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> 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 wh

> 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 apps for Android. Just so Apple can flex on Google, even though I was a paying customer for both. During a major pandemic when public services are heavily reduced and poor access to good weather apps could put people in danger. Extremely disgusting and extremely horrible. Always feels great to know that my reward for supporting startups is to be cannon fodder to rounding errors at major corporations.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
This was like the one Android app I paid for. Ugh. Also super annoyed.
- philistine 7y ago
  You are exactly the reason why companies like Dark Sky can be bought by Apple: you have only ever paid for one Android app. That does not make a vibrant app economy.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    Another thing would help a more vibrant app economy would be if more teams made high-quality apps that I want that I can pay a few dollars a year in exchange for no advertisements or tracking.
sandyarmstrong 7y ago
I cannot begin to say how much IBM ruined Weather Underground. The app was _perfect_! I was thrilled to pay for it. Now it's probably the worst app on my phone and I should just delete it. It takes forever to start, more than half the time it loads no data, and even if it is loaded the UI redesign has made the whole thing slow and useless. Would love suggestions for another app on Android.
- sauwan 7y ago
  Totally agree. I find I have to load it, close and reopen the app about 95% of the time. Hugely bummed these two apps are going into the wastebin. Certainly leaves a huge void for us Android users.
  - pergadad 7y ago
    I've been using this one since underground stopped being useful. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.weather https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.... Sadly at some point they weren't able to pay for the dark sky API anymore and since then the quality of forecasts is a bit less convincing. I'm still rather shocked by the low reviews though, for me it works well and I love that you can add a dozen cities and see the forecast.
    - Marsymars 7y ago
      That app also changed ownership a couple years ago - it's still functional, but I don't think can be downloaded if you don't already have it.
    - onychomys 7y ago
      Just a heads-up, that link is broken.
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        No it's not. It's only available if you bought it before it changed hands and providers, as I did. Supposedly they're still fixing bugs from the new weather provider before it's made public, but it hasn't been updated in ten months. I doubt it will be improved anymore, and I don't really use it much since the new provider is mediocre at best.
- minimalist 7y ago
  Restating a comment from about a year ago[0]: If you are in the United States, nothing beats getting the forecast straight from the horses mouth (NWS that is). Some companies are notorious for producing 30+ day forecasts, which can't have any meaningful levels of skill. NOAA/NWS should just create their own mobile application. I use Wx[1], which parses NWS data directly and can be found on f-droid[2] and g---le play. Granted, Wx doesn't follow Material Design for Android in the slightest, but I like it that way because it's very information-dense, snappy, and light (unlike r--ct "native" and other JS toolkits out there). [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775291 [1]: https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx [2]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/
rsync 7y ago
"IBM bought the Weather Underground app and ruined it ..." I never used the WU app, but I do use the WU website regularly and feel that it is very slow and spammy and bad UI, etc., etc. The problem is, I cannot find anyone else to give me a 10 day forecast. How can I tease out a 10-day forecast from weather.gov ?
- gbear605 7y ago
  My understanding is that 10 day forecasts just aren’t accurate enough to really mean anything, so most weather sources don’t publish them.
- _delirium 7y ago
  NWS doesn't do regular daily/hourly forecasts beyond a week, but they do publish "extended range outlooks" which provide probabilities for precipitation and temperature in the 6-10 day and 8-14 day range. Pretty low-res in both temporal and geographical resolution, though, due to the uncertainties: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/forecasts/extended_range_outlooks.shtml https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/forecasts/extended_ra... You could also use the NOAA's global weather simulations, some of which go out to 16 days: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datas...
Marsymars 7y ago
It's bonkers how bad all the weather apps are for Android. I use Yr weather (from the Norwegian Broadcasting Institute and Meteorological Institute) which is... fine, but their source of data isn't great for my location. Almost everything else I've tried is some combination of slow, poorly designed, or not-privacy-respecting, even if I'm willing to pay.
fralewsmi 7y ago
They're not ruining it, they're just not making their product available on a competitor device
- TacticalTable 7y ago
  Which ruins it for a large portion of the userbase. Do you have a good product if it only runs on a Nokia NGage? It's a grey area
kvakkefly 7y ago
You can try Yr: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=en 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 https://api.met.no
- slenk 7y ago
  I am not seeing a live radar view
  - kvakkefly 7y ago
    I think that only works in Norway where they have radar data from all the weather stations, or however that works.
- logjammin 7y ago
  Hey, truly thanks for this. It's not Dark Sky, but it's not bad, and I never would've heard about it were it not for folks on HN. I'm getting good data for where I live, the UI is nice and clean. It's a start!
- dantondwa 7y ago
  I came here to say this. No tracking, it's a public service and the UI is great. Thanks to the Norwegian Metereological Institute for making this available to everyone. I really think this shows how direly we need "public interest" services on our phone.
