Acme Weather
acmeweather.com127 points by cryptoz 13 hours ago
127 points by cryptoz 13 hours ago
The site doesn’t make it clear, but it’s not available worldwide. The App Store doesn’t tell you where exactly it is available, but it’s not in the UK.
This surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.
Check out zoom.earth, found it recently. They have an app too.
Apparently it's by https://neave.com/ who looks like an indy developer out of london (according to this: https://neave.com/legal/privacy/)
Also check https://earth.nullschool.net/ by https://github.com/cambecc
Looks lovely. I was keen to try this but US and Canada only unfortunately.
Also: subscription fatigue is real. Of course I understand that fetching weather data isn’t free etc. (even though I’m intrigued by their homegrown forecast model) but I’ve already got 10+ subscriptions on iOS and I’m not sure if I’ve got the stomach for another. Apple’s weather app is finally good though since the Dark Sky acquisition.
How about reporting on yesterday's weather? Its hard to plan a walk in the forest today if I dont know how much it rained yesterday.
I'm having this problem right now, trying to plan some nice long walks out of the city but it's been raining a lot lately. I'd love some kind of map of flooding/muddy conditions, but I don't think it would be feasible without a massive effort (as whether an area is prone to flooding or turning into a mudbath after rain depends on a lot of factors).
In the app, you can swipe backwards in time and see the reports and data for yesterday.
mentioned this elsewhere, but https://zoom.earth/ handles that ... (I've got nothing to do with them btw... I just think it's good)
Weather history sounds like a awesome feature. Sort of like a farmers almanac built into a modern weather app?
This team really have been thinking about weather a lot, and it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time.
It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.
> it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time
The rainbow and sunset alerts are really cool ideas. I'm now realising that a simple tie-in to astronomical phenomena could prompt a useful notificationa around it e.g. being worth going stargazing that night. I ski–learning that the near-term forecasts just changed would help me change my schedule the day before versus trying and failing the morning of.
> It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied. The more we spoke to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did too. And, of course, we missed those days as a small scrappy shop.
> So let’s try this again…
At this point, I think that this is just going to get bought out by OpenAI.
Won't be totally surprised to see that outcome.
Sweet! Looking forward to the android version. I was slightly bitter when apple yanked the website.
> Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.
I will never forgive them for selling out to Apple.
Dark sky was the greatest weather app I've ever used, it had features such as considering the pressure of the atmosphere when predicting rain using crowd sourced phones, and it was the only app I've ever used that was as accurate as it was during a time when my job relied on quickly leaving the office and running across town multiple times a day.
it was sad watching the API get killed off but even worse was that a lot of the features that dark sky had never really made it into Apple weather, and the rain predictions at Apple Weather had were never as accurate as dark sky. There were several times where it was actively raining and Apple weather never even knew. Dark sky always knew.
Nope nope nope fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me, I'm not touching this with 39 1/2 foot pole.
Assume they do sell out again in a year or 5.
Why exactly should you willingly choose to have worse weather predictions between here and there?
A weather app isn't something with lock-in or dependencies where using a maybe-not-permanent-solution is going to hamstring you if it disappears.
Exactly my sentiment. Will they sell out to Google or Microsoft this time?
Is there really that much money in making a weather app where you can quit your job at apple and do that?
Funniest thing is how they leave the company they sold their weather app to... to start another weather app.
The team/person responsible for Woot sold it to Amazon, and then launched Meh the day their non-compete ended, along with a manifesto explaining how badly they thought Amazon had handled Woot.
They sold their last weather app to Apple for like, tens of millions or something. These aren’t some random Apple employees.
Also, it seems a common misunderstanding about some weather apps: yes, most of them just package free data and steal your privacy, but some are really much more than a “weather app”. Some are attempts at building next-generation weather forecast models, which if successful are of course worth billions.
I’ve spent a lot of time building innovative weather apps, most of my career actually. And it’s always shocking to me when people say I’m wasting time or wasting my life or look at me like, “really? You’re dedicating your life to weather apps?!”
No dawg, I’m trying to improve short term forecasts to save life and property from severe events at scale!
I’m not sure what the Acme end goal is, but surely this isn’t just a “weather app”.
> I’m trying [...] to save life and property from severe events at scale
Tell me you work in Silicon Valley without telling me you work in silicon Valley.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. There is something in US startup mentality where you can't just "create an app and make a living", you have to be on a grand mission to save the world. That may be normal out there, but for the rest of the world it just seems... Get back to earth man :-)
Sure, most of us are doing nothing to help people and are using grandiose language to describe reticulating splines. I don’t think that applies to good weather apps though, a lot of people do die because they are unaware of weather events. I would be very unsurprised to learn that any major weather app has directly saved lives. The U.S is a very… weatherful place.
