Founders of long-lost weather app Dark Sky return with a new forecast platform, and it’s already better than Apple’s unreliable flagship weather predictions
Summary
After leaving Apple, the founders of Dark Sky have launched Acme Weather, a new forecasting app. This innovative tool aims to provide users with accurate and engaging weather updates, marking an exciting return to the weather app landscape.
Key Insights
What makes Acme Weather's forecasting approach different from typical weather apps?
Acme Weather uses a unique 'Alternate Predictions' feature that displays multiple forecast lines alongside the main forecast, showing a range of possible weather outcomes throughout the day. This approach acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in weather forecasting by leveraging different numerical weather prediction models, satellite data, ground station observations, and radar data. When the forecast lines are tightly grouped together, it indicates high confidence in the prediction; when they diverge, it signals lower confidence while showing users alternate possibilities. This contrasts with traditional weather apps that typically provide only a single forecast prediction.
Why did the Dark Sky team leave Apple to create Acme Weather?
The Dark Sky team was acquired by Apple in March 2020, and Apple eventually shut down Dark Sky in 2022 after integrating its features into Apple's native Weather app. Co-founder Adam Grossman explained that working at a large company like Apple made it difficult to experiment with new and unconventional ideas, stating: 'I absolutely love Apple…but as a big company, it's difficult to try weird, new, experimental ideas. If you have a billion users, mistakes are costly.' By returning to a small, bootstrapped operation, the team can iterate faster and pursue experimental features that would be too risky for a company with billions of users. Acme Weather represents their vision for the weather app they always wanted to build.