Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 150, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy Halloween, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I was in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee on a family vacation. It was delightful (and the reason this week’s Installer is a little short). I’ve also been reading about job hunting and 30 Rock and crypto detectives, testing the DuckDuckGo browser after a bunch of you told me to add it to the list, watching the adorable new Pixar short over and over, getting caught up on VisionQuest, playing with my new Pebble Index 01 now that it finally arrived, listening to music on my rad-looking new CMF Speaker S, and eating a worrying number of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.
I also have for you some new gear from Apple and Amazon, a better way to read books on your phone, a resurrected note-taking app, an absurdly expensive robovac, and much more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / listening to / playing / giving to trick-or-treaters 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.)
- The new iPad Mini. With apologies to the touchscreen iMac, this is the most intriguing new Apple product of the week. I, too, am annoyed that there’s no ProMotion screen, but I’m excited about thinner and lighter, and I’m very excited about the idea of a functionally water- and dustproof tablet.
- The Alexa Photo Frame. The Echo Show 16 is a cool smart home hub, but $500 is just too much for me. But a $200 digital photo frame that is also, sometimes, only when you need it, a smart home hub and timer-setter? That will end up in my living room. And my parents’. And my in-laws’.
- nvAlt. One of the all-time great note-taking apps got its first update in forever, and now it can run on modern Macs. (The developer is also working on nvUltra, which is in beta and even better.) If you’re a plain-text notetaker, you’re gonna want to get back into this app.
- Chromagraph. The director Rian Johnson — yes, that one — worked with his favorite cinematographer to make it possible to process iPhone photos the way they like best. An extremely opinionated camera app from people who have very much earned those opinions. I love it.
- “I love the iPod. It ruined everything.” This Mic The Snare video is both a very good history of the iPod and a surprisingly cogent theory that the iPod is to blame for some of the worst things about modern life. I still miss my gold iPod Mini.
- Readwise Books. A really nice-looking, really powerful app for buying, reading, and tracking your books. Right now it’s a little bit “better Kindle” and a lot “better Goodreads.” So far I’m mostly using the social feed to get recommendations from strangers, which suits me just fine. This went right onto my Boox Palma homescreen.
- Phantom Blade Zero. Currently burning up the Steam charts, this one. People love the martial arts-inspired combat system and the game’s overall aesthetic, and I’m even hearing good things about the music.
- No Man’s Sky. This is definitely one of the biggest and most ambitious games to ever come to iOS (and all it took was a decade!). It works on pretty much all recent iPhones and iPads, too. Just don’t be fooled by the Free sign at the top; the game costs $20. But it’s worth it.
- The Matic Serene. Two things here. One, $1,700 is an absolutely ludicrous price for a robot vacuum, no matter how good it is. Two, “we made it quieter” is maybe the quickest way to get me in particular to want your robot vacuum. Please, friends, do not let me buy this.
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.
“Currently watching: VisionQuest. It’s quite good! James Spader has really stolen the show, but I am a little biased as a huge Blacklist fan.” — Spencer
“I’m using CallMe to coordinate when my friends and I call each other. You can tap ‘I’m free for the next 15/30/60 minutes’ and your friends will get a notification. When you’re both free you can call each other (outside of the app). Makes it easy to reconnect.” — Jordan
“I’ve been spending the last few days working on my Top 10 for WXPN’s annual Top 885. This year is ‘Top 885 Songs from Movies and TV,’ and it’s especially challenging.” — Ben
“The one game that I play religiously is Clues By Sam, a daily logic puzzle game where speed and accuracy is the goal. Because everyone starts at the same spot, your time is your score, and it’s very fun competing with friends every day. Puzzles range from easy (~2 minutes) on Mondays to Brutal (up to ~15 minutes) on Sundays. Would 100% recommend adding it to your daily rotation.” — Adam
“Maybe niche, but Steam Frame and trying out older 3D media on it that flopped or became obsolete. Stereoscopic 3DS games and 3D movies work better than they ever did on original hardware, on devices with a dedicated individual display for each eye.” — Mango
“I am sooo into the Vivaldi browser now, with the look and feel, and all the customisations! 😍” — Oscar
“Spending some more time learning about the AT Protocol for a class project. The tech is neat. Fell down the rabbit hole of mental poker cryptography.” — James
“The YouTube channel Digging the Greats by Brandon Shaw is fantastic for music lovers like myself. He deeply analyzes albums and songs in long-form videos, from Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. I also recently finished two of a four-part video series: one where he only listened to music on an iPod for a month, and another where he explored the history of cassettes and mixtapes. I highly recommend checking out his channel if you love music!” — Josh
“The Dark Matter finale is this week.” — Steve
“I used Firefox for a long time but really don’t like their stance on AI and all the junk they keep adding (VPN, for instance). So I went to Librewolf, which is a Firefox fork that strips out all of the telemetry and AI and also pre-configures a bunch of hardening. I’ve encountered no problems whatsoever with any websites or streaming content.” — Nicholas
Back in the day, before I worked in the basement and actually left my house on occasion, I had a real weakness for laptop bags. Even now, I have absolutely no need for a new one, but after watching Byron Seven’s video about designing a laptop sleeve / desk organizer / backpack thing, I desperately want the one he made. Even if you don’t want the product, watch the video — it’s a cool look into product design and just a fabulously made video about a bag.