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Hello, everyone! Welcome to the 103rd edition of Installer, your ultimate guide to the latest and most intriguing topics in the world of The Verge. If you’re joining us for the first time, we’re thrilled to have you. Feel free to explore our previous editions available on the Installer homepage. Apologies for the high prices this week!
This week, I’ve delved into subjects like gooning, Costco, protein bars, and the Jonas Brothers. I’ve been engrossed in the second season of Nobody Wants This and contemplating how to save up $4,500 for the cutting-edge Rivian e-bike. Additionally, I’ve been spreading the word that T-Pain continues to impress, researching the fascinating Louvre heist, and spending quite a bit of time playing Fortnite on my iPad. Following recommendations from many of you, I’ve also started shopping for Yoto Players. Thanks for the tip!
This edition also includes a recommendation for a sleek new e-reader, an innovative AI browser, and an updated version of a beloved classic game, among other exciting highlights.
Please continue to share your favorite endlessly rewatchable content with me! I’ve received so many great suggestions that I’m considering dedicating next week’s issue entirely to this topic. Whether it’s shows, movies, TikToks, or creators you can’t get enough of, keep them coming!
(As always, the heart of Installer lies in your insights and tips. What are you reading, watching, playing, or creatively fixing with duct tape this week? Share everything with us at installer@theverge.com. If you know someone who might enjoy Installer, please forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe!)
- The Boox Palma 2 Pro. My love for this smartphone-sized e-reader knows no bounds. (Okay, some bounds, but not many.) This new model is fascinating: it has a color screen, cell connection, pen input… it’s almost a phone? At $399, the price is moving in the wrong direction, but I am deeply curious about this thing.
- ChatGPT Atlas. AI browsers are kind of a dime a dozen. It’s Chrome with a chatbot everywhere you look! But given the sheer size of ChatGPT, this one matters anyway; if anyone can make a real dent in the browser market right now, it’s OpenAI.
- Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted. The good news: PvZ is back! The bad news: it doesn’t seem like anyone tried very hard with this reboot. The upshot, I guess: I’ve already played it a bunch and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.
- The Samsung Galaxy XR. It’s the Vision Pro, but lighter and more comfortable and half the price. I’m not bullish on headsets as a genre right now, but that’s still a pretty good sales pitch! As an entertainment device, Samsung might have something here.
- The Aura Ink. It’s the Samsung Frame TV of digital picture frames: a 13.5-inch E Ink panel that hangs on your wall and apparently only needs to be charged every few months. Neat idea, and everyone I know who has Aura frames likes them, but the $499 price is tough to swallow.
- Bloom. I’ve been experimenting with a bunch of Mac apps that make the whole system a little easier to navigate — TabTab is a recent favorite — and I really like this app’s improvements to Finder. It’s worth it for the file-renaming and image-resizing tools alone.
- A House of Dynamite. Another for the “premise is maybe a little too real?” files, but everything I’m hearing about Kathryn Bigelow’s new brink-of-war Netflix thriller suggests it’s as gripping as you’d hope. This is first on my watch list this weekend.
- The Fujifilm X-T30 III. Lotta new cameras this week, including from Leica and Lomography! But I am a sucker for Fujifilm’s X series — the company’s just doing a great job of making filters and presets more accessible, and even finding smart ways to incorporate AI.
- Glamping. A Tubi original movie, directed by and starring the winner of a platform-wide contest for new creators. It’s a horror movie about influencers, the trailer looks either legit-good or so-bad-it’s-good, and I love a campy horror flick. I’m weirdly excited about this.
Our own John Higgins is a treasure trove of knowledge on all things TV. He’s been with us as a senior reviewer for TVs and audio for a few weeks now, and his expertise is truly impressive. He’s even a certified TV calibrator! That might just be my new aspiration.
Anyway, you’ll be seeing John all over The Verge covering audio and video gear of all sorts. I asked him to share his homescreen, both because I like to feature new people and to see if maybe he sucked at phones and I could feel one tiny shred of superiority over him. Alas, no dice.
