The best way to learn about a browser is to use it. No article is going to convey whether it will feel right to you. If needing an account is a dealbreaker, the consider the deal broken and move on. I've tried out a bunch of browsers over the past year, and Arc has been my default for a few months now. Being able to easily swipe between sandboxed profiles is great, and I like the rest of the UI. They also have a YouTube channel[1] that will give you some idea of how it behaves; scroll to the earlier ones.
Arc Browser 1.0
131–140 of 263 posts
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#132From https://www.protocol.com/browser-company > Agrawal decided early on not to try and rebuild the whole browser stack, and based Arc on Chromium like everyone else. Ladybird this ain't. More like YACI (yet another chromium implementation).
Seriously the fact the "I made a chrome wrapper" is apparently worth millions in VC funding remains absurd to me.
I understand this reaction, but you're missing the point. It's precisely that the rendering engine is not what drives value; it's what you build on top of that sediment layer.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#133In case you are interested in a wrapper for WebKit instead of for Chromium, but one that lets you use your favorite Chrome and Firefox extensions: Orion Browser by Kagi: Very fast. Zero telemetry. Lightweight, natively built with WebKit, made for you and your Mac. Industry-leading battery life, privacy respecting by design and native support for web extensions. Orion supports Firefox and Chrome browser extensions nat…
Can't wait for Orion to support Linux. As a Kagi subscriber it makes me feel salty, even though i understand focusing initial scope haha.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously the fact the "I made a chrome wrapper" is apparently worth millions in VC funding remains absurd to me.
There's value on the wrapper around the rendering engine. Presumably you don't use the raw engine, and use many of the UX features provided by your chosen wrapper (of which there are many). Things like tabs and extensions, hell even having history, settings, cookies, and a back button are UX niceties a raw engine doesn't necessarily provide. So the wrapper is important; making a better wrapper is thus a worthwhile en…
> it's easy to see a hypothetical consumer-focused browser that restored that functionality, or had it natively would easily be worth millions
And where would those millions come from? Make the browser paid? It could work if it's really that good, and it'd likely be targeted at Apple users who won't mind paying. Seems risky though, eventually if you're too popular, Google will just copy some superficial stuff you're doing and people will forget about you.
> and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that
Sure they can, losing money is easy.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#135Off topic, but clicking that link and seeing the "X" logo is really jarring to me. I heard it happened, but actually clicking a link in the wild and seeing that big dumb as-is Special Alphabets 4 "X" as a "logo" still shocked me.
I'm not even sure why the OP submitted this tweet. It has barely any information other than directing you to a different link.
Doesn't matter. Their website doesn't have much info either.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#136I played around with it a bit. Seems like a nice browser, very clean. However this also raises some issues. For instance sometimes when i want to click some button on a website which is close to the border, the top or left bar pop up and i miss click.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#137The best way to learn about a browser is to use it. No article is going to convey whether it will feel right to you. If needing an account is a dealbreaker, the consider the deal broken and move on. I've tried out a bunch of browsers over the past year, and Arc has been my default for a few months now. Being able to easily swipe between sandboxed profiles is great, and I like the rest of the UI. They also have a YouT…
So what we are supposed to shut up and move on ?
Not criticize that :
- "won´t ever sell your data" is an empty promise
- "We never sell your data, and we’ll only share it in the following circumstances: With our Service Providers" O yeah they don't sell just share ... (with a list of what a Service provider may be but not what it may not be).
- "Why do we collect personal data? Protect against fraud" strange would have not listed that first.
And no amount of using it will change anything for those points.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#138As someone who has used Arc for just over a year now, I have a love/hate relationship with it.
There are some features like the ability to "peek" into a webpage or Little Arc which is really handy for SSO popups without changing full focus to the browser that makes other browsers feel like a step down.
That said, and maybe this will change post-1.0, there were a lot of basic bugs that popped up over time like tabs disappearing from the sidebar, tabs "syncing" into the void because the browser blindly copied state from another browser, tabs that can't be closed and so on.
Generally these are fixed and don't happen all at once but when they do, it rubs up against the new features being touted to make you feel insane. "Boosts are great but I just want the browser to stop interfering so I can do some work"
Anyway, it's a bit like stockholm syndrome sometimes. I love it and anything else is a downgrade but it also keeps hurting me but nowhere near enough to outweigh the benefits.
As far as support goes, it feels bit like they're a victim of success. Almost every ticket used to get a response but now I rarely hear anything which makes the canned "We value your feedback" feel hollow. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Support has changed. It's just a somewhat unavoidable outcome when you start as part of a niche and the userbase rapidly grows, making replying to everything untenable.
In all, I'm glad there is a new entrant. Would a new engine be nice? Sure but differentiating a browser and building a full rendering engine at the same time is a bit of a tall order off the bat.
Perhaps if they had a cash generating machine already like Google did. It'll be interesting to see if that changes in future (I assume it won't be who knows) and they're doing a lot of interesting work porting Swift to Windows (their strategy for porting Arc)
I'm still a daily user since things have been solid for the last little while but I do wonder how things might degrade (enshittify) given a future need to return VC investment. You can learn a bit about their monetisation thinking here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eVda3zFLlhc
Lastly, I'll plug their YouTube channel which is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBrowserCompany
Particularly the videofile series which talks a lot about their internal workings, metrics and so on. There are times that I've had bad bugs or a new feature was ill received and then the next videofile confirms they've seen that reaction in bulk too
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point with a bunch of information when you can just download it and try for yourself? If you're at the car dealership, don't you want to take a car for a test ride first, before getting into more details?
Because you want to know what it is like before installing it? From what I gather so far this is not an executable I trust and feel comfortable running on my personal computer.
Back in the day, it would take ages to download and install software, and it could mess up your system. If now was then, I'd see your point.
But if you don't trust a software, then you should never install it, and you should never ask for reinsurance from the software makers. If their goal is to compromise personal computers, then they will also lie in any information they put out.
It's like being at a car dealer that you think is a criminal, and asking him to double-pinky swear that the car you're looking at wasn't stolen.
Re: Arc Browser 1.0
#140Looks like it’s just another chrome wrapper.