- wink 7y ago
  Thank you, this looks really good.
- mcjiggerlog 7y ago
  Another great option is Klara - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.androworks.klara https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.androworks... Great information density, clean interface and has by the far the best widget of any weather app I've seen. It manages to display so much information with graphs without being visually overloaded.
Barrin92 7y ago
It's literally bonkers to me how many people sell out. Is the VLC guy the only person with some integrity? Can we not be satisfied with the money we make from subscribers instead of selling everything including the kitchen sink to some corporate behemoth to swallow it up and kill every open service? The same thing is happening in the podcasting ecosystem right now. it's turning more and more into a walled garden.
- minimalist 7y ago
  I used to think the same thing, but what about the situations where people don't sell out and just see their features copied by the corporate behemoth, wholesale? That scenario seems to play out often as well (g---le+ and diaspora always come to mind). I suppose if the goal is to just see some technology or technique or idea become more broadly adopted, this isn't a bad thing. But what about poor-implementations of a good concept (UI/UX bloat, user-hostile business models, etc.) Honestly, I'm not sure. Is this analogous to the trends that drive consolidation of firms in general? I guess this is a round-about say of saying that selling-out is probably the most rational thing to do, but please prove me wrong.
  - gizmo385 7y ago
    > g---le+ What is the purpose behind "censoring" Google's name here...?
    - minimalist 7y ago
      It's an attempt to hide from the scripts that notify people or teams when some company is being mentioned. It's helpful in some environments.
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Large amounts of money offer much more tangible freedom than a moral victory, and can lead to many more moral victories down the line. Alternatively, people just like money. I'd much rather take whatever large amount of cash to basically ensure my needs and those of my future offsprings are taken care of for a very long time, if not for life.
aequitas 7y ago
My dad owns a base station that uploads data to WU and since the takeover I've not been able to get a proper API key to have him pull his own data from the WU API. Luckily the base station is easy to scrape for the raw data locally, but still.
51Cards 7y ago
I didn't realize that IBM bought WU. Explains why I saw the quality tank... I wondered what was up. I ended up deleting it.
jacurtis 7y ago
Try Carrot on iOS. It is really good. It is famous for its mini game and snarky robot comments that predict the weather. But the core weather is great and has the best interface.
- input_sh 7y ago
  Just two FYIs: it uses Dark Sky's API and it's also available on Android.
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  Carrot, by default, uses the Dark Sky API. It's one of the few apps that lets you choose an alternate data source. Wunderground used to be the best choice, but that API vanished last year. With Dark Sky gone, none of the remaining options are particularly good, if you live in the USA.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- macandcheese 7y ago
  Try Hello Weather - https://helloweatherapp.com/ https://helloweatherapp.com/!
  - pinko 7y ago
    Also powered by Dark Sky.
logjammin 7y ago
Just came here to say "fuck". I'm so let down. Can't have nice things, I guess.
- stevetursi 7y ago
  I was about to do the same. Frankly, I'm pissed.
duanem 7y ago
I felt a little slighted (in a cheeky way) by the "zero good weather apps for Android" comment. Started writing then decided against it. Then I got this email in my inbox from a user :-) Dark Sky is shuttering their Android app after being acquired by Apple. People are saying things like "Now I will have zero good weather apps for Android. " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740331 Flowx is better than Dark Sky!
- zachberger 7y ago
  I used to drive a convertible. I liked Dark Sky because I would get a warning notification if it was going to rain right were I was and I could go put the top up. I haven't been able to find this type of notification in Flowx. Am I missing this, or by chance is it cmoing?
  - duanem 7y ago
    No, there are no notification. I plan to add a notification editor one day where you can configure any notification you want. That said, the to-do list is super long so it might be a while before this feature is done. I depends on demand. That said, Rainviewer is working on predicting rain from radar images for up to 2 hours ahead. Check them out and ask when this feature might appear. They might have beta testing and your situation sounds like a good test case.
    - zachberger 7y ago
      Thanks for the update
- stkrzysiak 7y ago
  I like the UI, and I'll commit for now, but the end game for the constant churn of useful weather apps is an open source app that can't be sold. Someday someone will offer you X dollars and you'd be a fool not to accept and us users will be doing this rodeo all over. Just remember us when your partying on your p-diddy yacht.
srhngpr 7y ago
I've been using Overdrop [0] for a few months now. Has great widgets and can select from a few different sources for the weather data too. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=widget.dd.com.overdrop.free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=widget.dd.com....
- rckclmbr 7y ago
  it says "powered by dark sky", so since they are shutting down the api, wont this app likely stop working soon?
  - srhngpr 7y ago
    It has always provided the option to select between Dark Sky, Weather Bit or AccuWeather. So while Dark Sky may go away, at least there are two other options, and hopefully they'll add others in light of this news.
morganvachon 7y ago
It's especially frustrating when two paragraphs above they said this: > There is no better place to accomplish these goals than at Apple. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone. So how exactly does cutting off literally billions of potential users allow them to "reach far more people"?

