Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 142, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, how is it almost September already, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been remembering Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen, absorbing everything in Rockstar’s big GTA VI preview, wondering if Apple will announce a foldable iPhone at its September event, getting sucked into Summoning Salt’s latest speedrunning documentary about competitive Tetris, listening to Weird Al’s new Tiny Desk concert (“The Saga Begins!”), and getting a Reuben from my favorite local spot after thinking about it for months.
This week, I also have for you new Macs, a Nokia phone that can charge your phone, a Wyze cam with a great privacy feature, and more.
Programming note: Installer is off next week. I’ll be on vacation. See you next month for Techtember!
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What are your favorite things you’ve watched / seen / listened to / eaten recently? Drop a line to [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- The M6 and M5 Pro Mac Mini. Apple updated its tiny computer this week, and you can preorder it with a new M6 chip or an M5 Pro. Unfortunately, they have starting prices that are $100 more expensive than the previous generation, and the new model won’t be released until September 22nd. The company also refreshed the Mac Studio, and you can preorder it with a new M5 Ultra chip.
- Star Wars: Zero Company. This strategy game set in the Star Wars universe has been getting rave reviews. Gotta find some time to squeeze this in with all of the other big games coming out soon.
- HMD’s Nokia 300 Charge. HMD made an old-school, candybar-style Nokia dumbphone that doubles as a power bank. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack. Who needs a foldable iPhone when you can have this?
- Wyze’s Indoor Cam Pan. This new $39.98 security camera can tilt 360 degrees around and 103 degrees vertically, but it also has a privacy mode that tilts the lens fully downward into the body of the camera so that it can’t see anything. Great feature.
- Garmin’s Fenix 9 smartwatches. The Fenix 9 and 9 Pro have OLED screens, 64GB of storage, and for the two bigger sizes of the 9 Pro, the option to get solar-charging displays. The watches aren’t cheap, though: The Fenix 9 starts at $999.99, while the Pro starts at $1,099.99.
- Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition. The Switch 2 version of FromSoftware’s all-time classic is apparently worth the wait after a big delay. Do I need yet another excuse to get lost in The Lands Between? Probably not, but I’m tempted.
- Whoop’s Meridian Band. This $149 band is made from Milanese mesh, comes in gold, rose gold, silver, and black, and makes your fifth-gen Whoop tracker look super fancy. But one part isn’t so fancy: You can’t charge your Whoop while it’s in the Meridian Band.
Today I’m featuring John Gruber of Daring Fireball. If you follow Apple and are a regular Verge reader (which, as an Installer subscriber, I assume you are), you’re probably well aware of Gruber and his work as a writer, podcaster, friend of the site, and as a general tech person on the internet.
Ahead of Apple’s big launch event coming up on September 9th, I thought it would be fun to feature the homescreen of one of the most well-known people in the Apple universe.
Image: John Gruber
The phone: iPhone 17 Pro, deep blue, 1 TB (of which only 200 GB is used, but that won’t stop me from wasting money on a 1 TB model this year too).
The wallpaper: My wallpaper is a subtle gradient from very dark gray to black. For years I just stuck with a flat black wallpaper, as god and Steve Jobs intended. (You couldn’t change your homescreen wallpaper until iOS 4, and I remain unconvinced that was a good idea.) I like the subtle gradient now because it lets the dynamic island have a little visual contrast from the wallpaper background.
The apps: I’ve currently got three todo/task apps on the homescreen, which I can’t recommend, but it’s currently working for me: Unforgetful, Finalist, and Due. (The red “1” badge on Unforgetful is for a reminder to send you this email and the screenshot of my homescreen.) I’ve also arguably got three notes apps, if you count Journal (in addition to Tot and Apple Notes). Mosaic is a TestFlight-only alternative to the official MLB app, which has a great story behind it. Rather than shutting it down, MLB hired its developer, Jason Weingardt, because Mosaic is so awesome. If I took the screenshot later tonight, you’d see a Live Activity from Mosaic of the Yankees game in the Dynamic Island.
Kotoba is also TestFlight-only. It is, in my humble opinion, the best dictionary app for iOS, but because it uses the system-provided dictionaries and thesauruses to act as a dictionary app, it’s not permitted in the App Store. I look up words with it almost every single day. I wrote about it on Daring Fireball a while ago.
The Siri app shows that I’m testing the iOS 27 betas. It’s good. I tend to use it side by side with ChatGPT for now, to compare responses, but going forward, I’ll use both. So having that alongside ChatGPT is in line with my having multiple todo apps and multiple note apps (and multiple messaging apps).
I keep the badge on Mail counting my unread messages to remind myself that the heat death of the universe is inevitable.
Oh, and my App Store app icon isn’t the actual App Store app, but instead a shortcut that jumps me right to the list of apps with pending updates to install.
I also asked John to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- One show whose second season just finished: The Agency, on Paramount+. I think it’s probably the best spy series ever made.
- One show whose sixth season is about to begin: Slow Horses, on Apple TV. I think it’s probably the most amusing spy series ever made.
- Third, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, whose 18th season just started; it’s the best and most realistic show set in Philadelphia ever made.
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] 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 Bluesky.
“Feels like this week is all Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and now Transformers for Peter Cullen in terms of what people are watching and listening to!” — Carli
“I’ve been playing A la Card and REALLY enjoying my time with it. It’s an indie roguelike deck builder game that feels like Slay the Spire and Balatro said ‘Let’s go out for food from a food truck.’ All cards can be mutated and changed via the events — their values, their effect, what triggers them. Great art and music, solid design, and it’s scratching an itch I didn’t know I had. Awesome game from a 2-person indie dev team.” — Tom
“My preorder shipped early so I’ve been reading Emo Revival by Andrew Sacher and it’s a 10/10 so far.” — @thoughtlesskyle.bsky.social
“Empire of AI, Karen Hao. Recently translated to PT-BR :)” — Milena
“Tonight I’m going to finish House of Guinness. It’s a fine show but even better if you drink when watching it.” — Nick
“I’ve been on a kick reading older sci-fi novels recently and came across Berserker by Fred Saberhagen (1967). Fantastic book but surprisingly hard to find a physical copy. Ended up purchasing an ePub. Highly recommend!” — Nathan
I got a few good screentime reduction tips following last week’s issue. One person said they don’t install apps with an infinite scroll, which I thought was a good idea. They also have Screen Time enabled to block various things, but their partner holds the password to unlock Screen Time if needed. Clever! Another reader suggested zipping up their phone in a phone pocket.
On my vacation next week, to make sure I actually unplug, I plan to deploy my favorite hack: hiding every gadget with a browser in my daughter’s closet. My only free time where I could potentially slip into mindless scrolling would be when she’s sleeping, but there’s no way I’m risking waking her up just to get out the laptop. More time for the important stuff — like playing Switch 2.
