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Comment by aucisson_masque | Hacker News Reader

> $25/year subscription

I don't get it, is there even a market ? People get free and quite accurate weather information from Google and others. I don't think that a few radar view and probability prediction are worth that amount of money.

But then, how much was dark sky ? And did it succeed ? Getting bought by apple is a kind of success but I mean success as in profitability.

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The underlying data sources are not free, weather data providers charge per API request. Stock weather apps built into the OS eat this cost for you, but third-party apps can't do that, they either have to show ads (ugh) or have a subscription.

Of the $2.08/month this works out to, I don't know how much the devs have left for themselves after the weather API and Apple's 30% cut, but I can't imagine it's much. I don't think you're getting ripped off here.

I'm not sure if the price rose later, but I remember getting Dark Sky for a $3.99 one-time payment. Much more palatable than $25/year imo.

think it was pay once on iOS and the android dark sky app that came out later was $3/year. So like 733% increase.

The free (and paid) apps for weather are seriously terrible in LatAm. You can really see the focus and high data quality are all in the northern hemisphere. All the apps available rely on a handful of models: GFS, IFS, ICON, ...

"Quite accurate"

I've been hearing snow predictions for two months now. We have had one or two light dustings which didn't lie. I also find most predictions are mostly useless beyond three days.

There's probably an initial "nostalgia for DarkSky" market. But beyond that? Nope.

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