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Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

blog.darksky.net

121–130 of 313 posts

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#121

I am a long-ago purchaser of Dark Sky. I find I never use it on my iPhone. Carrot Weather is always superior in both the forecast and Radar. Dark Sky's "it will rain in 5 minutes" was hit or miss. I live in the mountains, so perhaps, Dark Sky works well in a less difficult environment. That said, if it disappears tomorrow, I won't miss it.

It didn't occur to me until they were gone, but I wish I'd asked my roofers what they used. I had my roof replaced a couple years ago in early March. Here in the Puget Sound area by than the winter rain has fallen off, but February and March still average about 6 inches each, so the schedule was "we'll do it when it isn't going to rain".

I got a call one evening saying they'd be over at 8 AM the next day, unless forecasts changed before then. That surprised me because all my weather sources were saying there was a high chance of rain after noon.

They showed up at 8 AM and promptly got to work removing the old roof. I'd expected them to work in sections, taking off the old roof in a section and then putting the new on up to the waterproof underlayment. (The shingles were due to be delivered that evening, so would have to wait until the next day). That way if the rain came earlier than expected they would be able to waterproof whatever section they were on in time.

Nope. They took it all off. They were confident that whoever was doing their forecasting was right that they had enough time to get the whole thing waterproof before the rain started.

As they started putting on the new stuff the clouds were darkening and it sure looked to me like rain was imminent. But they just kept going at the same pace.

As they put the last of the waterproof lining on and started coming off the roof, it started pouring. They packed up, told me they would be back tomorrow at 8 AM to put on the shingles, and left.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#122
post #10
post #5

Upsetting about the app, but the new iOS weather app has the functionality essentially. The real gut wrencher is the darksky website going down. It’s how I check weather most of the time a no other browser weather site comes close to it in simplicity and features.

I've used the weather.gov site for the last ~5 years, and it has been great. I bookmark both the 7-day local forecast[1] and the hourly dashboard[2]. [1] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71234500000... [2] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w0=t&w3u=1&w5=pop&...

Doesn’t seem to have configurable units... They provide today’s temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (as well as pressure in mb and inches [why mb instead of hPa I don’t know]), but wind speed is stuck in MPH (I prefer m/s) and future dates are always Fahrenheit. Also it is missing detailed forecast for future dates.

Overall pretty lacking in usability compared to dark sky.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#123
post #105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the sense where it's an anti-consumer concentration of market power. Something Apple is fond of. [1] Is this particular action currently illegal? Probably not, because in the US we're in an era of extreme friendliness toward companies from anti-trust regulators. But that doesn't mean no reasonable market regulator would ever frown on acquisitions like this. [1] E.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343…

How is it anti consumer? What harm has a consumer suffered? It seems like your only answer to this is “there’s less weather apps”? If your viewpoint were the one used for antitrust then no acquisition ever would be acceptable.

Many people love Dark Sky, and Apple simply killed it.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#124
post #5

Upsetting about the app, but the new iOS weather app has the functionality essentially. The real gut wrencher is the darksky website going down. It’s how I check weather most of the time a no other browser weather site comes close to it in simplicity and features.

Shortly after Darksky left Android, started using Windy. [1] Not necessarily a simplest solution for weather forecast, but provides wealth of information to satisfy my meteorological curiosity as well. (I pay Premium for higher precision data, and I think it worth every penny IMHO.) [1]: https://www.windy.com/

https://weatherflow.com/ is also good. I pay for their iKiteSurf product as a kitesurfer and it works decently well once you understand what "16 knots" at one spot vs another really means out on the water.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#126
post #5

Upsetting about the app, but the new iOS weather app has the functionality essentially. The real gut wrencher is the darksky website going down. It’s how I check weather most of the time a no other browser weather site comes close to it in simplicity and features.

Usually I use the default Samsung weather app, but when I'm on my PC https://wttr.in/ is a fun one, and you can even get terminal-readable output by using something like cURL!

Nice, I made something similar with https://github.com/ip2k/we4ther?files=1 a decade ago. It used to be up at we4ther.com but I hadn't updated the code in a long long time and didn't bother migrating it to my latest server. The free MaxMind GeoIP DB is def good enough to detect location (this was before the browser location API) close enough to give accurate weather.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#127
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Aussie, I use the BoM app. Has everything I need and being government supported is not driven by "for profit" motives.

Yeah the BOM website has also been the same design for so long and is great. Example forecast: http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/forecasts/perth.shtml Observations: http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/observations/perth.shtml

Still seems outrageous to me that BOM doesn't support HTTPS...

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#128
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like Dark Sky's response to that article. https://mobile.twitter.com/darkskyapp/status/108135144619558... So, not the case with Dark Sky.

>We still do not, and never will, sell your location data to 3rd parties. They sold the whole company. If they had sold to a data hoarder like Google or Facebook, I have very little doubt that the data would have been included. Who in their right mind thinks Google wanted to buy Fitbit for anything but their data?

Well, they also got the engineers.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#129
post #16

What weather app are people using on Android? I'm currently using Geometric Weather + MyRadar: https://f-droid.org/packages/wangdaye.com.geometricweather/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeaom.an...

To be honest, I was using bookmarks to the darksky website, that way they were synced between desktop and phone.

Re: Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

#130
post #31
post #30

My girlfriend uses Apple’s Weather app and I still use Dark Sky. My anecdotal experience is that Dark Sky is significantly more accurate than Apple’s Weather app, especially when it comes to rain. Anyone have any insight into why this is the case, especially considering Apple bought Dark Sky?

iOS only seems to be taking Dark Sky weather as of iOS 16, so guess start comparing them again as it was released today!

I wonder if you can source that. I am pretty confident Apple Weather has the same back-end data since iOS 15 a year ago, at the least.
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