Weather Line Acquired
The acquisition means the app is going away. Today, we removed Weather Line from the App Store. For all existing Weather Line users, free and paid, the app will continue working for 13 months, until April 1, 2022.
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As an Indie Founder without a day job, being able to sell an app provides for my family in a very difficult climate.
For those asking – we will not be joining the purchasing company.
We’ll transition the app to them, show them the ropes, and help them plan – but we will not continuing with the app long term.
I hope the buyer brings it back in a similar form because there’s still nothing like it.
Previously:
Update (2021-03-02): See also: MacRumors and Hacker News.
Update (2022-04-11): Ryan Jones:
Goodnight @weatherlineapp
Previously:
8 Comments RSS · Twitter
So what’s the deal? Some rich competitor buying it to shut it down? Can’t say I’m happy for them — I’ve supported WL for years, specifically because I wanted a weather app that I could depend on being around long term.This sends a crappy message to users about supporting paid indie apps instead of the many free alternatives. I guess Flighty is next!
Ahhh I loved the information density of their simple hourly and graphs, then a little scroll on down to see it in context over annual averages. Best wishes to all who worked so hard to make it such a great product! Cheers
@Ben G it sounds like you’re angry at the wrong person. Having supported them doesn’t entitle you to have them permanently continue running an unsustainable business.
I’m sure they would have preferred making an income from it. If anything, it sends a message to the majority that enjoys freemium apps without paying: Every subscriber counts.
@Peter It’s really a shame that such a great app for a general audience was apparently not a great seller, despite Apple taking competitor Dark Sky off the market. Was $10/year too much? Was the free version too good? Do most people just not care that much about weather?
@Ben G: Good grief, dude, listen to yourself. Could you possibly sound any more entitled?
Perhaps you miss the bit where Off Coast has to pay its upstream vendors for all that lovely weather data which WL delivers to its users, on top of paying staff salaries and all their other company running costs?
Or maybe you think everyone should work for exposure? Let me guess: you’ve never run a company yourself. It’s easy to armchair quarterback when you’ve never put your money where your mouth is.
Good for Ryan &co on what I hope is a positive outcome for all parties. Would that we all be so successful in business.
With WL giving so few details about the sale, it does seem that it was a “we’re cashing out because WL is so popular that a bigger company is offering us a lot of money for it — tough luck, users” and NOT “we couldn’t make ends meet anymore, so we’re shutting down” (if the latter was the case, why tell us that they sold the assets? and why be so secretive?).
@Ben There were some tweets that implied the latter. I don’t know why the new company wants to start with a fresh app, but it’s not surprising that it doesn’t want to announce its plans right now and so is requiring the secrecy.
