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Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

blog.darksky.net

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

#201

Post by can16358p »

beefman wrote: post #187

Folks here said the new Weather app has the same info. I upgraded to iOS 16 about a year before I normally would just to check this. And nope, it doesn't have the one feature I use Dark Sky for – the one feature no other weather app has: the ability to see what the weather was yesterday. It's what Dark Sky calls "Time Machine". (Can't believe Apple let them use this name this long, now that I think of it.) (I support…

Weather app doesn't even show the hour before. I get it, less features = simpler user interface and less code maintenance... but they could at least start at current hour BUT provide ability to scroll back in time for a few days, perhaps showing that data with 0.5 opacity faded to indicate that the data is no longer relevant (past).

Otherwise I LOVE the updated weather app in iOS 16 where you can see many data points in a nice graph for the next week hourly for things like humidity, wind etc.

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

#202

Post by emptybits »

jszymborski wrote: post #57
Drybones wrote: 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 usually used Darksky for the hourly percipitation forecast. It helped me time things out. For fellow Canadians who used it similarly, the Canadian Gov't has a pretty handy hourly forecast[0]. The radar is also nice [1]. [0] https://www.weather.gc.ca/forecast/hourly/qc-147_metric_e.ht... [1] https://www.weather.gc.ca/map_e.html?layers=radar&zoom=-1&ce...

Agree. I have trusted the Environment Canada forecasts for years. Web and basic app. The government-issued stuff isn't as featureful or pretty as some apps, but I go back to it every time because its track record here (Vancouver) has been good to me.

I wish there was an API or non-scraping approach to retrieve the daily & hourly forecasts. With the popularity of open data policies on tax-funded public data... it seems there should be.

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

#203

Post by drewlander »

JeremyNT wrote: post #173
unsignedint wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

On android, I switched to the open source "wX" app, which uses NWS data under the hood. It's incredibly detailed and although the UX is a little rough it's because it's aimed at power users, so I figured the HN crowd might appreciate it. Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/joshuatee.wx/ Source: https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx

I use that too but on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wxl23/id1171250052

https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wxl23

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

#204

Post by mach5 »

jamesdf wrote: post #43
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #37

I had home automation based on Dark Sky API. Sad to see it go. (mental note: make sure there are always alternate solutions and manual over-rides for external resources.)

The API is replaced by https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi which is available as a REST API and can be used on non-Apple platforms.

its not free like darksky was for small personal apps

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

#205

Post by GeekyBear »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #178
inlined wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really tired of hearing everyone suggest Google is some boogeyman trying to do something subversive to get your data. Anyone who thinks this should grab their nearest google engineer and talk about privacy controls internally. Privacy is critical to the company and every product launch has a privacy review. In one of my launches we even had to add an opt in to allow users to share data with themselves because it…

All of the Google employees I've met have been incredibly vocal about security and privacy, really considerate about how technology should serve us, as well as being some of the kindest engineers I've ever met. I can't really square the HN attitude of Google being evil with my experience.

Some of them were kind enough to speak out internally about Google's terrible privacy settings, after Google was caught still tracking user location for users who had followed Google's advice on how to turn off location tracking.

>"The current UI feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet difficult enough that people won’t figure it out."

"Some people (including even Googlers) don’t know that there is a global switch and a per-device switch."

"Indeed we aren’t very good at explaining this to users. Add me to the list of Googlers who didn’t understand how this worked and was surprised when I read the article ... we shipped a UI that confuses users."

"I agree with the article. Location off should mean location off, not except for this case or that case."

"Speaking as a user, WTF?" another employee said, in additional documentation obtained by the Arizona Mirror. "More specifically I *thought* I had location tracking turned off on my phone. So our messaging around this is enough to confuse a privacy focused (Google software engineer). That’s not good."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/unredacted-suit-...

However, the engineers at Google aren't in charge.

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

#206

Post by bdougherty »

zikduruqe wrote: post #118
lelandfe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say – the Dark Sky API will shut down end of March next year[0]. Apple recommends switching to WeatherKit's API. It is not free, requiring a paid Developer Program membership, which is $99/year.[1] That includes 500k API calls/mo. On that linked WeatherKit page, they include a DarkSky migration guide. There are fields that are no longer being offered. (The fact that `temperatureHigh` doesn't have an analog m…

I use the Dark Sky API on a weather site that I have been running since 2014. Thinking of switching over to Openweathermap, but would welcome other suggestions if anyone is in the same situation. https://openweathermap.org/api

Try Open-Meteo https://open-meteo.com/en

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

#207

Post by ramraj07 »

beefman wrote: post #187

Folks here said the new Weather app has the same info. I upgraded to iOS 16 about a year before I normally would just to check this. And nope, it doesn't have the one feature I use Dark Sky for – the one feature no other weather app has: the ability to see what the weather was yesterday. It's what Dark Sky calls "Time Machine". (Can't believe Apple let them use this name this long, now that I think of it.) (I support…

What do we expect from stupid Apple. They don’t even store more than the last 100 phone calls. It’s 2020. Their phone is more powerful than supercomputers from the 90s. It can’t store more than 100 phone numbers.

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

#208

Post by vorpalhex »

Maursault wrote: post #198
morley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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&...

Same, but since 2010 on iPad. When Dark Sky got popular, I looked at it, but I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I'm sure the data is fine, but it is not an attractive app by any means, the graphics all look washed-out, and the data presentation is nothing special. Everything needed for local weather is provided by that free hourly dashboard on weather.gov. Because it is slick, I also use RadarScope on rai…

Dark Sky had three big features:

1. Hyperlocal data which made it _very_ accurate in a lot of cases. Not flawless, but better than others.

2. Simple and fast. Sure, the UI wasn't fancy - but it loaded quickly. No bloat.

3. They had a really lovely API that was simple to use.

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

#209

Post by freetime2 »

wpietri wrote: post #74
Gigachad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason seems pretty simple, because it was cheaper to buy it than to pay their own people to try and recreate it.

Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need? I think the simpler explanation is one you'll find in many comments here: Dark Sky was unusually good, and Apple bought it to get all that goodness to themselves.

> Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need?

The parent said that the data Dark Sky uses is public and that anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so.

They also said that it was probably cheaper for Apple to buy Dark Sky than build it themselves. That does not mean that Apple can’t build it themselves if sufficiently motivated.

I don’t see any inconsistency here in the above statements.

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

#210

Post by soheil »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #183
soheil wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iOS 16 beta Weather app has incredible features and down to the hour granularity even for future days.

Is this the 16.1 beta, or the 16.0 release?

16.0 if you click on the day a pop up appears with an interactive graph broken down by hour on the x axis.
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