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Welcome to Installer No. 72
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 72, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.
What I’ve Been Up To This Week
This week, I’ve been reading about Hasan Piker and calculator apps and car thieves and the real economics of YouTuber life, using my month of Paramount Plus to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Yellowjackets, replacing my big podcast headphones with the Shure SE215 in-ear headphones, switching all my reading out of the Kindle ecosystem for increasingly obvious reasons, and taking copious notes on Kevin Kelly’s 50 years of travel tips.
What’s New and Exciting This Week
I also have for you Apple’s slightly confusing latest smartphone, a couple of new things to watch this weekend, the best new Xbox game in a while, and much more. Also, the first part of our group project on all the ways we listen to music. Let’s do this.
The Verge’s Recommendations
- The Apple iPhone 16E: I’m torn on this one. I like that it’s $599, I like that it has good battery life, I like that it has Face ID and USB-C. But only one camera? And an Action Button but no MagSafe? Some odd tradeoffs here, and for a higher price than the old SE, but this’ll surely be the phone for a lot of iPhone users.
- Avowed: It’s been a while since an Xbox game felt like it was everywhere on my social feeds. But it seems like everyone’s into Avowed, a properly huge and complicated RPG that, according to my colleague Andrew Webster, doesn’t blow up the format but executes it well.
- Memes & Nightmares: A satirical true crime documentary! About a meme that was everywhere and then suddenly disappeared! It’s giving Documentary Now! and American Vandal, except about NBA Twitter and GIFs. Truly the intersection of all my interests.
- The Americas: There are few things in the world I enjoy more than the Planet Earth series. I watch them all, I watch all the copycats, I only wish there were more of them. And now I get a version of it in my own backyard! With Tom Hanks narrating! That’s my Sunday nights sorted for a while.
- The Oppo Find N5: A foldable phone I’ll likely never be able to buy but will lust after nonetheless. It’s impossibly thin, outrageously expensive, and a genuinely exciting sign that foldable design can continue to go cool places.
- The King Jim Pomera DM250US: I have long had romantic ideas about buying a digital typewriter and just buggering off to some Airbnb in the woods to write. This one, from Japanese stationery brand King Jim, is pretty expensive but has a good track record in Japan and looks alarmingly close to the device I’d want it to be.
- Grand Theft Hamlet: A documentary, now streaming on Mubi, about two actors who decided, during the pandemic, to… do all of Hamlet inside of GTA. (Look, we all got weird during covid.) The whole thing takes place inside the game, and the gimmick actually really works. I don’t love the whole thing, but I’ve certainly never seen anything quite like it.
- Sober Ringtones: This one is specifically for my mother-in-law (hi, Diane!) who has the most ear-splitting ringtone of all time. In her defense, all built-in ringtone options suck. I think you’re a monster if your phone is on anything but vibrate, but I like the sound of these chiller, more melodic options.
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop: I confess I knew nothing about the Radiophonic Workshop until I saw this new library of their work appear online, but wow is there a cool (and decades-long) history to this pioneering group of electronic musicians. I’d bet you start to hear some of these old-school sounds show up all over, and soon.
Community Spotlight
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.
What Our Community is Into This Week
- “I’m super excited for the Framework event on the 25th. I picked up a 13-inch Intel Core Ultra laptop when it launched last year and have been loving it. Big fan of Framework’s mission, and I hope this event brings even more people to their products.” — Ben
- “I’m a big fan of the animated series Invincible on Amazon Prime, which just kicked off its third season. It centers on a superhero who inherits his powers from his alien father, and aside from the crime-fighting aspect it gets into some complicated family dynamics and the balance between being good and ‘good-ish.’ The comic is also really well done, and as a bonus I was able to read the entire series through my local library.” — Jon
- “These days I’m reading about the history of Silicon Valley, especially about the start of the semiconductor industry.” — Filip
- “I did a deep dive into Obsidian this week and ended up moving all my Apple Notes over to it. I’m particularly excited about the Graph and Canvas features. It’s like having a second brain. I don’t want to be dramatic, but this might have changed my life.” — Nick
- “After the ridiculous enjoyable new album of FKA Twigs — Eusexua — I discovered two additional Eusexua World Apple Music mixes curated by Koreless and FKA Twigs. Worth a listen. More to come apparently.” — Rob
- “I know Civ VII is the new hotness, but I learned this week with a Netflix account you can play Civ VI on your phone. It’s a crazy platform for Civ, and amazing it works, but why not break up some doomscrolling by being slaughtered by barbarians that are tougher than you remember?” — DLS
- “I’m using Tldraw a lot lately — been loving it. It’s basically an infinite canvas but cooler. I really recommend it.” — Elouan
- “Right now, I’m trying out Linux (KDE Neon for its looks and customization). It definitely takes more time to make it work, but not as much as I feared. I’m positively surprised with its snappiness and better battery life (primarily in sleep mode) compared to Windows. Because of the Steam Deck and the help of AI in troubleshooting, Linux seems more accessible than ever.” — Jakub
Chess and the Brain
I was a pretty good chess player, once upon a time. Now I am a garbage chess player, but I’m trying to get back into it! (I’m even starting to play on chess.com again — if you ever feel like beating a really easy opponent, hit me up.) I love the slow and deliberate strategy of the game, which feels like it uses the opposite part of my brain from the always-scrolling news junkie I am the rest of the time. But I’ve also come to really enjoy the overarching history and culture of chess. I found this great Half as Interesting video about the evolution of what you might call “mainstream chess strategy” and was riveted by it. Over a hundred years, chess hasn’t changed a bit and yet has changed entirely.
Conclusion
One thing I’ve learned in life as a reporter is that there are complicated, sometimes invisible forces that make everything tick and evolve, and if you can figure them out — or at least learn to sense them — you can usually find an advantage. I swear, I’ve played like eight games of chess and it’s making me a philosopher.
