Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 139, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, barbecue sauce, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Johnny Knoxville and Google Zero and the history of the bicycle, @all-ing everyone in all my WhatsApp chats just because I can now, rereading There Will Come Soft Rains because this week is when it happens, seeing if Sabbath can help fix my screentime problems, once again moving everything around in my home office, eating altogether too much of the fabulous Trader Joe’s snack mix, testing the Clicks Power Keyboard, and starting to prep for my fantasy football drafts. Because I will not finish last again.
I also have for you the return of a favorite TV show, some new bags for toting all your gear, a couple of exciting new Android apps, and much more. Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / hacking into with your AI agent 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.)
- Ted Lasso season 4. Lots of good reviews for the new season, which is also kind of a soft reboot of the franchise. And all the bad ones are like, “why isn’t there any conflict, this show is too happy,” which I count as a good review anyway. Give me more shows that make me feel better at the end of every episode.
- The Peak Design City Backpack. The whole lineup of City products — which includes totes, crossbody bags, and more — looks great, but I’m a backpack guy at heart. Love a dedicated AirTag pocket, love an integrated hook, love the mix of clean design and tons of organization. I really don’t need a new backpack, and yet…
- Bose QuietComfort headphones. Noise-canceling headphones are like AI models, in that it seems every one’s the best until the next one comes out three days later. I’m excited about Bose’s adaptive EQ for dialogue and the improved passthrough when you want the ANC off. I also like the mint color. A lot.
- Nothing’s CMF Clip Pro. More headphones! Nothing’s buds are generally hard to beat for $100. Also, open earbuds are awesome. Throw in the awesome orange color I already love in my Shokz headphones, and I’m getting alarmingly close to two headphone purchases this week.
- Tony. After BlackBerry, director Matt Johnson is officially in my “I will watch anything he does” category of filmmakers. Johnson’s latest, a story about how Anthony Bourdain got his start as a chef, has gotten good reviews and is very much at the intersection of all my interests.
- Sunbird. “iMessage for Android” is one of those ideas that just won’t quit, and now Sunbird is back with big promises about fixing its previous security issues. You should always tread super carefully with these messaging aggregators, but they really are a useful idea.
- Notability for Android. FINALLY. After months of promises and more months of beta tests, one of the most powerful note-taking apps is officially shipping to Android devices everywhere. I haven’t used it a ton, but so far it’s stable and fast — it’s a particularly big win if you’re the handwriting type.
- The Sega Dreamcast Watch. From Sega and SuperGroupies comes an extremely rad series of watches designed like old consoles. You can also get the Mega Drive and the Sega Saturn models, but for me there’s no beating the color pop of the Dreamcast’s controls.
JA Westenberg is one of those people who always seems to be blogging about what I’m thinking about. “I Deleted My Second Brain” still rattles around my head whenever I’m needlessly fiddling with a note-taking app, I used the word “cockroachmaxxing” unironically in conversation the other day, and I’m forever jealous of the insight that YouTube “looks increasingly like a single show with five million hosts.”
They’ve also built a couple of really cool productivity-adjacent apps, including Kerouac (which is basically like that GitHub commit chart but for writing) and recently Post Through It, which is basically a journaling app that looks like a private Twitter. Clever!
Anyway, I asked JA to share their homescreen to see if they might have other sneaky tips up their sleeve, or more awesome apps to show. Here it is, plus some info on the apps they use and why:
The phone: I use an iPhone 17 Pro Max, 512GB.
The wallpaper: My wallpaper is Mors Imperator (“Death Is the Ruler”), by the German artist Hermione von Preuschen. It’s on display in Berlin right now and I fell in love with it on a recent trip. She was famously banned from displaying it, and instead rented a house and charged an entry fee to see it. Very punk rock / DIY for the 1800s.
The apps: Insight Timer, Beeper, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Buffer, Cursor, 1Password, Replit, Termius, Granola, Kilo, Kerouac, Post Through It, Buzz, Wikipedia, Marvel Unlimited, Linear, Medium, GenZD, The New York Times, Obsidian, Vimcal, Readwise Reader, Kobo.