Here’s John’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: I’m on an iPhone 15 Pro Max at the moment, but considering upgrading to a 17.
The wallpaper: It’s a picture of a redwood from when I took a drive up the west coast from Los Angeles to a little north of Seattle in 2023. I camped for a few days amongst the redwoods, went hiking, and was just absolutely amazed to be surrounded by the nature of Endor… I mean, Northern California.
The apps: Wallet, Settings, Camera, Apple Maps, FaceTime, Reminders, Apple Notes, Chrome, Safari, Weather, Find My, Photos, SoCal Sound, Phone, Messages, Mail, Calendar.
I’m kinda terrible at organizing my apps (although I used this opportunity to clean them up a bit). I generally just download them and have them show up at the end of my list. I have six screens of apps at the moment, including a multitude of AV apps for each manufacturer.
My main screen includes the things I access most often: email, different social networking (like Instagram, Signal, WhatsApp, LinkedIn), my Home app for device control, a load of streaming apps, and of course the games I play most, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes (which I’ve been playing since just after it launched almost 10 years ago) and Marvel Strike Force.
I also asked John to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- Right now, my son has started to really get into Star Wars (finally!), so we’re watching the movies and about to start Clone Wars.
- I’ve also recently started following an interesting Instagram creator, Dave Chisholm, who is a comic book artist and musician that does great music theory breakdowns of Radiohead songs accompanied by his illustrations. I have my masters in music performance, so I really dig the way he accessibly breaks down the song structure and musical symbolism.
- I’m also a huge Dropout fan, and am happy that the new season of Make Some Noise has just started.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com 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.
“After setting up my NAS a few weeks ago, I moved from Google Photos to Immich, a self-hosted dupe which is nearly identical. The process of moving the photos over was painful, but now I own my own image server. I’ve started working on setting up Home Assistant, and my journey of self hosting (as much as I can) is well and truly underway.” — Craig
“Finished Task on HBO today. Incredibly well done, totally devastating in parts and uplifting in others.” — Óli
“I recently discovered a use case that, in my opinion, fully justifies its existence: loading board game instructions into NotebookLM and utilizing it as both a guide and, more importantly, a judge during arguments.” — Jakub
“Just finished reading Enshittification by Cory Doctorow this morning. Was an excellent read, and I would highly recommend.” — Nathaniel
“Just got this RayCue charger dock to add some functionalities to my Mac Mini M4. Waiting for NVMe SSD to add storage to my Mac.” — Jean-François
“Been enjoying MD Vinyl. It’s just a great looking app that focuses on albums. These apps tend to be a dime a dozen, but this one has my phone on standby more often.” — Matthew
“Ball x Pit has taken over my life just like Balatro did once upon a time.” — Ronak
“Zen Browser recently got a great update that makes a lot of quality of life improvements, and generally over the last few months it has become fully capable of being my daily browser.” — Janego
“I really enjoy little cars racing down some serious tracks. 3DBotmaker is a YouTube channel where they do some awesome racing, and they’re in the middle of the DRC-X right now. It’s beautifully filmed, some great commentary, and it’s all about the big air, baby.” — Jasper
I am in an eternal struggle with what I call “the scrolling apps” on my phone. I’ll delete Reddit and Threads and Bluesky and Instagram and everything else, then find myself stuck in line at Costco and suddenly poof, they all reappear. Reading’s good, sure, and I like doing the crossword, but sometimes I want to look at my phone for 10 minutes, you know?
The best thing I’ve found, somewhat surprisingly, is Dropout. (I wrote this before John told me he also loves Dropout, I swear.) I only recently became a subscriber, and its giant library of good-vibes comedy games turns out to be the perfect thing to watch a few minutes at a time. (Sam Reich, if you’re reading this: give me a vertical video feed of all your social clips, in the app!) Loading up a Make Some Noise episode leaves me in a vastly better mood than doomscrolling does, and like the rest of the internet, I’m rapidly turning into a Brennan Lee Mulligan superfan. Highly recommended on all counts.
