Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 138, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy August, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about microwave sounds and Meta glasses and Alex vs. Alix, testing the Logitech Alto Keys K98M to see if I’m ready for the mechanical keyboard life, digging into the history of the first chatbot, clearing space on my desk for a Bob Ross deskmat, doing a full Ted Lasso rewatch ahead of the new season next week, finally getting into Cyberpunk 2077 now that it’s so cheap, cackling and nodding at this Adobe hate post, and upgrading my home camera setup with the truly enormous Elgato Prompter XL.
Also, I have some personal news: I’m having a baby! (If your response to this is, Didn’t you just have like 37 other babies, yes, yes I did. Pray for me.) I’m planning to be out from about mid-August to the beginning of October, but I’m also in could-happen-anytime land now. So if I’m suddenly gone, that’s why! Just like last year, my colleague Jay Peters will be taking over Installer while I’m out, and just like last year, he’s going to be great.
But for now, I’m still here! I also have for you a new superhero movie, a new take on an old game, some great Musk-related comedy, and much more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / putting in a blender this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Tom Holland Spidey era just never seems to miss. It’s pretty impressive to pull off a more or less full story reboot while keeping all the same actors and characters, but by all accounts this one pulls it off. Since I still can’t get IMAX Odyssey tickets, this one’s at the top of my to-watch list.
- Pastebot 3. Missed this one last week! Great clipboard managers are right up there with launchers and text expanders in the “how did I ever use a computer without this” category, and Pastebot is one of the Mac’s best. The new version has smart organization options, support for all kinds of media, and much more. The kind of app you’ll find new uses for… forever.
- President Curtis. I was going to describe this as “basically a Rick and Morty spinoff” before I realized it’s actually a Rick and Morty spinoff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people seem to either love it or hate it. I think most of us would agree R&M is not what it once was, but the idea of throwing all its chaotic energy into the US government does pay off at least a few times. And it’s not not political commentary, you know?
- “Why Is So Much AI Tech Useless?” Two of my favorite people on the internet — Joanna Stern and Hasan Minhaj — go deep on where AI is, and isn’t, actually good and useful in our lives. Minhaj’s complete disbelief at all these overhyped products just gives me life.
- Halo: Campaign Evolved. Confession: I was always terrible at Halo, and I’ve always been unfairly mad at the series because of it. The new remake appears to be a mediocre game (with terrible dialogue) but great nostalgia bait, and that might be enough for a lot of people looking to get Master Chief back into their lives.
- Leafy Corner. This game exists somewhere on the spectrum between Animal Crossing and RollerCoaster Tycoon, and I mean both as a compliment. It’s a quiet, cozy game, but also something of a management sim, all in the confines of a plant shop. Adorable.
- Spotify Running Mode. I actually think Spotify’s last take on running, with adaptive tempos and generative beats, was both cooler and a more interesting take on AI. But Spotify’s prompted playlists have generally been pretty good, and I appreciate having the timing updates built in instead of having some other app constantly ducking my music to tell me I’m too slow.
- “Elon’s Epic Ego Explained.” Nobody does topical comedy like Josh Johnson, and this is my favorite of his recent sets. It’s not just 45 minutes of making fun of Musk — it’s also about The Odyssey and a bunch of other things — but it’s both ruthless and right about the world’s richest man.
- The SwitchBot Battery Circulator Fan 2 Pro. My colleague Thomas Ricker has successfully convinced me that SwitchBot’s fans are worth a look over the “whatever’s on the shelf at Target” models I’ve been buying for years. This new $120 model is quiet and powerful, charges over USB-C, and is going to live on my patio the rest of the summer.
I buried the lede here: The biggest new thing of the week, at least in my book, is Instapaper 10. Instapaper is one of the original read-later apps, and has continued to be among the best on the market. After some weird ownership stuff over the years, Instapaper has been in the hands of Brian Donohue, who has been steadily improving the service in lots of ways. This week’s launch comes with a really nice redesign, a way better web app, and a lot of helpful organization and reading tools. I’ve been testing it, and I think it’s back to being my go-to recommendation for reading apps. (For power users I still think Readwise is the move.)
With the new app out, I asked Brian to share his homescreen with us — I wanted to see how he organized his stuff, and if he might be working on even more cool stuff. Turns out he is! Here’s his homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 16 Pro. I almost always purchase iPhones every other generation. Maybe a foldable this year?
