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Popular Weather Line App Acquired By Unnamed Buyer, Service to Shut Down Next Year
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Except this is literally an example of people who buy the lifetime version getting a worse deal than people buying a subscription.
Same.
But the real issue is that the iOS/iPadOS breaks this model that we like in many ways. For instance, one may purchase an App and not be able to use it on the next revision of the OS due to compatibility issues, and then we are beyond luck in a rather short term. In this case, some people bought lifetime subscription which they view as purchasing a license forever, but the companies vanishes and so does the software/service...
If anyone is looking for a good weather app, Snowflake is the one to get. It reminds me a lot of a weather app mockup that I designed several years ago. It's made by Bjango which makes iStat Menus. I'm a weather geek and it's my favorite—except for the radar. For radar I use RadarScope. To be fair, Snowflake's radar isn't bad, it's just pretty standard, although it could use more frames. Both are worth paying for the subscriptions if you want advanced features and more data. Otherwise they are fine out of the box. I wish there was some way to mash them together!
That was an incredibly surprising and interesting read. Curious about the aftermath of it all.
Off-topic but curious thing to point out that regulators might only be where the money is, an excerpt:
“(...) It started buying up many of its competitors, like Sleepy's and Sleep Train and Mattress Giant - great branding going on here. And it did this so fast that the company took on a lot of debt. Its debt load went up six times in just a few years. (...)”
Class action lawsuit? Anti trust something something? Nah
Some companies do it for growth, but in this instance, Mattress Firm bought them to eliminate competition. It's pretty dirty, but the mattress industry isn't something people normally talk or care about, so it's so easy for it to slip through the cracks. I bet the regulators who approved the purchase don't even have an idea how many other mattress companies there are.
The point is that the microclimates in San Francisco create very different weather within a km of each other, making a weather app very useful.
Hi everyone! If you like Weather Line's widget-like presentation, I’d love if you took a look at Weathergraph, the widget-like app/complication for Apple Watch I'm working on: https://weathergraph.app
(As for the naming - yes, there is the similarly-named app from j-a-x, but I have been doing Weathergraph under that name since 2016 on Pebble and 2017 on Garmin)
(As for the naming - yes, there is the similarly-named app from j-a-x, but I have been doing Weathergraph under that name since 2016 on Pebble and 2017 on Garmin)
I bought lifetime just 4 months ago. Apple won’t refund me. To say I’m annoyed would be an understatement.
I totally get that I’m not going to get 80 years out of an app, but it should at least mean I don’t pay more than an equivalent subscriber. The annual subscription was £9.99 I believe, so I think I deserved 4+ years out of the app having paid £43.99.
The dev has offered a couple of ideas, unfortunately neither are suitable to me. One was a free year of their other app, which is not something I’d ever use and the other was being able to share weatherline with my family until it dies. I don’t particularly want to introduce an app to my family which they may really like, but then have to tell them it’s being discontinued in a few months. My husband uses Carrot anyway and I don’t think two pre-pubescent boys would care much for a weather app lol.
Ouch. I got about 9 months out of my lifetime purchase, and with 13 months remaining before Weather Line sunsets, I will be getting 22 months of use. Not that I would. I already switched to CARROT Weather and it just feels yucky using Weather Line.
So far, developers are not helpful, that it's up to Apple and they can't do anything about it. While that maybe true, they are still offering $250 lifetime sub (vs. $50/year) for their sibling app, Flighty.
At the end, it was their choice to sell Weather Line to an unnamed company. They could've done the right thing to make sure existing customers don't get short end of the stick. To customers, blaming Apple is effectively the same as blaming customers.
Indeed. They’ve stated several times that negotiations were going on for several months, yet apparently the sale was very sudden. And they apparently wouldn’t remove the lifetime option because offers from buyers come in all the time and don’t usually lead to anything. Surely there was a point during this process where all parties involved realised it was a serious negotiation and lifetime should have been taken away immediately. Deals like this don’t happen overnight.
There is definitely an element of buck passing going on here. In one tweet, the dev said lifetime was only available as people kept asking for it and accepted there may be a risk. However, I’m sure most people don’t think their purchase is going to last mere months. And as you say, the old get-out clause of blaming Apple does not sit well here.
The dev has also repeatedly reiterated that it was never an intention to sell the app. Well if that were the case, an offer would not have been entertained!
