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Hello friends! Welcome to Installer No. 101 is your guide to the best and edge-The most wonderful things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope you like the silly accessories, and you can also read all the old issues at Installer Home.)
This week I was reading about it Intel factories and Nobel Prize winners and ATM thieves“Watch this pop punk”Defying gravity“Repeated cover, I’m reliving my teenage music tastes now then Coordination He’s back, catching up Critical role Campaign, receive all my calls with cheerfulness Pop phone Phone, see more Love is blind Than I’m proud of, sending this Deep dive into RSS readers To anyone who hasn’t blocked me and pasted stuff on Google Pixel Snap chargertrying desperately to evade the cold surrounding him. Good luck to all of us.
I also have a new way to use ChatGPT, a great new video game podcast, Tim Robinson’s new show, and more battlefieldAnd much more. Let’s dig.
(As always, the best part of… Installer These are your thoughts and advice. What are you up to this week? What should he read/watch/play/hang on the wall/cut with scissors? Tell me everything: Email installer@theverge.comOr follow me at signal@davidpierce.11. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it InstallerTell them that Subscribe to Edge And come to spend time with us.)
- Applications in ChatGPT. OpenAI has started talking about ChatGPT as an OS, which is clearly a smart and cruel tactic – it’s good business to have the OS! -And a way to make the product itself more logical. Open the bot, head to an app, and ask Spotify to make a playlist for you or Expedia to find your flights. This…works for me.
- Hidden levels. Two of my favorite podcasts – 99 percent invisible and An endless thread – They are collaborating to create a six-part podcast about the amazing real-world effects of video game mechanics and tools. This is all my conflicting interests, I’ll take a thousand more episodes please and thank you.
- “Cartoonist review of artificial intelligence art“. Really beautiful, poignant, take-from Oats On the current state of generative artificial intelligence. (now Which (It’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) It’s about what art feels like, both making and consuming it, and whether AI objects will one day feel the same way.
- Al-Kursi Company. Tim Robinson, at least for me, has entered the world of “I’ll watch whatever they make no matter what” comedians. Plus, what hypothesis is more novel than something relatively normal happening to a man that sends him down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole that turns the world around?
- “Clean your TV screen the right way“. In five minutes, friend installer) Caleb Dennison convinced me to stop using Windex on my TV, made me buy some huge microfiber towels, and made my TV the cleanest it has ever been. Even the little ones’ fingerprints are finally gone!
- Subway builder. If you’ve ever played a game like… Mini metro or Train ValleyThis game will rock your world. It’s a highly realistic, outrageously detailed game with real-world data and simulations that puts you fully in charge of building and maintaining the subway system.
- Battlefield 6. I didn’t play much battlefield In the last few years – I like very tight shooters, not huge open worlds and online multiplayer. But all the reviews for this game seem to say that it found a good middle ground between these things, and that the game ends up being more fun than playing hard again.
- Belkin Stage PowerGrip. Is an $80 external battery/camera grip for iPhone a good idea? I don’t know. Here’s what I know: I hate using camera controls, iPhone landscape photos with one hand are awkward, okay, I’ll buy one, that’s a good idea.
Show Steven Robles“His face is all over the internet. He’s right there on the home page of Riverside.fm, the platform we use to record podcasts, where he creates product videos and tutorials. And with his excellent Primary technology Podcast, very useful YouTube channelThe dude always seems to be in my feed!
I reached out to Stephen this week because he and I need to fight about shortcuts. I think Shortcuts is a huge failure of the product, and Steven provides a lot of great content on how to create and leverage really cool Shortcuts. I complain about abbreviations; Stephen told me I was wrong. We’re going to get it out vertcast. But I also asked Stephen to share his home screen, to see how he manages everything. And to find out if it’s really as full of acronyms as it seems.
This is Steven’s home screen, plus some information about which apps he uses and why:
Phone: iPhone 17 Pro Max.
wallpaper: My home screen changes depending on focus mode on weekends/evenings. My main background is from Basic Apple Guy, September gradations. My weekend lock screen is NASA’s image of the Pillars of Creation, because it’s cool. (Yes, I have a reminder to do Wordle every day.)
