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Acme Weather

acmeweather.com

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Re: Acme Weather

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

marbletiles wrote: post #20

This team really have been thinking about weather a lot , and it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time. It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.

> it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time

The rainbow and sunset alerts are really cool ideas. I'm now realising that a simple tie-in to astronomical phenomena could prompt a useful notificationa around it e.g. being worth going stargazing that night. I ski–learning that the near-term forecasts just changed would help me change my schedule the day before versus trying and failing the morning of.

Re: Acme Weather

#32

Post by chickensong »

mattlondon wrote: post #26
rcarmo wrote: post #19

I am going to chalk this up as another datapoint in the "Apple cannot retain talent" chart. I don't know what the heck they are doing, but everyone they've acquired seems to leave as soon as they can instead of staying.

Leave as soon as you can, along with millions and millions in cash that you got from the sale? Who wouldn't?! Why would you continue working for "the man" when you have FU-money?

Should probably quit and sell the same thing again with a different chart because FU money isn't enough.

The price is reasonable I guess, but also, you can just get weather for free? IDK...

Re: Acme Weather

#33

Post by imiric »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
JensenTorp wrote: post #7

Subscription app in 2026, no thanks.

Your phone comes with a free weather app. There are thousands more free apps for folks who don’t mind ads. Weather requires ongoing costs. It’s always going to need to be maintained because meteorological models are evolving. Anything beyond a viewport will need to track and metabolize those changes.

> Weather requires ongoing costs.

I strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data, a negligible amount of IT infrastructure, and their employees. Considering that there are many free weather APIs, and that a polished frontend can be built by a single person, what exactly are the overheads?

To be fair, I'm not criticizing the subscription model. I think it makes sense for software that needs to be continually maintained. But a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment. A big reason why companies love the Apple ecosystem is because subscriptions have been normalized, and users are used to paying them regardless if the model actually makes sense for the type of software.

Re: Acme Weather

#34

Post by NoboruWataya »

imarkphillips wrote: post #21

How about reporting on yesterday's weather? Its hard to plan a walk in the forest today if I dont know how much it rained yesterday.

I'm having this problem right now, trying to plan some nice long walks out of the city but it's been raining a lot lately. I'd love some kind of map of flooding/muddy conditions, but I don't think it would be feasible without a massive effort (as whether an area is prone to flooding or turning into a mudbath after rain depends on a lot of factors).

Re: Acme Weather

#35

Post by altmanaltman »

3rodents wrote: post #16
Galanwe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m trying [...] to save life and property from severe events at scale Tell me you work in Silicon Valley without telling me you work in silicon Valley. Sorry but I couldn't resist. There is something in US startup mentality where you can't just "create an app and make a living", you have to be on a grand mission to save the world. That may be normal out there, but for the rest of the world it just seems... Get bac…

Sure, most of us are doing nothing to help people and are using grandiose language to describe reticulating splines. I don’t think that applies to good weather apps though, a lot of people do die because they are unaware of weather events. I would be very unsurprised to learn that any major weather app has directly saved lives. The U.S is a very… weatherful place.

People do die due to weather events. But attributing their death to bad weather apps is pretty wild.

Re: Acme Weather

#36

Post by NoboruWataya »

jwr wrote: post #14

Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others… "Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.

BreezyWeather is a pretty good open source option for Android, if you are looking. Gives you plenty of options of data providers to use.

https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather

Re: Acme Weather

#37

Post by cryptoz »

imiric wrote: post #27

How are weather apps still relevant, let alone profitable enough to build a company around? This problem has been solved years ago. All the app needs to do is hook up to one or more data providers, and show some stats and pretty graphs. It's essentially a read-only frontend to an API. There are plenty of options to choose from on every platform, including not using an app at all. The features this ad promotes all see…

> Why do you collect any data??

There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.

Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?

I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.

One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.

Re: Acme Weather

#38

Post by k4rli »

ca6d8815 wrote: post #18
jwr wrote: post #14

Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others… "Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.

Try your local weather app. Here in Switzerland the MeteoSwiss app is absolutely wonderful, and has all these main features: - Uncertainty bands in the forecast (the bands are a better UX than more lines imo) - User-supplied reports - Many many many different maps (snow / cloud / wind / sunshine / air quality / etc) - Alerts (not notifications, but real alerts to watch out for something) Plus many more other features…

yr.no tends to be most accurate for Scandi+Baltics somehow pretty often.

Ventusky has the best app experience in Android with many different layers like wind, precipitation, air quality and many more. Can only recommend this as well.

Re: Acme Weather

#39

Post by lionkor »

jwr wrote: post #14

Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others… "Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.

I'm in Germany and I really enjoy the Norwegian weather app YR, it's nice and simple and very clean.

Re: Acme Weather

#40

Post by ho_schi »

jwr wrote: post #14

Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others… "Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.

It looks nice. Less nice but very good in Germany is DWD Warn Weather:

https://apps.apple.com/de/app/dwd-warnwetter/id986420993?l=e...

Yes. We pay for it with taxes! And again with our money in the App Store. But the app success is build upon the lawsuit from WetterOnline which is a private company.

https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...

The lawsuit backfired and made the state funded app well known. WetterOnline attacked the DWD because the state funded app is superior :)

I think in Italy they have some similar app. Would be nice if the EU helps us to unify the app. And add offline capabilities, bad or no internet happens. The weather radar is offline of less use but the forecast still helps.

They release videos for dangerous weather on YouTube. We’ll know for regular people, in regular cloths, speaking like regular Germans. Everyone loves it :)

I like it when important services are provided by the state and private companies. Save foundation! In worst case the state is always better. In best case they compete and public benefits. In this case the private company just sucks. But they made a good job in advertising for DWD ^^

PS: If someone would implement a nice weather for Linux (best Gtk) based upon DWD public data? DO IT!

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