7 ms·

A platform buying up cross-platform apps and making them uni-platform really should be slam dunk anti-trust. It's obviously anti-consumer and concentration of m

by atchoo 4y ago

A platform buying up cross-platform apps and making them uni-platform really should be slam dunk anti-trust. It's obviously anti-consumer and concentration of market power.

katbyte 4y ago
fwiw it wasn't available in Canada, i'd been waiting years for it, and now via the apple weather app it will be.
Gigachad 4y ago
It's a weather app. There is no monopoly on weather info. The data is pretty much public and anyone could start their own alternative.
- wpietri 4y ago
  In which case, it sounds like there was no need for Apple to buy this.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The reason seems pretty simple, because it was cheaper to buy it than to pay their own people to try and recreate it.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need? I think the simpler explanation is one you'll find in many comments here: Dark Sky was unusually good, and Apple bought it to get all that goodness to themselves.
      - TillE 4y ago
        This is just asking why acquisitions happen. There are plenty of reasons, and they typically don't demonstrate monopolistic behavior, certainly not in any legal sense.
        wpietri 4y ago
        Except for the sense where it's an anti-consumer concentration of market power. Something Apple is fond of. [1] Is this particular action currently illegal? Probably not, because in the US we're in an era of extreme friendliness toward companies from anti-trust regulators. But that doesn't mean no reasonable market regulator would ever frown on acquisitions like this. [1] E.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-imessage-blue-green-bubbles-texting-rcs https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-im...
        abduhl 4y ago
        How is it anti consumer? What harm has a consumer suffered? It seems like your only answer to this is “there’s less weather apps”? If your viewpoint were the one used for antitrust then no acquisition ever would be acceptable.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        Many people love Dark Sky, and Apple simply killed it.
        wpietri 4y ago
        Exactly. Comments here show that people had a good thing. Apple took it away from them to get a competitive advantage.
        abduhl 4y ago
        What did Apple take away here? The app icon? Android support has been gone since 2020 and most (all?) of the features of Dark Sky are integrated (and enhanced apparently) into iOS 16. So you have a situation where all the people that "had a good thing" now have it by default without an extra app they have to click on and now more people will have that good thing by default for free. If anything, this is anti-anti-competitive behavior because it's PRO-consumer. Apple is literally giving away a $4 app that was previously available ONLY to iOS users to all iOS 16 users. If this is anti-consumer in your mind I would really like to hear what acquisition is not an antitrust problem from your perspective.
      - freetime2 4y ago
        > Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need? The parent said that the data Dark Sky uses is public and that anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so. They also said that it was probably cheaper for Apple to buy Dark Sky than build it themselves. That does not mean that Apple can’t build it themselves if sufficiently motivated. I don’t see any inconsistency here in the above statements.
        wyre 4y ago
        > anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so. Saying that anyone can accomplish a task posits some level of triviality or easiness that enables anyone to be able to accomplish it. If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it.
        freetime2 4y ago
        > If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it. I would interpret “anyone can lose weight” to mean that anyone has the capability to lose weight, not that it is easy. On the contrary, I find losing weight to be pretty hard! I do recognize that the phrase “anyone can do x” can often carry the connotation of being easy. But it depends on context. Since we’re talking about a proprietary weather forecasting model and accompanying UI, I see no reason to assume it would be trivial. But rather that the data is available for anyone to use, should they decide to attempt to build the next Dark Sky. This is in contrast to building the next Google Maps, for example, where just getting a hold of the necessary data would probably cost a good deal of money.
- lynndotpy 4y ago
  I believe the point of Dark Sky was that they used air-pressure sensor data from the phones they were installed on. That was the secret sauce that (used to) power their hyper-local forecasts.
  - cryptoz 4y ago
    Dark Sky did not explain themselves with the barometer data thing. Their actual algorithm did radar-based extrapolation, meaning they used statistics to 'move' radar features like rain into the future. This is why Dark Sky always had a problem with forecasting new rainfall and was better at forecasting existing rain moving into your location based on wind speed. They claimed something about barometer data but I don't honestly believe that they used it to improve their forecasts. I worked on this problem at different companies for many years, and with academia, and found it to be quite difficult. Possible, doable, but very difficult to demonstrate actual improvement. Significant academic work was done after Dark Sky made their claim, and the papers published used ensemble kalman filters among other on-device data-cleaning techniques that I do not believe Dark Sky implemented. So I doubt their barometer claims.
