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.
Everything but the UI is open-source Chromium so the main risk is just telemetry.
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.
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.
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.
[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)
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 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.
Also no idea what you are talking about with Zen's "Mozilla underpinning sabotaging the experience".
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'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.
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.
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.
A decent fzf style history search runnable from the top bar might encourage me to close more tabs.
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.
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?