Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Shuts Down Popular Weather App 'Dark Sky'

I hate the GUI in Apple's weather app and sorely miss DarkSky.net. The later had a great GUI with much more data than the weather app and the weather history feature was very valuable. Apple's weather app has neither of these features. This is in keeping with what I suspect is Apple's MO: see what websites its device users are browsing, buy them, shut them down and then either dumb-down or not include the great features of those websites into bad Apple apps. e.g. LaLa.com for music...
FWIW, I've posted rather hostile feedback on the weather app and strongly encourage other to do so also. https://www.apple.com/feedback/weather/
 
  • Like
  • Wow
Reactions: sorgo †, mikext, nybear31 and 3 others
MaxEntropy said:
I hate the GUI in Apple's weather app and sorely miss DarkSky.net. The later had a great GUI with much more data than the weather app and the weather history feature was very valuable. Apple's weather app has neither of these features. This is in keeping with what I suspect is Apple's MO: see what websites its device users are browsing, buy them, shut them down and then either dumb-down or not include the great features of those websites into bad Apple apps. e.g. LaLa.com for music...
FWIW, I've posted rather hostile feedback on the weather app and strongly encourage other to do so also. https://www.apple.com/feedback/weather/
Click to expand...
Ever since they shot Dark Sky, the weather in Buffalo has been crap.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Razorpit, OriginalAppleGuy, Lioness~ and 1 other person
MaxEntropy said:
I hate the GUI in Apple's weather app and sorely miss DarkSky.net. The later had a great GUI with much more data than the weather app and the weather history feature was very valuable. Apple's weather app has neither of these features. This is in keeping with what I suspect is Apple's MO: see what websites its device users are browsing, buy them, shut them down and then either dumb-down or not include the great features of those websites into bad Apple apps. e.g. LaLa.com for music...
FWIW, I've posted rather hostile feedback on the weather app and strongly encourage other to do so also. https://www.apple.com/feedback/weather/
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link, Really miss Dark Sky. In Bristol UK the weather App is far less helpful and accurate compared to Dark Sky, not sure if they are using a different data source or the algorithm they now use is different. I have submitted my experience, and would encourage others to do the same. If enough people submit complaints then hopefully they will improve the app.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bladerunner88
As a Dark Sky user from the very beginning, going from that clean and concise interface to Apple's very busy and overproduced new Weather app was going to be a huge adjustment.

But, then I realized that there is a theme in Carrot Weather that pretty much looks just like Dark Sky, so that is what I am using now. Just use the 'Inline' vertical layout and you're good to go.

See more details here.
 
  • Like
Reactions: After_Much_Hullabaloo, tivoboy and RaceJunkie
I live in Scotland, where the weather can make life difficult and sometimes dangerous. I have already had two incidents of being rained on heavily during hillwalking when Apple's 🤬 app forecasted no rain whatsoever. When the temperatures are hovering around freezing and you are miles from civilisation, rain can bring on hypothermia (but of course I prepare for this possibility by carrying rain gear and a bothy bag emergency shelter). So... now I don't really have a weather app I trust, so I must glean the forecast from multiple sources. I guess that in sunny California Apple don't have these kinds of problems. Maybe if they left their bubble, they would understand issues regarding forecast accuracy. And for the record, in the years of using Dark Sky I experienced only a few instances of misforecasting.

Thanks Apple. [/rant]
 
  • Like
  • Wow
Reactions: The-Real-Deal82, sorgo † and Jay-Jacob
VulchR said:
I live in Scotland, where the weather can make life difficult and sometimes dangerous. I have already had two incidents of being rained on heavily during hillwalking when Apple's 🤬 app forecasted no rain whatsoever. When the temperatures are hovering around freezing and you are miles from civilisation, rain can bring on hypothermia (but of course I prepare for this possibility by carrying rain gear and a bothy bag emergency shelter). So... now I don't really have a weather app I trust, so I must glean the forecast from multiple sources. I guess that in sunny California Apple don't have these kinds of problems. Maybe if they left their bubble, they would understand issues regarding forecast accuracy. And for the record, in the years of using Dark Sky I experienced only a few instances of misforecasting.

Thanks Apple. [/rant]
Click to expand...
Didn't Apple buy DarkSky primarily for their weather technology? Seeing as though they didn't use much else from the app, I thought at the very least we were getting the accuracy of DarkSky.
 
  • Like
  • Sad
Reactions: sorgo † and Michael Scrip
I switched to Carrot too. It has more stuff some which I really don't need or want but it's very similar. I'm really pissed at Apple because I've been a user theirs from the beginning and it's really funny that it seems like they don't care about their customers at all........
 
  • Like
Reactions: VulchR
I use weatherwidget.io for widgets on my Mac's, instead of dark sky now.

And Swedish weather service SMHI for usually faster accuracy for me here.
Not really a good modern app, but it still works on portable's. Their website is very good though.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: VulchR
robertgarven said:
I switched to Carrot too. It has more stuff some which I really don't need or want but it's very similar. I'm really pissed at Apple because I've been a user theirs from the beginning and it's really funny that it seems like they don't care about their customers at all........
Click to expand...