The wallpaper: My daughter, as a reminder that my apps must be good otherwise she will not have food on the table.
The apps: Safari, Google Calendar, Emerald, Google Maps, Weather, Photos, Instapaper, Kobo Books, Reddit, 1Password, Google Authenticator, Slack, Google Docs, Google Sheets, ForeFlight, Flight Circle, Claude, Linear, Phone, Sunflower, Messages, Spotify.
I’ll start with the ones not yet in the App Store: Emerald and Sunflower.
Emerald is a Markdown editor I’m working on that solves two personal pain points: native iOS / macOS client, and collaboration on markdown files. I have been a big Obsidian user the past two years, but it’s been failing me in those areas. I’ve been writing with Emerald exclusively for the past few months and it’s almost ready for beta testing. Waitlist in the link.
Sunflower is a new email client from Bobby Goodlatte and friends. It’s beautifully designed and has some tasteful AI features, like summarizing your inbox, chatting with your email, and an Autopilot feature which seems to be perpetually “Coming Soon.” I’ve been trying a few clients in the “AI email” space like Extra, and an autopilot tool called Cora, which didn’t stick.
Instapaper’s big launch this week included a new home screen widget. It fits nicely in the widget stack alongside the Apple News, Stocks, and Weather widgets.
Additionally, you have many of the usual suspects. I am doing a huge amount of my work with Claude and Linear these days, both of which have fantastic iOS apps.
I also asked Brian to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I’ve always been inspired by creative builders, and two come to mind right now. The first is Andrew Jones, who has been building free & open-source alternatives to paid software (e.g. Granola, Wispr Flow) — fingers crossed Instapaper is not next. The second is Q, a designer who has been building small, single-purpose websites for himself that I find inspiring. It almost reminds me of a purer, distant version of the Internet, where you built a bunch of Geocities pages for fun and without expectations of fame and fortune.
- Hyper Mesh. Q has been exploring image reveal animations, and built a tool to tweak presets on the initial mask and the animation that reveals the image.
- SVG Star Editor. Create a star from different settings and export to SVG.
- Chess Moves. Q is learning how to play chess with his girlfriend and made this tutorial website as a companion tool.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com 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. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“I am hopelessly hooked on the game Murdoku. It’s free online, or you can play old school through books. It’s a logic game where you solve crimes by process of elimination.” — Kurt
“I’ve been loving Paradiso for finding movie showtimes. Not only does it alert you when something on your Letterboxd watchlist is playing near you, it also beats Fandango or other apps for simply browsing first run showtimes.” — Mike
“My friend recently ordered a Galaxy Z Fold 8 and I had to introduce them to Good Lock.” — B
“I love Anker stuff and tend to choose it over everything else. But I have the Anker 3-in-1 travel charger and… this ESR one (a brand I hadn’t really heard of) is the better product in every way. The Apple Watch charger is in a better place, it’s thinner, and the cooling fan works better. I can’t vouch for long-term reliability yet, but I have one by my bedside and one in my travel bag!” — Peter
“Finally switched from a mess of read-it-later apps to a second brain with Obsidian + Claude, inspired by Karpathy’s LLM Wiki concept. Hoping this setup is the one that actually sticks…” — Kartik
“I use Readwise Reader for all my newsletters. It has unique email addresses to either add newsletters to your library or RSS feed. I love keeping all my things to read all in the same app, read later, newsletters, pdfs…” — Rich
“HIGHLY recommend the movie Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. It’s a crime and shame that Paramount isn’t putting this into more theaters, AND that the movie was leaked on X earlier this year. Amazing film with all-time stunning visuals that honestly left me angry I was watching it on TV at home. Deserves bettering than being dumped on Paramount Plus.” — Nolan
“Watching the restored version of Lawrence of Arabia. Peter O’Toole’s blue eyes are dreamy.” — SaltedPork
The coolest internet experience I had this week was scrolling through the Everything Machine, a deep and detailed breakdown of how your phone works. It’s only the first chapter of what I hope will be a very long exploration of how smartphones changed everything, and I love the way it seems to interact with your phone as you scroll. Our phones are such a “This is water” thing in our lives now, and I really enjoy anything that makes me pay a little more attention to the object, the cultural force, and the economic engine that takes up so much of my life. Highly recommend taking a scroll.
