Welcome to Installer No. 71
This week, I’ve been reading about Alan Turing, OnlyFans, street booze, convenience stores, dusting off my Fortnite skills, reading The Ministry of Time, working up the courage to make air fryer donuts, trying out a Sony ZV-1 M2 as my webcam, catching up on The White Lotus before season 3 starts, trying Anybox as a bookmarking / note-taking app, and seeing if the Simplify Gmail extension will make me like email more.
What’s New
I also have for you a place to watch all the best SNL sketches, a great new pair of Beats headphones, a new drawing tablet for creators of all kinds, a fun-sounding sci-fi movie on Apple TV Plus, and much more.
Music and More
Oh, and thanks to everyone who sent in music thoughts last week! I got a ton of good responses, and to be completely honest, I haven’t been able to properly read and respond to everything yet. That means next week’s gonna be a big, huge, music-setup extravaganza, and that means if you have thoughts on music services, favorite music gadgets, apps you love, a deep love for Victrolas, or anything else, you’ve still got time to tell me all about it. Hit me up!
The Verge’s Picks
Here are some of our top picks from the week:
- SNL50: I am very excited for the three-hour SNL anniversary show on Sunday, and even the concert on Saturday night, but I might be even more excited about this Peacock landing page. It’s just playlist after playlist of iconic sketches, monologues, and musical performances — you could easily spend your whole weekend just watching these clips.
- Beats Powerbeats Pro 2: All the useful Apple-y features of AirPods Pros, but in cooler colors and with earhooks that actually keep the buds in my ears. I bought a pair in the (slightly boring but that’s the point) “quick sand” color, and I’m very happy with my purchase. I do wish the mic was a little better, though.
- The Witcher: Sirens of The Deep: I haven’t really dug into the whole Witcher Netflix-verse, after hearing so many mixed things about the show. But this, an animated movie with none of the baggage but all of the cool monster-hunting, sounds like my kind of thing.
- The Wacom Intuos Pro: Easily the biggest thing to happen to drawing tablets in, I don’t know, a decade? I like the idea of putting the controls at the top and making them more tactile, and I like that they’re a little smaller and slimmer, but I do wonder how many yearslong workflows are going to need some time to adjust.
- The Gorge: I like the premise of this movie so much — two people on either side of a huge, deep, fog-filled gorge, tasked with protecting the world from whatever is down there, and also something something love story — that I don’t really care that the reviews aren’t great. (Or that Apple TV Plus movies mostly suck.) I’m here for this one.
Community Picks
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 more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
User Submissions
- “Trying to stay sane by limiting my consumption of news and screen time amidst the chaos going around. Reading The Wager from David Grann, the author of Killers of the Flower Moon. Essentially about conflicting reports of a real-life Lord of the Flies that transpires in the 1700s. Very interesting!” – Colin
- “We just started watching Paradise over here and it’s fantastic.” – Jules
- “As the topic of digital self-determination is more and more a topic (yes, here in Germany too), I was looking into different OSes for my mobile phone. I found a rather good working alternative to Google’s Android and iOS which is called /e/OS. It works really well, and I can still use all my apps. And they sell phones with pre-installed /e/.” – Christian
- “Played a lot of this game called Hole. The name is unfortunate, but it’s cheap and a very good time.” – Sophie
- “I don’t know if a lot of people care about this but Notion and TickTick have a two-way integration and it’s great!! I still feel it’s limited in functionality because I can only send one list at a time, which doesn’t make sense, and it’s limited to three lists.” – Barry
- “Found some joy on the Internet this week with this video. It’s playing the Star Trek TNG theme song as if it was blaring from the Enterprise itself!” – Mike
- “Recently downloaded the National Film Board app and it’s a delight. ‘Get free access to the largest collection of Canadian films online. No subscription or ads.’” – Christine
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Installer. Don’t forget to send us your thoughts, recommendations, and reviews, and we’ll feature some of them in next week’s edition. Remember to stay tuned for more great content, and we’ll see you next week!