  - freetime2 4y ago
    I had never heard of this before, but a quick Google search did turn up a bunch of news stories from 2015 [1] covering the announcement of this feature. I'm not sure if it's something they still do, though, and I haven't really heard anything about it since then. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/dark-sky-weather-app-iphone-6-plus-barometer/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dark-sky-weather-app-iphone-6-...
freetime2 4y ago
On the other hand, since there are presumably more Apple Weather users than Dark Sky users, by moving the functionality of Dark Sky into the Apple Weather app, more people will benefit from the features than when Dark Sky was independent.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Right. Just like how we all benefitted when they bought Lala :(
  - freetime2 4y ago
    > By purchasing Lala, Apple acquired technology that would enable it to bounce everyone's iTunes libraries to online servers, so iTunes users would be able to access their collections from a variety of Apple's devices: laptops, desktops, Apple TV set-top boxes, iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. [1] I never used Lala, but I have used the iTunes "Sync Library" feature. So, in my case, yes I suppose I benefited from that acquisition. Not claiming that "we all" benefited. But this seems to be another case where Apple bought some company for its technology, folded it into its own service and made it available to a much wider audience, and then killed off the original service. If you were a happy Lala user, then I think your disatisfaction is justified, and you certainly have my sympathy. But also need to recognize that Apple was able to reach a far wider audience with that technology than Lala did. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service/ https://www.wired.com/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service...
    - zapzupnz 4y ago
      Definitely. I've used iTunes Sync Library and iTunes Match since the day they were released by Apple. Never heard of Lala until today.
      - vict00ms 4y ago
        Lala was great, you could upload your own MP3s and stream them or you could purchase them directly (for download or streaming as a "web song"). If you were a registered member, you could listen to any album/song once at no cost (not just on their platform, embedded in web sites too).
a4isms 4y ago
More than a decade ago, I blamed the victims. I still do, in a way. When you build on top of someone else's platform, you are engaged in digital sharecropping. The platform owner acts like they own your customers, and you are tilling the landlord's fields in exchange for 70% of what you can earn selling your app. You may think the landlord is taking an outrageous cut of "your" sales, but the landlord thinks they own the relationship with their customer, and you only exist to do product/market fit and sizing research for them. Joel Spolsky put it extremely well way back in the day in his "Strategy Letter V:" All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease... Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements. (Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ Recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657166) Platforms always want to commoditize the apps that run on top of their platform. If they don't buy you and bundle your product, they'll do everything in their power to drive your revenue down until you are living on ramen noodles. Anti-trust might help stop them from turning cross-platform apps into uni-platform apps, but the larger problem that remains unsolved is that platforms are powerful and it is in their best interests to drive app revenue down to zero.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Has anyone who is doing arm chair legal analysis on HN actually been following the entire thing where Apple announced support for Android for WeatherKit? https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherkit/ https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...
  - tomaskafka 4y ago
    Yep, they offer pretty nice REST API with quite generous rates.
scarface74 4y ago
Apple announced that it would support WeatherKit on Android based on the Dark Ski API. https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherkit/ https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki... Even if it didn’t, it’s not like little old Google doesn’t have the resources to give Android a similar capability.
ghusto 4y ago
Reading the Apple apologist replies to this, is a lesson in why arguing with cultists or any other religious types, is pointless. "It's not true because X!" "Here is something that is a fact, which we all (including you) agreed is true. It demonstrates why X is false." "It's not true because X!" Jesus.

by atchoo 4y ago

A platform buying up cross-platform apps and making them uni-platform really should be slam dunk anti-trust. It's obviously anti-consumer and concentration of market power.

katbyte 4y ago

fwiw it wasn't available in Canada, i'd been waiting years for it, and now via the apple weather app it will be.