Applications: Maps, Wallet, Photos, Instagram, Confusion, Home, Things, Reminders, YouTube, Slack, Bear, YouTube Studio, Safari, Topics, Messages, Foodnoms.
I’ve moved a large percentage of my web search to Confusionso it got a place on the home screen. bear It is the best app for notes. I use Kanban view in reminders For YouTube planning, however Things For project/task management, so yes I have dual-tasking apps.
I recently started tracking calories and macros using Foodnomswhich had a great update for iOS 26. It made the process much easier than other apps I’ve tried and I’ve lost 30 pounds in the last few months because of it!
I also asked Stephen to share some of the things he’s interested in right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I only discovered them recently, Hank and John Green I started consuming a lot of my time on podcasts and YouTube. Hank confronts Sora And the Internet as a whole is worth a listen.
- My kids introduced to Happy Gilmore and sequelThey’re both great.
- I read Four thousand a week Earlier this year and it’s still messing with me.
- My kids are playing with the new one skating game, so I save the TikToks from the funny tricks and we all watch them as a family.
- As well as abbreviations.
Here’s what Installer community this week. I want to know what you’re up to now too! Email installer@theverge.com Or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here each week. For more great recommendations, check out the responses to This post is on topics and This post is on Bluesky.
“Two years ago I joined Instagram to follow a band; Beth. Very quickly I started seeing posts from a strange but convincing account. Dream eaterswhich were short music videos mixing gothic, electronic, metal and pop music from the 80s on unusual funny topics. I wouldn’t have known about them, a New York City art rock band, if they hadn’t started posting short videos on TikTok and then Instagram. Now they are one of my favorite artists ever.” – John
“We’ve been catching up First, last, everything. It’s a great interview so far with great guests (and a tech angle of course).” – Roman
“This week I fell into the trap of what I would describe as Nouveau Retro gaming PS Vita mods. Incredible things. Lots of hacks, tweaks, plugins, and home brews. A real nerdy treasure trove. -Simon
“Just bought 2010 5.1 Mac Pro. Upgrading/repairing it would be a good weekend project. -Salted pork
“I recently upgraded my device Morena Account for more storage and better support. Eventually, I’ll probably upgrade to a phone purchased directly from Murena. In the meantime I switched providers to ProtonYet I still feel drawn to the ecosystem I prefer: Next cloud. Its suite of online services — Office, Calendar, Notes, Tasks, creative note apps like Carnet, and even an experimental “cookbook” feature — matches what I’ve long wanted from Google. I’ve tried hosting my own Nextcloud instance, but the maintenance has become cumbersome, so I’m happy to pay for an annual service that supports a healthier internet and phone ecosystem. -Stephen
“I made my Switch 2 transparent with the new ExtremeRate Collection!” – Sophia
“I keep a list of saved product manuals and documents. I also download them all into a notebook LM notebookNow I just want to ask “How do I descale my Sage coffee maker” to get the information I need!” – Sarah
“Japanese was learned and never iOS has helped me a lot in learning the characters. Fun and fast, I was taking big quick tests all the time on my phone. It’s good to see the stats going up and there are no ads, along with other apps they have to keep learning.” – Ollie
“Demo for Ski storyperhaps the sickest game of the year, has just dropped. -Sophie
“I just got a jump rope, trying to rebuild a fitness habit. I immediately saw this as a reason to buy new workout headphones, as my AirPods Pro 2 don’t stay in my ears while I’m jumping rope. I ended up getting Powerbeats Pro 2. Really loving them so far! – Matthias
For years, any time someone asked me what movie they should watch, I always said serves. It’s a documentary that follows four people’s training to become master sommeliers — which requires passing one of the world’s most failed exams — but it’s also a story about passion and hard work. And wine. I learned more about wine from… serves Of a million winery tours.
I haven’t seen anything since then that scratches the same itch, but there may be a new offering this week soon. It’s called Knife edge, It’s on Apple TV Plus, and it’s about chefs trying to get or maintain a Michelin star. Only one episode has been released, but the vibe has been fairly good so far Hell’s Kitchen meet Driving to surviveIf that makes sense? It’s all very melodramatic, but it’s a blast. I always love watching people be good at their jobs, and this one does that really well. It also made me feel hungry about 60 times in the first episode.
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