Maybe I am being a bit unfair. Perhaps the dev was offered a ridiculous amount of money and it was simply too good to turn down. In this economic climate, a nice windfall is always welcome. I just wonder if the fallout is worth it. I’ll certainly never pay for an app from this dev again, and I expect people interested in their other app will be nervous about committing to any long-term purchases.
I’ve been subscribed to Carrot for a while now as their Apple Watch app is awesome. The dev engages with the community frequently too, which is always a nice bonus. Did you see the weatherline snark someone posted earlier today? 😄
I’ve also given Hello Weather a try starting yesterday. Quite a nice widget, but different from weatherline. I think they made a comment on Twitter about all this too lol.
No, the people buying a subscription are worse off. You could be forced to buy a new computer and software because the subscription ran out on a vital piece of software.
My 2010 27" iMac works fine and runs all the software I need on it fine with ZERO ongoing subscription fees.
My FileMaker Pro 7 works just fine on it.
A subscription model is all about cash flow and continuous payments, it is 100% for the benefit of publishers, not consumers.
Although I do have a few for the apps I like, generally I am not a fan of app subscriptions, and wish they weren't as prevalent.
When an app offers a "lifetime" option alongside monthly/yearly subs, I opt for that, knowing it's a gamble. As a user of their v1, I even purchased "lifetime" for Weather Line 2 on release date.
All of that said—hopefully to make clear that I'm not carrying water for the software subscription model—I think it's extreme past the point of hyperbole to say the benefits are 100% on the side of the devs/publishers.
While I am annoyed to only have gotten a year or so for my "lifetime" Weather Line payment, there are many, many defunct apps from Mac/iOS history that I miss, would have liked to see evolve, and would have paid more for. So while subscriptions don't guarantee an app remains sustainable—as Weather Line proves—it can and often does improve its chances. On top of that, continuous revenue can result in new features being added that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive for devs—especially in cases where API access/requests costs money, like Twitter tokens in the past, or some of CARROT Weather's advanced features.
There are pros and cons, and the benefits to publishers vs. consumers exist on a sliding scale.
Not in this case they aren’t. Lifetime was $45; yearly was $10. You would’ve had to own the lifetime license for more than 4.5 years to break even, which wasn’t even possible, because WL2 only existed for <1.5 years.
You put absolutely zero thought into how that applies to this app, did you? This isn't about FileMaker Pro 7. This is about a weather app, which in turn connected to third-party weather services, which meant recurring costs for the developers.
Like, yes, your rant about how subscriptions are bad is valid (albeit not very original), but not a good fit for an app that 1) had recurring costs of its own and 2) literally did offer a lifetime option that actually wound up screwing some customers over.
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How on Earth is that even possible? I had to check a map and it's only 5 miles away.
P.S. for anyone not accustomed to Freedom units, it's 10.5 degrees Celsius in Presidio and 38 degrees Celsius in Noe Valley.
I guess people who pay money for weather apps live in really crappy regions. In LA, it's sunny everyday and 70F everyday - kinda boring, but it is what it is
Definitely some truth to that. If I still lived in California, I don't really think I'd be paying for a weather app. I live in Illinois now (crappy for more reasons than just the weather, but we'll focus on the weather 😂 ). The "extras" that are provided by paying for some weather apps...go a long way for me. With spring and summer coming, it's great to have that little heads up that this tiny little blip that just popped up on the radar out of nowhere is going to absolutely dump on you for a half hour and then be out of here! That info is good to know, because with the hit-and-miss rain showers/storms we get in the summer, a couple miles could be the difference between looking at a cloud in the distance and thinking "wow, it's raining HARD over there" or actually being under that cloud!
Ahh to be back in California again where I could wake up in the morning, know that it was going to be sunny and 90-100+ degrees...and that was all I needed to know. Simpler times 😂
I bought a lifetime license to Weather Line, and can’t get a refund from Apple.
Are you saying (not guaranteeing, obviously, you’re not the devs) you contacted them, and they offered a lifetime sub to Flighty as a “make good”? I’d rather have WL live on, but that’s not bad. Just want to make sure I’m reading this correctly.
No, Flighty is another app the developer makes. Like Weather Line, it too, is available with lifetime subscription.
As for Weather Line, contact them. They will offer compensation in some other way.
I still didn’t find a proper replacement for this app. I tried out „Overdrop“ and while I love the style I really don’t like the fact that it can’t show multiple cities on one screen. Still looking for a proper alternative.
