The site doesn’t make it clear, but it’s not available worldwide. The App Store doesn’t tell you where exactly it is available, but it’s not in the UK.
This surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.
In Canada it's $35/yr and I don't see any indication of the 2-week trial that's mentioned on their website. Probably can still cancel within two weeks, but it simply has a Subscribe button before you can do anything.
Looks lovely. I was keen to try this but US and Canada only unfortunately.
Also: subscription fatigue is real. Of course I understand that fetching weather data isn’t free etc. (even though I’m intrigued by their homegrown forecast model) but I’ve already got 10+ subscriptions on iOS and I’m not sure if I’ve got the stomach for another. Apple’s weather app is finally good though since the Dark Sky acquisition.
This. I just went and cancelled a bunch of vampire subscriptions that had accrued in my life (both in and out of the Apple ecosystem) and ended up saving somewhere in the range of $60 a month.
I get that people have bills to pay and building and maintaining software costs money, but when everyone wants money from me for every little thing, eventually I have to decide who gets what cut from an increasingly limited sized pie.
Apps like this that, while beautiful, replicate functionality that is "good enough" that I can get for free are the first thing to be cut.
Going even further off topic, one of the things I love with Apple is having all your subscriptions in one place, and being able to cancel them easily.
The few zombie subscriptions I've had have all existed outside of the App store, one that I didn't even sign up for (looking at you Masterclass). I bought a one year gift subscription for someone else, and because it came with a "free" subscription for me (that I didn't use), I git hit with annual renewals until I noticed it on my credit card statement and cancelled.
Yes, I should check those more frequently, but who has time for that?
It rankles that you can can cancel a free trial before it's over with every app exept Apple's. I like the feature, but the double standard grates.
My understanding is that they're just starting out with the app. Someone posted it to HN prematurely. Dark Sky expanded to support global weather and I'm sure Acme will as will.
I used to use DarkSky for the "history data" for my platform. Querying weather for certain points in the past at certain locations. DarkSky was great for that until they were bought by Apple. Now I am using VisualCrossing for historical data. Hope Acme plans to do historical data too. But if it is US only then it is a no-go anyway.
I am going to chalk this up as another datapoint in the "Apple cannot retain talent" chart. I don't know what the heck they are doing, but everyone they've acquired seems to leave as soon as they can instead of staying.
This team really have been thinking about weather a lot, and it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time.
It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.
I'm almost shocked we don't have a large weather model instead of a language model. Seems right up the alley.
Also I don't get what happened but I think it was AccuWeather or weather underground in the early 2000s where it was to the minute accurate and it seems like it's gotten worse since everywhere.
This is exactly what Precip does. Other apps just show the past forecast which can often be wrong. The Precip app uses radar to measure what actually happened so you'll know if that trail is muddy or not. https://precip.ai
How are weather apps still relevant, let alone profitable enough to build a company around? This problem has been solved years ago. All the app needs to do is hook up to one or more data providers, and show some stats and pretty graphs. It's essentially a read-only frontend to an API. There are plenty of options to choose from on every platform, including not using an app at all.
The features this ad promotes all seem like solutions to nonexistent problems. "Alternate possible futures" don't give me any more confidence in the forecast—it just shows that it's not reliable, which everyone should know already. "Community reports" just add another layer of uncertainty. How can I trust that someone's report is valid or up-to-date, or that it applies to my area? Maps are nice and visually interesting, but this is not exactly novel. Notifications? No thanks. A weather app "should be fun"? Huge no thanks. Privacy and trust? Why do you collect any data?? Unbelievable.
You are not wrong, except at scale it gets complicated quickly. For starters, to support large user numbers, you’re going to have to process your own grib2 data for radar and turn them into tiles at zoom levels.
It takes about 24 cores with a GPU to do CONUS, Canada, Alaska, Pacific and Caribbean data. This should be 2x for redundancy. Even being cheap with main processing in my basement (gen power, backup internet) the cloud costs to serve it are $200 month plus data transfer. The standby grib machine spins up should it not see the cheap primary or the NOAAPort receiver is offline.
There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy. People just won’t pay for a privacy focused weather app. I keep this going as a hobby.
I care! I have to cross-reference multiple apps to get a good detailed forecast, a "minutecast" of precipitation, and Canadian humidex and windchill numbers. I haven't tried this one yet because I'm a little confused why it didn't offer me a free trial, but if it gives me all of that then I am sold.
I can't download it, as it appears to be US only. Based on the screenshots, without 'feels like' support throughout the forecast (not just for current conditions) it wouldn't be useful where I live.
If a weather app is going to be truly useful, it usually needs a lot of permissions, like access to your location all the time, notifications, etc., and I don’t feel comfortable giving a proprietary app that kind of access, especially when there are great FOSS alternatives.
> Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.
I will never forgive them for selling out to Apple.
