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WeatherKit

developer.apple.com

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Re: WeatherKit

#141

Post by ibeckermayer »

simondotau wrote: post #131
ibeckermayer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that they don’t actually care because they’re not offering true privacy. Real privacy means my data is mine, and I decide individually which people or groups get access, including Apple. Apples’ “privacy” is that they retain monopoly control over my data. Basically they stiff arm the competition (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc) and get to profit exclusively by spying on me.

> Apples’ “privacy” is that they retain monopoly control over my data. That's a strange way to describe the situation where Apple is not allowing third parties to share your private data without your permission. Apple is doing exactly what you wanted in your first paragraph, which is to let you decide who gets access to your private data. If you only give it to Apple, that's YOU deciding to voluntarily grant Apple th…

The point is that there's no option where nobody gets to spy on me. I should have the option to host the server-side software myself, and/or delegate that to a third party of my choosing which provides a standardized API.

Calling what Apple does "privacy" is a sleight of hand. True privacy means my data is mine, I am not forced to share it with whatever random employees of a multinational corporation happen to be able to access it, it is not necessarily within the crosshairs of bulk warrants imposed on Apple by governments, and I have the option to refuse to allow it to be used to demographically and psychologically profile me for the purposes of advertising or anything else by any other entity including Apple.

What they are engaged in is the monopolization of user data, duplicitously dressed in the robes of "privacy".

Re: WeatherKit

#142

Post by jmbwell »

adastra22 wrote: post #40

We have WewtherKit, yet we still don’t have an iPad port of the official iOS weather app?

[doesn’t offer iPad calculator]

Apple is hostile to users!

[adds iPad calculator]

Apple is hostile to third party developers!

Re: WeatherKit

#143

Post by balderdash »

gregoriol wrote: post #85
kmeisthax wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Space is not a good reason: you could easily fill some with a calculation history log, or even implement type/editor features like the Numi app on macOS.

Or add in a financial + graphing calculator

Re: WeatherKit

#144

Post by fishywang »

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

I've been searching for weather apps on Android since Apple acquired DarkSky, and eventually settled on Yr. Would recommend them.

Re: WeatherKit

#145

Post by yreg »

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?

If you preferred Dark Sky before then what do you have against WeatherKit? Isn't it basically a repackaged Dark Sky for half the price?

Re: WeatherKit

#146

Post by easeout »

wingerlang wrote: post #103
adastra22 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it really a problem though?

It really isn't. You likely have a phone, there's a whole App Store full of calculators, and in a pinch there's always Spotlight.

PCalc has been on iPad since just after iPad launched. https://www.loopinsight.com/2010/04/07/pcalc-now-available-f...

Re: WeatherKit

#147

Post by easeout »

balderdash wrote: post #143
gregoriol wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is not a good reason: you could easily fill some with a calculation history log, or even implement type/editor features like the Numi app on macOS.

Or add in a financial + graphing calculator

For what it's worth, Apple offers Numbers free on the App Store. I'm not sure how deep the financial functions go.

Graphing: The classic has been ported by its original author. Not free but a pleasant surprise https://swift.org/blog/graphing-calculator/

Re: WeatherKit

#148

Post by suction »

ghosty141 wrote: post #99
suction wrote: post #89

What data is Apple using in Central Europe? Because all weather apps only using data from US providers only are hilariously wrong.

I wonder too, they get the rain forecasts wrong all the time. They are at least off by 1-2 hours or somtimed forecast rain when there is none. Compare that to other apps like WeatherPro which are way closer

That's also what I'm using (WeatherPro). But sadly it's on the decline and seems to have been abandoned since the data supplier was acquired by another company. I only heard rumours though.

Re: WeatherKit

#149

Post by dagmx »

robsws wrote: post #92

I don't really know Swift, but does the following line from that site make any sense? "And with Swift concurrency, it’s easy to request weather data with just a few lines of code."

Without Swift Concurrency, you'd write something like this (pseudocode):

GetWeather() { results in

   // Do something with the results

   UpdateUI(results)
}

The part in the curly braces is a closure/completion handler. The GetWeather call is not blocking, so it runs on another thread and then it calls your completion code when it's done.

This looks fine in a small example, but it quickly gets gnarly when you need to pipe those results to something else, or you can also end up deep in many completion handlers.

With the new concurrency model it's just this

let results = await GetWeather ()

UpdateUI(results)

Now let's say your UpdateUI call was also non blocking:

GetWeather() { results in

   UpdateUI(results) {

       DoSomethingElse ()

   }
}

Which just becomes this

let results = await GetWeather ()

await UpdateUI(results)

DoSomethingElse()

Re: WeatherKit

#150

Post by echelon »

madeofpalk wrote: post #109
politelemon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no doubt that Apple is looking at how data is leaking across the ecosystem and is seeking to stop it as much as possible. I have no doubt that Apple is looking to exploit it to their exclusive advantage as much as possible, while marketing it under the guise of their privacy measures.

Seems like a win/win when the customers and businesses interests align. No one is pretending Apple is a charity. Of course they do all this for obscene amounts of profit. But if we get stronger privacy as a side effect, I think that’s a generally okay situation.

We're selling our freedoms for a sense of security.

Apple is almost too big to defeat. With the flip of a switch, they could turn course. (I would argue in many senses that they have.)

They're already obeying local governments as a central point of censorship and control. Even the FBI/NSA has them monitoring the files on your device.

Apple is too many functions wrapped up as a single legal entity. They have too much control, and they're growing bigger every year.

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