Well, yeah, that's the point. I'm giving feedback about my own experiences as a user, based on what I've come to expect from other browsers. I think the key thing to note, based on this thread, is that I'm not alone.
we want Orion to feel as a native app
And it does an amazing job of that, truly! That said, I use Orion precisely because it's not Safari, a browser I've tried to like many times, invariably to come to the conclusion that Safari feels like a browser designed by a team that would much rather have you install an app from the App Store than use a web app.
I have no data to back this up, but I think it's fair to guess that the kinds of people that try out (and evangelize) less-known browsers belong to the class of 'power users'. It strikes me as an odd strategy to take design cues from a browser that offers little to such users.
I'm a software engineer with plenty of experience in search, ranking, fuzzy matching algos, and the like. I'd be happy to brainstorm.
Actionable solutions might be:
- Making the order of autocomplete suggestions (in settings > search > autocomplete suggestions) configurable by drag-and-dropping items in the desired order.
- Subjecting Top Hits to a filtering step based on a user-configurable list of excluded websites.