People do die due to weather events. But attributing their death to bad weather apps is pretty wild.
I have always had a ton of respect for the Dark Sky devs. I love the work that goes into designing interfaces that make sense of complex datasets intuitively, and I feel like Dark Sky was a textbook example. I’m genuinely really excited to try this out.
Couldn't agree more! This is why I wrote the Eulogy for Dark Sky: https://nightingaledvs.com/dark-sky-weather-data-viz/
Ha, this looks like someone took mine and got a real designer to polish it.
I used to use DarkSky for the "history data" for my platform. Querying weather for certain points in the past at certain locations. DarkSky was great for that until they were bought by Apple. Now I am using VisualCrossing for historical data. Hope Acme plans to do historical data too. But if it is US only then it is a no-go anyway.
Smells heavily like the Wunderlist approach, just re-do and re-sell the same thing over and over.
I can't download it, as it appears to be US only. Based on the screenshots, without 'feels like' support throughout the forecast (not just for current conditions) it wouldn't be useful where I live.
Never understood using that metric, doesn’t temp and wind give you enough info? Genuine question
The "feels like" metric is more closely tied to human stress and safety than raw temperature.
In cold weather (wind chill), wind strips away the thin warm layer of air next to your skin, so you lose heat faster. Hence, "feels colder".
In hot weather (heat index), humidity slows sweat evaporation, so your body can't cool itself as effectively. Hence, "feels hotter".
So it's a lot more useful for decision-making (like what to wear, weather it is safe to run/hike, how much water you need, etc.) than the plain temperature.
Time for everyone who has posted lamenting how Dark Sky was better (that's me!) to put our money where our mouth is.
If a weather app is going to be truly useful, it usually needs a lot of permissions, like access to your location all the time, notifications, etc., and I don’t feel comfortable giving a proprietary app that kind of access, especially when there are great FOSS alternatives.
I am going to chalk this up as another datapoint in the "Apple cannot retain talent" chart. I don't know what the heck they are doing, but everyone they've acquired seems to leave as soon as they can instead of staying.
Leave as soon as you can, along with millions and millions in cash that you got from the sale? Who wouldn't?! Why would you continue working for "the man" when you have FU-money?
Should probably quit and sell the same thing again with a different chart because FU money isn't enough.
The price is reasonable I guess, but also, you can just get weather for free? IDK...
I'd love to see some stats on this: people leaving to start something new (be it Apple or any other acquiring company) might be over-represent because there is not much news about people staying in their job
Subscription app in 2026, no thanks.
Your phone comes with a free weather app. There are thousands more free apps for folks who don’t mind ads.
Weather requires ongoing costs. It’s always going to need to be maintained because meteorological models are evolving. Anything beyond a viewport will need to track and metabolize those changes.
> Weather requires ongoing costs.
I strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data, a negligible amount of IT infrastructure, and their employees. Considering that there are many free weather APIs, and that a polished frontend can be built by a single person, what exactly are the overheads?
To be fair, I'm not criticizing the subscription model. I think it makes sense for software that needs to be continually maintained. But a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment. A big reason why companies love the Apple ecosystem is because subscriptions have been normalized, and users are used to paying them regardless if the model actually makes sense for the type of software.
> strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data
No. But I'd suspect a tabula rasa approach to weather–particularly given it hasn't been rolled out globally in one go–incorporates satellite data, local measurements, et cetera.
Again, that may not take constant subscriprtion. But it does take constant expert monitoring and awareness.
> Considering that there are many free weather APIs
If you're a glorified viewport into these APIs' data, you may be able to stick with their most-static data and fire and forget. In reality, what those outputs mean change as the models and techniques evolve. There are new APIs with new data constantly coming out, and they're often adding connectors.
> a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment
The only way I see this working is if the user is explicitly aware the app can break at any time if one of the APIs change anything, which they often do, and that this may not cause any obvious failures, just a decay in the app's accuracy or usefulness.
I only have one Apple devices (an iPad) but from what I seen the subscription is popular on it. I wanted to use Infuse, a video player, for my Jellyfin server but the lifetime price was $100 or a $2/month subscription. Also was interested in Panels, a comic book reader, for my Komga server. Panels was more reasonably priced ($20 for all updates to the current major version) but it also a subscription tier at $1.5/month.
