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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#351

Post by neurobashing »

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…

> killing competition

Apple believes it should make/provide the whole “widget”. If they think every phone should ship with a really good weather app, they’ll do one. If one comes on the market that they think is better, they’ll buy it and make it the new default.

I mean they’re not in the weather app business. They aren’t competing against Dark Sky. What they’re competing against is Android, and if their phone comes with a stellar weather app out of the box, that is good for Apple. Others can continue to make weather apps.

iOS comes with a calculator. People still buy PC Calc and Calcbot despite the built-in being pretty useful.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#352

Post by lozaning »

zcrackerz wrote: post #279
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.

That's because Google is an ad company while Apple is a hardware company.

Apple is a services company now according to them, and as demonstrated by the Apple tv app on my Samsung TV.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#353

Post by vikramkr »

dnh44 wrote: post #320
vikramkr wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The idea is to prevent monopolies before they happen. If antitrust gets involved in a merger they dont want to let the merger happen and then reverse it, the idea is to prevent the merger from happening in the first place

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#354

Post by duanem »

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…

I felt a little slighted (in a cheeky way) by the "zero good weather apps for Android" comment. Started writing then decided against it. Then I got this email in my inbox from a user :-)

Dark Sky is shuttering their Android app after being acquired by Apple. People are saying things like "Now I will have zero good weather apps for Android. "

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740331

Flowx is better than Dark Sky!

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#355

Post by kyledrake »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #126
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…

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.

The reviews for the app are pretty amazing. It went from one of the highest rated weather apps to 2.5 stars in a matter of days: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wundergrou...

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#356

Post by beoberha »

girzel wrote: post #347
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?"

This is exactly what I found it didn't work for. I live in Seattle, and basically gave up on it (with today's news, I'll uninstall it from my Android phone). I could look out the window at steady rain, and Dark Sky would still be telling me it was going to be clear all day. Like that more often than not.

I live in Seattle now but used to live in Ohio. I agree that the minute by minute is pretty much useless in Seattle but it was incredibly accurate in Ohio. I have numerous stories where I was able to get to shelter or remain sheltered minutes before a sprinkle turned into a downpour.

I know nothing about weather, but I have to assume the weather patterns in Seattle are just very difficult to predict or analyze at such a fine granularity.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#357

Post by fermienrico »

lozaning wrote: post #352
zcrackerz wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because Google is an ad company while Apple is a hardware company.

Apple is a services company now according to them, and as demonstrated by the Apple tv app on my Samsung TV.

Services != Advertisement. Advertisement is about collecting data from potential customers and offering that to advertisers. Services in the context of Apple is about selling the hardware hoping to capitalize on the ecosystem of their services (music, news, icloud, etc). In extreme cases such as Sony who sells PlayStations ("hardware") at a loss hoping to recover it from game sales ("services"). Apple is more like Sony than Google.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#358

Post by gizmo385 »

minimalist wrote: post #283
Barrin92 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally bonkers to me how many people sell out. Is the VLC guy the only person with some integrity? Can we not be satisfied with the money we make from subscribers instead of selling everything including the kitchen sink to some corporate behemoth to swallow it up and kill every open service? The same thing is happening in the podcasting ecosystem right now. it's turning more and more into a walled garden.

I used to think the same thing, but what about the situations where people don't sell out and just see their features copied by the corporate behemoth, wholesale? That scenario seems to play out often as well (g---le+ and diaspora always come to mind). I suppose if the goal is to just see some technology or technique or idea become more broadly adopted, this isn't a bad thing. But what about poor-implementations of a…

> g---le+

What is the purpose behind "censoring" Google's name here...?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#360

Post by dantondwa »

kvakkefly wrote: post #248
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

I came here to say this. No tracking, it's a public service and the UI is great. Thanks to the Norwegian Metereological Institute for making this available to everyone.

I really think this shows how direly we need "public interest" services on our phone.

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