Yep! And you already identified it: comparing apples to oranges.
Those other apps aren’t recording real-time continuous location data. They mostly rely on what’s called the “significant location change” service. That service starts up the app every time your position has changed some “significant” distance, which could be hundreds of metres or even kilometres. Then the app goes back to being suspended.
That results in something that is potentially useful for recording visits, but not for recording the trips between them. Arc is an app that’s designed for continuous all day timelines, including full detail on trips between places. Sometimes the distinction between these two kinds of apps sounds subtle, but on a technical level it makes them completely different things.
Any app that can continue to function correctly if it’s swiped closed or terminated by iOS is of the other kind, not the same kind of app as Arc. And if those apps tried to do what Arc does - recording trips between visits in full detail - they’d also have to be left running in the background, never swiped closed.
Those apps are likely spending 99% of their time “suspended” in the background. iOS wakes the app up for each “significant location change”, the app records that, then the app is suspended again. The end result is path lines that have points hundreds of metres apart. And in principle that means they’re basically already shut down almost all the time.
Anyway, I strongly recommend jumping on the Arc Editor beta: Arc Editor public beta 15
The new Arc Editor app is a ground up rewrite, using all the latest technologies and techniques. While old Arc Timeline app is a decade of code, built for a decade of changing technologies and systems.
That means that Arc Editor is faster, more reliable, records better data. It’s also less likely to be terminated by iOS, as a result of those improvements. It can run for days or weeks at a time without being terminated. That means that the Arc Recorder companion app is less necessary.
I’ll still eventually be changing Arc Recorder to act as a backup for the new app. But for now it’s not a high priority, because iOS is much kinder to the new app.