Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 594 posts

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#541

Post by lstamour »

dingaling wrote: post #519
cosmie wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whereas Apple was pulling data from The Weather Company, now part of IBM. It's turtles all the way down[1]. The Weather Company also leverages NOAA data and is listed as such as a weather service provider on NOAA's site[2]. Although they ostensibly augment it with other sources and apply their own forecasting models to the data, they're still basically repackaging NOAA data in one form or another. [1] https://en.wi…

> The Weather Company also leverages NOAA data ... in the USA. But one of its great advantages is the data it receives from tens of thousands of amateur weather reporting stations globally. The Wunderground forecast for our locality is hyper-localised and very accurate for that reason, particularly compared to the national Met Office forecast which applies to an airport 35 miles away, beside a lake and on the other s…

I had no idea Weather Channel had bought Weather Underground in 2012. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(weather...

I remember fondly using their Wunder Radio app in the early iPhone years.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#542

Post by dguest »

kvakkefly wrote: post #248
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…

You can try Yr: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=e... It is an app made by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute afaik and works quite well all over the world. I'm curious on how well it works where you live! They have open API's as well: https://api.met.no

I was going to suggest Yr as well! I live in France and it seems to work reasonably well.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#543

Post by dguest »

The situation around weather apps really confuses me: my understanding is that most weather predictions come from massive networks of weather stations and very complicated and expensive simulation, both of which are publicly funded. This information must be available via some public API.

Making an app is "just" providing an interface to this. I don't mean that front end design is easy (as demonstrated by a lot of badly designed weather apps), but it does mean that most apps should give you exactly the same information.

With this in mind I just looked for a publicly funded app (so no adds, free) and ended up with Yr. Am I missing something here?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#544

Post by simonh »

enos_feedler wrote: post #405
simonh wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mistake you’re making is thinking Apple cares about messaging. They don’t. They care about the iOS platform. Messages gives them a competitive advantage in that sector. Yes a competing messaging service might surpass it, in fact this has already happened in China with WeChat. This goes some way to level of the playing field with Android over there. But putting Messages on Android would level the playing f…

I think if Apple didn't care about messaging they would just kill their investment and let SMS and 3P apps do the job. They wouldn't just throw money away to make something they didn't care about.

Please read my fourth sentence again. Messages cant give them a competitive advantage on their platform if it's on competing platforms.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#545

Post by wakeless »

cosmie wrote: post #515
mattmcknight wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently DarkSky does use the NOAA data, whereas Apple was pulling data from The Weather Company, now part of IBM. "IBM purchased the Weather Co. in 2016 and sells weather data to, among others, Apple, for its weather app. The purchase could signal that Apple will develop its own weather model rather than continue to use IBM-derived data, or it may indicate that Apple, too, liked the design of the app." https://www…

> whereas Apple was pulling data from The Weather Company, now part of IBM. It's turtles all the way down[1]. The Weather Company also leverages NOAA data and is listed as such as a weather service provider on NOAA's site[2]. Although they ostensibly augment it with other sources and apply their own forecasting models to the data, they're still basically repackaging NOAA data in one form or another. [1] https://en.wi…

There is a great episode of 99 percent invisible about this.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#546

Post by simonh »

Nullabillity wrote: post #460
CarlRJ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has a monopoly on the channel to deliver iOS apps. That's only a monopoly in the same sense that McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs. It's within their own ecosystem. Customers can decide whether they want to buy into that ecosystem or choose an alternative (like Burger King, or Android).

Utter nonsense. Buying a burger is an independent transaction. Buying a Big Mac one day doesn't make you less likely to buy a Whopper the next. Buying a phone is an investment that locks you into that ecosystem for ~2 years (until you buy a new one), and once that time comes, both ecosystems encourage you to stick with your existing choice via purchase transfers, exclusives, and (more) seamless data transfers. Your c…

We're not talking about a monopoly on selling particular phones as physical products. We're talking about apps, which often, but not always are much more 'burger-like'.

I think the best analogy would be video games on console platforms, does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games? Well, kind of if you squint really hard, not that it seems to stand in the way of a vibrant and competitive console industry and that's the key issue. If there's a competitive market that is serving customer needs, and no deceptive practices so customers have a clear choice then it's hard to argue there's a market dysfunction such as a monopoly.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#547

Post by the_other »

threeseed wrote: post #323
notthemessiah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember a few years ago Apple bought a fantastic public transit app (Embark?), shut it down and I still don’t think their Maps app comes close to the original transit app. When Edwin Howard Armstrong invented FM radio, he was working for RCA, which had everything invested in AM radio, an incompatible technology. RCA chose not to invest, and used their political clout to lobby the FCC to cripple FM radio, and the…

> For companies like Apple, these acquisitions are more about killing competition This is just nonsense. Every acquisition they've ever done can directly be seen in future projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... The products you don't see give a hint into their roadmap.

My experience with Shazam is that it has got less good at identifying music since Apple bought it. My guess is that it now ONLY identifies music from the Apple Music catalog.

This suggests that Apple may only buy to augment their product line; whilst still making the core experience worse for everyone overall.

I’ll admit I’ve not done a proper study of post-acquisition Shazam. I’m going on casual observation here.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#548

Post by ernesth »

dublinben wrote: post #482
vertis wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is an interesting argument. Apple theoretically respects privacy more, but you have to take their word. You don't have control of your device. Android phones on the other hand at least have the option of installing a variant that is more privacy focused, such as Copperhead[1]. I can install F-Droid and follow some of the other recommendations on the Free Software Foundation website to "Free my Android"[2]. Al…

For every "expert" who takes advantage of those options on Android, there are thousands upon thousands of Apple users who get better privacy by default.

So all in all, you have three options: No privacy used by billions (Android), a little privacy used by millions (iOS) or some privacy used by thousands (Android derivatives).

If you are willing to sacrifice privacy, why not go android? If you do not want to, you must buy an android phone and tweak it. Using Apple is but a compromise.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#549

Post by scarface74 »

oarsinsync wrote: post #523
scarface74 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the purpose of “owning messaging?” All of the popular messaging companies make money via advertising. Messaging needs a network effect. The other alternative besides advertising is charging customers. Can you point to one successful platform that has a network effect and charges customers?

Microsoft Windows is a successful platform that has a network effect and charges customers. Microsoft Office (or maybe just Excel?) may qualify too, if VBScript is sufficient to label it as a platform.

Microsoft charges OEMs not customers. I doubt many customers paid for Windows.

Also for Office, what free alternatives were there when Office was gaining popularity?

Compare that to now. How did Windows Mobile work compared to Android?

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#550

Post by jrockway »

dashundchen wrote: post #156
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…

> I remember a few years ago Apple bought a fantastic public transit app (Embark?), shut it down and I still don’t think their Maps app comes close to the original transit app. Semi-related but for transit apps, I much prefer the dedicated "Transit" app over any of the mapping services. https://transitapp.com/ It has great visualizations of nearby lines and departures, gives bike/walk/taxi alternative times, allows y…

I've also never liked the built-in Transit functionality in either Google or Apple maps. It always seems like it's trying to be smart, rather than giving me the information I actually want. (The information I actually want is, "should I leave now, or will I just be stranded underground for 30 minutes?" I know how long it takes me to get down to the platform at the stations I frequent, but Apple and Google don't.)

I wrote my own little thing: https://jrock.us/mta.html. It just pulls the train arrival times for my home and work stations, the transfer stations along the way, and system-wide service advisories. It fits on one screen. The code is a trash fire (it's just jquery that injects raw HTML), but it works ;)

Post reply on HN