Dark sky was the greatest weather app I've ever used, it had features such as considering the pressure of the atmosphere when predicting rain using crowd sourced phones, and it was the only app I've ever used that was as accurate as it was during a time when my job relied on quickly leaving the office and running across town multiple times a day.
it was sad watching the API get killed off but even worse was that a lot of the features that dark sky had never really made it into Apple weather, and the rain predictions at Apple Weather had were never as accurate as dark sky. There were several times where it was actively raining and Apple weather never even knew. Dark sky always knew.
Nope nope nope fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me, I'm not touching this with 39 1/2 foot pole.
I have always had a ton of respect for the Dark Sky devs. I love the work that goes into designing interfaces that make sense of complex datasets intuitively, and I feel like Dark Sky was a textbook example. I’m genuinely really excited to try this out.
I agree, Dark Sky was really nicely done. That said, when I want to know the weather I just look out the window, so it's unlikely to be something I would buy.
66 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 72.3 ms ] threadThis surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.
Acme is currently available in the United States (including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico) and Canada.
Also: subscription fatigue is real. Of course I understand that fetching weather data isn’t free etc. (even though I’m intrigued by their homegrown forecast model) but I’ve already got 10+ subscriptions on iOS and I’m not sure if I’ve got the stomach for another. Apple’s weather app is finally good though since the Dark Sky acquisition.
This. I just went and cancelled a bunch of vampire subscriptions that had accrued in my life (both in and out of the Apple ecosystem) and ended up saving somewhere in the range of $60 a month.
I get that people have bills to pay and building and maintaining software costs money, but when everyone wants money from me for every little thing, eventually I have to decide who gets what cut from an increasingly limited sized pie.
Apps like this that, while beautiful, replicate functionality that is "good enough" that I can get for free are the first thing to be cut.
The few zombie subscriptions I've had have all existed outside of the App store, one that I didn't even sign up for (looking at you Masterclass). I bought a one year gift subscription for someone else, and because it came with a "free" subscription for me (that I didn't use), I git hit with annual renewals until I noticed it on my credit card statement and cancelled.
Yes, I should check those more frequently, but who has time for that?
It rankles that you can can cancel a free trial before it's over with every app exept Apple's. I like the feature, but the double standard grates.
"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.
Yet another China-only app with China-only weather, I guess, like countless others…
"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.
Build your own EU weather app if you care so much. No one is obligated to support their software in the part of the world you happen to live.
The US might suck socially, but the other side of that coin is that it gets all the cool stuff.
It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.
Also I don't get what happened but I think it was AccuWeather or weather underground in the early 2000s where it was to the minute accurate and it seems like it's gotten worse since everywhere.
https://deepmind.google/science/weathernext/
https://microsoft.github.io/aurora/intro.html
https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2023/8/pangu-weather-forcast
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-earth-2-open-models/
A Swiss startup named Jua does this for energy markets. Disclosure: I used to work there.
Can we update the title?
The features this ad promotes all seem like solutions to nonexistent problems. "Alternate possible futures" don't give me any more confidence in the forecast—it just shows that it's not reliable, which everyone should know already. "Community reports" just add another layer of uncertainty. How can I trust that someone's report is valid or up-to-date, or that it applies to my area? Maps are nice and visually interesting, but this is not exactly novel. Notifications? No thanks. A weather app "should be fun"? Huge no thanks. Privacy and trust? Why do you collect any data?? Unbelievable.
It takes about 24 cores with a GPU to do CONUS, Canada, Alaska, Pacific and Caribbean data. This should be 2x for redundancy. Even being cheap with main processing in my basement (gen power, backup internet) the cloud costs to serve it are $200 month plus data transfer. The standby grib machine spins up should it not see the cheap primary or the NOAAPort receiver is offline.
There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy. People just won’t pay for a privacy focused weather app. I keep this going as a hobby.
Most free one are disappearing and frustratingly in most countries, the weather agency you pay with your tax will not provide it for you.
I want something that integrates into my life very minimally and just gives me the information I need when I need it. Most weather apps fail at this.
https://zoom.earth/
Apparently it's by https://neave.com/ who looks like an indy developer out of london (according to this: https://neave.com/legal/privacy/)
Also check https://earth.nullschool.net/ by https://github.com/cambecc
I will never forgive them for selling out to Apple.
Dark sky was the greatest weather app I've ever used, it had features such as considering the pressure of the atmosphere when predicting rain using crowd sourced phones, and it was the only app I've ever used that was as accurate as it was during a time when my job relied on quickly leaving the office and running across town multiple times a day.
it was sad watching the API get killed off but even worse was that a lot of the features that dark sky had never really made it into Apple weather, and the rain predictions at Apple Weather had were never as accurate as dark sky. There were several times where it was actively raining and Apple weather never even knew. Dark sky always knew.
Nope nope nope fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me, I'm not touching this with 39 1/2 foot pole.
https://wthr.cloud