Dark Sky Removed From iOS App Store Ahead of Upcoming Shutdown

[typecase]

I loved this app and used it extensively often multiple times per day. When I moved to my new iPhone 14, the transfer process redownloads all the apps and wouldn't restore my previous purchase. Maybe this is why. I still want to use it until January and it sucks that I can't.

 

[Bawstun]

The annoying thing about Apple's own apps like Weather and Health is that they technically have all the same information, but the interface is just a mess. It takes three precise taps to get from Weather's main screen to the hourly chance of rain, and it's this crappy graph display.

Dark Sky is just so much better at how it displays its data.

I currently use Carrot. One swipe and you can see detailed weather information. The key to a successful weather app is to see the most data as possible as quickly as possible…and Apple’s stock weather app is crap for this. You have to scroll way down, tap things 3 or 4 times, it’s a mess. Just like all of their other apps lately. Interface is becoming totally unintuitive.

 

[Appaljack]

I have used Weatherbug since my first iPhone 3gs. Still the best for me. Was better when run by the University, though.

 

[testcard]

One of the first apps, if not the first, with hyperlocal forecasts. I’ll miss it.

 

[jvchappy]

iOS 16 Weather has nothing on Dark Sky. I'm gonna miss it so much :/

 

[Futurix]

RIP Dark Sky - my main weather app in UK and US for several years.
Only now other weather apps are catching up to it.

I hope that integration into iOS means that the next hour functionality will be eventually expanded outside of US/Canada/UK/Ireland!

 

[npmacuser5]

There are like a thousand to choose from. PCalc is a good starting place, if you don't have another preference. It's also been around (continuously improved) since ... 1992?

I get people wanting an official calculator app that has been anointed by Apple, but they don't seem interested (I seem to recall an interview once where it came up and their response was, "no, we wouldn't just scale up the iPhone app, if we made an iPad calculator, it'd have to be something really special"). What I don't get is the continuing wailing and gnashing of teeth (from some, not from you) when this comes up - it's not like an iPad is incapable of running any of a thousand calculator apps, and it's not like Apple's calculator app on iOS is all that special, and it's not like someone who can afford $500-$1000 for an iPad can't afford $5 for an app. Like, really? Is this the hill you want to die on? Just pick an app (again, PCalc is a great choice if you don't want to research on your own), and move onto something else.

All your points have merit. Understand your point if Apple had no such app for any device. Apple has one for the iPhone. Already made, works every time, all the benefits of Apple. A five minute job to convert the iPhone app to iPad. Plus consistency in use a big factor. I have tried a good number of iPad calculator apps. Most suffer from ads and required upgrades. Several do not work at all. I will try PCalc. Thanks for that tip.

 

[kevinws]

I still hope that Apple will release a weather station for crowd sorced weather.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

How do you replicate this in the weather app?

Good question. So far that was ignored by all the, "Oh, Apple weather does everything DS did but with a better UI" people... THIS is what I go to Dark Sky for all the time, and as an example it came in very handy when we were trying to forecast when it would be a good time to spend 2 days painting our deck and keeping it dry for 24 Hours to set.

 

[schwartzki]

First weather.com ruined WeatherUnderground, now DarkSky my goto weather app is being killed as well.

 

[RaceJunkie]

Good question. So far that was ignored by all the, "Oh, Apple weather does everything DS did but with a better UI" people... THIS is what I go to Dark Sky for all the time, and as an example it came in very handy when we were trying to forecast when it would be a good time to spend 2 days painting our deck and keeping it dry for 24 Hours to set.View attachment 2083824

We used it allot boating on the lake. Was easy to pinpoint any rain that may be coming in. 🥲

 

[ackmondual]

A bit surreal to read that Google's Stadia getting killed, and then reading this. Granted, I wasn't surprised by the former. It's more so the "one-two" punch of it is all.

 

[SnappleRumors]

I lost track of how many apps that I had that Apple took away later.

I used the original Internet Phone program (which was commonly called iPhone, yeah iPhone) to make VOIP calls. The first version was single duplex and a later version came out with full duplex.

Then suddenly iPhone vanished. 😏

It was an amazing product by Vocaltec. It went public in 1996 and by 2000 made investors very happy.

 

[bcgorder]

Once again apple has taken an amazing app, gutted it, closed the original down, and replaced it with its own crapple app. Is it their enormous ego, or is the company run by morons?

 

[FireFish]

So idiots like myself who actually paid for the app, what happens? Do we loose it?

 

[yanki01]

dang, first my beloved swiftkey and now dark sky?

 

[Tagbert]

Once again apple has taken an amazing app, gutted it, closed the original down, and replaced it with its own crapple app. Is it their enormous ego, or is the company run by morons?

Have you looked at the new Apple Weather app? It uses the data from Dark Sky and implements most of the features from Dark Sky. The Dark Sky team has been involved in upgrading the Apple version.

It is not identical and there are still a couple of features that are not there yet, but it is a big upgrade. In addition, Apple is making that data available to other weather apps in a Weatherkit library so that thone apps can improve their weather apps, too. By doing this, Apple can be used to replace some third-party weather data sources that have been tracking user location.

 

[CarlJ]

All your points have merit. Understand your point if Apple had no such app for any device. Apple has one for the iPhone. Already made, works every time, all the benefits of Apple. A five minute job to convert the iPhone app to iPad. Plus consistency in use a big factor. I have tried a good number of iPad calculator apps. Most suffer from ads and required upgrades. Several do not work at all. I will try PCalc. Thanks for that tip.

