Nothing left to solve
lmnt.me
lmnt.me
So by not attracting folks who are interested in open source, the company now has an uphill struggle to market to people who are already bombarded with ads and marketing. And when they do reach someone, if that someone asks a tech-knowledgable friend about it they are more likely to get a response of apathy or negativity towards it because of the closed-source nature.
This is not to say it's impossible to overcome this hurdle, but it makes their job more difficult. And trying to compete with well-established, free products is already pretty hard to do in the first place.
I use mainly Vivaldi, and Firefox as a backup browser. I wouldn't mind trying Arc to see what the fuss is about even being closed source. But no deal when they don't even support Linux.
Everything but the UI is open-source Chromium so the main risk is just telemetry.
I can freely choose whether to enable the boost feature or to open sub-tabs in a pop-up window on Chrome. Isn't that cool?
For TBC, wouldn't it be better to make these functions into separate Chrome extension plugins? I hope they consider this commercial monetization approach.
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Others have tried to solve the intersection of new discoveries and daily reading workflows, but only Arc seems to present the latter in a way that does not get in the way of the former and does not require N keypresses to get there.
Sidebar plus floating URL bar means much less window chrome, which is (especially for people like me who haven't owned a monitor or a desktop PC for a decade) a welcome freeing experience that maximizes screen estate.
Having a baked in tracker stripper for a one-keypress URL copy is, especially for people like me who copy dozens of URL daily, a boon. No other browser seems to think, that this is something that is needed. And most users seem to have arranged themselves with two keystrokes to highlight the URL bar and copying the contents, followed by dozens of deletes to remove trackers.
Sure, it's small stuff and easily waved off, but if none of the other browsers wants to break with the Netscape early days paradigms, Arc it is[1].
[1] Zen Browser tries, but then, that Mozilla underpinning often sabotages the experience.
[1] https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-death/ (Though I realise after reading this that this concept isn't really all that relevant anymore)
I've tried to experiment with different ways to present browsing information. One approach is to present the tabs, bookmarks, and history on one open cohesive page, and allows searching all of them at once. Of course the devils are in the details, how to effectively navigate to different sections of the page, how to make sure performance is good, etc. I made a browser extension to try out the idea [1].
[1] One Page Favorites.
Also no idea what you are talking about with Zen's "Mozilla underpinning sabotaging the experience".
I can't see a reason to change browsers. What are the features that Arc has that other browsers don't have?
Their sales pitch is the problem they need to solve.
While I haven't used arc and don't have experience how that feature feels, I think the over 20 year old concept of a bookmarks menu, and tabs, as separate things is the best and never needed solving, and any attempt be different is worse than the original (like android firefox and its 'collections'. Why? Or Linux file managers hiding bookmarks different locations that operate differently called "Go", "Places" and actual "Bookmarks" that change through versions and sometimes coexist for some reason so you never know which menu it's going to be this time)
I'm sure there must still be problems that can be solved with "more" software or "better" software, but those problems are getting harder and harder to find.
People will continue to innovate, and some of that will involve software, but it doesn't mean there is a desperate need for software innovation.
There was a point where radio innovations were coming fast and furious. There was a point where mechanical engineering was progressing in leaps and bounds. Fields eventually slow down. It didn't put mechanical engineers out of work. But it's not the kind of field it was in (guessing) 1850.
1. https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle...
I did use arc, but I found it troublesome for two reasons:
1. I find little arc needs tab switching indicators as I lose windows in it and then close it unknowingly, because it’s not obvious that when it has extra windows open.
2. I’m uncomfortable using a browser where I have to remain signed into it all the time and I’m concerned about the privacy implications of that.
Arc seemed pretty nice from a UI perspective, but crash-y in my experience, with no support for Linux or Android, and their iOS app wasn't even much of a browser. Now it sounds like they're putting Arc into maintenance mode and trying to build a conventional looking browser with AI features, so I think there's not much hope for it.
Kinda sad that browser UIs are frozen in 2008.
A decent fzf style history search runnable from the top bar might encourage me to close more tabs.
What's the business model? Sell subscriptions to their AI stuff? No thanks. Sell me a browser for $40 per version with yearly releases? I'd probably buy that, but that's a 5 person indie software company not a 100+ person VC backed company.
This is probably why they're going back to the drawing board and putting Arc in maintenance mode.
I’m out of the loop - what happened with Apple’s Photos app? I’ve seen their marketing from announcements earlier in the year and was looking forward to the update - is it underwhelming?
Nobody else adds anything except privacy enhancements, so for a typical non privacy focused user the rest are either not that interesting or too small and niche to seem trustworthy.
I don't really want more browsers, what I'd really like to see is Chrome apps and extensions on Mobile, with more power.
With fine grained permissions of course, but still with enough permissions to change the UI, write sandboxed user visible files, and talk to other stuff on the LAN.
Tabs was such an obviously good idea all the browsers copied it in short order. Anything arc builds on top of chromium seems destined for the same fate once millions are using it.
If you want to change behavior you have to start with a clear mainstream user need, not building features for power users and hoping they trickle down.
How we use the web today, with the Chrome engine and skins as the user agent, seems like the last decade's local optimum. The community is increasingly iterating to the next leap, and I don't think the winning companies will be perplexity.ai, Anthropic 's compute API, meta's Ray-Bans, or some browser ChatGPT extension startup. There is a lot of room for new winners.
I do agree with ZIRP comments saying this is NOT a matter like Zoom doing everything 10% better to be enough: browser teams need to be thinking 10X+ better on broad use. Brave tapped into the privacy & ads psyche, which is a leap for a large niche, but still not enough compared to some sort of more ambitious Jarvis etc rethink.
No one can know what the winning form factors will be without trying and finding out, so IMO, the next few years are a lot more interesting wrt UX then the last 10+!
Somehow tab management is the killer feature that will change browsers?
Personally I've always wondered why the taskbar and toolbars didn't switch to the side once resolutions got to and especially beyond 1080p
I can freely choose whether to enable the boost feature or to open sub-tabs in a pop-up window on Chrome. Isn't that cool?
For TBC, wouldn't it be better to make these functions into separate Chrome extension plugins? I hope they consider this commercial monetization approach.
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If you're gunna post a blog, at least choose one that writes well.
Our Qwerty keyboards are ubiquitous. You may think there are no problems left with that design, until you are hit with carpel tunnel pains.
Before that, you would not even be aware of the problems and their myriad solutions: better layouts, better hardware designs (like split body or 3d sculpted), or even conceptually unique input devices.
Saying that there’s nothing left to solve signals your position among the conceptually impoverished. It is fine to not know, but it is not wise to proclaim that no one else does or will ever know.
Back to browsers. How could a solution ever arrive? Perhaps someone assumes there is a better way and try to build new things? Should we have instead stopped at letter writing or fax for the solved problem of communication?
I am just glad that there are people who are willing to take on risk to pursue a solution, for problems we are too stupid to care about.
Calling people stupid is not a useful response.