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WeatherKit

developer.apple.com

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Re: WeatherKit

#61

Post by beardface »

dieselgate wrote: post #48
knadh wrote: post #20

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has an excellent free HTTP/JSON weather API that covers the globe. No signup required. https://developer.yr.no

Apple api - nope. Norwegian Meteorological Institute api - yup. That’s mostly in jest though (sent from an iphone) but also because Apple bought darksky (which was my preferred weather api/source in the past) and I’d assume that’s a big part of/rolled into the weatherkit offerings now?

I've been using Dark Sky for years but I uninstalled it yesterday. Since the acquisition, the native Weather app has been massively upgraded with a lot of Dark Sky's best features and is very good now.

I ran the two in parallel for a few months to compare the alerts and accuracy. Weather won out.

Re: WeatherKit

#63

Post by zuzun »

kioleanu wrote: post #52
knadh wrote: post #20

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has an excellent free HTTP/JSON weather API that covers the globe. No signup required. https://developer.yr.no

Lucky for them that they’re not a public service in Germany, otherwise they would get sued for unfair competition (and lose): https://www.deskmodder.de/blog/2020/03/12/kostenlose-warnwet...

They still publish all their data free of charge and are required to do so by law. For weather forecast, they dump all parameters of their recent model runs.

So I guess I'm saying that you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially...

Re: WeatherKit

#64

Post by leobg »

kioleanu wrote: post #52
knadh wrote: post #20

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has an excellent free HTTP/JSON weather API that covers the globe. No signup required. https://developer.yr.no

Lucky for them that they’re not a public service in Germany, otherwise they would get sued for unfair competition (and lose): https://www.deskmodder.de/blog/2020/03/12/kostenlose-warnwet...

For context, from the court ruling (BGH, DeepL translation):

  Originally, it was envisaged that all services provided by the DWD to the general public for public dissemination via modern means of communication, such as mobile devices via an app, as specified in Section 4 (1) DWDG should be free of charge (Explanatory Memorandum to the Government Draft of a First Law Amending the Law on the German Meteorological Service, BT-Drucks. 18/11533, S. 22). The Bundesrat has commented on this and raised competition law concerns about the tax-funded DWD making meteorological and climatological services available to the end consumer free of charge, because such a free charge constitutes an impediment to established private-sector providers and erects barriers to market entry for new providers or new offerings (explanatory memorandum to the government draft of a first law amending the law on the German Meteorological Service, BT-Drucks. 18/11533, S. 25). The version of Section 6 (2a) DWDG that has become law is based on the resolution recommendation and report of the Bundestag Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BT-Drucks. 18/12836, p. 2), according to which not all services provided by the DWD to the general public pursuant to Section 4 (1) DWDG should be free of charge, but only those pursuant to Section 4 (1) Nos. 3 and 7 DWDG.

Re: WeatherKit

#65

Post by throwawaygog6 »

annexrichmond wrote: post #8

I learned in a meeting at my last job that many weather apps solely exist to collect and sell location data. Don’t have specific evidence but it seemed to be par for the course. So I’m glad to see this API, hopefully it’ll help more privacy focused weather apps thrive.

Yep. Can confirm this. Weather apps provide location data. Email apps provide logged in users. SOurce: Ex-yahoo person here.

Re: WeatherKit

#66

Post by nowherebeen »

Rygian wrote: post #33
bredren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has continued to take on services third parties previously used to exploit the private information of Apple’s customers. This includes Apple Card, but also the recently introduced multi-week payment options Apple is offering to buy its products. (Previously offered by other services “for free.”) I have no doubt that Apple is looking at how data is leaking across the ecosystem and is seeking to stop it as much a…

What business advantage does it being to Apple to (just) stop those data leaks?

Even if there is little upside reward, they might just want to decrease downside risk. It's inexpensive for them to limit data gathering. But letting data gathering fester outside their control and they are 1 PR disaster away from damaging their brand. Which is extremely valuable.

Re: WeatherKit

#67

Post by withinboredom »

Rygian wrote: post #33
bredren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has continued to take on services third parties previously used to exploit the private information of Apple’s customers. This includes Apple Card, but also the recently introduced multi-week payment options Apple is offering to buy its products. (Previously offered by other services “for free.”) I have no doubt that Apple is looking at how data is leaking across the ecosystem and is seeking to stop it as much a…

What business advantage does it being to Apple to (just) stop those data leaks?

I've heard (2nd-level -- ie, people that talked to people in Apple, in confidence) rumors that they want to use the data themselves to sell more stuff. All under the guise of "privacy," it's the best marketing ploy ever... if true.

I like what Apple is doing, but I've heard that rumor enough times from former employees who worked on this stuff, and people who've come out of meetings with the Safari guys, that I continue to be wary of Apple.

Re: WeatherKit

#68

Post by dloss »

zuzun wrote: post #63
kioleanu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucky for them that they’re not a public service in Germany, otherwise they would get sued for unfair competition (and lose): https://www.deskmodder.de/blog/2020/03/12/kostenlose-warnwet...

They still publish all their data free of charge and are required to do so by law. For weather forecast, they dump all parameters of their recent model runs. So I guess I'm saying that you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially...

Like Meteocool? https://github.com/v4lli/meteocool

Developed by a former colleague of mine. Open source and my favorite for 2h forecasts about upcoming rain in Germany.

Re: WeatherKit

#69

Post by misnome »

beardface wrote: post #61
dieselgate wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple api - nope. Norwegian Meteorological Institute api - yup. That’s mostly in jest though (sent from an iphone) but also because Apple bought darksky (which was my preferred weather api/source in the past) and I’d assume that’s a big part of/rolled into the weatherkit offerings now?

I've been using Dark Sky for years but I uninstalled it yesterday. Since the acquisition, the native Weather app has been massively upgraded with a lot of Dark Sky's best features and is very good now. I ran the two in parallel for a few months to compare the alerts and accuracy. Weather won out.

Weird, because for me, in the UK, the weather radar is much, much lower resolution in the Weather app.

Dark Sky app however always had a longstanding bug that it’d never show past radar, only future sliding predictions, so I guess both have their problems.

Re: WeatherKit

#70

Post by phkx »

It‘s the first time that I have come across the term ‚hyperlocal‘. As far as I understand in this context it means ‚high spatial and temporal resolution‘. Is that correct?

The Wikipedia article states that hyperlocal is used for information, which is relevant to the population of some given community. Does this always refer to a geographically defined community or has it been extended to other logical communities, as well?

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