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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

501–510 of 594 posts

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#501

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.

I've used some of their Android apps (Apple Music for the longest time). It feels like someone made them as a weekend project and then Apple forgot to take it down.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This drove Armstrong to suicide by defenestration For those who are extra slow like me: he killed himself by jumping out of a window.

Lol in French defenestration is literally death by jumping out of a window.

In English too

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#503
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this acquisition going to give more people access to a great weather app or less people access to a great weather app? It's going to be the same people, working on the same product, but now, it's going to unavailable via their cheif competitor. Tell me how on earth you can consider that not killing competition.

> Is this acquisition going to give more people access to a great weather app or less people access to a great weather app? Perhaps more. It’s a matter of comparing all users of Dark Sky, including via the API and on Android, against the user base of iOS. And perhaps they’ll be able to use the technology in other countries, bringing in more users than Dark Sky ever could.

> Perhaps more. It’s a matter of comparing all users of Dark Sky, including via the API and on Android, against the user base of iOS.

Not disagreeing with the following paragraph, but GP specifically asked about "access", and all of these iOS users already had access to Dark Sky; this strictly decreases access, even if more people end up using it.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#504
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I buy a Primesense-based USB RGBZ camera these days?

FaceID uses this technology?

Presumably the rear-facing LiDAR sensor in the new iPads as well, and I suspect those are basically a developer preview for the iPhone 12 Pro hardware so that improved ARKit apps can be ready for the fall

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#505
It sounds like Dark Sky might do this but I'm curious how often various weather services check for correctness. I've seen the Apple Weather app (which I know is based on a 3rd party) tell me it's sunny and clear when it's raining outside more than once.

I also have this fiction that locally run weather services do better than internationally run. My fiction is that weather.com doesn't care if the weather is wrong in Japan or China or Africa they only care it's correct at their offices because the people that work there unconsciously would only notice when it's wrong in their area.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#506
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…

As a founder or VC you just made a lot of money. As a normal employee you just found out that 1) buyouts don’t make you rich, 2) that “success” can look exactly like failure because your product got cancelled, and in about four months, 3) that promises from your ex boss are unenforceable.

The major upside for most employees is that they just got acquihired into Apple and they get to put that on their resume. Not everyone is so fortunate.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#507
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if they integrate it into iOS's default weather app, that would open up a whole trove of walking sensors. And potentially make it the most accurate forecasting service by far.

But closed off and only accessible if you buy Apple devices. So this is yet another example of a private corporation taking a useful, accessible resource that people rely on, and gating it behind their own services so they can extract rent. God I love capitalism!

Dark Sky was not a public service, it was a private enterprise. If it weren’t for capitalism, Dark Sky wouldn’t have existed.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#508

As an Android user that uses Dark Sky: Fuck you. Everyone else is congratulating the team on a job well done, I'm not. I rely on Dark Sky because there are no better services, and it is a service I pay for. Now I'm going to have to switch to some second rate weather app that can't predict the weather worth a damn because it just regurgitates the NWS. God fucking damnit.

Weather Timeline used to be awesome, but it used Dark Sky APIs and got shut down during this whole Apple acquisition thing. The app got acquired by MyRadar and they say it will be back using the MyRadar APIs, but will probably never be as good without the Dark Sky data behind it.

> Weather Timeline used to be awesome, but it used Dark Sky APIs and got shut down during this whole Apple acquisition thing.

What? Was it shut down by the ‘acquisition thing’ that was announced today, or the API that Apple will be supporting for the next 18 months?

I think you’re drawing conclusions not supported by anything.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#509

> 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…

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 haven’t had that many conversations with founders, but I’ve had a few, and I suspect that like a lot of thing there’s a fiction that the hopeful believe and the entrenched have absolutely no incentive to correct. Not as bad as record labels for new bands, but not a whole lot better.

That fiction, if I have it right, is that selling your company is a merger. That you are a lesser peer and that you will still have a great deal of influence in the resulting company. And there are people who manage that, but most do not. And not only that, your payout is delayed and contingent on you keeping your former employees from getting too surly. Sometimes for several years.

And since your story was supposed to be about how much you sacrificed and how hard you worked to sell your company and became successful, are you really going to be frank and honest with yourself and those who ask, or are you going put on a brave face?

I wonder how many of the “money doesn’t buy happiness” nouveau-riche mean something like the problems listed above when they say that. “I reached my goal and it wasn’t what I wanted.”

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I buy a Primesense-based USB RGBZ camera these days?

Are you suggesting that Apple bought Primesense because they wanted to kill the competition of USB RGBZ cameras?

RGBZ in general. They killed a market just to have a minor feature in their phones. Also keep in mind that Primesense's biggest precious licensee was an Apple competitor.
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