Devin Jeffery

Who knows where this industry is headed? All I know is it feels amazing to get out of my usual design tools and actually prototype real iOS apps on my phone. I can build those wild interactions I used to just admire on awwwards.com. I don’t have to just imagine things anymore. I can make them.

If I wasn’t having so much fun, I’d probably be more worried about the future of design. But for now, I’m just messing around and loving it.

It’s hard to explain exactly why this browser works so well for my chaotic brain, but it just does. After giving it a shot as my main squeeze for a couple weeks I realized I had way fewer tabs open, way fewer rogue windows, and my pinned favorites worked SO well for things like email and my calendar.

I became a fan pretty quickly, getting a little too excited to nerd out about it when I would see a colleague using it while screensharing. Surprisingly, their release notes are the thing that transformed me into a super fan.

Release notes have never, ever, ever, come close to piquing my interest in the past. They usually feel like an afterthought, left purposely vague… “We fixed some bugs and improved performance.”

The Browser Company does it differently. They let use get a peek behind the curtain. Not only do they let us know what they’ve changed, but they even show internal Slack threads to let you see why they made decisions. They call the engineers and designers out by name for each feature. Not to mention, they are constantly pushing out meaningful updates that make an actual difference for users.

This transparency and active effort to humanize their company has me invested. It’s not just another soulless browser, it’s a group of passionate and talented people that are invested in making my life easier. More of this plz.

Lately I’ve been missing the early days of the internet. MySpace, AIM, super niche and passion driven forums. It could be nostalgia kicking in since I was just 13 when I was getting access to this amazing new connected world, but I think it’s something deeper. I think I’m missing a feeling of authenticity.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit all brought incredible innovation to the world, but over time I also think they changed our relationship with the internet and our motivation to be online. It started to turn from authentic connections and interests to dopamine hits and monetizing attention. In the same way that Walmart affected local Main Street shops, Reddit took on the majority of the inten.

MySpace hits in a different way for me because it really felt like an easy way for everyone to have their own little corner of the internet. Tom let us personalize our profiles to our hearts desire and even tricked us into learning a bit of code. It still had that magic of the early internet where anything felt possible.

It’s hard to imagine how many more of these platforms will come and go in my lifetime. I’m already the proud owner of 7+ profiles that are basically abandoned at this point because I never know what to post on which platform.

I mean, look at all of these profiles. They stress me out. I need to figure out what to post on each one? And they’re all sort of the same but sort of different? And there’s a chance everything I post on one might get lost forever if the company goes under?

This might end up being a failed experiment, but my website is my main profile now. I’m claiming my own weird little corner of the internet back.