Apple acquires Dark Sky weather app, and it’s bad news for Android users

That's a bummer for API and Andorid users.

With that said, I far prefer it to the native weather app in iOS so I'm hoping it starts getting integrated as a default

Fuck. That's what my favorite weather app pulls when you're out of the United States. I hope there's a good replacement for it.

The native one is basic to a fault. It doesn't provide much weather data beyond the very bare minimum. And the fact that Siri only uses it to provide weather feedback is yet another handicap to their virtual assistant.

I don't begrudge the founders of Dark Sky for taking what I am sure is a very nice check.

I am very tired of Apple (and the rest who continually engage in behavior like this) taking a fully functional app used on a competing ecosystem and locking us out of it.

Their maps cover the whole globe, so there's no reason it should be:
https://maps.darksky.net/

I personally use their web site forecast.io (with a link saved to my home screen) since the app was never available in the Canadian app store unfortunately.

Is there a case for an antitrust violation here?

Seriously? I moved to Dark Sky because they don't track users like Weatherbug and other weather apps. Bad move Apple.

I'm going to Carrot, they pull data from a few weather services.

Same here, I'm disappointed and really annoyed they decided to give the middle finger to all android users. I just signed up for their subscription service as well, it was only $3/yr but still really irritates me.

I hope the devs enjoy their money...

Isn't the European Model of weather forecast more popular? That's still free.

This is my favorite weather app and I happily ponied up for the subscription. The precipitation alerts felt like Back to the Future Part II. Now I'll have to try and find something else that isn't a bloated mess like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. I don't know why Apple couldn't just leave this as a cross-platform app instead of pissing off all of its Android users.

GOD DAMMIT!
I just started using Dark Sky a couple of month ago when Weather Underground's app (Android) got redesigned and turned their UI and whole app into a steaming pile of poo.

To take the question straight without any judgement on whether the tradeoff is worth it, the relevant question wouldn't be how many users exist for Android as a whole, but what percentage of them use Dark Sky. Because if Apple makes Dark Sky (perhaps renamed/spiritual successor) the default for weather in a future iOS, than the comparison is near-100% of iOS users. Given the power of defaults, it's extremely conceivable that would be a bigger number. Marketshare is only relevant for developers to the extent it translates into actual installed base, and sometimes that will happen at different percentages for different platforms even naturally. That's why way back when the Mac was able to have a fairly solid software scene in many areas even when Apple was in a far weaker position, and why iOS can have much higher revenue numbers for paid apps than Android. Worldwide Android marketshare is higher, but that doesn't necessarily translate into higher numbers of users who will actually buy your thing.

Only Dark Sky (and now Apple) would know exactly what their user counts were like, but it wouldn't be surprising if only a single digit percentage of users on either platform used it (though more might have seen it in the form of other apps which utilized the API, like Carrot IIRC). If so going to default on iOS could make that a true statement, though you'd be reasonable to raise questions like the uneven global impact.

Apple aren't the ones saying that:

... a blog post from the Dark Sky team announced. The post claims that Dark Sky will now “reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone.”

Unfortunately their main source is Dark Sky.

Some of the reaction seems premature. Might want to wait until they make an announcement about the API.

Plus, really not sure why this news would cause people to switch to apps that mine and sell your location data.

On that front, the Apple takeover is a plus, since they don’t sell peoples data. I don’t even trust apps that don’t do it today—you’re always just one terms of use modification from being sold down the river.

While I can understand the sentiment, Apple users aren't locked out from controlling nest thermostats.

Add this to the list of apps apple bought and killed on competing platforms. Sucks but that's life.