Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 121, your guideline to the champion and Verge-iest worldly successful the world. (If you’re caller here, welcome, bully luck successful the Elite Eight, and besides you tin publication each the aged editions astatine the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reference astir Will Wright and sync music and the smartphone mentation of everything, picking up The Soul of a New Machine again aft proceeding that Tracy Kidder died, adding SNL UK to my play YouTube clip rotation, watching each my favourite things collide erstwhile Hilary Duff went connected Hot Ones, moving each my euphony into Parachord, playing pinch the NewsBlur Android beta, listening to the caller podcast from the Serial folks, playing a bunch of Ball x Pit connected my phone, and trying desperately to footwear this stupid cold.
I besides person for you an app to make your travels easier, a bizarre and delightful caller show to watch, a caller logic to play an aged Mario game, and overmuch more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the champion portion of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reference / playing / downloading / vibe-coding this week? Tell maine everything: [email protected]. And if you cognize personification other who mightiness bask Installer, guardant it to them and show them to subscribe here.)
- Flighty. Ordinarily I’d only urge Flighty to group who recreation a batch — it’s an astonishing app, but not cheap, and very overmuch for powerfulness users. Right now, though, we could each usage a small thief navigating information lines, delays, and changes. The caller Airport Intelligence characteristic mightiness salary for itself beautiful fast.
- Bait. The premise of this show — astir an character auditioning to beryllium James Bond, and each the weird worldly that follows — is truthful thoroughly internet-pilled and meta that it decidedly shouldn’t work. But astatine slightest from what I’ve seen truthful far, it wholly does. Though to beryllium fair, I’ll watch Riz Ahmed successful anything.
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Like my workfellow Andrew Webster says, it’s ever a bully clip to get backmost into this game. The caller Switch 2 update comes pinch a bunch of caller levels, leader battles, and characters — it’s not a ton of caller content, but for maine it was a awesome logic to fundamentally commencement the crippled each complete again. Zero regrets.
- The HTML Review rumor 05. This online mag remains 1 of the coolest things going successful integer literature. This year’s rumor is, arsenic always, afloat of beautiful penning and cartoons and interactive creation — the web is truthful cool, y’all.
- Dropzone 5.0 for Mac. My favourite apps are the ones that conscionable look to beryllium evidently portion of really your instrumentality ever worked. Dropzone is for illustration that: it’s conscionable an easy, customizable measurement to prevention / stock / download / immoderate each sorts of things, conscionable by dragging a record aliases a link. The caller creation looks great, and the app is conscionable truthful useful.
- “The Ten Pounds Episode.” I mentioned this show successful passing past week, but location is thing astir Friends Keep Secrets that I conscionable cannot extremity watching. It’s a celeb podcast meets trashy reality show, filmed and presented successful the astir fascinating way. I don’t moreover cognize if I for illustration it! But I’m hooked.
- Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. I person a database of shows and movies I deliberation could person been hits, isolated from they were ruined by stupid names. (The database is named for Kevin Can F*ck Himself, an unthinkable show nary 1 watched.) This movie is weird and fun! I’d show you to watch it if I could retrieve the name.
- Notion 3.4. I proceed to deliberation Notion is simply a singular portion of package that is conscionable slow and annoying capable to make maine perpetually want to switch. But these are really bully changes: tabs and heading upgrades, a vastly cleaner sidebar, archives successful databases, and more. Hey app developers everywhere? Give maine less AI things and much updates for illustration this.
Casey Liss and I are going to bent retired successful personification 1 of these days. He’s been 1 of my favourite podcasters for years, arsenic 1 of the hosts of Accidental Tech Podcast. (Recent episodes are getting maine dangerously adjacent to going all-in connected self-hosting…) He’s besides the developer of Callsheet, a terrific app for uncovering movie accusation and the first-ever point to beryllium featured successful Installer. He besides lives for illustration 90 minutes distant from me. We request to lunch, Casey.
Anyway, I asked Casey to stock his homescreen pinch us, funny to spot really his galore lives and occupations coalesce connected his phone. Here it is, positive immoderate info connected the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 17 Pro, 512 GB, successful immoderate Apple calls “blue” this year.
The wallpaper: Just a blueish gradient I group utilizing Apple’s ain tools. Boring, I know.
The apps: AnyList, Settings, Apple Notes, Apple Maps, Apple Music, Sonos, Overcast, Day One, Instagram, Indigo, Slack, NetNewsWire, Home Assistant, Callsheet, Due, Photos, Fastmail, Messages, Fantastical, Safari.
A batch of what’s connected my homescreen shouldn’t beryllium surprising. The astir astonishing point to maine is a move I made a while ago: I switched from 4 semi-organized homescreens (and ne'er utilizing Spotlight) to 2 homescreens, and utilizing Spotlight constantly. I besides turned connected large icons because I for illustration the aesthetics. The main homescreen has upwind astatine the top, and 16 of my most-used apps. (Speaking of aesthetics, squad light-in-the-day-and-dark-at-night.)
The 2nd surface has 2 widget stacks: photos from this time (from the Photos app and Widgetsmith), Fantastical and Parcel, a mini Foodnoms widget, and 4 different often utilized apps. The apps are Pushover, which receives push notifications I nonstop myself from apps for illustration Home Assistant, n8n, and more; Sports Alerts for sports scores, Banktivity for financial tracking, and UniFi Protect to spot cameras astatine home.
After being a devout Spotify personification for forever, I yet switched complete to Apple Music, since it is portion of the Apple One bundle. It’s… fine. I’m besides a immense Sonos fan, and person 5 rooms successful the location pinch immoderate benignant of speaker successful it. I almost ne'er AirPlay to them, and instead, usage the app. They’re mostly done the dark days of 2025 now, thankfully.