Exactly ⬆️ What Robert said, Just like Aperture  woke up one day and thought oh were not going to support this any more, after getting Professional Photographers to build Systems round it...Oh sorry no more RAW Profile updates for you. What The Hell Happened to "Think Different??

[/Rant]
 
Sowelu said:
Didn't Apple buy DarkSky primarily for their weather technology? Seeing as though they didn't use much else from the app, I thought at the very least we were getting the accuracy of DarkSky.
Click to expand...

You’d think wouldn’t you? I’d love to know why it’s gone so inaccurate since they bought it then.

It’s not going to be as obvious to people who live in hot countries where there is very little changeable weather. For those of us who live in Europe where the weather changes by the half hour, Dark Sky in Apples hands is no longer as reliable as it used to be.
 
Sowelu said:
Didn't Apple buy DarkSky primarily for their weather technology? Seeing as though they didn't use much else from the app, I thought at the very least we were getting the accuracy of DarkSky.
Click to expand...
Honestly I am not sure that Apple is paying for the same quality of meteorological information the developers of Dark Sky used to. Forecasting depends on having high-quality measurements taken from as many locations as possible. That's expensive and I could see bean-counters at Apple cutting the budget for that because it doesn't improve profits. The first clue we'll have that this happened is an Apple-based subscription service for 'premium weather'...

Anyway, I admit that it could be attentional bias, but it does seem where I am that Apple's app is much less reliable than Dark Sky used to be. Using Dark Sky I would get caught out in seriously bad weather about once a year. We're only into February this year and it has happened twice already when I've used Apple's app. (Please note seriously bad weather in Scotland can happen throughout the year, so it's not just a winter thing. I have seen snow (OK, flurries) in June and thunderstorms in December.)
 
Sowelu said:
Didn't Apple buy DarkSky primarily for their weather technology? Seeing as though they didn't use much else from the app, I thought at the very least we were getting the accuracy of DarkSky.
Click to expand...
In my experience, that seems to be the one thing that they did NOT incorporate: accuracy. DarkSky used to say things like "rain to start in ten minutes," while it'll be raining and Apple Weather app will say it's dry.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: VulchR, Razorpit and Jay-Jacob
Just realized today that they are displaying the temps again in this app (previously stated "no data") on shutdown date.

Sure wish they would bring back the radar as well :(
 
eclipse01 said:
Just realized today that they are displaying the temps again in this app (previously stated "no data") on shutdown date.

Sure wish they would bring back the radar as well :(
Click to expand...
That’s funny, because its still FOUR DAYS till April 1

but yeah, cool to see - I wonder if it’s a coup within apple, some timeout on the API block that was probably put in place.

Or, could be MAYBE that apple has come to their senses and figure for the 100K most likely that it might take to simply maintain this app as an endpoint for the API date which they own, they might as well engender some good will with users?
 
one other thing to note, still not able to download from app store, I uninstalled and reinstalled using previous purchases.

And yeah, it was working for me all weekend up to today and now it is saying no internet connection :-/
 
eclipse01 said:
one other thing to note, still not able to download from app store, I uninstalled and reinstalled using previous purchases.

And yeah, it was working for me all weekend up to today and now it is saying no internet connection :-/
Click to expand...
Unless they make a specific change, i doubt one will ever be able to download it from the App Store again, even if it was a previous purchase.
 
Still somewhat mourn the loss of Dark Sky, but I’m getting more and more used to the apple Weather App. I don’t find it as accurate (even though it apparently used a lot of the DS API data).

One new trick i found though that I DO like in the ios weather app I find this week when checking AQI for various cities. If one goes into the AQI data MAP detail, one can see of course where the cloud of AQI impairment is, but on THAT MAP one can click anywhere on the app, surrounding areas, drag the map around as well and wherever one taps it brings up the WEATHER data for that other area/city, and a little press and hold it pops essentially that locations weather data in a modal box with all detail available and then one can of course also simply ADD that location to their list of weather locations stored.

It’s a neat little feature I’d never seen before. Maybe brings some solace?
 
  • Like
Reactions: bladerunner88
tivoboy said:
Still somewhat mourn the loss of Dark Sky, but I’m getting more and more used to the apple Weather App. I don’t find it as accurate (even though it apparently used a lot of the DS API data).

One new trick i found though that I DO like in the ios weather app I find this week when checking AQI for various cities. If one goes into the AQI data MAP detail, one can see of course where the cloud of AQI impairment is, but on THAT MAP one can click anywhere on the app, surrounding areas, drag the map around as well and wherever one taps it brings up the WEATHER data for that other area/city, and a little press and hold it pops essentially that locations weather data in a modal box with all detail available and then one can of course also simply ADD that location to their list of weather locations stored.

It’s a neat little feature I’d never seen before. Maybe brings some solace?
Click to expand...
I love the look of so many other weather apps but I can’t get pass the accuracy of WearherZone.

It’s always much more accurate. I have it on my Lock Screen but use the iOS weather widget (weather zone widgets suck)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back