> Anyway, use firefox or librewolf. Stop enabling the chromium monopoly!
Or Safari of course, it's really a great browser if one's on the Mac.
Or Safari of course, it's really a great browser if one's on the Mac.
edit: Okay so it's webkit based, mac only, with built-in adblocking, which sounds nice, but honestly the idea that it can easily install extensions from both chrome and firefox sounds like a security nightmare to me.
The fact that the only mention of security in their FAQ is to conflate it with privacy
"Most browsers regularly "phone home" dozens or even hundreds times. Each request poses a security risk"
is a red flag IMHO
Full text for reference: "Each request poses a security risk, no matter what information it sends, by potentially exposing your IP address and your browser fingerprint. Telemetry can also inadvertently leak personally identifiable information or corporate intelligence."
The venerable iCab or new Orion from Kagi shows what's possible here.
Kagi's Orion runs Firefox and Chrome extensions, including on iOS, and of course works with Kagi search, which is enough better that it's worth switching from Google/Bing/DDG.
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EDIT to add, on iCab, it's been updated as of 2020, which unfortunately finally dropped the legacy Macs, but does support modern filter lists:
iCab 6.0 (September, 28th 2020)
iCab 6.0 is completely rewritten, therefore there’re many new features and existing many old features have changed. The new release uses the newer modern web engine of the macOS which is much faster and smoother than the classic engine that was used by older iCab releases. It also supports more web technologies.
Because the modern web engine had too many limitations under macOS 10.12 and older, the minimum macOS release for the new version of iCab is therefore macOS 10.13. Older macOS releases are no longer supported. This has the advantage that iCab can now rely on many native macOS features which are only available in newer macOS releases.
iCab now uses the native „Tabs“ feature of the macOS, so the tabs in iCab will now behave just as the Tabs in all other Apps using the native Tabs feature (like Safari Mail, the Finder etc). All the capabilities of the macOS to manage tabs are fully available in iCab as well.
iCab is now using the native filter capabilities of the modern web engine of the macOS. Therefore the filter manager is completely new. The new filter manager supports the popular filter lists from AdBlock Plus, Easylist, uBlock and compatible. The filter manager window provides a few links to web sites where you can find these filter lists. using the „Add“ or „Subscribe“ links on these sites can directly import these filter lists, but you can also simply download these lists into a file and then use the „import“ feature of the Filter Manager to import these files.
iCab 6.0 supports syncing of tabs, bookmarks, reading list, filters and search engine via iCloud. The iCloud sync is compatible to iCab Mobile for the iOS platform, so you can now sync all this data between iCab for the Mac and iCab Mobile for the iOS as well.
The new web engine provides more control over audio and video playback. It is possible to immediately stop all audio and video playback with a certain menu command. But it can also make sure that audio and video playback only occurs on the active tab.
Modules of the module manager can be put into the status bar, so these modules are directly accessible very fast and comfortably.
The App supports private tabs which do not save any private data (Cookies, Caches etc). Private tabs are marked with a red border around the address field.
And much more
But highly unlikely to be better enough to justify paying a subscription for it (for most people, anyway), so it's always going to be confined to a small niche of users.
I'd argue if you live in first world, earn a living from tech, even if you don't care whether you pay for things vs. be tracked, it's worth the subscription, in the sense of, it's enough better to be worth paying for as a better tool, not just because there's no gaming of the SERPs above the fold. The Lenses are impressive, but it's not just that, the results are what one used to appreciate from web search. After getting used to the quality, the lower quality of Google or the Bing derivatives like DDG will frustrate you.
If you dislike adtech or value privacy, it's worth the subscription, because there are no ads and no tracking. (Also, unlike neeva, to which I also subscribe, it's not an ad-alternative model from former ad-tech people.)
Globally, I can easily see enough users sign up to sustain the small team. Their blog post [0] mentiones they calculate they need 25,000 subscribers to sustain themselves.
(I'm a paying customer, FWIW).
[0] https://blog.kagi.com/status-update-first-three-months#futur...