things look pretty nice. Hopefully their mobile app is as nice as their website.

Their mobile app is amazing it's basically a clone of the website so all the features are on the app as well.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#319

Post by Aldipower »

cnst wrote: post #105

Dark Sky is a very nice implementation, but what makes them unique, actually? They gather data from public sources, there's no user input to worry about having to censor, there's no networking effect in order to make it useful. It's basically a perfect candidate for a lifestyle project. How big is the team? I'd gather the whole thing could be re-implemented (at least for a single market like US and Canada) in a few m…

The historical weather data is very unique! Everybody is talking about forecasts, damn, I use Dark Sky to look back in the time. They aggregated this data from a lot of sources over a very large time span and with very good coverage. Nothing can compare to this. Nothing I know about..

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#320

Post by dnh44 »

vikramkr wrote: post #178
scarface74 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in anything so why would anti-trust regulations apply?
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