It would be considerably more than five minutes to convert the iPhone app to the iPad. And consistency loses out big time if they port the exact same app over - the iPhone's calculator app has buttons that are, very roughly, the size of a thumb. What happens if you port that app directly to the iPad? Either you end up with a same-sized calculator screen, swimming in an ocean of blank screen, or you enlarge it to the full screen, and, well...

... the iPad 13 Mini's screen is roughly 2-1/4" wide. That puts 4 calculator buttons across at about 9/16" wide each. Reasonable for human fingers. The 12.9" iPad Pro's screen is roughly 7-3/4" wide. That puts 4 calculator buttons across at about 2" wide each (closer to 1-15/16").

That's only reasonable for fingers if you're a silverback gorilla. A human can't reasonably "type" on that. So, you can't just scale up the existing app (an Android vendor might ship that, Apple won't). If you don't just scale it up, suddenly you're left with design decisions - what to do with all the extra screen space? Lots more buttons (what will they do)? Big scrolling list of previous calculations? All of this is a considerable departure from the iPhone's calculator app. It's not a five minute job to convert (and trust me, even with no changes at all, it was never a five minute job), unless you want an app that objectively sucks. Then all the people complaining that there wasn't a built-in calculator app would simply switch straight away to complaining that the built-in app sucks, and laughing at Apple for shipping it with gorilla-sized buttons.

(There's a philosophical argument too - so, if Apple made a total knockout calculator for the iPad that used all that extra screen space for scientific / financial calculator buttons and a scrolling tape of previous answers - and, I suspect Apple would actually want to go in a more disruptive direction of not simply aping historical calculator designs but reinventing it somehow - then... what happens to the iPhone Calculator app? It doesn't have space on screen for all that extra stuff. You're left with either inventing ways of layering in multiple sets of buttons to accommodate much more functionality on the iPhone screen, ending up with a calculator that's likely more difficult to use for the basic functions for which it was originally designed, or... you ship new wonder-calculator with the iPad and leave the iPhone with the dinky old 4-function calculator, and then people will complain that the iPhone is now being left behind. I have a feeling this may be another reason Apple has never done anything with an iPad calculator. And, for what it's worth, PCalc on the iPhone can be set up so that in portrait mode you get a slightly more powerful calculator, and then if you rotate to landscape mode, you get a full-blown scientific calculator - which is super cool, but more complex than Apple would want to present to the average grandmother who just wants to add some numbers. Personally, I also have PCalc set to use RPN entry in both modes, because as a programmer I find that more intuitive and powerful, though most people would find it confusing.)

All that aside, yes, try PCalc. It's a great app. I don't know if there's a trial mode these days, but there is a PCalc lite that will give you an idea how it works (I expect the full blown version is substantially better). If you like it, get the full-blown version (as opposed to upgrading the lite version). It's possibly not the best calculator ever, but it's a good solid app, the full version has no ads, it's well supported, and has a long history (going back to pre-OSX Macs).

 

[Dominican]

can get refund ?

 

[CarlJ]

I’m still using it and I will to the end. It’s the simplest and best rain notification app out there. The new Apple UI does not go far enough.

Just look at how precise Dark Sky is here when it comes to rain spells. Screenshot just this morning at the same time for me travelling across London: ...

You might try taking a look at RadarScope. Not the same as Dark Sky, but shows the actual output from weather radars.

 

[CarlJ]

I can't find the rain radar map and prediction of the next hour on Apple's Weather app ... is it there somewhere. It's the most useful feature of Dark Sky for me, I can see the rain coming and dress accordingly for my daily walk. If Weather does not do this, can you or anyone suggest an app that shows the active rain radar movie and prediction?

If I scroll down the main display of the iOS 16 Weather app a bit, there's a radar image of my area. If I tap on that, it goes to a full screen animated radar map. All the little squares on the main display are tiles that, if tapped, lead to more detailed information. The one for precipitation says 0" expected in the next 24h at the bottom, which, admittedly isn't very specific. The top display of hourly conditions can be scrolled sideways, and I would expect the sun/clouds icons there would turn to rain icons if rain was expected. And down at the very bottom of the screen, there's a "Manage Notifications" button. If you tap that, one of the notifications you can turn on is "Next-Hour Precipitation". I don't know how that compares to Dark Sky's super-specific messages (we're unlikely to have any rain here to test it with for quite some time). It's possible they went for "let's be more vague but therefore more accurate in what we say, rather than being super specific while being wrong sometimes". Personally, I liked Dark Sky's notifications a lot.

Carrot Weather will give you somewhat similar notifications of rain and such, with varying levels of snark and abuse (from "none" to "a lot"), and it has radar maps too. And RadarScope specializes in animated radar maps (down to the level where you're picking which actual radar stations it uses). If you don't find the Weather app's results to your liking.

 

[CarlJ]

Carrot Weather with Dark Sky's data was the best combination. I'll be sticking with Carrot but have to select a new data source.

The latest Carrot Weather has the ability to use "Apple Weather" as the data source. This has nothing to do with Apple's Weather app directly - it means Carrot will simply use the WeatherKit API, which is, more or less, the Dark Sky API, just rebadged. So it'll be essentially the same as you have now.

 

[CarlJ]

So where do we go from here? What is everyone moving too?

Apple Weather, Carrot Weather, Weather Strip, RadarScope.

Really, though, what I use most is my own weather station - 15k lines of Python, which has been using Dark Sky's API for forecast data, and will now be switching to Apple's WeatherKit API.

 

[qnssekr]

Do I get a refund since I paid for the Dark Sky app?

 

[AgentOSX]

I live in an area with radii weather changes, and Dark Sky was by far the best weather app. The integration with Weather I don't like so much and the simplicity and predictability is gone.