Apple’s new Airtags are a nice upgrade to a simple gadget

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 114, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send Arc Raiders tips, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about wind turbines and phishing scams and oboes, keeping organized with the ultra-minimal Attn app, testing the lovely Aeronaut Bluesky client, spending too much time researching electric snow shovels, finally upgrading my trusty podcast headphones to a new Beyerdynamic pair, starting my umpteenth rewatch of Superstore, and debating whether to swap my iPhone 16 for an iPhone 17 or a Pixel 10. I think I’m going Pixel.

I also have for you a nice upgrade to an Apple gadget, a great new AI search tool, a couple of excellent new things to watch, new Sonos gear, and much more.

And I have a question: What’s your favorite non-Big Tech piece of tech? I’m hearing from a lot of people who, for a variety of reasons, want to ditch devices and services from Google or Apple or Amazon or Microsoft or any number of other companies. If you have, and you’ve had a great experience, tell me about it! I’m [email protected] and @davidpierce.11 on Signal, and I want to hear everything you like. For now, lots to do, let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / listening to / playing / building out of snow 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.)

He probably doesn’t know this, but Christopher Mims (who I believe I have never referred to as anything other than “Mims”) gave me some of the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten. Back when we used to work together at The Wall Street Journal, where he is a tech columnist, he taught me a ton about how to be crisp and clear, and most of all how to just say the thing you mean right up top.

Case in point: Mims’ new book, How to AI, which just came out this week. I’m most of the way through it, and so far it is excellent; simple, thorough, understandable, neither dedicated to explaining why AI is a god that will save us or to trying to tear it to shreds. It is exactly what the title suggests. It’s great.

I asked Mims to share his homescreen, and some stuff he’s into, just to see if he’d really gone full AI or not. I have good news:

The phone: I had to check the settings. I know. It’s an iPhone 15. I’m a “work gave me this phone” guy. It really doesn’t matter these days, I can’t believe anyone cares whether their phone is newer than, say, 2-3 generations ago, unless they’re using it constantly for photography or shooting videos.

The wallpaper: Apple’s generic “here’s Earth from space right now.” I like to be reminded we are, as Carl Sagan said, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The apps: Google Keep, Google Tasks, Chrome, Hark, Google Maps, Spotify, Overcast, BitCam, Camera, Phone, Messages.

In the lower-left corner is BitCam. If you have an attachment to the original black-and-white dithering algorithm, and like the way high-contrast photos look in it, it’s for you. On the right side is Hark, which I love because it’s the only podcast clipper / aggregator I know of and their editorial judgment is exquisite.

I also asked Mims to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he 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. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.

“I’ve been obsessing over The Roottrees are Dead, a game where you play an investigator in 1998 attempting to put together a family tree. You do this using era-appropriate internet search engines and a corkboard with string. Also the soundtrack that plays is the perfect vibe.” — Jonathan

“I use Apple’s Home app to control all the smart stuff in the house. I installed Wemo light switches six-ish years ago. They never worked consistently. Recently swapped them out for these Matter-enabled Tapo ones. Whether it’s Matter or six-years-newer technology, they haven’t lost connection with the Home app once. Highly recommended.” — Ryan

“The Mecha Comet is a modular Linux handheld and I’ve fallen in love with it!” — @trainsandinternet

“I’m playing through Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and lamenting over how badly Microsoft dropped the ball with this iconic IP. (You had Cortana, that could’ve been your cool AI assistant, but you killed it?! And the Halo TV series! And the latest Halo games!)” — Anshuman

“Watching Send Help, aka the third gory horror movie I’ve seen in the cinemas this month.” — Kev

“I recently discovered FocusFlight, and it has become the app I turn to when I need to dive into focused work. It’s a really cool mix of ideas, and as an aviation nut, it’s a great app for me to use while I’m trying to stay focused on work or any other activity. It does need to cut back on the number of taps needed to start a session, but it’s a really solid idea that recently added a mode where you can watch the clouds fly by your airplane window while you focus.” — Adam

“My Fiio Snowsky Disc DAP AliExpress order came in last weekend, and I’ve been having lots of fun with it this week. It’s modeled to call back to an earlier generation of music players, this time a minidisc unit. Extremely tiny (palm-sized unit), can slap a sizable microSD card in it, and has great sound quality and power output.” — Brian

“The newest Pokémon TCG Pocket update just dropped this week, so I’ll be ripping packs and building some fun new decks. Excited about Stadium cards finally in the game!” — Bob

“I wanted to recommend Blood on the Clocktower 🙂 It’s a social deduction game, similar to Mafia, Werewolf, or Among Us, but it has the added advantage of making every role useful and players can participate even after their death. It’s really having a moment, thanks to No Rolls Barred and Good Time Society featuring a lot of the Dropout cast in their recent games. I love watching all the showcases of how games can be run, and I hope to find a group to play it with one day!” — Jack

I’ve written about this before here, but I’ve become totally enamored with the concept of local-first software. The idea is straightforward: that software should not be designed on the assumption that it’s accessing a bunch of your data in the cloud, but that everything it needs is already on your device. It should still have all the features you want, be available everywhere, and be totally collaborative, but it should come with all the speed and security of a bunch of files on your computer. Loading screens are the enemy.

The team at Ink & Switch wrote a great essay about local-first software a while back, and this week I stumbled on CultRepo’s 10-minute YouTube doc that digs in on the concept even more. The whole thing just makes sense to me, and the local-first tenets are already changing how I look for and use software. Files for the win.