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Comment by adambyrtek | Hacker News Reader

I'm sending an email to tell them how disappointed I feel as a long-time subscriber about them maliciously (since there is no other more generous explanation) shutting down the service for Android users: https://darksky.net/contact

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> since there is no other more generous explanation

How about "Apple just bought a really talented team of developers and want them to work on the Next Big Thing at Apple rather than spend their time on a product that doesn't do anything for Apple's strategy?"

Sure, that's the classic "it's been a wonderful journey" scenario where the whole product is sunset, but shutting down just a single platform is not as obvious.

One could easily argue that Apple is sunsetting the Android app for one of the same reasons we can't install MacOS on a non-Apple PC (without violating the EULA): Apple doesn't like supporting unpredictable platforms, and doesn't want to be in a situation where people blame them for other people's bugs and unexpected under-the-hood changes.

Apple supports apps on Windows and Android already.

Do you really believe that Apple doesn't allow macOS on PCs because of "unpredictability"? I think it's pretty obvious by now that bundling is a great way to differentiate their hardware, charge a premium, and lock users in their ecosystem. Remember the people who complained about issues with the butterfly keyboard, but kept buying Macbooks just because of macOS?

The Apple employee who opens your email will undoubtedly pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Well, it's not like they suddenly replaced the whole team overnight, but I guess I get your point. I don't claim it could change anything, but I still believe that it's important to (respectfully) let the team know how their paying ex-customers feel about their decisions.

Also, the message in the app seems misleading:

"""

Effective: 7:00 PM CDT, March 30

Expires: 7:00 PM CDT, June 30

To continue using the app and receiving weather notifications, please update to the latest version. You can read more on our blog.

"""

It appears they created a new version simply to better display this message, in lieu of using the weather alert interface.

I appreciate your effort, I really do, but you'll get a lot farther complaining on HN. Nobody is going to do anything about it here either, but at least here you'll have people that care what you think.

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