My home screen is a mix of reading, working, playing etc. I definitely want to call out Kerouac (a writing studio for pro bloggers) and Post Through It (microblogging for one) which are PWAs of the apps I launched this year. I’m a big believer in web apps as a way to avoid app store gatekeeping, so I’m on a mission to make the PWAs of my own tools as top-notch as they can be, which means using them every day myself.
I keep the Kobo app in my dock so I push myself to read an actual book instead of doomscrolling; and I don’t keep any social media apps installed. If I want to post, I have Buffer on my home screen, and it’s connected to my Hermes agent via MCP anyway. I use Beeper to manage my chats across Discord, Slack, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, etc; it’s a fantastic tool that probably rescues me from chat hell a thousand times a day.
GenZD and Marvel Unlimited are my favorites. The first is a GZDoom client for playing Doom 1 and Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen, and their mods (3D shooters from the ’90s). The other is Marvel’s digital comics app, where I’m attempting to read every Spider-Man story since the inception of the character. Other than that, it’s work, note-taking and podcasts.
I also asked JA to share a few things they’re into right now. Here’s what they sent back:
- I have rediscovered my love for MC Lars. He’s a “nerdcore” indie rapper who came to fame with songs about Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare etc. He’s been a favorite of mine for years, but I introduced my kid to his music this year, and he’s been in constant rotation since. “I Was Never Afraid” is his all time best song.
- The Paradox are the best band I’ve heard in a decade. They play pop punk the way it should be played, with so much energy and joy I can’t not jump out of my seat when I hear it. I recommend their track “Good For Me,” which I think is going to be on their new EP in October.
- I’ve been reading Barbarians at the Gate: the Fall of RJR Nabisco, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. A wild story of leveraged buyouts, Wall Street excess, and the unhinged market economics of the 1980s. An absolute page turner, even if you’re not usually interested in the subject matter.
- My brother has started us on a Daggerheart campaign. It’s a tabletop RPG that came out last year, with a heavy emphasis on storytelling, and it’s the freshest take on roleplaying I’ve experienced in a while. Really makes you want to get inside the character you’re running and think about who they are — which is a great exercise for me as a writer.
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.
“Madden NFL 27 Mobile came out! The wild part? The Apple Arcade version removes **ALL** of the recent enshittification: ads, virtual currencies, paywalls, etc. Add in the controller and Apple TV support, and it feels like playing Madden from the early 2000s, in the best way.” — Brian
“I’m waiting for my Retroid Pocket Nova so I can replay Rogue Squadron on GameCube and Need for Speed: Carbon on PS2, and I’m organizing my ROM library before it arrives.” — Josue
“Moved my gaming PC to CachyOS (tried Bazzite before and got a little frustrated). So far it’s been amazing. Also, I just upgraded my PC case from an old NZXT one to a Fractal North. These cases are no joke. So well made.” — Kolin
“Silo season three.” — Amanda
“Biological War: A Scenario from Annie Jacobsen, the author of Nuclear War: A Scenario. I honestly cannot believe it’s that easy to wipe us off the planet.” — Dawit
“Found this neat little Mac OS app, Hoy, for communicating via iCloud. Quite digging the simple UI and how it ‘sits’ nicely inside my menu bar.” — Julius
“Reading John Ousterhout’s excellent A Philosophy of Software Design to get ready for a presentation I’m making at the gRPC conference next month.” — Tim
“Watching the anime Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia. I’m enjoying learning about that period of history (the show took me into a Wikipedia hole), and I’m excited to see how the magic elements come into play.” — J
I’m about to go on parental leave, which previously in my life has been a good time to change stuff on my phone. I delete all the work apps, turn off some notifications, all that stuff. But you know what’s really making me do it this time? The Google Health app. I haven’t been wearing my Fitbit Air recently — no good reason, just haven’t been finding it useful — and every single day the app sends me a sad notification that’s like, “Oh no, I haven’t collected any data, pretty please let’s get the Fitbit back on?” No thanks, I hate it.
Anyway, I’ve also been noticing that some of the smartest people I know are always showing that they “have notifications silenced” in iMessage. So I’m learning from them, and turning everything off. From now on, my phone will have no buzzing or noise-making notifications other than phone calls. I’ll see things when I decide to check my phone… which hopefully won’t be very often. Silent phones forever!
In theory, I’m here next week before I head out. If not, you’ll be in the very capable hands of Jay Peters for a while. Either way, see you next week!
