It’s been a busy few months since launch. We’re grateful to everyone who downloaded Acme, subscribed, sent feedback (good and bad), reported bugs, and told a friend about the app. We read every email and support request, and many of the changes in this release came directly from your input. Thank you.
Today we're excited to share: Acme is now available in 42 countries across Europe!
If you're just discovering Acme, check out our original introduction post, too.
"When are you coming to Europe?"
It's one of the questions we heard most often at Dark Sky. Back then we had limited access to high quality or affordable data that would allow us to provide hyperlocal precipitation forecasts. This meant Dark Sky was only available in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. That’s changed, and Acme is now available in the App Store in Europe. Pricing is the same as North America. It's a two-week free trial then $25 USD/year.
For existing subscribers, you’ll now receive next hour rain notifications and forecasts in Europe just like you do in the United States and Canada.
We believe Europe's diverse weather conditions provide an ideal environment to showcase the full capabilities of Acme. We’re thrilled to finally make it happen and hope you try it.
We've also been busy shipping a number of other improvements, some of which have been rolling out to users over the past few weeks. Here’s a summary of the important changes:
We've made a number of improvements to maps.
As our co-founder Josh remarked, animated radar forecasts are table stakes for a great weather app. Yet when we launched Acme, we didn't have them. When we started to build them, we realized we were frustrated by the standard method of hitting a play button. Sometimes the animation moved too quickly. Sometimes it paused at the wrong moment. And often we'd end up watching the whole thing multiple times just to answer a simple question multiple times just to answer a simple question.
It took some time to settle on a different approach: instead of a play button, we built a timeline that you can drag using a slider. This makes it easy to move backward through recent radar observations or forward through forecast data and stop exactly where you want.
The timeline is available in both the Current Radar and Hour-by-Hour Precipitation maps. In Current Radar, you can scrub through recent observations and forecast conditions every four minutes over the next hour. On the Hour-by-Hour Precipitation map, you can step through hourly forecast conditions for the next 24 hours.
If you haven’t already done so, please give them a try and let us know what you think.
Another common request has been support for additional units, like wind measured in knots instead of mph.
Acme now allows you to customize units throughout the app, including temperature, wind speed, precipitation, and other measurements. You’ll find these under Settings on the upper right. (Use the ⚙️ icon.)
We also added a shortcut for switching between Celsius and Fahrenheit. Just double-tap the temperature in the Right Now section of the forecast.
It’s a small change, but if you switch units frequently, it ends up saving a surprising number of taps.
Acme now supports a Family Sharing subscription. You can enable Family Sharing in your Apple account settings, and everyone in your family can use Acme with the Family Sharing subscription. If you already bought Acme, directions to upgrade are here: https://acmeweather.com/help.
We’re continuing to work on improvements throughout the app, including new features, bug fixes, and an Android app.
We have a lot more planned, and we're looking forward to sharing it with you.