acidburnNSA 7y ago

This was like the one Android app I paid for. Ugh. Also super annoyed.

philistine 7y ago
You are exactly the reason why companies like Dark Sky can be bought by Apple: you have only ever paid for one Android app. That does not make a vibrant app economy.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Another thing would help a more vibrant app economy would be if more teams made high-quality apps that I want that I can pay a few dollars a year in exchange for no advertisements or tracking.

sandyarmstrong 7y ago

I cannot begin to say how much IBM ruined Weather Underground. The app was _perfect_! I was thrilled to pay for it. Now it's probably the worst app on my phone and I should just delete it. It takes forever to start, more than half the time it loads no data, and even if it is loaded the UI redesign has made the whole thing slow and useless. Would love suggestions for another app on Android.

sauwan 7y ago
Totally agree. I find I have to load it, close and reopen the app about 95% of the time. Hugely bummed these two apps are going into the wastebin. Certainly leaves a huge void for us Android users.
- pergadad 7y ago
  I've been using this one since underground stopped being useful. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.weather https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.... Sadly at some point they weren't able to pay for the dark sky API anymore and since then the quality of forecasts is a bit less convincing. I'm still rather shocked by the low reviews though, for me it works well and I love that you can add a dozen cities and see the forecast.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    That app also changed ownership a couple years ago - it's still functional, but I don't think can be downloaded if you don't already have it.
  - onychomys 7y ago
    Just a heads-up, that link is broken.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      No it's not. It's only available if you bought it before it changed hands and providers, as I did. Supposedly they're still fixing bugs from the new weather provider before it's made public, but it hasn't been updated in ten months. I doubt it will be improved anymore, and I don't really use it much since the new provider is mediocre at best.
minimalist 7y ago
Restating a comment from about a year ago[0]: If you are in the United States, nothing beats getting the forecast straight from the horses mouth (NWS that is). Some companies are notorious for producing 30+ day forecasts, which can't have any meaningful levels of skill. NOAA/NWS should just create their own mobile application. I use Wx[1], which parses NWS data directly and can be found on f-droid[2] and g---le play. Granted, Wx doesn't follow Material Design for Android in the slightest, but I like it that way because it's very information-dense, snappy, and light (unlike r--ct "native" and other JS toolkits out there). [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775291 [1]: https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx [2]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/

rsync 7y ago

"IBM bought the Weather Underground app and ruined it ..." I never used the WU app, but I do use the WU website regularly and feel that it is very slow and spammy and bad UI, etc., etc. The problem is, I cannot find anyone else to give me a 10 day forecast. How can I tease out a 10-day forecast from weather.gov ?

gbear605 7y ago
My understanding is that 10 day forecasts just aren’t accurate enough to really mean anything, so most weather sources don’t publish them.
_delirium 7y ago
NWS doesn't do regular daily/hourly forecasts beyond a week, but they do publish "extended range outlooks" which provide probabilities for precipitation and temperature in the 6-10 day and 8-14 day range. Pretty low-res in both temporal and geographical resolution, though, due to the uncertainties: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/forecasts/extended_range_outlooks.shtml https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/forecasts/extended_ra... You could also use the NOAA's global weather simulations, some of which go out to 16 days: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datas...

Marsymars 7y ago

It's bonkers how bad all the weather apps are for Android. I use Yr weather (from the Norwegian Broadcasting Institute and Meteorological Institute) which is... fine, but their source of data isn't great for my location. Almost everything else I've tried is some combination of slow, poorly designed, or not-privacy-respecting, even if I'm willing to pay.

fralewsmi 7y ago

They're not ruining it, they're just not making their product available on a competitor device

TacticalTable 7y ago
Which ruins it for a large portion of the userbase. Do you have a good product if it only runs on a Nokia NGage? It's a grey area

kvakkefly 7y ago

You can try Yr: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=en 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 https://api.met.no

slenk 7y ago
I am not seeing a live radar view
- kvakkefly 7y ago
  I think that only works in Norway where they have radar data from all the weather stations, or however that works.
logjammin 7y ago
Hey, truly thanks for this. It's not Dark Sky, but it's not bad, and I never would've heard about it were it not for folks on HN. I'm getting good data for where I live, the UI is nice and clean. It's a start!
dantondwa 7y ago
I came here to say this. No tracking, it's a public service and the UI is great. Thanks to the Norwegian Metereological Institute for making this available to everyone. I really think this shows how direly we need "public interest" services on our phone.
wink 7y ago
Thank you, this looks really good.
mcjiggerlog 7y ago
Another great option is Klara - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.androworks.klara https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.androworks... Great information density, clean interface and has by the far the best widget of any weather app I've seen. It manages to display so much information with graphs without being visually overloaded.