How do you expect them to pay for their costs and service fees? One time payments of $1-$10 don't cut it. People aren't paying massive one time fees for mobile apps
Interested, but no android app and apparently US only?
Can we update the title?
How are weather apps still relevant, let alone profitable enough to build a company around? This problem has been solved years ago. All the app needs to do is hook up to one or more data providers, and show some stats and pretty graphs. It's essentially a read-only frontend to an API. There are plenty of options to choose from on every platform, including not using an app at all.
The features this ad promotes all seem like solutions to nonexistent problems. "Alternate possible futures" don't give me any more confidence in the forecast—it just shows that it's not reliable, which everyone should know already. "Community reports" just add another layer of uncertainty. How can I trust that someone's report is valid or up-to-date, or that it applies to my area? Maps are nice and visually interesting, but this is not exactly novel. Notifications? No thanks. A weather app "should be fun"? Huge no thanks. Privacy and trust? Why do you collect any data?? Unbelievable.
You are not wrong, except at scale it gets complicated quickly. For starters, to support large user numbers, you’re going to have to process your own grib2 data for radar and turn them into tiles at zoom levels.
It takes about 24 cores with a GPU to do CONUS, Canada, Alaska, Pacific and Caribbean data. This should be 2x for redundancy. Even being cheap with main processing in my basement (gen power, backup internet) the cloud costs to serve it are $200 month plus data transfer. The standby grib machine spins up should it not see the cheap primary or the NOAAPort receiver is offline.
There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy. People just won’t pay for a privacy focused weather app. I keep this going as a hobby.
Fair enough. Things are always more complicated at scale.
But then again, we don't know whether this company is maintaining this infra themselves, or if they're paying for API access. Besides, if anything, running their own servers is often the more cost-effective option, so the details you mention might not matter in practice.
My incredulity has more to do with the profitability of this type of software, considering that the free options are good enough for the average person, and that the features promoted in the article are hardly innovative.
> There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy.
Well, I do object to that. It's certainly possible to sustain a profitable business without selling out your users' data. It may not be as profitable as the advertising model, which is often too enticing for companies to ignore. This company explicitly says that their income comes directly from customers, so apparently I'm underestimating the amount of people who find these features valuable enough to pay for them.
> Why do you collect any data??
There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.
One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.
> I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Alright, fair point. That could be a reasonable use case.
But judging by their advertised "Community reports" feature, Acme doesn't seem to be doing this. And even if they did, this feature should be opt-in, and their privacy policy should only apply for those users.
> Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
Have you tried looking out the window? What do you need hyper-local and minute-accurate forecasts for? If you need to know accurate current conditions get a thermometer and barometer. If you want it on your smartphone, then the app could show you live readings from your device, without sending the data anywhere.
Weather forecasts have always been an inexact science, and likely always will be. Our models have gotten better over time, and at this point I think that they're good enough. I only need to know the general temperature and likelihood of certain weather events a few days in advance, at most. If there's a chance of rain, I carry an umbrella just in case. If it's going to be cold, I pack a jacket.
Highly accurate weather prediction doesn't solve any practical problem for the average person. Hyping it up like it does only serves as marketing for companies that want to build a profitable business around it.
After thinking more about this, I don't think smartphones would even be good sources of ambient data that could improve forecasts.
Smartphones are personal computers. They spend most of their time in pockets and controlled indoor environments. This ambient data is of no use to anyone, which is why there's still a market for home weather stations, whose sensors are typically placed outside.
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Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others…
"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.
Try your local weather app. Here in Switzerland the MeteoSwiss app is absolutely wonderful, and has all these main features:
- Uncertainty bands in the forecast (the bands are a better UX than more lines imo)
- User-supplied reports
- Many many many different maps (snow / cloud / wind / sunshine / air quality / etc)
- Alerts (not notifications, but real alerts to watch out for something)
Local weather services shouldn't be overlooked (and they're "free"... save for taxes!).
I actually use (and pay a subscription for) Windy, which is local (EU) and has data from a multitude of providers (some of which aren't free).
My comment was a critique of a launching approach that I find annoying, because I would never dare to launch an app ignoring most of the world.
In Switzerland all weather data is now also open and accessible via API. You can also use it for commercial purposes.
https://www.meteoswiss.admin.ch/services-and-publications/se...
yr.no tends to be most accurate for Scandi+Baltics somehow pretty often.
Ventusky has the best app experience in Android with many different layers like wind, precipitation, air quality and many more. Can only recommend this as well.
WarnWetter for Germany. Costs a symbolic 1 Euro for dumb reasons, but I think it's easily worth it.
