Hello friends! Welcome to Installer #45, your guide to the best a Country– the best thing in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry, I love productivity apps so much and you can also read all the old issues at Installer home page.)
I’m back after a few days off, feeling rested and sunburned and ready to rumble. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday cards! I read this week Made for love and stories about AI players and AI musicians and EV Ferraritracking Turning pointreplacing my weather app with Lazy weather, raging at Ira Glass for listen to podcasts at 2x speedand pouring all your feelings into Dot AI bot.
I also have a new phone, a new smart ring, a new/old podcast reunion, a sci-fi show that everyone seems to love, a nice update to a great recipe app, and a wild new AI mod for you to try out. There’s a lot going on in mid-July! Let’s dig in.
(As always the best part Installer are your ideas and tips. What are you doing right now? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / eating / downloading / saving for the winter? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it Installertell them to subscribe here.)
Decrease
- CMF phone 1. A nice-looking, long-lasting Android phone for $200? With an OLED screen and interchangeable back plates and a bunch of really cool accessories, one of which is a stand? Yes. Please. In orange of course.
- Samsung Galaxy Ring. I’m still a fan of Samsung’s Fold and Flip phones, even though the new models are very much the same and even more expensive. But what I’m most excited about is the Galaxy Ring, which seems to have pretty much nailed the smart ring’s hardware — and even has some interesting ideas for gesture control.
- “The Diggnation Reunion Part 1.” If you’re a techie of a certain age, there’s a good chance you grew up watching Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht sip and make tech jokes while sitting on the couch. Watching the boys get back together was a wonderful blast from the past. AND here is the second partalso!
- Delta 1.6. Delta game emulation is on the iPad! I’m actually not sure how much I’ll use it considering how much of my retro gaming is on the iPhone with the Backbone controller. But this update with a bigger screen and support for more games at once sounds pretty cool.
- Amazon’s new Echo Spot. For me, it’s just the right balance of things for an Alexa speaker. It’s small, $45 (so far), has a touchscreen but no camera, and is just the right size for a nightstand. I keep vowing to leave my phone out of the bedroom and maybe replace it with this one.
- Sunny. A woman loses her husband but gets a robot from his tech company to help her. Strangeness ensues. Such a good premise! And by all accounts, the show continues Apple TV Plus’ streak of great sci-fi stuff. I’ll definitely make it before episode 3 drops on Wednesday.
- openvibe. Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Nostr all in one timeline in one app. This is basically a smart hack, not the connected social universe of my dreams, but it’s a pretty good hack! And I like that it basically hides what network people are using; they’re just people, in a timeline.
- Gavel. I love a good recipe app. I mostly use Crouton and Mela, but Pestle’s new ability to import recipes from Instagram Reels is pretty awesome. Just paste the link, name it, and the video becomes a bunch of ingredients and steps.
Screen sharing
A million years ago I was an intern wired, and one of the stories I helped work on was this wild thing where the writer decided to disappear completely and see if the internet could find him. The story turned out amazing and was written by Evan Ratliff, who has been one of my favorite journalists ever since. Co-founded Atavist Magazine and they did a lot of great work there, they created amazing Persona podcast, and until recently was one of the co-hosts Long form, a journalism podcast I’ve always dreamed of one day being invited to. Alas.
Now Evan has a new podcast called Shell game, in which he uses an AI clone of his voice to cause all sorts of chaos in his own life. The first episode is great, and I’m really looking forward to what’s next. I asked Evan to share his splash screen with us to see if he had any podcast tricks I could steal from him and to see how his life became an AI.
Here is Evan’s home screen and some information about the apps he uses and why:
Phone: iPhone 13 Mini.
wallpaper: The one I sent here is my cat Henry, an 18-year-old icon who was once a mini-celebrity on Vine and is the sweetest creature on earth. (They’re normally my kids, but I don’t allow their photos on the open internet.)
Application: Google Maps, Photos, Apple Notes, Slack, Settings, Clock, Phone, WhatsApp, Signal, Freedom, Google Translate, CloudBeats, Scrivener, Instapaper, Spotify, TuneIn, Libby, Gmail, Google Calendar, Messages, Brave.
My home screen rules are no social media, no news. I’m a certified news junkie, but I want it to be at least a little bit out of sight. And no Twitter app on your phone, ever. For some applications:
- Children [group]: The thing they don’t tell you about parenting in 2020 is how many school, camp, and bus apps you’re forced to get and review.
