They often shut down apps on android, and they will likely shut it down on iOS as well, and just build it into weather, which is what they are already doing.
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Apple-Acquired Dark Sky Delays Shutting Down Android App Until August 1
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They often shut down apps on android, and they will likely shut it down on iOS as well, and just build it into weather, which is what they are already doing.
Examples, please. Texture became the Apple News service, meanwhile Shazam is alive and kicking.
I suppose if you don't use Safari, then iCloud Keychain is not much use, or if you use a selection of different browsers across different non-Apple devices. But Keychain (going back 20 years!) has been an immense lifesaver and peace of mind for me! Yes, 20 years! It's that reliable and secure, and I don't need to pay for it.
Bitwarden does look cool, though. I'll need to check it out!
Texture is one. Beats music. NextVR. Topsy. Beddit. Etc. etc.
They buy companies and shut down the android app, or the entire business. The ios app becomes part of the iOS.
This is worth the effort. Apple touts privacy but iCloud and iOS/MacOS have become very adept at sucking up user data (by default anyway) and i have numerous concerns about what Apple is storing and bugs in not being able to clear some of it.
For example, for some reason my entire iCloud inbox decided to clear itself (likely a bug in an early version of iOS 13 or beta) so I requested it be restored from a backup. For a start, the support technician said she didn’t think that was possible because the frontline workers don’t seem to know much these days. When she put the request through to someone more capable and senior however and the emails restored, I was surprised to find that the restore included seemingly every email I had ever sent or received at that address in all mailboxes, including many emails that I’d deleted many years ago (over 5 in some cases). In other words, Apple doesn’t seem to delete them from their servers unless they really have to, which in my case was never. They seem to only hide them from the user by marking them as deleted but keeping copies of them. The same also happens to recent contacts lists after you clear them, something that is repeatable and demonstrable. I’ve had numerous other iCloud-related lists refusing to clear themselves, like cookies in Safari.
It was super annoying to have to go through and delete hundreds of emails that I know longer wanted, but I was much more concerned with the privacy implication of what they still had stored for so long.
Beats begat another service, Beddit vanished totally, as did Topsy. Nextvr is still in Flux and is apparently "reinventing" itself.
None of these are apps that Apple brought and did nothing other than shut down the Android app version. In fact many were used to form the bedrock of Apple Services, which was my point.
And my point was that when apple buys companies it typically shuts down the android service and builds the service into its existing sdks or operating systems. Which is what they do. And why speculation about paying for a weather subscription is stupid (especially since it’s already being built into Weather.app for free, which anyone with ios 14 can see)
I do use Safari (mostly), and the keychain has worked well for me through the years. But Bitwarden (and other password managers) do plug in to Safari, just like they do with any other browser - and I can say it's working pretty well so far.
For me, Bitwarden actually offers a few advantages over Keychain, even if I stay with macOS:
- Bitwarden also can act as a TOTP client (two-factor codes, a la Google Authenticator or my old favorite OTP Auth). So it not only fills in my passwords, it also copies the two-factor numeric code automatically to the clipboard as soon as I log in.
- Bitwarden lets me access my secure notes on iOS and iPadOS. The fact that Keychain doesn't do that has always irritated me.
- Bitwarden gives me quick access to my passwords on the occasions I do use a different browser - or am at a different computer.
- Bitwarden has a command line tool! I can script it if I want to (I think Keychain can also do this, though).
Exactly. I wonder what is the point of all this. Seems like a lot of resources and energy for a weather app.
Yeah, I assume people will realize that was meant as a joke.
Into the black hole, it will be thrown. About ten years ago there was a nice little app called "BumpTop", it was a desktop replacement that used physics and 3D walls with which to organise files. It was a load of fun to use and worked well with my workflow. Google brought it, and never used it. Development ceased and that was a shame. I fear the same for dark sky. At most, it will be a graphic panel buried in the Apple weather app or a notification.
They’ve already started. The iOS 14 weather widget has a very Dark Sky like live weather timeline and it works just as well (better since it sits on the home screen). I can’t wait to have that functionality in watchOS 7 as well.
Wow, dude--the art of sarcasm is seriously lost on you.
Can we talk about how royally IBM screwed up the weather underground app after their acquisition?
Change for change's sake- but now more annoying to navigate. Thats why I went to Dark Sky.
Change for change's sake- but now more annoying to navigate. Thats why I went to Dark Sky.
If you google "weather" and "business" you find all sorts of interesting stuff about the importance of weather data and access to it; e.g.
www.inquirer.com
(this was sourced from the Washington Post with the political stuff removed)
@R3k mentioned IBM and this article touches on that a bit. How does this relate to Apple buying Dark Sky? Well, part of it is the crappy Weather app, but there's potentially a larger story here, too.
The weather is big business, and it’s veering toward a collision with the federal government
The expansion of private weather forecasting means we are careening toward a future in which the federal government may no longer be the primary source of weather information.
www.inquirer.com
@R3k mentioned IBM and this article touches on that a bit. How does this relate to Apple buying Dark Sky? Well, part of it is the crappy Weather app, but there's potentially a larger story here, too.
The logic is it’s a great app and Apple wants it to be exclusive to their platform. Of course no one is going to switch platforms over a weather app. However, having many great platform exclusives may get people to switch (or stay).
Google, Microsoft and Facebook are all following the same lock-in model, except neither of them gives a flying fudge about user privacy. Choose your prison well. 😊
I love Dark Sky. I was eating outside at a restaurant last weekend and saw some dark clouds. Pulled out the app which said it was going to rain hard in 20 minutes. So we got our table moved to a covered area. In exactly 20 minutes, it poured. And someone they put in our table got drenched. I then saw it would stop raining in 18 minutes, which it did. Really felt like living in the future, where scientists cause the rain to start and stop on a dime.
Weather apps have no viable business model.
Good weather reports are expensive - it requires a network of satellites in low earth orbit, radar sweeps from the highest altitude point near every city in the world, solar powered weather stations floating miles out to sea. And all of these feeding data into supercomputers running 24/7/365 and a team of data model scientists experimenting and researching to improve the algorithm.
How do you pay for that? Users won’t pay monthly subscriptions and they won’t put up with obnoxious ads either.
Weather apps track your location to provide local weather reports. And they sell your location history to data companies that don’t have the user’s best interests at heart. It’s pretty much the only viable business model except for in regions where weather reporting is fully government funded.
Apple can afford to fund weather reports through iPhone sales revenue to protect customer privacy. But they need good people from the industry to make it work. Dark Sky is a step towards building that team.
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