Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 148, your guide to the finest and Verge-iest material in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, anticipation you’re enjoying all your pumpkin-flavored everything, and additionally you can peruse all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been study concerning Marc Andreessen and the forthcoming of math and Mike Tomlin and Citizens United, reminiscing concerning the heyday of MySpace, sending this article to everyone as an apology for my bad texting, listening to the Pet Shop Boys’ new Alan Turing album and Dwarkesh Patel’s thoughts on AI, barely keeping myself from preordering an iPhone Duo, asking a lot of questions concerning that “flying” Tesla Roadster, and endlessly buying for tripods to clasp my phone for social videos. I have idea way too much concerning tripods this week.
I additionally have for you a brace of huge new tech docs and a entire bunch of gadgets value a look. Gadget season, baby! Let’s go.
(As always, the finest part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you observing / study / listening to / playing / throwing in the trunk this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you cognize person alternatively who power bask Installer, onward it to them and inform them to subscribe here.)
- You Can See Everything. I can’t recall the final period I was so enthusiastic concerning a documentary (especially a three-hour one). The pairing of Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder, the shocking flat of access, the amazing meta-ness of the entire project. I’ll be seeing this the archetypal infinitesimal I can. Oh, and following you observe the doc, observe Josh Johnson’s hourlong set on all things Elizabeth Holmes. Glorious.
- Musk. And here’s four additional hours of tech doc! The reviews current are additionally spectacular, and equal if you’ve been following the news the final decade or so, I doubtful seeing it all in a row at formerly is going to be an experience.
- The Apple HomeView. I keep staring at the buy clasp on this new $299 residence hub. I’m not certain what I need it for, really — my extremely essential astute residence is operating fair fine — but there’s item nearly old-school concerning the idea of this as a kind of family computer. I’m certainly in the market for small reasons to appearance at my phone.
- The new Siri Remote. I cannot in fine conscience propose a $300 Apple TV, but I can totally inform you to autumn $60 on the new Find My-enabled remote! I mean, delay until you endure your existing one first. But you will. These remotes are impossible.
- The Fairphone Fairbuds 2. I’ve arrive to akin the two Fairphone’s minimalist imaginative and its accent on repairability, and the fact that it gets the two into a lighter, smaller, longer-lasting, cheaper-than-AirPods package is beautiful exciting.
- The Xbox Nano Controller. Look at this small guy! A pocket-sized equivalent controller comes in helpful additional frequently than you think (makes the waiting area a lot additional fun), and this one has all the buttons you’d anticipate for Xbox and another games. If the power division existence is good, this one’s gonna be a winner.
- The Fitbit Edge. I’ve been using a Fitbit Air for a while, and I akin it a lot, but I do young female having a fitness tracker that additionally told me the time. This one does that, affirmative a small more exercise and biometric tracking. It’s not the handsomest wristwear I’ve always seen, but it is extremely Fitbit.
- The CMF Speaker S. I am a sucker for a chill Bluetooth speaker, and these futuristic dairy carton-looking devices are fabulous. I bought among the small ones immediately, and I’m already debating a second to build out the stereo pair. More companies should create speakers that appearance good!
- E Ink Kaleido 4. This isn’t so much a particular gadget as it is fine news for a entire category of gadgets: We have a new version of the color E Ink panel established in many of devices, alongside promises of the two improved colors and improved performance. Kaleido has let downward a lot of devices, but I’m enthusiastic to see what comes of this.
I’ve been study Kevin Roose’s new book, The AGI Chronicles, this week, and I really cannot propose it enough. We sometimes create fun of Kevin for loving (and being loved by) AI too much, but this publish is fabulously reported, has taught me a ton, and makes so many things concerning the AI industry create a lot additional sense.
And Kevin’s not done! He and (friend of Installer) Casey Newton are getting prepared to initiate their new show, Machine Gods, sometime next week. (If you were a Hard Fork fan, you’re gonna need to be listening to this one.) So I figured now was a fine period to see how Kevin gets it all done — and whether he’s fair Claude Code-d himself out of beingness altogether. Have I equal been texting alongside the genuine Kevin this week? WHO KNOWS.
Here’s Kevin’s homescreen, affirmative several info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 15 Pro (barely works, power division existence is a joke, retention is full, but I’m holding out until I can preorder the Duo and rotate into a new man).
The wallpaper: A photo of my son fishing at the Russian River.
