Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WeatherKit

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 203 posts

Re: WeatherKit

#71

Post by Closi »

phkx wrote: post #70

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…

The term hyperlocal was used by the Dark Sky app which was acquired by Apple two years ago.

I believe the term was used to mean that the weather forecast was based on your GPS position rather than the town you are in, allowing for more 'real time' forecasts like 'it is going to rain in the next 5 minutes, but this will stop in 10 minutes' (while a traditional forecast would just say '10% chance of rain at 1pm in Leeds').

The ability to get some rain and look on an app and say "it looks like this will ease off in about half an hour, so we might as well get another beer before we go to the next pub" is really useful, and on that timespan there can be different weather in different parts of town which is why a more refined forecast is required.

Re: WeatherKit

#72

Post by dodgerdan »

twicetwice wrote: post #2

Looks like this is what they did with DarkSky after they acquired it. It looks awesome. It's a shame it's only available to Apple developers and users Edit: my bad for skimming too fast, I'm glad there's a REST API, that's unexpected and cool!

And idea why the Apple Weather app still has the “The Weather Channel” logo on it?

I hope they continue to support Darksky, at least until the Apple Weather app is on par with it.

Re: WeatherKit

#73

Post by mrtksn »

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

Free is always good but when it's fee you also get no guarantees and commitments. Apple and the free options probably target different segments.

Re: WeatherKit

#74

Post by sph »

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

It's what the GNOME weather applet uses. I thought it's weird it uses a Norwegian service for my UK weather, but makes sense now.

Re: WeatherKit

#75

Post by adastra22 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #57
clintonb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strangest omission to me is the calculator app.

This is deliberate. Jobs saw what the calculator app looked like on an iPad and pulled it at the last minute. This is a problem specifically caused by the iPad's design. On desktop you just prohibit the user from making the calculator app window bigger than reasonable and that's that. But iPads require that the current app fill the entire screen, so any apps that can't are really awkward and frustrating to use - as c…

Sure, but they've had 12 years to solve this problem.

Re: WeatherKit

#76

Post by tinus_hn »

withinboredom wrote: post #67
Rygian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conti…

It’d be the dumbest marketing move ever, Apple makes billions from selling their devices and the rest of the ecosystem, the location data they could gather under the table would be worth small change compared to the risk they’d be taking.

It’d be an embarrassment to emphasize their privacy advantage in their announcements only to throw away that trust in pursuit of a few pennies.

Re: WeatherKit

#77

Post by [deleted] »

nowherebeen wrote: post #66
Rygian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: WeatherKit

#78

Post by harha »

leobg wrote: post #64
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...

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 Servic…

Quite interesting reasoning given in how many places the state intervenes and how high taxes are.

Though then again not that surprising that they manage to publicly fund something and then ruin it, leaving the taxpayer in the worst condition. I believe there’s even no official source of laws online in Germany decades after the internet has made it cheap and easy to provide access to information.

Re: WeatherKit

#79

Post by concinds »

withinboredom wrote: post #67
Rygian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conti…

This is plausible. Apple is blocking methods used by more aggressive/invasive ad networks (at the App Store policy level, the iOS level like with IDFA, and the Safari level with ITP), which makes using Apple's ad network more advantageous (since Apple's anti-tracking strategy favors first-party tracking).

https://digiday.com/media/apple-skadnetwork/

> Apple Ads Attribution API (used by Search Ads campaigns) provides visibility into clickDate, adGroupId, creativeSetId. “This is a massive, and unfair, advantage Apple is giving to its own systems and advertisers,” said Sergio Serra, senior product manager at supply-side platform InMobi.

https://www.adexchanger.com/mobile/3-ways-apple-is-throwing-...

> Which is particularly interesting considering that late last week, Eric Seufert, a mobile strategist and editor of Mobile Dev Memo, discovered a settings option in the forthcoming iOS 14 that would give preferential treatment to Apple ads personalization.

(IDFA tracking is opt-in, Apple's tracking is opt-out)

Re: WeatherKit

#80

Post by tjpnz »

PostOnce wrote: post #58
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

New Zealanders pay taxes for a weather agency and a separate climate agency, neither of which provides weather local for most farms (one farm client of my agtech automation business is an hour from town; the weather report only applies to town). Additionally, the weather service is a "state owned enterprise" expected to turn a profit. So everyone who needs farm weather uses yr.no After covid, I'm going to go talk to…

Who are you planning to talk to? A National MP will be in favour of just selling it and then bungle the IPO returning very little to the government. A Labour MP will propose opening it up but then get distracted trying to pass other legislation that nobody wants.

That aside you might make some progress talking to the Greens if you framed it as an environmental issue.

Post reply on HN