- Ships / Planes: The only AR apps I’ve ever used. I feel like a wizard just showing off Airborne radar 24 in the sky or MarineTraffic at sea to see where ships and planes are coming from and where. My father studies logistics and instilled in me a curiosity about how things get from place to place.
- CloudBeats: Essential for listening to concept podcasts while running and walking; with Shell game in production I’m on this thing sometimes for hours a day.
- Libby: Any New Yorker who doesn’t have it is missing out. You can take out eBooks and audiobooks from the library and listen to them right here!
- Instapaper: Anyone else using Instapaper? I don’t even know who owns this thing anymore. But I still read the long stuff I’ve saved.
I also asked Evan to share a few things he’s been working on. Here is what he shared:
- Moss. I made a moss garden this year and I’m into all things moss related. Websites on how to maintain it and its incredible properties, moss gurus (eg. Mossin’ Annie). Moss!
- New Charley Crockett album. Just a brilliant songwriter and singer with an incredible story. Perfect listening while walking on your moss (which you must).
- Currently revisited Braindead megaphonea collection of essays by George Saunders, parts of which are very enjoyable Shell game– relevant to me.
- My sister-in-law, who is 50 times more culturally aware than I am, turned us on to this British comic game show, Taskmaster. The perfect decompression after a day at work with your AI doppelgänger.
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 great recommendations, check out the answers to this thread post.
“I just wanted to share an app that (and this is a shock to me) no one knows about. It is called Slick Inbox. The idea is very simple: it allows you to create your own mailbox just for newsletters. I hate reading newsletters in my personal Gmail inbox and this is a very convenient solution to my problem.” – Denis
“I just binged all six episodes of Netflix Supacell. It is like Heroes but darker, set in South London, with an almost entirely black cast and created by Rapman. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year, and such a fresh show in a genre that’s pretty much monopolized by Marvel.” – Guilherme
“Currently reading The singularity is closer by Ray Kurzweil. We are lucky to see human evolution in real time.” – Matthew
“The best balls in the draft.” Underdog Fantasy. What was once a niche version of fantasy football is now a (inexplicably?) popular sports betting format where players draft an entire team in an hour or less and then compete against strangers. It’s like trying to win a March Madness bracket, but you draft a fantasy football roster.” – Noah
“Using VR Exercise Tracker app created by VR Health Institute. They use science-based VR activity measurement to help you measure your exercise in VR. Connects to Apple Watch and other Bluetooth fitness devices.” – Dan
“As a new dad, Dungeons & Daddies resonates with me in a special way. This (self-described non-BDSM) podcast brings a hilarious twist D&D, following four fathers who navigate a fantasy realm to rescue their lost sons. It made me laugh more than I have in a long time and made me cry more times. I’ve read the first series three times already (that’s over 180 hours of listening) and now I’m listening to the second series again.” – Mark
“He just bought a Boox Go 10.3 E Ink tablet and I really enjoy it. Very thin, nicely designed, no front light and writes quite well when needed. It’s meant more as a competitor to Remarkable 2 (i.e. a note-taking device), but I enjoy it for reading articles via Omnivore.” – Patrik
“I recently started reading a book called Deep work Cal Newport on the merits of spending time focusing on a task with minimal distractions. My attention span, along with many others in recent years, has been wiped out, so I picked up this book to try and repair my ability to focus deeply.” – Dave
“Apple PenLite: iPad before iPad.” I’ve been following Colin Holter’s channel for a few years now and really love his stuff, but this video is really something else for him. He interviewed several former Apple employees and I thought it was really well done. I was really young during the time period, so I don’t remember any news about this stuff, but it was so interesting to get that kind of perspective from the engineers and product managers working at Apple at the time.” – Iane
Logging out
I sincerely believe that “Each image frame” is the best YouTube series of all time. If you haven’t seen them, check them all out. (If you only watch one, watch this one about Edgar Wright. Or this one on david fincher. Or this one sound of Marvel movies. Check them all out!) So when the channel released its first video in seven years – short trailer for a new limited series and short — I immediately started refreshing the page every 10 minutes and rewatching every single thing on the channel. It’s like going to film school at warp speed and I can’t recommend it enough. Chair, you all! Chair!