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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

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Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#431

Post by knr2345 »

bageljlin17 wrote: post #427
blehn wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that basically the same premise as Chrome, which already dominates the market? Google even made something called ChromeOS. Arc wasn't really more than a distracting skin on Chromium with a few innovative bits of UI...

Exactly, they basically have better designer. For the real tech feature, I really don't think they ever brings any new invention to the product. Data sync, AI, etc. All other competitors have these features. They even need to count on chromium update.

Did they drop data sync? Could have sworn all of my spaces, tabs, folders, favorites and etc synced anytime I logged back in on my other machine (with access to spaces on iOS well)

It’s been a while since I used it regularly though.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#432

Post by shruggedatlas »

ale wrote: post #372
scosman wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A UI framework? What’s the other $608m for?

Just like the old Carlin joke. Made me chuckle.

I wanted you to know that, due to this comment, I "lost" approximately 45 minutes watching George Carlin's best jokes

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#433

Post by cosmic_cheese »

lmm wrote: post #421
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like more than half the problem is the lack of standardization in desktop operating systems. There’s no reason why all Mac apps can’t take advantage of the system standard tabbing like AppKit Mac apps do, but most don’t, so in most apps you don’t get apps unless the dev implements them. Same deal with updaters. If macOS and Windows had a standardized way to update apps Linux distros do that wouldn’t be nearly…

> Sounds like more than half the problem is the lack of standardization in desktop operating systems. There’s no reason why all Mac apps can’t take advantage of the system standard tabbing like AppKit Mac apps do, but most don’t, so in most apps you don’t get apps unless the dev implements them. Yep. "Every app ships most of Chrome" is a profoundly stupid way to get a sensible cross-platform application runtime to de…

> Disagree. That's creative destruction at work, it's messy but it's the only way to get better. Like it or not (and I don't like it), the best UIs around these days are built on React or similar webtech.

It may be a matter of perspective, but from where I’m standing web UIs have barely improved in the past 5-7 years. In many products they’ve gotten considerably worse. At the very least, there’s been an awful lot of tail chasing for the amount of improvement yielded.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#435

Post by rank0 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #311
rank0 wrote: post #295

Arc always interested me for the UX and design choices (especially since I'm one of those who constantly has 100s of tabs open). But the account requirement is a hard blocker for me adopting as my daily driver. Anyone know of similar projects? I recall there being a arc-inspired linux-supported project, but they refused to sign their macOS release for god knows what reason.

Have you tried Zen?

Just did! Been great so far!

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#436

Post by foobarchu »

wpm wrote: post #415
foobarchu wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, isn't this the insight that led to both ChromeOS and FirefoxOS?

How many actual regular every day people are using either? ChromeOS's big market is "tired and underfunded K-12 IT/Library/HVAC admin who just doesn't give a fuck give the kids a chromebook so I can go do something else", it's not exactly making waves among the general populace.

In my experience, very few. FirefoxOS failed hard, and anyone who uses ChromeOS quickly becomes acquainted with the limitations of the approach.

I mainly brought them up in a "we've tried this before" sense.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#437

Post by tombert »

neutronicus wrote: post #272
Pfhortune wrote: post #236

It has been so tragic to see the unforced downfall of this company. Arc is such an amazing browser that really did some new and interesting things. They clearly have some phenomenal talent on the team, having managed to get their swift-centric development working on _Windows_. That's a huge and difficult undertaking! And they threw it away to work on (probably) the CEO's new fixation and threw Arc away like an old to…

> Nobody wants to use an Atlassian browser. False. On my work machine, I would grasp at any straw that promised to make JIRA less annoying.

I hate Jira like all good people, though in fairness I haven't really found a replacement for it that I actually liked.

The closest I've used was Pivotal Tracker, which I believe is dead now, but I still remember finding stuff annoying about it (though drawing a blank on those facts right now). I wonder if dedicated ticket management stuff at scale is just inherently going to be annoying.

I use Obsidian with the Tasks plugin as a Jira-lite, and for whatever reason it doesn't bother me. I think it's because I can tune it however I want without a bunch of menus and write my own arbitrary queries, but I also think part of the appeal is that the tasks can be part of my notes, instead of a separate application (which is why I couldn't stick with OmniFocus).

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#438

Post by knr2345 »

amykhar wrote: post #129
al_borland wrote: post #58

I lost all faith in The Browser Company when they went into a maintenance-only mode with Arc to shift to Dia, without any real announcement. Just a reply to a Twitter post calling them out. They figured no one would notice. I think they eventually addressed it after some public pressure, but I don’t think they sold the decision well. AI seems like a feature to add to existing browsers, not something that needs its ow…

I also hated that they were trying to make it a free tool, which would mean selling user data to make money, and would require growth at all costs. These days, I'm trying to migrate to paid tools. I would much rather work with a slower growing company that has a real business model other than grow and sell out.

I share your sentiment but still can’t imagine adding a browser-specific AI subscription alongside my current GPT or Claude sub.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#439

Post by presentation »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #102
nerdjon wrote: post #8

What is with this need for a single application to do so many different tasks instead of just being focused on doing its job and doing it well (browsing the web in this case). I just don't understand how they can with a straight face say "Today’s browsers weren’t built for work." when their entire business relies on browsers ability to do exactly that and have basically been fine (heavy javascript usage in Jira aside…

I’d like to ask the same thing. The main things I want from my browser are for it to be a good browser . Fast and secure with excellent tab and bookmark management capabilities. Anything else except maybe ad blocking is extraneous. I understand that a lot of people live in their browsers, but for web apps I’d rather split them out into “installed” PWAs and have them benefit from system app/window management facilitie…

Are you paying for your browser?

There’s your answer.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#440

Post by chillfox »

al_borland wrote: post #399
crowcroft wrote: post #173

The strategic insight behind Arc was perfect – your browser IS the Operating System, and so we should build a browser that can function as that platform. Arc had pretty good market validation with early adopters, they say that growth was flattened out but IMO that's normal for most products, and it's up to the company to find out WHY growth flattened and then solve that problem. Not kill the product and chase some en…

This wasn't a new insight by Arc. ChromeOS exists. Palm's WebOS was a thing. Even Apple pitched rich web apps as the avenue for 3rd party developers to make things for the original iPhone, they were just a bit too early. There is even Electron, for web apps to run as desktop apps on all major operating systems. Most browsers can also turn any website into a self-contained web app that lives along side other local app…

Doesn't help that it didn't run on Linux (where a lot of people are willing to check out new tech), I kept checking in on it a few times a year, but it was never available. I have gotten people to use Firefox and Chrome in the past, but I did not push Arc to anyone as I could not use it myself.
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