Acme Weather
The creators of the popular Dark Sky app have launched Acme Weather, a new forecasting service that aims to revolutionize how users understand and interact with weather uncertainty. Leveraging their extensive experience, this team emphasizes transparent predictions, community-driven reports, and robust privacy. However, the $25 annual subscription and initial limited geographic availability sparked significant discussion among users who have grown accustomed to free weather apps.
The Lowdown
Acme Weather marks the return of the original Dark Sky team, who, after their acquisition by Apple, felt a persistent dissatisfaction with the existing weather app landscape. Their new venture seeks to build the ultimate weather experience by prioritizing a more nuanced approach to forecasting, moving beyond single-point predictions to embrace the inherent uncertainty of weather.
- Embracing Uncertainty: Acme Weather introduces 'Alternate Possible Futures,' visualizing a range of potential outcomes rather than a single forecast. This spread intuitively indicates forecast reliability, allowing users to gauge how much trust to place in the prediction.
- Community Reporting: Users can contribute real-time weather conditions, enhancing local accuracy for events that traditional radar or models might miss, like light rain or sudden changes.
- Useful Maps: The app offers a comprehensive suite of maps including radar, lightning, precipitation totals, wind, temperature, and cloud cover, often embedded contextually within forecasts.
- Notifications & Acme Labs: Beyond standard alerts, Acme Weather provides customizable notifications and introduces 'Acme Labs' for experimental features like 'Rainbow alerts' and 'beautiful sunset' predictions, aiming to make weather engagement more fun.
- Privacy & Trust: The team commits to a strict privacy policy: no unnecessary data collection, no location history storage, no data selling to third parties, and no third-party trackers.
- Availability & Monetization: Currently available on iOS (with Android planned), Acme Weather operates on a $25/year subscription model with a two-week free trial, stressing that direct customer revenue supports their privacy stance and service quality.
Ultimately, Acme Weather represents the culmination of 15 years of experience from the Dark Sky founders, an attempt to build the weather app they've always envisioned.
The Gossip
Geographic Grievances
Many commenters quickly noted their disappointment regarding Acme Weather's limited regional availability, primarily to the US and Canada. This was particularly frustrating for international users who saw example images featuring European locations, leading to a sense of misleading marketing. The discussion highlighted a common issue with app launches that don't clearly state their geographical restrictions upfront.
Subscription Scrutiny
The $25 annual subscription was a major point of contention. Some users expressed 'subscription fatigue,' stating they were unwilling to add another recurring payment, especially for a weather app when many free alternatives exist (including Apple's own, which now incorporates Dark Sky tech). Conversely, others defended the subscription model, arguing it's necessary to cover data costs, ongoing development, and to avoid monetizing user data through ads or sales, thereby ensuring the app's stated commitment to privacy.
Missionary vs. Market
A philosophical debate emerged regarding the founders' ambitious framing of their work in weather forecasting, particularly the sentiment of 'saving life and property from severe events at scale.' Some commenters viewed this as typical Silicon Valley hyperbole—an inability to simply 'create an app and make a living' without attaching a world-saving mission. Others, including a developer with similar experience, defended the profound impact advanced weather forecasting can have, pointing out that some 'weather apps' are truly attempts at building next-generation models worth billions.