BreezyWeather is a pretty good open source option for Android, if you are looking. Gives you plenty of options of data providers to use.
Not available on Android either, so... no big deal. They're just starting out. Give them a chance to grow.
My understanding is that they're just starting out with the app. Someone posted it to HN prematurely. Dark Sky expanded to support global weather and I'm sure Acme will as will.
Has EU weather sources per credits (DWD, ECMWF, EUMETSAT -- roughly what it's doing is graphing multiple models), but if you are into weather apps you're likely best off with Carrot that (a) lets you design your own UI including matching this (more or less), and (b) lets you choose among weather sources and flip among them with a tap.
If it's about cute UI and key notifications, try Hello Weather. For microcell notifications on anything, Tomorrow weather. For much better maps, WeatherMap.
For comparing multiple models, try Windy.app. For coastal barrier island use, I have 8 graphed at once, most of them EU models.
Very little reason for any weather app beyond Carrot, though Apple Weather is surprising evolved from the app of 20 years ago, no longer the 4th app to replace after messaging, maps, and browser).
Carrot is the only weather app with a vicious weather control AI singing an entire Broadway concept album about your destruction at you though.
I'm in Germany and I really enjoy the Norwegian weather app YR, it's nice and simple and very clean.
Yeah, odd to show an example screenshot with France and Spain on the map if it's not available there...
Windy.com - both website and app. It covers the whole world and seems that they have very large number of models available.
Also yr.no app - the Norwegian weather service. Covers the whole world, uses a decent selection of models. I go between this and windy.
I doubt people would complain this much if they came across a weather app that is only supported in the EU or China or India. No one would say
Yet another China-only app with China-only weather, I guess, like countless others…
"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.
Build your own EU weather app if you care so much. No one is obligated to support their software in the part of the world you happen to live.
Why would you pay a subscription for a weather app in the EU when national providers are already so good?
I guess they wanted to focus on the US market at first because they know there is money to be made there.
EU weather apps usually have an horrible UX. This one seems pretty cool and I’d pay for it if it would be available. I now use the ugly Windy.com app and the weather ios app.
All Europe has to do is let grind-culture young people become billionaires and they'll have all the cool (and necessary) software they could imagine.
The US might suck socially, but the other side of that coin is that it gets all the cool stuff.
Why not look into it instead of complaining about something you have no right to have in the first place?
Maybe the market is too small, maybe it will come with the next version, maybe there are EU barriers that prevent implementation?
This constant complaining about something that didn't exist 1 second ago is tiresome.
Dark Sky weather app never landed in Europe while it was available in US for years. The complaint is legit.
It looks nice. Less nice but very good in Germany is DWD Warn Weather:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/dwd-warnwetter/id986420993?l=e...
Yes. We pay for it with taxes! And again with our money in the App Store. But the app success is build upon the lawsuit from WetterOnline which is a private company.
https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
The lawsuit backfired and made the state funded app well known. WetterOnline attacked the DWD because the state funded app is superior :)
I think in Italy they have some similar app. Would be nice if the EU helps us to unify the app. And add offline capabilities, bad or no internet happens. The weather radar is offline of less use but the forecast still helps.
They release videos for dangerous weather on YouTube. We’ll know for regular people, in regular cloths, speaking like regular Germans. Everyone loves it :)
I like it when important services are provided by the state and private companies. Save foundation! In worst case the state is always better. In best case they compete and public benefits. In this case the private company just sucks. But they made a good job in advertising for DWD ^^
PS: If someone would implement a nice weather for Linux (best Gtk) based upon DWD public data? DO IT!
Why is that? I know that some US-based news websites choose the nuclear option of completely disabling access to EU-based users instead of complying with EU laws. But weather app? What problem do they have with supporting EU users?
We don't care about a Weather app. Very easy to do and there are millions of it. What is missing is good freely accessible data /api for weather info.
Most free one are disappearing and frustratingly in most countries, the weather agency you pay with your tax will not provide it for you.
Speak for yourself :) Weather data is already freely available.
I want something that integrates into my life very minimally and just gives me the information I need when I need it. Most weather apps fail at this.
I care about a weather app and since Dark Sky disappeared there has been nothing even remotely close to it in usefulness, FOSS or otherwise.
Weather agencies funded by taxes should make their data available to everyone, since it’s the public that finances them. Luckily, that’s already the case where I live, but when I travel I have to rely on global sources like Open-Meteo, which are usually less accurate than local ones. Another open (and global) alternative would be great.