I'm sure there are tons of other, lesser known acquisitions... looking at what Apple acquires - seems relevant to be integrated into their products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Oh, wow, they even acquired Intel smartphone modem business at 2019 and other Semiconductor businesses.
Was the easiest way to put some fire under Qualcomm's arse, RF modems, batteries and displays are the only things Apple doesn't have under their direct control - but for batteries and displays they at least have a selection of competing suppliers. With modems, they're stuck at whatever crap Qualcomm delivers.
The cost also went down. DarkSky was $4. I wasn't ever willing to pay for a weather app.
I see hourly rain predictability for today, and for future days there are hourly precipitation charts in inches. I can't imagine that precipitation beyond the current day on an hourly basis has any chance of being accurate.
I think alternative weather apps like DarkSky were incentivized to provide extra information that justifies their existence regardless of accuracy/precision.
E.g., if I make my own weather app and my selling point is that I give you a forecast for every 10 minutes or that my forecast goes out 5 years, I don't have to have any shred of accuracy because it's just a forecast. I was able to sell you my app because you're impressed by the fact that I give you more granular predictions.
I was the same way. Then I broke down and paid the $5. Best app purchase I ever made. One time fee and used it for years. I wish there were more apps like this.
Precipitation probability is the most important thing in a weather app to me.
It’s one of the few apps I bought and it’s frustrating that Apple bought them, picked a few features, killed the rest, and shut everything down.
I’m not even complaining about killing the api, that makes sense since Apple doesn’t care about this.
But Apple Weather’s maps don’t work as well, the precipitation views aren’t as detailed, the user supplied precipitation reports are gone. It just does different things.
But, yes, Apple Weather is now a better app because the acquisition.