Apple sunsets Dark Sky on Android and Wear OS

Dark Sky, the popular weather app, is no longer available to download or use on Android and Wear OS, with the Apple-owned app now nonfunctional on Google's mobile and wearable device platforms.

As scheduled by Apple, the Dark Sky app has stopped working on Android and Wear OS devices. Users of the app are now not able to access weather reports from the app itself, and instead must check other apps for the same details.

Existing users of the app are now greeted with a notification in the app of the shutdown, and that subscribers of the app will have a full refund of their $2.99-per-year plan, reports 9to5Google. Attempts to search based on location now offers no usable results at all, such as sunrise and sunset being 12AM and temperatures being set at 0 across the board.

Following the purchase of Dark Sky by Apple in March, the Android app was originally set to shut down on July 1st, but instead was allowed to function for an extra month. The Google Play Store listing for the app no longer functions, and was previously taken down to prevent any new users from signing up for the service.

Dark Sky's in-app sunset message for Android users. (via 9to5Google)

According to the schedule, the website was supposed to be shutting down on August 1, but the app's blog advises "Weather forecasts and maps on the Dark Sky website remain active." The API service is still active for existing customers only, and will continue to function until the end of 2021.

The iOS version of the app continues to be available for purchase from the App Store, but it remains to be seen how long it will continue to do so. In iOS 14, the Weather app has been updated to include some data being sourced from Dark Sky's API, including a new next-hour forecast, while widgets will display the expected weather for the coming hour.

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9 Comments

rob53 3312 comments · 13 Years

About 4 years ago

I hope Apple uses Dark Sky instead of the garbage app they have now. I like it and would rather see Apple simply rebrand it.

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

Apple should have kept Droid users bleeding money and give it's users the features for free.

geekmee 647 comments · 13 Years

Beats said:

Apple should have kept Droid users bleeding money and give it's users the features for free.

I am sure Apple consider it, but not the best option or in alignment with their mission going forward.
In other words, they got bigger fish to fry.

geekmee said:

Beats said:

Apple should have kept Droid users bleeding money and give it's users the features for free.

I am sure Apple consider it, but not the best option or in alignment with their mission going forward.
In other words, they got bigger fish to fry.

Apple Music does this. I think it's a great idea. Probably pulled though because of how much the U.S. hates Apple. They would have cried "not fair".

linuxplatform 124 comments · 5 Years

Beats said:
Apple Music does this. I think it's a great idea. Probably pulled though because of how much the U.S. hates Apple. They would have cried "not fair".

So a small percentage of Americans aiming some criticism at a company = "Americans hate Apple." Wow do your divergent from reality takes ever end at any point?

Compare the criticism that Apple gets to say:

Wal-Mart (especially in the 90s and 00s).
Airlines (other than Southwest).
Cable companies (especially Comcast).
Fossil fuel companies (all of them; every last one).
Microsoft (prior to Nadella taking over and especially the late 90s monopoly era and the Ballmer era).
Facebook (hasn't received positive press in like 8 years).
Cell phone companies (especially AT&T and Verizon).
Disney (particularly since they bought Lucasfilm and especially since they bought Fox).
Amazon (who has taken Wal-Mart's place as the scapegoat for labor issues and destruction of small businesses)
Google (Apple fans will hate them forever for Android, Microsoft fans hate them for blocking YouTube and Gmail from Windows Phone, leftists hate them over David Snowden and Election 2016, conservatives hate them for pulling their videos off YouTube ... of the 4 companies that were grilled by Congress - Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - they are by far the most likely to be actually broken up despite by far being the least profitable)

For goodness sakes Apple is the least criticized "#1 company in the world" in history. The "lack of diversity in tech" crowd has mostly focused on Facebook and Google (and to a lesser extent Amazon and Microsoft), leaving Apple entirely alone. The left-liberal "we hate all big corporations" crowd never mentions Apple at all. Phil Schiller and Apple got no blowback whatsoever over the very classist comments that he made ripping lower-income school districts (and the lower-income heavily minority students that they serve) for using Chromebooks instead of iPads that cost three times as much and require far more expensive tech support. The media generally takes Apple's side in IP/infringement lawsuits (if they report them at all) to the point where it is generally accepted that "Samsung and Google blatantly rip off from Apple" while Apple merely "adopts features and makes them better."

So Apple gets accused of maybe charging too much for the app store. Big deal. Oil companies get accused of destroying the planet. Wal-Mart gets accused of destroying small towns and being hotbeds of racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Google and Facebook get accused of destroying democracy by driving newspapers out of business and giving extremists a platform. Airlines, cable companies and cell phone companies get accused of lying to their consumers and ripping them off. Amazon gets accused of defrauding people, stealing ideas from sellers on their site, and literally working people to death and then replacing them with robots. You want to know what is funny? The media is treating macOS moving to ARM as the equivalent of Prometheus giving fire to humans when Windows, ChromeOS and most Linux distributions have been running on ARM for years. And you know what else is funny? Absolutely no one in the press criticizes Apple for doing anything and everything the Chinese government tells them, including deleting apps used by pro-democracy dissenters! And were it Google, Facebook or Wal-Mart tied to China's repression of the Uighurs instead of the company that makes the iPhones, iPads and MacBooks everyone in the media and all the NGO members loves to use ...

Yet it is Apple that people hate because some developers don't like the payment rules on the app store?!?! Amazing. Simply amazing. News flash: when Apple becomes the subject of a global boycott like Huawei, or are the subject of a coordinated legal attack by the EU, the DOJ and multiple state attorney's general like Google or when the EU and the DOJ team up to stop them from making a routine acquisition of a tiny company that is headed for bankruptcy anyway (again Google with FitBit) then let's talk about how someone - anyone anywhere - hates them.