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What's the play with Dark Sky and their API? Apple just launched the Weather API, and it's just Dark Sky rebranded, and slightly cheaper pricing. But why? I h
by danpalmer 4y ago
What's the play with Dark Sky and their API?
Apple just launched the Weather API, and it's just Dark Sky rebranded, and slightly cheaper pricing. But why?
I had expected either:
- No location permissions needed to get basic weather data, to reduce location permission use by apps when it's only for weather.
- Free weather API to lock in developers on Apple platforms.
- joekrill 4y agoI'm wondering the same thing. I was surprised they even released a public API. I thought for sure it would be limited to iOS/macOS apps only. It does require a developers account now - which means an upfront cost for anyone who isn't in the Developer program. And the pricing tiers aren't as friendly as before. But the free tier is much higher now (500,000 now vs 31,000 with DarkSky). Hopefully they don't jack the price up in the future. > No location permissions needed to get basic weather data, to reduce location permission use by apps when it's only for weather. This seems tricky. The response currently returns the latitude/longitude, so it could be a possible way for an app to get around requiring location permissions. Even if they excluded that, there are other data points that could probably help narrow things down, particularly when there is an active weather alert, because those tend to specify locations.