Hello friends! Welcome to Installer #43, your guide to the best a Country– the best thing in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and you can also read all the old issues at Installer home page.)
This week I read about memes and telepathy and John Lennon’s wristwatchtracking Presumed Innocent and Ren Faire, testing Genspark for searching for AI things, redoing the home screen with Dumbifyand experimenting with overnight oats in an attempt to make mornings less messy. (Peanut butter turns out to make everything 20 percent better.)
I also have a new tech podcast, some nifty new gadgets, a new calendar app, a game to occupy your weekend, and much more. Let’s get down to it.
(As always the best part Installer are your ideas and tips. What are you doing right now? What cool apps/books/podcasts/shows/games/recipes/whatever else have you discovered and loved recently? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it Installertell them to subscribe here.)
Decrease
- Asus VivoBook S 15. Copilot Plus computers are coming. It’s been a strange rollout, what with all the recall complications, but we’re starting to see what this new era of Qualcomm-powered Windows devices can do. I’m pretty optimistic so far, but I’m still waiting to see how the new Surfaces do.
- Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree. The overall feel of this huge new DLC is pretty much “it’s Elden Ring, but more”. Considering how deep and big this game already was, and how many hours we’ve all already put into it, that’s pretty much all you could ask for.
- Pissing out Cancer. If all of the Dropout Presents stand-up specials are as funny as this one from Hank Green, we’re in for a lot of new comedy. Green here is as funny and goofy as ever and extremely Hank Green-y. It’s an hour you won’t regret.
- Xreal Beam Pro. Such a fun and different take on how smart glasses should work: instead of trying to bake everything into the glasses themselves, Xreal pulls all the smarts and software into a separate, relatively inexpensive smartphone-style device. I’m excited to test it out.
- Backfired: The Vaping Wars. The Juul story may forever be one of the strangest things to ever happen in Silicon Valley. This podcast goes deep into that story, along with the confusing societal debate about vaping, the government’s efforts to keep up, and where things are going from here.
- Arc for iPad. Still my favorite browser, finally available on almost all my devices. (Android when, Arc people!?!) The app isn’t exactly iPad-optimized—it’s missing some keyboard shortcuts, and it’s really just a bloated version of the iPhone app—but it syncs and works well, and I’ll totally take it.
- Amie for Windows. Big week for cross-platform apps! Amie is one of my favorite calendar/to-do apps and has gotten a lot more polished over the past few months. If you’re the all-in-one productivity type and appreciate some gorgeous design, go for it.
- Logitech Keys-to-Go 2. I’ve had the original Keys-To-Go in my bag for a few years as a super light and handy way to do things with my phone or iPad. It feels like a huge upgrade: still light, still small, but with a more convenient set of keys. $80 is a lot, but I suspect I’ll end up buying one.
- A sense of rebellion. An amazingly well-crafted and deeply reported podcast about several decades-old ideas about AI and how we might use and live with the technology. A story about hippies and capitalists and government and big business is a kind of technology story all wrapped up in 10 episodes. I like this one so far.
- Clipbud. A clipboard history is all well and good, but having a place with all the text you write frequently—your delivery address, stock email replies, important links, and all—is life-changing. Built-in text replacement and personal dictionary features (on iOS and Android, respectively) do a lot, and apps like excerpt they are mega powerful but this new one is quite pleasant to use.
Screen sharing
I think Nick Quah he introduced me to more great podcasts than any other person in the world. Even in the early days Hot Pod or in his Speed 1.5x newsletter via on Vulture (The Vergesister site here at Vox Media), he seems to have been listening to all the shows all the time. Just this week he wrote a fun story about how chat podcasts have taken over and named some of the biggest names in New Radio.
I asked Nick to share his splash screen because a) I was wondering what podcast app he was using and b) I was hoping he might recommend a new show or two. I got my wish on both counts! Here’s Nick’s home screen plus some information about the apps he uses and why:
Phone: I recently upgraded from my trusty old iPhone 12 to the iPhone 15. It seems to be doing well so far; I am no longer stressed about losing juice on long flights.
wallpaper: My sweet, sweet baby boy Siobhan (aka Shooby).
Application: Calendar, Photos, Clock, Weather, Google Maps, Tasks, Google Calendar, Gmail, Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, Steam, Delta, Strava, Discord, Slack, Stocks, LastPass, Messages, Phone, Firefox, Pocket Casts.