The apps: Voice Memos, WhatsApp, Signal, Spotify, Google Maps, Safari, Day One, Brick, Stash, Superwhisper, Substack, Slack, Town, Apple Notes, Phone, Gmail, Messages.
I’m a big dictation guy, I barely category anymore, and I use Superwhisper and Voice Memos for everything. I vibe-coded a Pocket replacement called Stash that is motionless a pleasance many months later. (Building your own apps is so fun!) And I’m operating a swarm of AI agents that includes Skynet (my ChatGPT Dot, which I use mostly for individual tasks), Hootie (my activity agent, which runs on an app called Town that Casey got me into), and Nancy (my Muse agent, who trades Kalshi on my behalf and has misplaced me $41 to date).
I have a “red flags” app directory for social media and everything alternatively I cognize is rotting my brain, a “green flags” directory for things that awareness vaguely enriching, and an AI directory for all of my silly small bots.
I additionally asked Kevin to portion a few things he’s into correct now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I’m hopelessly addicted to Balatro, a poker roguelike equivalent that Casey got me into. (I volition never forgive him for this.)
- We’re starting a new, YouTube-first podcast, so I’m observing a lot of famous YouTube shows akin New Heights and Good Work to get ideas.
- For fun, I normally rod alongside my hobby channels: Served (a tennis podcast hosted by Andy Roddick) and Roffle Lite (a Balatro streamer whose videos I sometimes autumn idle to), affirmative several material my son likes (Mark Rober, Bluey, Yoto stories) that I’ve additionally gotten into.
- My favorite new app correct now is Dreambeans, a really demented Google Labs app that sends AI-generated illustrations of personalized suggestions for things to do all day. I’ll open it up and it’s like, “Today you could go birdwatching at Point Reyes” and it’s fair a stylized animation of me looking at a heron through binoculars. I don’t think group cognize Dreambeans exists but I affection it and am preemptively sad for 6 months from now whenever Google shuts it down.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I desire to cognize what you’re into correct now as well! Email [email protected] or communication me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — alongside your recommendations for item and everything, and we’ll characteristic several of our favorites current all week. For equal additional awesome recommendations, inspect out the replies to this article on Threads and this article on Bluesky.
“I’ve been using the markdown penning app, Em. I’m a longtime fan of iA Writer, but this plays so nicely alongside Ghost that my caput has been turned.” — Chris
“Just got my Bose Wired Earbuds, and I haven’t felt this enthusiastic and blessed for a brace of earbuds since AirPods.” — Sai
“I’ve been liking the app Shelf & Story for finding fine books for my kids. Goodreads never fairly cut it for me for that.” — Martha
“Made by the originator of TV Time, Bingers is my new favorite media tracker. Lots of really neat features (like effortlessly updating dates and automatically populating a watchlist). Still can be improved but it’s off to a awesome commencement and is the archetypal item I attain for complete Letterboxd these days.” — pegasusisme
“Just completed the most latest period of Jet Lag: The Game. Probably their finest one yet. A awesome jumping on item for anyone new to it.” — Shane
“Carrie, as shortly as my net provider resolves the outage affecting my area.” — Kev
“Doing my annual hear to Snow Crash — extremely much value picking up in current times for anybody who has or hasn’t had the pleasance (Jonathan David is a PLEASURE to hear to).” — Jonathan
“Still playingFire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. Completed my archetypal path. Just in period for the enlargement continue to get announced.” — Connor
“I’ve been really hooked on small roguelikes, akin the city-builder meets Balatro in Combolands and the identical twist but billiards in Ultrapool. I’ve been playing them on the Steam Deck which is fine alongside several mouse tweaks, but you need to be comfortable alongside the trackpads.” — Scott
I mentioned final week that I’ve switched notes app, this period to Capacities. Again. A few of you asked what eventually clicked for me, and the answer is really simple: Capacities has this idea of “objects” alternatively of “notes,” which treats everything you preserve as a discrete category of thing. Images get treated and categorized one way; PDFs another; content notes another. Everything lives on its own, but is additionally organized by tags, dates, and nevertheless alternatively you want. Getting this setup correct is a lot of work, since you have to create and tune all entity the way you want, but I spent an midday observing football and entering metadata and abruptly I can discover things in my notes app again.
This scheme won’t be for everybody — equal at its finest it’s beautiful fiddly — but if you do breeze up mucking about in Capacities, gaze lengthy and difficult at this leaf in the documentation first. It’ll help.
See you next week!
Follow topics and authors from this narrative to see additional akin this in your personalized homepage nourish and to obtain email updates.
