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Apple IT

Apple Users Report Weather App Outage in Some Locations (bloomberg.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the outages dept.
Apple said that some users are experiencing disruptions of its weather app on Tuesday, citing a data provider issue. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based company said on its website that issues for the app were reported at 11 p.m. New York time Monday and continued Tuesday. Apple said that precipitation forecasts for the next hour may be unavailable in Alaska "due to a data provider outage," but disruptions appear to be across various cities. All other services, such as the App Store, Apple TV and FaceTime, appear to be available and working without issue.
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Apple Users Report Weather App Outage in Some Locations More

Apple Users Report Weather App Outage in Some Locations

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  • Reminds me of the Peter schickley gag where there was no weather to report because there is no weather.

  • OMG (Score:2)

    by 0xG ( 712423 )
    OMG my POS bloatware stopped!

    • I can't speak for everyone, but the Weather App is my second, or third most used function on my phone.
      Clock, Weather (to see what I can do later that day, if I should go for a walk or not), Internet Browsing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by 0xG ( 712423 )
        You really think so? That apple has a whole room full of actual meteorologists? Or do they (like most weather apps) just scrape it from government websites? That are waaaay to difficult to navigate to?

        • Re:OMG (Score:4, Interesting)

          by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @01:52PM (#63425520) Homepage Journal

          You really think so? That apple has a whole room full of actual meteorologists? Or do they (like most weather apps) just scrape it from government websites?

          Apple Weather is based on Dark Sky now, which used to be an independent third party app that while I don't think it was done by a bunch of meteorologists in the room, was handled by a bunch of data scientists who - yes, scraped government data - but then applied a bunch of additional data from weather stations to create what they called "hyper-local" forecasts.

          Who knows what's left of Dark Sky inside of Apple now. Apple used to source weather from IBM (who got it from government sources), and they bought Dark Sky to bring it in-house. Assuming they kept the Dark Sky code, it's not "just" scraping government sources. But who knows, Apple doesn't provide any method of accessing the data besides the iOS app now, and won't say what they've done with it. Everything that made Dark Sky great is just gone now.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Lycestra ( 16353 )

        I can't speak for everyone, but the Weather App is my second, or third most used function on my phone.
        Clock, Weather (to see what I can do later that day, if I should go for a walk or not), Internet Browsing.

        So, not calling people. Just so we're clear, this is a phone we're talking about, right? /s

      • Oh no, if only there were some other way to find out the weather forecast.

      • I can't speak for everyone, but the Weather App is my second, or third most used function on my phone. Clock, Weather (to see what I can do later that day, if I should go for a walk or not), Internet Browsing.

        Yup - hit me this morning, but working fine now. The Weather App is pretty darn good.

  • This just effected me (Score:3)

    by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @11:55AM (#63425220) Homepage

    This just effected me, I was out and about, and the weather was basically what I would have expected. It was mildly annoying.

  • Slow News Day (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @12:24PM (#63425290)

    A small outage for some users on one app now makes the front page of Slashdot. We really have nothing to talk about anymore.

    • Yeah, this is what you call being slightly inconvenienced.
      "Oh no, I'll have to open the browser and type 'weather' now."

      • While you're right that finding weather info is easy to do, the nice thing about Apple's weather app is it will buzz your phone or your smartwatch if a change in weather is imminent.

        There are times that'll suck, and we do have serious dangerous weather happening around the country right now. Maybe some aren't getting life-saving tornado warnings. (Although you wouldn't know that from the /. summary....)

        • Yeah, weather alerts are a thing on smartphones, I'm aware.
          Still, I assume that even an Apple user can look up the weather if they want to know.

    • It's like Down Detector with a sarcastic comments section.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Some? More like many! :(

  • iRony (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @12:25PM (#63425294) Journal

    "Due to bad weather, our Weather App is not currently functioning."

  • Good. Fuck Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @01:05PM (#63425384) Homepage Journal

    Good. Fuck Apple.

    Now you may say that seems like a kind of strange reaction to Apple Weather going down, but let me remind you that Apple purchased Dark Sky to provide their weather data. Prior to Apple's purchase, Dark Sky was an app that worked on both iOS and Android and provided an API that could be used by third parties that needed world-wide, accurate weather data. It also provided access to historic and "future" weather which was basically generic climate data over the course of the year. It was extremely useful.

    With Apple's purchase, the API and Android app were pretty much immediately shut off. The iOS app continued for about a year before Apple pulled the plug on that, too, without ever bothering to ensure they reached feature parity in their own weather app.

    So: Good. Fuck Apple for destroying a useful weather app, and I hope they're never able to recover from the outage. It serves them right for pulling it from everyone else.

    • I hate both Apple and Google, who is going to rescue the smartphone market with a better smartphone?
    • I run a web service that used Dark Sky for years before Apple bought them. I was annoyed by the loss of Dark Sky, but it all worked out. In the end, Apple gave years of notice to developers. They also delayed the shutdown multiple times. They only actually shut down Dark Sky a few days ago (end of March). From my perspective, they managed it well. Would I rather have them leave the APIs intact? Of course, but they bought Dark Sky, they get to do what they want with it. That's how it works. I get that you'r

  • Due to climate change, there will be no weather today.

  • Yup, instead of giving me something almost, but not quite, entirely incorrect weather, I got nothing.

    Surprisingly NOT an improvement . . .

    I wanted to be a weatherman for years . . . having the inverse proportionality to doing it wrong to getting fired. Then I saw some of the schiat that DBAs pull and I was in awe.

  • So put your umbrella away. Take your sandals and shorts off. Now go enjoy the 68* degree temperature outside by relaxing with a good book on the deck. *Human body temperature.
  • I thought that was pretty clear by now.

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