Yeah, well, as you can see, I’m pretty vanilla for the most part. All of the instant apps are things that I hit with some frequency on a given day. Google Maps for navigation (and tracking). To Do to clear my brain. TikTok and Instagram for something to do in the bathroom. I play a lot more these days, so I’m always looking for deals on Steam. Food because somehow I became a big runner. I’ve also been hitting Delta quite a bit, going through a backlog of old JRPGs. And of course, Pocket Casts, which is my favorite destination for podcast listening.
I also asked Nick to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I’m a big rewatcher/re-player of things, and for whatever reason, summer is usually when I pick up my annual visits. I’m working my way through it right now Stop and fire for the sixth time. God, that show is so beautiful. It’s the 10 year anniversary, you know?
- Like the rest of the universe at this point, I seem to be digging Chappell Roan. “Red Wine Supernova,” very good.
- I’m slowly making my way through Season of the Witch: Enchantment, terror and deliverance in the city of lovea history of San Francisco by David Talbot in 2013. I find it quite remarkable.
- Catching up on episodes of My perfect consoleSimon Parkin’s excellent interview “Disert Island Discs, but for Video Games” shows that the medium is indeed doubling down on the fun historical record.
Crowdsourced
Here’s what Installer community is in this week. I also want to know what you are doing right now! By email installer@theverge.com or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here each week. For even more recommendations than can fit here, check out the answers to this thread post.
“This little camera. I was wondering how to justify it because it’s so cute, but the photos are surprisingly decent too.” – Daultone
“Check The same. It is the Nostr server that makes the Mastodon API available to its clients. So we promise you will be able to use your very nice Mastodon (Ivory, Ice Cubes) app and add Nostr connection to it. It would be like another server in the same app where your main Mastodon account is.” – Adnan
“I slowly got back into watching Pokemon cards and I was addicted to watching. TheBulbStore On Youtube. It’s very interesting to see the supplier’s perspective and the prices that some cards are now going for!” – Petr
“The Hawthorne & Horowitz Mysteries by Anthony Horowitz. He recently released a fifth series, Near death. They all have tortured puns as names (in this case “close” is the British word for an enclosed area). Furthermore, the books are metafictions in which Horowitz himself is the main character, talking about how he writes the series of murder mysteries you’re reading. Still, these are some of the best contemporary murder mysteries I’ve read, and they do a great job paying homage to Agatha Christie, all while playing with the genre. – Kendrick
“I play and watch chess! Chess is cool now! Lots of cool ways to play though Chess.com is probably best for beginners. And there is great chess content on YouTube from Eric Rosen, Irina Krushova, Left Rozmanand Hikaru Nakamura. I am getting better so that one day I can teach my three-year-old niece to be a champion.” – Ryan
“I really enjoy it”Jet Lag: The Game” On youtube. Imagine amazing race but actually good and not written. The hosts are nice and the game has a decent level of complexity behind it. They are about to finish their Aussie season and it has been a nail-biter for them.” – Dev
“I’m just reading Hell Divers II: Ghosts by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi about halo jumpers who dive into radioactive wastelands to scavenge for supplies of mutated monsters, and yes, it’s as good as it sounds.” – Jesse
“I was obsessed with my new one. Klydoclock, a digital take on classic analog clocks. It features changing artist-arranged faces and can even tick and chime on the hour if you wish. Best of all: it has no additional features and is not connected to an app or phone. Minimalism and elegance in all their beauty.” – Jonathan
“I truly believe that a home server or NAS is useful and readily available to more people than they currently have. More people should have their own Plex server, Pi-hole, self-service cloud storage, Minecraft serveror self-hosted VPN. An old computer is all you need if you want to keep it simple. And if you don’t mind learning Linux, you can even use an old Android phone or a cheap Raspberry Pi clone.” – Voltaire
Logging out
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I absolutely can’t get enough of watching/listening/reading about how people who are great at their thing do their thing. (Musician Kygo has a line making videos that’s always the first example I think of in the genre.) One of my recent favorites is this video, with Zane Lowe interviewing Finneas and Billie Eilish about the making of Eilish’s latest album. He talks about the process, fear, microphones, editing and much more. I’ll almost certainly never make an album, make a movie, or make it in the NBA, but hearing people do it never gets old.