I don't know. How's Dark Sky competing with Apple? I don't think they derive much, if any, revenue from the Weather app. More likely they're paying for the data.
It might have to do with AccuWeather trying to make weather data harder to access, especially NOAA data.
Dark Sky was one of the best API's for weather data too, and now Apple does not have to follow anyone else's rules. Tim Cook's big push for environmental responsibility can also be a reason for the acquisition as well. Having access to this type of data allows them to open the door to more environmental productions/applications.
Apparently DarkSky does use the NOAA data, whereas Apple was pulling data from The Weather Company, now part of IBM.
"IBM purchased the Weather Co. in 2016 and sells weather data to, among others, Apple, for its weather app. The purchase could signal that Apple will develop its own weather model rather than continue to use IBM-derived data, or it may indicate that Apple, too, liked the design of the app."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/03/31/apple-buys...
> whereas Apple was pulling data from The Weather Company, now part of IBM.
It's turtles all the way down[1]. The Weather Company also leverages NOAA data and is listed as such as a weather service provider on NOAA's site[2]. Although they ostensibly augment it with other sources and apply their own forecasting models to the data, they're still basically repackaging NOAA data in one form or another.
... in the USA. But one of its great advantages is the data it receives from tens of thousands of amateur weather reporting stations globally. The Wunderground forecast for our locality is hyper-localised and very accurate for that reason, particularly compared to the national Met Office forecast which applies to an airport 35 miles away, beside a lake and on the other side of mountains.
I was an early supporter (and payer) for Wunderground, but now they have turned into another IBM money grab and I refuse to have anything to do with them now.
I realy love the norwegian weather service, yr.no (Has english language selection on top). It works worldwide and has an open API [1]. Not sure where they get the data though but short term it's very good here in Sweden. Long term tends to be a bit exagerated though but improves the closer it gets.
You forgot to add
with more restrictions, decreased customer satisfaction, upsetting early supporters, and an incomplete storefront that barely has enough online features to state it was built in the last 2 decades.
Buying things to bury just to make sure the competition doesn't get them is by no means a new business model or invented by Epic Games. It's been a solid go to for most big companies since forever. It's nothing new for Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
So I exclusively use Dark Sky on my iPhone and watch. They could also be looking at the data and noticing that most people use Dark Sky as opposed to the default weather app.
