Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 125, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send me cereal recommendations, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about NASA seamstresses and friction and Muskism and scooters, highlighting the heck out of Jeff VanderMeer’s terrific new short story, listening to the Dissect podcast’s new season about Daft Punk, giving Firefox another run as my go-to browser, having my mind blown by amazing music video directors, and nodding along to John Oliver on prediction markets. I’ve also been dealing with sick kids and a bunch of emergency electrical work so my house doesn’t burn down. Fun times! Also the reason we’re gonna do Ruthless Self-Promotion Week next week — still going through all your emails, thanks again to everyone who wrote in!
I also have for you some very exciting new PC gear, the must-see movie of the Spring, a couple of genuinely useful new AI apps, a high-tech postcard, and much more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / listening to / dipping in hummus 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.)
- The Framework Laptop 13 Pro. I love Framework’s whole thesis that computers should be more upgradeable and repairable. For the first time, it seems to have also made a laptop that is just really, really nice. If this thing lives up to its spec sheet, and our first impressions, it’s going to be a big winner for Linux and Windows users.
- The Framework Laptop Sleeve. I love a good laptop carrier, and this one — especially the silver model, which isn’t duct tape but looks just like duct tape — is an awesome one. It’s obviously designed for Framework gear, but should fit lots of other laptops too.
- Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85. I feel obligated to tell you about this new animated Netflix show — because, you know, Stranger Things — even though by all accounts it’s really not very good. If you watch it anyway because you can’t get enough of the Hawkins gang, just know that I get it.
- New Things. Our good friend Joanna Stern just started her own newsletter / YouTube channel / whole thing, and it’s already delightful and extremely Joanna-y. Go subscribe! And keep an eye out, because we’re gonna get Joanna back in this space one way or another.
- Extra. As I get worse and worse at maintaining my email inbox, I get more and more enticed by the possibility of managing it with AI. Using Extra requires a whole re-think of what your email is even for, but I’m finding it full of clever organizational ideas.
- Memo AI. These smart transcription apps are a dime a dozen now, but this one has a couple of things going for it. One, it’s made by the developer of NotePlan, which means it is thoughtfully designed and really clever. Two, it’s fast. So far, speed has been the difference between AI tools I ditch quickly and AI tools I keep using.
- Vampire Crawlers. Every once in a while, all of my gamer friends fall of the face of the Earth for a few days, because they’re all obsessed with some new title. It’s happening right now, and it’s all because of this extremely addictive, retro-styled deckbuilder. I probably shouldn’t get into this game. I’m going to get into this game.
- The Govee Table Lamp Classic. Half the power is currently out in my house, which has made this kind of product – a smart lamp that can either be plugged in or carried around — incredibly useful. In general, I’m finding Govee stuff to be almost as good as Hue, and way cheaper. Not a bad combo.
- Claude’s Spotify connector. If you’ve been skeptical or nervous about trying AI tools, here’s my advice: connect one to Spotify. (ChatGPT has had a connector for a while, Claude got it this week.) It’s such a fun, useful, surprising way to organize and discover music.
Every 25 issues or so in this space, I like to share my own homescreen. As the Installerverse’s self-appointed Head of Thing-Trying, I am forever experimenting with new systems, new apps, and new ways to do everything. Plus it’s a fun record for me of where my own thinking is.
At the moment? My thinking is apparently… all over the place. This is about as unorganized as I have ever been, on a bunch of different levels. My homescreen is not organized intentionally, so much as it is just a record of my phone habits recently. (I also have way too many unread everythings.) Here it is, as of this week:
The phone: iPhone 17. I love the sage color, I am sort of annoyed that I’m still an iPhone user, but here we are.
The wallpaper: Blue. I had a solid black background for a long time, so I guess this counts as sprucing things up? Honestly, it’s too bright, especially at night — need to go back to all black everything.
The apps: Coffee Pool, RB College, Memo AI, Craft, DualShot Recorder, Todoist, Google Maps, MyMind, Obsidian, Readwise Reader, Phone, Pocket CAsts, Spotify, Camera, Messages, Notion Calendar, the app I’m vibe-coding, Arc.
