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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#281

Post by jackklika »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #94

As an Android user that uses Dark Sky: Fuck you. Everyone else is congratulating the team on a job well done, I'm not. I rely on Dark Sky because there are no better services, and it is a service I pay for. Now I'm going to have to switch to some second rate weather app that can't predict the weather worth a damn because it just regurgitates the NWS. God fucking damnit.

Same here. It's been the best weather app I've used. I'm not one to get pissed off like this on the internet but I'm heated!

Is there any alternative?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#282

Post by onychomys »

pergadad wrote: post #174
sauwan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I find I have to load it, close and reopen the app about 95% of the time. Hugely bummed these two apps are going into the wastebin. Certainly leaves a huge void for us Android users.

I've been using this one since underground stopped being useful. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.... Sadly at some point they weren't able to pay for the dark sky API anymore and since then the quality of forecasts is a bit less convincing. I'm still rather shocked by the low reviews though, for me it works well and I love that you can add a dozen cities and see the forecast.

Just a heads-up, that link is broken.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#283

Post by minimalist »

Barrin92 wrote: post #259
kyledrake wrote: post #33

> Android and Wear OS App > The app will no longer be available for download. Service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are still active at that time will receive a refund. IBM bought the Weather Underground app and ruined it, and now Dark Sky was bought by Apple and they're ruining that too. Now I will have zero good weather…

It's literally bonkers to me how many people sell out. Is the VLC guy the only person with some integrity? Can we not be satisfied with the money we make from subscribers instead of selling everything including the kitchen sink to some corporate behemoth to swallow it up and kill every open service? The same thing is happening in the podcasting ecosystem right now. it's turning more and more into a walled garden.

I used to think the same thing, but what about the situations where people don't sell out and just see their features copied by the corporate behemoth, wholesale? That scenario seems to play out often as well (g---le+ and diaspora always come to mind).

I suppose if the goal is to just see some technology or technique or idea become more broadly adopted, this isn't a bad thing. But what about poor-implementations of a good concept (UI/UX bloat, user-hostile business models, etc.) Honestly, I'm not sure. Is this analogous to the trends that drive consolidation of firms in general?

I guess this is a round-about say of saying that selling-out is probably the most rational thing to do, but please prove me wrong.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#284

Post by reaperducer »

minimalist wrote: post #256
reaperducer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you are in a densely-populated area of the United States..." Your blanket statement doesn't always hold. This is more accurate.

I'm not sure, NWS does a good job of interpolating for regions without a weather station, even taking into account coastal effects and elevation. In my experience (in a rural, montane environment) it works pretty well if you specify your coordinates, not just the zipcode. Have there any been any comparisons of the commercial services to NWS? That would be an interesting casual study. Edit: There are some additional i…

I'm not sure

I am. Spend some time in the desert southwest, particularly on indian reservations. You'll find that NWS temperatures are regularly off by 10-20°. But that's still better than Weather Underground, which can be off by as much as 50°.

One thing I will give the NWS credit for is the wind forecasts. Those things are spot-on at least 90% of the time.

I've lived in 15 cities in a dozen states, and what I've noticed is that if you're in a large city, or east of a large city, the forecasts are great.

But if you're west of a large city, or in a smaller city, it's hit-or-miss. This makes sense, as the better forecasters tend to end up in the larger markets.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#285

Post by bearcobra »

ecf wrote: post #104

> Our API service for existing customers is not changing today, but we will no longer accept new signups. The API will continue to function through the end of 2021. I believe this could be the main reason for the purchase. Apple is still using The Weather Channel as the data source for their stock app. If you take a look at their website you’ll soon realize they’ve jumped the ship and are highlighting articles such a…

The Weather Company (which no longer owns The Weather Channel) is part of IBM and also owns WeatherUnderground which has a pretty extensive personal weather station network. I'm skeptical that DarkSky's data is that much higher quality even if weather.com is a mess.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#286

Post by dmos62 »

jaywalk wrote: post #131
dmos62 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to acknowledge that there is a benefit: Apple products' value increases in relation to other platforms' when they introduce more exclusive offerings. The right to do this without repercussions is hurting IT. Big IT business is rife with anti-competitive crap that noone should put up with.

You really think Apple (or anyone else) should be forced to support software on a competing platform? That's absurd. It's a crappy decision on their part, no doubt. But saying it should be illegal is way out of line.

You can always come up with a ludicrous policy; it doesn't detract from the potential of regulation. Would you accept General Motors buying freeways and not allowing others' platforms on it? Competition must be regulated.

Also, isn't the barrier between iOS and Android devices artificial? I don't see a veritable technical reason why the two platforms can't be compatible.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#287

Post by mr_toad »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #270
untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. I mean, congratulations to the founders of Dark Sky. It’s a wonderful app and they deserve all the money they’ll get from this and they deserve a lot of credit for not selling user data when almost every other weather app does. But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. And I hope we actually see a good improvement to the Apple weather app as a result of this. I remember a…

Interesting that Google makes a ton of apps for iOS but Apple doesn't go the other way.

Google wants people to use their software, Apple wants people to use their hardware.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#288

Post by saagarjha »

matthewmcg wrote: post #30

Interesting that they just unilaterally state that your data is now subject to Apple's privacy policy. Checking the policy in effect before the acquisition[1], it seems they disclosed the possibility of transferring data to an acquirer. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172542/https://darksky.n...

This is sadly fairly standard verbiage for most privacy policies.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#289

Post by VectorLock »

fooey wrote: post #61
huhtenberg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Et al - maybe, but Dark Sky built their own near-future "hyperlocal" forecasting engine and they were the first ones to do that. They basically invented the whole genre. Perhaps they expanded into repackaging NOAA data now, but that's not what Dark Sky is about.

Hyperlocal forecasting, who just ejected most of the world from their data collection pool.

Oh they were collecting data from phones? Sounds like a good excuse to delete the app before they spike it anyways.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#290

Post by secabeen »

qqqwerty wrote: post #181
maliker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ain't pretty matches my experience. My team pulls a lot of weather data for utility engineering work we do, and the NOAA APIs have proven very hard to navigate. Some data only available via FTP, lots of different weather station networks with different metrics (e.g. lots of variety in the cloud/irradiance data). Darksky provided a nice clean interface, but I guess we'll go back to cobbling things together directly fr…

While I agree that the NOAA data is hard to work with, these more 'polished' api providers come with their own set of risks. For example, Dark Sky is forecasting a snow storm in my Bay Area coastal town[1]. That seems unlikely. Also, there is another paid service that I am familiar with that had a nice clean API with consistently formatted data, but it turned out their data was wildly inaccurate. [1] https://darksky.…

That is delightfully ridiculous.
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