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I use the free Carrot Weather myself. I love the app and would actually love to pay for it, but they only offer subscription options-- and oh my, what options!

I use the free Carrot Weather myself. I love the app and would actually love to pay for it, but they only offer subscription options-- and oh my, what options! These payment options vary from $1/month to $30/month. For a weather app. They seem to be intentionally obtuse. It's extremely difficult to parse out which one you might want. I believe you need "Premium Ultra" to get weather notifications, to let you know it's about to rain, and that's $8/month. The listings in the Apple store are different from the documentation on their support website, so that's no help. Seriously, check out the in-app purchases at the bottom of the Apple app store. How could anything be more anti-consumer? And I like this app. If they sold a new version every year for, say, $10 I'd buy it. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/carrot-weather-alerts-radar/id961390574 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/carrot-weather-alerts-radar/id... http://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/ http://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/

noirbot 4y ago
At the same time, I mostly understand their levels. The higher levels are mostly intuitively as a developer, things that cost more money to provide in terms of infrastructure and access to paid APIs. Also, I'm not sure what you're looking at, but looking in the app, Premium Ultra, which seems to only give you notifications for lightning and storm cells, as well as tidal data and the ability to hook up to your own weather data source, is $29.99/year. I'm literally not seeing anything that costs $30/month on either of your links, or in the app. They even do a decent job on your link of explaining why they charge money: "The subscription is necessary because weather data is very expensive. Without charging extra for the subscription, in just one year it would cost CARROT more to supply weather data than a $4.99 upfront payment for the app. So CARROT's Maker either had to offer a subscription or not add these awesome features at all." What's anti-consumer is how the app store obfuscates things in their UI. If you open the app itself and look at their options for purchasing a subscription, it gives you plenty of information that's clear and explains the levels. If you think this is your height of anti-consumer behavior, you're blessed in who you're shopping with.

noirbot 4y ago

At the same time, I mostly understand their levels. The higher levels are mostly intuitively as a developer, things that cost more money to provide in terms of infrastructure and access to paid APIs. Also, I'm not sure what you're looking at, but looking in the app, Premium Ultra, which seems to only give you notifications for lightning and storm cells, as well as tidal data and the ability to hook up to your own weather data source, is $29.99/year. I'm literally not seeing anything that costs $30/month on either of your links, or in the app. They even do a decent job on your link of explaining why they charge money: "The subscription is necessary because weather data is very expensive. Without charging extra for the subscription, in just one year it would cost CARROT more to supply weather data than a $4.99 upfront payment for the app. So CARROT's Maker either had to offer a subscription or not add these awesome features at all." What's anti-consumer is how the app store obfuscates things in their UI. If you open the app itself and look at their options for purchasing a subscription, it gives you plenty of information that's clear and explains the levels. If you think this is your height of anti-consumer behavior, you're blessed in who you're shopping with.