Happy Trails, Dark Sky
Dark Sky has been my default go-to weather app on my phone for just about a decade now. I loved it.
The genius behind it was the realization that weather forecasting is actually very accurate as long as you don’t go too far into the future or cover too large an area. “What’s the temperature going to be next week?” is a hard question and the answer is going to be wrong. “Will it rain at my house in the next hour?” is still a hard question, but you can get the answer dead on.
Dark Sky started as pretty much just answering “do I need to take a rain jacket with me?”. When it worked, it was like sorcery, frequently correctly predicting the time rain would start down to the minute.
They branched out into longer term “traditional” forecasts first as a separate web app at forecast.io, and then folded that into the main Dark Sky App. They also has a spectacular API for getting weather data that I used on a project a couple lifetimes ago.
But, as these things go, Apple bought them out back in 2020, rolled the fundamental functionality into the new-for-iOS 16 weather app, and then today turned off the backend for the Dark Sky App itself.
So, okay. I know nothing about the financial or personal situations of anyone at Dark Sky, but I have no doubts of any kind that accepting a buy out from Apple in the dark days of mid-2020 was the right call. And separate from the back end tech, the new iOS 16 weather app was a triumphant story for other reasons. Happy endings all around!
But.
The new weather app is fine, its FINE, but it’s very Apple-built-in-app-y. The Dark Sky app hd this fantastic unique design. Cool layout, distinctive symbols, subtle animations, a holdover from the days when iOS apps had a little more zip to them than they do now. I’ll miss it.
And, you know, there’s something sad any time a small company that makes one really nicely made valuable thing that people love decide that the right thing to do is take the buy out. I’m sure I’d make the same call in their place, and it’s easy to over-signify one company deciding to cash out, but— I’m still going to miss that app I used every day.,