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If  shuts down the 1M+ (less than 5M) Google[1] accounts and then this weather app becomes the default system backing Siri, there will be a lot more users than the Google Play store users Dark Sky is losing.

Right now, Apple's weather is backed by Yahoo! so my guess is that Yahoo! is going away and all 1 billion  devices will now be using Dark Sky.

[1] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.darksky.da...

3 comments

That's fair. My counterpoint would be that Apple could have become a customer of the Dark Sky API, achieving essentially the same result without Dark Sky having to kill off platforms.

But sure, at that point, it probably makes sense for Apple to just buy the company to make sure that the data supply chain is within their control.

I am just a little bitter to lose the service personally.

Counter-counterpoint would be, Apple becomes a customer of the API, and then someone else (Google, Facebook, whoever) buys Dark Sky and Apple has to scramble.

I'm bitter too, I build my own local/remote weather station at home (several Raspberry Pi's, an Arduino with a custom shield, and 15k lines of Python), which uses Dark Sky's API as one of its data sources. This means I have a year or so to find a new data source and rewrite a bunch of code (and no source is going to give me exactly the same data from the same sensors, so my 3-4 years of historical data is going to have a definite before/after cutoff in it).

Yeah that is understandable. The data is still going to be surfaced via Duck Duck Go, but that's not the same as having an integrated experience.

Wait, so HN normally filters the more odd Unicode characters, but does not filter codes from the Private Use Area?



Note: Since this is the Private Use area, the character you used does not display the same on every device. In my browswer, it displays as a box containing “F8FF”; if I copy it to a nearby terminal window, it shows up as “(t)”. According to the ConScript (unofficial) Unicode Registry for private use characters¹, the character you used is the “KLINGON MUMMIFICATION GLYPH”. I assume that you meant to display some sort of Apple logo? ‭

1. http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/klingon.html

It renders as the Apple logo on Apple devices, yes.

Although a Klingon Mummification Glyph sounds much more awesome.

For me it shows as the box in the browser, but when I search for f8ff in KCharSelect with FreeSans (GNU FreeFont) it shows as the Apple company logo.

The area also contains the Ubuntu icon as well as the Ubuntu word logo, and a bunch of assorted text symbols (numbers, fractions, accents, arrows, etc.).

Haha sorry, I'll replace that with the word Apple in the future.

The Apple Weather app and Siri currently get data from The Weather Channel, not Yahoo.

(At least, in the USA.)

Ah yes, you are correct! the iPhone weather app data is from Yahoo.