Gigachad 4y ago

It's a weather app. There is no monopoly on weather info. The data is pretty much public and anyone could start their own alternative.

wpietri 4y ago
In which case, it sounds like there was no need for Apple to buy this.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  The reason seems pretty simple, because it was cheaper to buy it than to pay their own people to try and recreate it.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need? I think the simpler explanation is one you'll find in many comments here: Dark Sky was unusually good, and Apple bought it to get all that goodness to themselves.
    - TillE 4y ago
      This is just asking why acquisitions happen. There are plenty of reasons, and they typically don't demonstrate monopolistic behavior, certainly not in any legal sense.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Except for the sense where it's an anti-consumer concentration of market power. Something Apple is fond of. [1] Is this particular action currently illegal? Probably not, because in the US we're in an era of extreme friendliness toward companies from anti-trust regulators. But that doesn't mean no reasonable market regulator would ever frown on acquisitions like this. [1] E.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-imessage-blue-green-bubbles-texting-rcs https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-im...
        abduhl 4y ago
        How is it anti consumer? What harm has a consumer suffered? It seems like your only answer to this is “there’s less weather apps”? If your viewpoint were the one used for antitrust then no acquisition ever would be acceptable.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        Many people love Dark Sky, and Apple simply killed it.
        wpietri 4y ago
        Exactly. Comments here show that people had a good thing. Apple took it away from them to get a competitive advantage.
        abduhl 4y ago
        What did Apple take away here? The app icon? Android support has been gone since 2020 and most (all?) of the features of Dark Sky are integrated (and enhanced apparently) into iOS 16. So you have a situation where all the people that "had a good thing" now have it by default without an extra app they have to click on and now more people will have that good thing by default for free. If anything, this is anti-anti-competitive behavior because it's PRO-consumer. Apple is literally giving away a $4 app that was previously available ONLY to iOS users to all iOS 16 users. If this is anti-consumer in your mind I would really like to hear what acquisition is not an antitrust problem from your perspective.
    - freetime2 4y ago
      > Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need? The parent said that the data Dark Sky uses is public and that anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so. They also said that it was probably cheaper for Apple to buy Dark Sky than build it themselves. That does not mean that Apple can’t build it themselves if sufficiently motivated. I don’t see any inconsistency here in the above statements.
      - wyre 4y ago
        > anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so. Saying that anyone can accomplish a task posits some level of triviality or easiness that enables anyone to be able to accomplish it. If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it.
        freetime2 4y ago
        > If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it. I would interpret “anyone can lose weight” to mean that anyone has the capability to lose weight, not that it is easy. On the contrary, I find losing weight to be pretty hard! I do recognize that the phrase “anyone can do x” can often carry the connotation of being easy. But it depends on context. Since we’re talking about a proprietary weather forecasting model and accompanying UI, I see no reason to assume it would be trivial. But rather that the data is available for anyone to use, should they decide to attempt to build the next Dark Sky. This is in contrast to building the next Google Maps, for example, where just getting a hold of the necessary data would probably cost a good deal of money.
lynndotpy 4y ago
I believe the point of Dark Sky was that they used air-pressure sensor data from the phones they were installed on. That was the secret sauce that (used to) power their hyper-local forecasts.
- cryptoz 4y ago
  Dark Sky did not explain themselves with the barometer data thing. Their actual algorithm did radar-based extrapolation, meaning they used statistics to 'move' radar features like rain into the future. This is why Dark Sky always had a problem with forecasting new rainfall and was better at forecasting existing rain moving into your location based on wind speed. They claimed something about barometer data but I don't honestly believe that they used it to improve their forecasts. I worked on this problem at different companies for many years, and with academia, and found it to be quite difficult. Possible, doable, but very difficult to demonstrate actual improvement. Significant academic work was done after Dark Sky made their claim, and the papers published used ensemble kalman filters among other on-device data-cleaning techniques that I do not believe Dark Sky implemented. So I doubt their barometer claims.
- freetime2 4y ago
  I had never heard of this before, but a quick Google search did turn up a bunch of news stories from 2015 [1] covering the announcement of this feature. I'm not sure if it's something they still do, though, and I haven't really heard anything about it since then. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/dark-sky-weather-app-iphone-6-plus-barometer/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dark-sky-weather-app-iphone-6-...