Since covid, I’ve journaled fundamentally each day. This sounds very fancy, but successful reality, it’s usually conscionable a little introduction pinch immoderate photograph I’ve taken during the day. I’ve utilized Day One for this forever, and person nary volition to quit.
The purple-ish icon pinch the lowercase “i” is Indigo, a forthcoming app from my friends Ben McCarthy and Aaron Vegh that I’m beta testing. It’s a unified Mastodon and Bluesky customer that interleaves the 2 timelines arsenic one. It’s really great, and has made it so overmuch little burdensome to support up pinch some my nerds (Mastodon) and regular group (Bluesky). I usage NetNewsWire arsenic my RSS reader, wherever I get a ton of some nerdy and section news. Thanks to my The Verge membership, I yet person full-text RSS for here, arsenic well! 🤩
The clapperboard is my app, Callsheet! Imagine if IMDB was written and designed by personification who… well… cares. Instead of group who are conscionable trying to chimney you into buying junk connected Amazon. Or auto-playing videos. Or begging you to log successful again. Callsheet tries to beryllium successful the aforesaid abstraction arsenic IMDB, but it’s designed pinch people successful mind. It’s designed to beryllium fast, to reply immoderate mobility you whitethorn have, and past get retired of your way.
Next to Callsheet is Due, which I unrecorded by. Due will continually re-remind you of things until you clear that task. It’s arsenic adjacent arsenic I get to immoderate benignant of general task guidance system.
Finally, my woman and I are all-in connected Apple Photos, and Shared Photo Library. It’s been amazingly bulletproof for us.
I besides asked Casey to stock a fewer things he’s into correct now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I’m an unapologetic Scrubs fan, and I was very tense astir the reboot. As I constitute this, we’re respective episodes in, and… it seems really good! They’ve astatine slightest acknowledged galore of the things astir the original Scrubs that didn’t property well, and are besides taking characters successful caller directions.
- I americium a Vision Pro proprietor — it was for my work, I swear! — and I watched the Raye Concert for One erstwhile it was caller a mates years ago. I precocious played her medium My 21st Century Blues; it rules. I consciousness for illustration everyone knew this but me.
- I precocious stumbled onto the slowest — but coolest — website connected the internet. The Auto Catalog Archive, which has brochures from zillions of cars.
Here’s what the Installer organization is into this week. I want to cognize what you’re into correct now arsenic well! Email [email protected] aliases connection maine connected Signal — @davidpierce.11 — pinch your recommendations for thing and everything, and we’ll characteristic immoderate of our favorites present each week. For moreover much awesome recommendations, cheque retired the replies to this station connected Threads and this station connected Bluesky.
“I’m playing a bunch of Pokémon ROM hacks (like Eternal X and Renegade Platinum) connected my AYN Thor and having the absolute clip of my life.” — NEAL
“Giving Noteful a effort connected iPad. It’s bully and afloat of a batch of bully features. But I don’t cognize that I’ll ever beryllium capable to wholly ditch pen and paper.” — Nick
“Big into the Bambu Printer A2. Looking for bully 3D prints!” – Zach
“Watching The Capture connected BBC iPlayer which is very very bully and I recommend. Massively into my MacBook Neo, which I bought sans Touch ID because you tin alteration motion successful via Apple Watch.” — Nathan
“I can’t judge I missed the telephone for notebook comments! For what it’s worth, Beechmore Books is the undisputed champ of insubstantial that doesn’t bleed through. I haven’t recovered immoderate (other than dedicated sketchbooks) that do it arsenic well. And it’s mostly comparable to Leuchtturm1917. I now person 1 connected recurring bid pinch Amazon. “ — Bruce
“I deterioration a Bulova Computron. Specifically the achromatic and reddish one. It’s glorious. Like a lil ‘90s siren timepiece power connected my wrist.” — Aidan
“Continuing to play pinch my Synology NAS setup pinch things for illustration Plex, Jellyfin, the ARR suite, etc... to beryllium prepared for the subscription apocalypse and re-rise of beingness media.” — Jamison
“With each the hubbub astir the caller episode, I FINALLY made clip to watch The Amazing Digital Circus. Tons of nosy (and psychological torment), I dream indie animation keeps connected increasing much powerful.” – Hanna
“I recovered a awesome E Ink reader, the Xteink X4. Its main features are that it’s pocket-sized and it doesn’t support immoderate DRM. Carrying each my books connected an e-reader that fits successful my pouch is thing else. You tin moreover flash its firmware pinch an open-source project that makes it moreover better!“ — Alric
“I propose you cheque retired Brad Dowdy astatine The Pen Addict. (Start pinch his Top Five Pens list.) He besides has a agelong moving podcast, besides called The Pen Addict.” — Dan
I discovered a website called Obsolete Sounds this week, and instantly fell successful love. It is precisely what it sounds like: a trove of sounds you ne'er perceive anymore, from a winding pouch watch to a number-crunching calculating instrumentality to pouring glacier ice. Fully half of these should beryllium turned into white-noise machines.
And actually, to that end: Cities and Memory, the statement that hosts Obsolete Sounds, hosts an (I think) yearly arena successful which it opens up its sound room to anyone who wants to play pinch and remix them. Listening backmost to the submissions from past year is simply a trip. Seeing some what group record, and what others do pinch these seemingly mundane sounds, is already changing really I perceive the world astir me. So cool.
See you adjacent week!
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