Ironic that I wasn't familiar with this company or their products before today, and having read about both Arc and Dia, including reading this blog post you've linked, the product that makes me want to try it is the one they've stopped developing...
It's still worth trying and using. The developers consider it a "finished product" and I don't disagree. It does lots of small things well* that many browsers (even the self-confessed clones like Zen) don't do out of the box, if at all. Maybe in two years the browser will no longer be distributed or receive Chromium updates, but it exists and works fine now.
* For example, I get a lot of value from renaming my tabs and even replacing their favicons with emojis of my choice. Zen appears to have limited support for this.
Damn, I really appreciate the decision to do this in a new product. Arc is the best browser I've ever used, and I'd hate to see AI features forced upon me. Thanks Browser Company!
I agree. I think Arc was the biggest innovation in browser UI since Chrome.
I think you will eventually have to switch because it will lack behind given that it's not their priority anymore. Zen browser seems like viable alternative but I haven't used it enough yet to know how well polished it is.
It is impressive what a single person with a vision can achieve hacking away on Firefox, especially considering Mozilla's track record in recent years.
A bus factor of 1 is still a bit red flag on something as involved as browser maintenance. Hopefully a community can emerge around the project.
Yeah, this is the unfortunate part about products kept alive in maintenance mode in a rapidly evolving space.
I guess you could argue (as TBC did) it’s actually not rapidly evolving, and that gives it staying power. But eventually someone will reach parity and eventually eclipse the original product.
Hopefully Zen does that. I’m just tired of moving the same data to the effectively the same product run by a different team for no good reason.
This was their blog post back in May
https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...
Ironic that I wasn't familiar with this company or their products before today, and having read about both Arc and Dia, including reading this blog post you've linked, the product that makes me want to try it is the one they've stopped developing...
It's still worth trying and using. The developers consider it a "finished product" and I don't disagree. It does lots of small things well* that many browsers (even the self-confessed clones like Zen) don't do out of the box, if at all. Maybe in two years the browser will no longer be distributed or receive Chromium updates, but it exists and works fine now.
* For example, I get a lot of value from renaming my tabs and even replacing their favicons with emojis of my choice. Zen appears to have limited support for this.
Thanks, I will do
It was popular but had no real route to profitability. Hence the acquisition.
It was put on maintenance mode with minimal security updates to favour the development of their newer product Dia (AI browser).
Damn, I really appreciate the decision to do this in a new product. Arc is the best browser I've ever used, and I'd hate to see AI features forced upon me. Thanks Browser Company!
I agree. I think Arc was the biggest innovation in browser UI since Chrome.
I think you will eventually have to switch because it will lack behind given that it's not their priority anymore. Zen browser seems like viable alternative but I haven't used it enough yet to know how well polished it is.
https://zen-browser.app
This video seems informational, and goes over a lot of other new browser projects too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxhVA5NVQ4
It is impressive what a single person with a vision can achieve hacking away on Firefox, especially considering Mozilla's track record in recent years.
A bus factor of 1 is still a bit red flag on something as involved as browser maintenance. Hopefully a community can emerge around the project.
ref: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/graphs/contributors
Yeah, this is the unfortunate part about products kept alive in maintenance mode in a rapidly evolving space.
I guess you could argue (as TBC did) it’s actually not rapidly evolving, and that gives it staying power. But eventually someone will reach parity and eventually eclipse the original product.
Hopefully Zen does that. I’m just tired of moving the same data to the effectively the same product run by a different team for no good reason.
Yeah my plan is definitely to move to zen in the long run, it's mostly migrating workspaces and so on that hold me back
I mean, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, they did abandon the product, so you’ll have to switch anyway in time.