Some of these are staples: Readwise Reader, Pocket Casts, MyMind, and Arc are all apps I’ve used for a long time and am very happy with. The rest are all experimental in one way or another.
I am a longtime fan of Retro Bowl, an essentially perfect mobile game, so of course I jumped on the college football game. I’m also a longtime fan of Coffee Golf, a fun game to play for a couple of minutes a day, and the pool-shooting version is just as satisfying. I don’t normally have homescreen games, so these probably won’t live here forever.
As you can probably see, I’m in a bit of a productivity app crisis. Craft, Obsidian, Memo AI, Todoist, even Notion Calendar – I’ve been trying them all, and many more (like Workflowy, Twos, and NotePlan) to see if I can find a new system that works. My life has a lot more deadlines right now than it typically does, so I’m leaning into some of the ideas behind time blocking to see if schedule-maxxing works for me. So far… kinda.
(Also, that app with the nine dots? I hate the icon, thanks for nothing Claude Code, but it’s the beginnings of the tool I’m trying to build bringing all this stuff together for me. It will be useful to exactly no one, but I’m excited about it. More on that next week.)
Lastly, if you shoot a lot of video and you haven’t tried DualShot Recorder, change that ASAP. It captures horizontal and vertical video simultaneously, and is simple and fabulous whether you’re a content creator or just trying to get videos of your kids at the right aspect ratio. It’s not quite my default camera app yet, but it might get there. Best $10 I’ve spent on an app in a long time.
Oh, and the widgets: Notion Calendar is, you know, fine. Acme Weather is fantastic. It’s made by the folks who built Dark Sky, and it has the same ability to tell me everything I need to know — the weather, the chance of rain, the chance the forecast is wrong and actually it is going to rain — in about two seconds. Already my go-to weather app.
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’m loving the Earth.fm app. Never felt like soundscape apps helped me focus or relax, but these nature field recordings are where it’s at for me. And it’s a beautiful app too!” — Ben
“I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve started using Nvidia GeForce Now — that thing is incredible on an iPad Pro.” — Jean-Francois
“Check out the Aviate app for Android. It’s like Flighty but for Android. It’s in early access — beautiful design.” — Guarav
“Absolutely loved Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. One of my top movies this year. Hilarious and great action. There’s a 5 minute argument between grown men over who the best boyfriend on Gilmore Girls was. It’s Logan btw.” — Justin
“Just picked up the Aune AC55 on-ear clip headphone recently and wanted to give a shout out that this headphone style is still out there rocking, didn’t actually fade away after the 90s/00s along with American Hi-Fi, and offers an excellent alternative (along with flathead earbuds) to large over-ear sets and IEMS. The Koss KSC75 is the venerable affordable set of this style, but Aune is breaking new ground with some very high-end sets.” — Brian
“Been playing enclose.horse for a few months now. Always enjoy it since it’s a quick daily game but not centered on words/letters.” — Peter
“Clayton Morris did a video on YouTube about great games for adults with no time. Really great recommendations. Vampire Survivors and Dredge in particular are great and both are included in Apple Arcade.” — Witzke
“A new, fully native font manager called Pica for macOS dropped this week and us design nerds are freaking out about it.” — Pedro
“Space Design Warehouse is a phenomenal under the radar Mac YouTube Channel. The host Nicholas Johnson, will get as nerdy over specs and testing as you could want, while keeping it accessible and fun. Everybody episode features a Mac on fire and Dunkin’ Donuts, so not sure what else you could want. He also does inventive things like having a secondary audio track on certain videos where he just riffs what he’s thinking about.” — Clinton
The funniest thing has happened to my YouTube over the last few months. In the course of researching stories and Version History episodes, I’ve spent a lot of time watching really old YouTube videos — and this has evidently convinced the YouTube algorithm to send me more really old YouTube videos! Recently I’ve been reminded of some of the great Epic Rap Battles of History, some top-notch Lonely Island shorts, an iconic clip of Jay Z and Timbaland in the studio, and even Charlie The Unicorn. Early YouTube was a time, y’all. Mostly a very good one.
