Apple's racing movie is finally here
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 88, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy heat dome, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I've been reading about crypto crimes and egg thieves and Gap, watching Last Breath and Tires and The Four Seasons, testing the super simple Min browser, learning a ton from The Magic of Code, playing too much Ridiculous Fishing, vibe-coding a tracker for baby feedings, finally winning a Knockout Tour in Mario Kart World, lusting after the new Teenage Engineering scooter, taking photos with Project Indigo, and listening to Star Wars Lofi all day every day.
This is the last Installer for me this summer! It's baby time. Starting next week, you'll be in the very good hands of Jay Peters, who has some awesome stuff lined up for you. He'll be in the Installer inbox, so please, send him emails, hit him up with questions, and tell him everything you're into right now. Y'all are going to have fun together.
And in the interest of filling up the Gmail for Jay, I have a question: what's your favorite non-famous app? A few of you have recently reached out to remind me that yes, everyone knows Instagram and WhatsApp, but all of us power users take so much software for granted and forget that not everybody knows about them. So let's share the stuff we know all too well! My current favorites are probably Raycast, Mimestream, Unread, Raindrop.io, and Deck.Blue. But I want to hear all of yours, too.
All right, enough from me. I also have for you a bunch of new stuff to watch while it's too hot to go outside, the best-looking VR headset I can remember, a new Death Stranding game, and much more. Let's get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here. It's free, and you get it a full day early!)
A few months ago, I went from not knowing Travis Larchuk at all to suddenly spending a lot of time together. We've been working on… a project that I can't tell you about yet but am excited to tell you about very soon. And, as of next week, Travis is also going to be the supervising producer of The Vergecast, which means we'll be making a truly alarming amount of stuff together going forward. The Vergecast will not be as good as Travis's podcast about jam and seltzer, but we'll do our best.
In addition to his podcast prowess, Travis is also slowly teaching me about Dungeons & Dragons, has more weird game show ideas than anyone I've ever met, and knows a truly alarming amount about the Guitar Hero franchise. I asked him to share his homescreen with us, as I like to do with new Verge folk — here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: A blue iPhone 13 Pro.
The wallpaper: A blurry version of my lockscreen. It's a rotating gallery of photos from vacation, the sides of arcade cabinets, and random stupid things, with the purple+blue Duotone filter applied.
The apps: Messages, Clock, Wallet, Google Maps, Settings, Passwords, NYTimes, NYT Games, Life Time, Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, Slack, Phone, Gmail, Outlook, Safari.
I only have one page of apps. I find most of my apps by typing their name into the search bar. For my aphantasiac brain, the English language is a better organizational method than randomly plopping squares in different places.
I'm not defending my app choices, because they are indefensible, but here are some explanations:
I also asked Travis 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 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.
'Cool Tools have been around for 25 years, they have a podcast and have even published a book with the same name. It is a web site which recommends the best / cheapest tools available. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas.' — Sinan
'The red-tailed hawks' nest at Cornell (and a bunch of other types of birds) have live feeds you can watch if you're stressed out.' — Hayden
'List, with the too-cute-for-its-own-good URL llllllll.io (that's eight of them), one of the nicest tools to put all the information you care about in order. It basically lets you make lists, and encourages you to get creative with them. If you're a collector of physical media, or an internet list-fanatic or, generally, a completionist, you might fall in love with this app.' — Cosmin
'Reading the recently-released, Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. It's THE authoritative source on the origins of D&D, and by extension the invention of role-playing games and the origins of all the game mechanics that we take for granted from video games.' — Jonathan
'Currently watching King of the Road (the Vice series, available on YouTube). Also playing a ton of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, and the original THPS3 on my Steam Deck with Partymod. All of this skateboarding media made me pick up a longboard too, which has been fun so far!' — Alex
'The newish podcast Post Games from Chris Plante, former editor in chief and co-founder of Polygon. Great weekly dives into under-covered aspects of gaming news.' — Nick
'Trying to solve Every 5x5 Nonogram (Picross for the Nintendo fans) with a community of people around the world. About half of the 25 million solutions are done. I've contributed about 650 so far.' — Sam
'I beat my phone addiction using the AppBlock Android app. It has a strict mode that makes it almost impossible to access blocked apps or websites. I also found a daily routine app that works for me. It's called RoutineFlow and it makes routines behave like playlists with set time for each task and estimated time of completion. It was designed for people with ADHD.' — Jakub
'The book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman is fantastic! The series is funny and engaging — I tore through all seven books in two weeks and couldn't put them down!' — Kyle
'Trying to learn cardistry with my USPCC decks that came in earlier today. They're a big step up from the dollar store playing cards I was using before. (I got the gorgeous unicorn-themed cards and the low-poly skull-themed ones called Memento Mori Genesis.)' — Julia
A while back, I had Casey Johnston, author of She's A Beast and A Physical Education, on the Vergecast to talk about phone usage. She gave me lots of good tips for using my phone less, but one in particular has been a game-changer for me: she recommended getting a second device, on which to put all the feeds and social media and all the stuff I don't want to do all day.
Friends, I did that, and it rules. (I had an extra Android device lying around, but you can buy a pretty good one for a couple hundred bucks.) Now, my phone is much more minimal and thus less distracting, but if I want to bring something with me for scrolling and games and generally wasting time, I have a device that's equally easy to pocket. I like it better than moving everything to an iPad, because it's way more portable, and it still looks like I'm just on my phone to the rest of the world. It feels less weird in the Starbucks line, I don't know.
If you're looking for a summer reset, give this one a try. Buy a phone, repurpose an old one, whatever, and dump everything but your most essential apps on there. Use it as much as you want, but always make sure it's a second device. For me, at least, it's been the best of all worlds. I still have everything close… but not always too close.
Have a great summer hanging with Jay, and I'll see you in a couple months!
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