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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

571–580 of 594 posts

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#571
Hello, weather app developer here (https://wg.tomaskafka.com)

As multiple people speculated on reasons, I believe it is very simple - before the acquisition, Apple didn't have weather data, and thus was forced to direct their users to weather.com, which is a terrible, ad-infested (and probably personal data harvesting) experience.

Don't forget, every weather provider gets hourly access to your real location, which is very valuable.

Dark Sky acquisition fixes that.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#572
post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utter nonsense. Buying a burger is an independent transaction. Buying a Big Mac one day doesn't make you less likely to buy a Whopper the next. Buying a phone is an investment that locks you into that ecosystem for ~2 years (until you buy a new one), and once that time comes, both ecosystems encourage you to stick with your existing choice via purchase transfers, exclusives, and (more) seamless data transfers. Your c…

We're not talking about a monopoly on selling particular phones as physical products. We're talking about apps, which often, but not always are much more 'burger-like'. I think the best analogy would be video games on console platforms, does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games? Well, kind of if you squint really hard, not that it seems to stand in the way of a vibrant and competitive console industry and that…

> does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games?

Yes? The whole console industry is equally awful, and does the same bullshit. That said, there used to be a few mitigating factors for consoles, but they have never been relevant for phones:

1. Generational incompatibility: Since console generations generally weren't backwards-compatible, every new generation would more or less reset the playing field.

2. You could have multiple consoles connected to your TV. You probably won't bring multiple phones with you every day.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#573
post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s open source there’s no specific requirement for the project to provide a hosted instance. Develop the (Ideally extensible) logic to parse a given government funded weather source into a common format, and have “API consumers” run their own instance of services (or set them up an instance for $ and use the profits to help with project costs).

Not disagreeing, just extending. Dark Sky merges multiple weather data sources, even in a single country, and I use it for a private app that deals with weather all around the world. An open source project could just be code, not a service, but that code should have a config where you specified which sources to fetch and how often instead of choosing "a given govt-funded weather source".

Of course, if it's designed to be extensible then definitely non-public sources could be added, but whether they'd be supplied as included modules/plugins or need to be developed (and then optionally contributed upstream) by users of a given non-public service is a question of practicality and sometimes cost (if it's a paid service an OSS project may not be able to justify the cost of a licence/account for the service to develop/test against).

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#574

> 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.

Every man has his price...

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#575
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I process weather simulation data from around the world (22 data sources). My servers process around 400-500 GB of data a day and I store about 120 GB which gives me about 5 days of historic simulation data and up to 16 days forecast data. Storage and processing is relatively easy since it's just a matter of throwing resources at it. However, it'll be damn expensive to store months or years of historic simulation dat…

This is very helpful. Thank you for sharing.

If you wouldn't mind: how do you go about creating a simulation around the empirical data? This seems to be very core to how Dark Sky is able to provide such accurate realtime data for geographies in between weather stations.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#577
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 ever…

It wasn't until I read the commentary that I realized that Dark Sky has Android developers. That may end up being an uncomfortable choice between quickly learning Swift or being phased out.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#578
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, isn't the barrier between iOS and Android devices artificial? No, not even remotely. They are completely different operating systems.

Not processors though, right? OSX and Windows are distinct as well, but Web apps are portable. The main reason why there isn't an analogue native standard is that the economics incentivize walled gardens.

Web apps are not actually "applications" in the sense we're talking about here and are wholly irrelevant.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#579
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…

Sigh is right. I used and paid for dark sky on Android, and now it's dead. This is one way Apple tries to lock people in, and it's really frustrating. This isn't an efficient market situation, this is a monopolist protecting their walled garden kingdom by slurping up the cross platform innovators. I'm terribly disappointed in the Dark Sky authors for doing this to long time loyal customers, no matter what their paych…

Why should Apple subsidize Android development?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Carrot on iOS. It is really good. It is famous for its mini game and snarky robot comments that predict the weather. But the core weather is great and has the best interface.

Try Hello Weather - https://helloweatherapp.com/ !

Also powered by Dark Sky.
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