Barrin92 7y ago

It's literally bonkers to me how many people sell out. Is the VLC guy the only person with some integrity? Can we not be satisfied with the money we make from subscribers instead of selling everything including the kitchen sink to some corporate behemoth to swallow it up and kill every open service? The same thing is happening in the podcasting ecosystem right now. it's turning more and more into a walled garden.

minimalist 7y ago
I used to think the same thing, but what about the situations where people don't sell out and just see their features copied by the corporate behemoth, wholesale? That scenario seems to play out often as well (g---le+ and diaspora always come to mind). I suppose if the goal is to just see some technology or technique or idea become more broadly adopted, this isn't a bad thing. But what about poor-implementations of a good concept (UI/UX bloat, user-hostile business models, etc.) Honestly, I'm not sure. Is this analogous to the trends that drive consolidation of firms in general? I guess this is a round-about say of saying that selling-out is probably the most rational thing to do, but please prove me wrong.
- gizmo385 7y ago
  > g---le+ What is the purpose behind "censoring" Google's name here...?
  - minimalist 7y ago
    It's an attempt to hide from the scripts that notify people or teams when some company is being mentioned. It's helpful in some environments.
ativzzz 7y ago
Large amounts of money offer much more tangible freedom than a moral victory, and can lead to many more moral victories down the line. Alternatively, people just like money. I'd much rather take whatever large amount of cash to basically ensure my needs and those of my future offsprings are taken care of for a very long time, if not for life.

aequitas 7y ago

My dad owns a base station that uploads data to WU and since the takeover I've not been able to get a proper API key to have him pull his own data from the WU API. Luckily the base station is easy to scrape for the raw data locally, but still.

51Cards 7y ago

I didn't realize that IBM bought WU. Explains why I saw the quality tank... I wondered what was up. I ended up deleting it.

jacurtis 7y ago

Try Carrot on iOS. It is really good. It is famous for its mini game and snarky robot comments that predict the weather. But the core weather is great and has the best interface.

input_sh 7y ago
Just two FYIs: it uses Dark Sky's API and it's also available on Android.
LeoPanthera 7y ago
Carrot, by default, uses the Dark Sky API. It's one of the few apps that lets you choose an alternate data source. Wunderground used to be the best choice, but that API vanished last year. With Dark Sky gone, none of the remaining options are particularly good, if you live in the USA.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
macandcheese 7y ago
Try Hello Weather - https://helloweatherapp.com/ https://helloweatherapp.com/!
- pinko 7y ago
  Also powered by Dark Sky.

logjammin 7y ago

Just came here to say "fuck". I'm so let down. Can't have nice things, I guess.

stevetursi 7y ago
I was about to do the same. Frankly, I'm pissed.

duanem 7y ago

I felt a little slighted (in a cheeky way) by the "zero good weather apps for Android" comment. Started writing then decided against it. Then I got this email in my inbox from a user :-) Dark Sky is shuttering their Android app after being acquired by Apple. People are saying things like "Now I will have zero good weather apps for Android. " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740331 Flowx is better than Dark Sky!

zachberger 7y ago
I used to drive a convertible. I liked Dark Sky because I would get a warning notification if it was going to rain right were I was and I could go put the top up. I haven't been able to find this type of notification in Flowx. Am I missing this, or by chance is it cmoing?
- duanem 7y ago
  No, there are no notification. I plan to add a notification editor one day where you can configure any notification you want. That said, the to-do list is super long so it might be a while before this feature is done. I depends on demand. That said, Rainviewer is working on predicting rain from radar images for up to 2 hours ahead. Check them out and ask when this feature might appear. They might have beta testing and your situation sounds like a good test case.
  - zachberger 7y ago
    Thanks for the update
stkrzysiak 7y ago
I like the UI, and I'll commit for now, but the end game for the constant churn of useful weather apps is an open source app that can't be sold. Someday someone will offer you X dollars and you'd be a fool not to accept and us users will be doing this rodeo all over. Just remember us when your partying on your p-diddy yacht.

srhngpr 7y ago

I've been using Overdrop [0] for a few months now. Has great widgets and can select from a few different sources for the weather data too. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=widget.dd.com.overdrop.free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=widget.dd.com....

rckclmbr 7y ago
it says "powered by dark sky", so since they are shutting down the api, wont this app likely stop working soon?
- srhngpr 7y ago
  It has always provided the option to select between Dark Sky, Weather Bit or AccuWeather. So while Dark Sky may go away, at least there are two other options, and hopefully they'll add others in light of this news.

morganvachon 7y ago

It's especially frustrating when two paragraphs above they said this: > There is no better place to accomplish these goals than at Apple. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone. So how exactly does cutting off literally billions of potential users allow them to "reach far more people"?