freetime2 4y ago

On the other hand, since there are presumably more Apple Weather users than Dark Sky users, by moving the functionality of Dark Sky into the Apple Weather app, more people will benefit from the features than when Dark Sky was independent.

Tao3300 4y ago
Right. Just like how we all benefitted when they bought Lala :(
- freetime2 4y ago
  > By purchasing Lala, Apple acquired technology that would enable it to bounce everyone's iTunes libraries to online servers, so iTunes users would be able to access their collections from a variety of Apple's devices: laptops, desktops, Apple TV set-top boxes, iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. [1] I never used Lala, but I have used the iTunes "Sync Library" feature. So, in my case, yes I suppose I benefited from that acquisition. Not claiming that "we all" benefited. But this seems to be another case where Apple bought some company for its technology, folded it into its own service and made it available to a much wider audience, and then killed off the original service. If you were a happy Lala user, then I think your disatisfaction is justified, and you certainly have my sympathy. But also need to recognize that Apple was able to reach a far wider audience with that technology than Lala did. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service/ https://www.wired.com/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service...
  - zapzupnz 4y ago
    Definitely. I've used iTunes Sync Library and iTunes Match since the day they were released by Apple. Never heard of Lala until today.
    - vict00ms 4y ago
      Lala was great, you could upload your own MP3s and stream them or you could purchase them directly (for download or streaming as a "web song"). If you were a registered member, you could listen to any album/song once at no cost (not just on their platform, embedded in web sites too).

a4isms 4y ago

More than a decade ago, I blamed the victims. I still do, in a way. When you build on top of someone else's platform, you are engaged in digital sharecropping. The platform owner acts like they own your customers, and you are tilling the landlord's fields in exchange for 70% of what you can earn selling your app. You may think the landlord is taking an outrageous cut of "your" sales, but the landlord thinks they own the relationship with their customer, and you only exist to do product/market fit and sizing research for them. Joel Spolsky put it extremely well way back in the day in his "Strategy Letter V:" All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease... Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements. (Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ Recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657166) Platforms always want to commoditize the apps that run on top of their platform. If they don't buy you and bundle your product, they'll do everything in their power to drive your revenue down until you are living on ramen noodles. Anti-trust might help stop them from turning cross-platform apps into uni-platform apps, but the larger problem that remains unsolved is that platforms are powerful and it is in their best interests to drive app revenue down to zero.

scarface74 4y ago
Has anyone who is doing arm chair legal analysis on HN actually been following the entire thing where Apple announced support for Android for WeatherKit? https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherkit/ https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...
- tomaskafka 4y ago
  Yep, they offer pretty nice REST API with quite generous rates.

scarface74 4y ago

Apple announced that it would support WeatherKit on Android based on the Dark Ski API. https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherkit/ https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki... Even if it didn’t, it’s not like little old Google doesn’t have the resources to give Android a similar capability.

ghusto 4y ago

Reading the Apple apologist replies to this, is a lesson in why arguing with cultists or any other religious types, is pointless. "It's not true because X!" "Here is something that is a fact, which we all (including you) agreed is true. It demonstrates why X is false." "It's not true because X!" Jesus.