Plus, in this week’s Installer: a Space Race history, an Apple TV heist flick, a Wikipedia podcast, and much more.
Plus, in this week’s Installer: a Space Race history, an Apple TV heist flick, a Wikipedia podcast, and much more.
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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 152, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, thank you for taking time away from Zelda to be here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .)
This week, I’ve been reading about school apps and AI benches and sports gambling and Megaspeed , watching the surprisingly emotional Dane Cook documentary , learning way more than I ever expected about dial-up sounds , digging out my old Xbox One since it’s apparently my best shot at playing GTA VI , seeing what I can get done with Claude Duet , and trying a bunch of third-party iPhone keyboards in the hope of voice-typing my way through everything forever.
I also have for you a great new space history performance, new apps for writers and podcast listeners, a fun podcast about Wikipedia, and much more. Let’s dig in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / warming up on the stove this week? Tell me everything: [email protected] . And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer , forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here .)
A lot of you out there in the Installerverse have become iPhone Duo users over the last few weeks, and I’ve heard a lot about how you’re all using Apple’s new foldable phone. (I’d say the sentiment in my inbox is roughly 80 percent positive, 5 percent negative, 15 percent deeply confused about interface choices.) I’ve also gotten some questions about which Duo apps are great, and how best to set yours up.
Alas, I do not have a Duo. So I turned to The Verge ’s Allison Johnson , who coauthored our review of the device and has used it as aggressively as anyone I know. I asked her to share how she’s wielding the Duo, and she sent over a truly unhinged color scheme and otherwise a bunch of very good ideas. Her’s her homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The wallpaper: It’s one of those color gradient options you can pick in iOS. I was trying to go for a minimalist thing.
The apps: NYT Games, Kindle, Headspace, Spotify, Google Maps, Safari, Messages, Mail.
So I tried the whole aspirational “dress for the homescreen you want” thing for a few days, with just a few apps like Headspace and NYT Games , and it was a miserable failure. It just made me mad every time I had to search for Messages. I added a row of essential apps to the bottom of the screen and a big calendar widget, and things have been much better.
There’s a big widget / shortcut to TypeDraw , which is a fantastic app on the Duo that makes the whole phone behave like a physical notebook. It’s great with the Apple Pencil . I also realized I need weather close by, so I added a giant widget to the left panel of the homescreen.
I also have a shortcut for the built-in lo-fi playlists on iOS, which is handy if I need to pop in earbuds and play something instrumental so I can focus real quick. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn’t discovered these yet and also gets overstimulated! They’re already on your phone!
I did nuke the dock entirely in my minimalist experiment and I’m actually fine with it. Maybe I’ll never go back to the dock again.
I also asked Allison to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email [email protected] or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“ Search , a browser developed by a small Parisian design studio of all things. I’d say they have created the classy European cousin of Arc, based on Webkit so it’s super light & responsive on Mac while also having the flexibility of Chrome extensions.” — Elliot
“Trying out Monarch to potentially break my years-long Quicken habit. So far I’m about 90% sure I’m switching.” — Bruce
“ Dungeon Crawler Carl . I recently started listening to the audiobook. It has consumed my life. I listen to it on my drive to work, I take breaks at work to listen to it, I play it throughout my day, and eventually fall asleep listening to it. It’s almost 200 hours of content and Jeff Hays does an amazing job voicing all the characters. I’m currently on book seven of eight, and not looking forward to the withdrawals as we wait for book 9. Seriously, check it out.” — William
“Brenpoly on YouTube has open-sourced his “ I built an Apple Vision Pro for $5 ” project. It’s a great watch even if you don’t dabble in 3D printing. It also shows how much potential there is for affordable VR with just the phones in our pockets and some very clever people and communities.” — Owen
“For anyone with an iPhone Duo. On the outer display, Safari keeps a column down the side for its buttons, and web pages stop short of it. I’m a Duo owner, and am now using a great Safari extension called Widen that runs pages underneath that column: ~25% more page, with text kept clear of the buttons.” — Marcus
“I took my kid to see Wildwood , the new Laika movie, this past weekend and left the theater with my jaw on the floor and dragging a few feet behind me. It is extraordinary. For me, put it up there with the all time Studio Ghibli greats. (I know, I know, but I’m serious.) In a way that no Marvel movie special effects have done, I sat at multiple times in the movie thinking, ‘I just can’t believe humans made this.’” — Stephen
“I am a browser snob, constantly flitting back and forth trying to find the one that combines speed with features with proper UX with privacy. I had begrudgingly settled on Safari for Apple and Chrome for everything else when I stumbled upon Brave Origin . It’s a little steep at a one-time purchase of $59, but it’s completely cross platform, syncs, and gets rid of all the Brave cruft. It’s just a good, minimal, fast Chromium-based browser.” — Kait
“ Queen’s Domain , a wonderful King’s Field -like game, was released this past weekend and it conjures up all those familiar FromSoftware feelings of combat and exploration! Highly recommended, it’s quite the experience.” — Kyle
“I finished Jet Lag: The Game’s Japanorama , and it is the absolute best tourism video series for Japan without trying at all to be one. It is part scavenger hunt, part race across Japan, and shows off the wonderful scenery and the beautiful public transit of the country. I learnt that Japan loves making lists (OCD folks rejoice!) and has lists of Three Views, Three Great Gardens, 100 Best Sunsets, 100 Remarkable Waters and many more.” — Utkarsh
I’m working on a story about the new era of hardware hacking, in which people are suddenly discovering they can vibe-code their way to a better TV, the e-reader of their dreams, and a million other things besides. In almost all my conversations, one thing keeps coming up: the M5Stack developer kits. This company will send you an ESP32-based device you can hack to bits, whether you’re looking for something with an E Ink display or something with a round touchscreen . I’m about to spend an alarming amount of money buying these things, and an equally alarming amount of time making Claude Code do weird stuff with them. I’m already stealing ideas from the fabulous M5Stack subreddit . If you get up to something fun while hardware hacking this weekend, tell me all about it.
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