Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 76, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry if your bracket’s busted, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I have been shirking most of my responsibilities to watch March Madness. But I’ve also been reading about Polymarket and the future of social media and Taylor Sheridan, watching the Severance finale and immediately starting a full season two rewatch, listening to Amy Poehler’s delightful new podcast, testing out the new base-model iPad and the Nothing Phone 3A Pro, and cleaning out my Downloads folder for the first time in way too long.
I also have for you a new-old gadget I love, a new Assassin’s Creed title, a new mid-range Android phone, a decidedly not mid-range camera you’ll want anyway, a great journaling app, and much more. I want to buy too many things this week. Let’s dive in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be watching / reading / playing / listening to / sticking in their suitcase this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)
- The Core 2 Duo. I have so many fond memories of Pebble smartwatches, which combined features, battery life, and simplicity better than basically anything I’ve used since. And now they’re back! They’re not called Pebbles, but they’re Pebbles. The Core 2 Duo is the cheaper option and ships sooner, and you better believe I pre-ordered one.
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows. There are three game franchises I will always try any new version of, no matter what, and Assassin’s Creed is one of them. There have been some disappointments, but this isn’t one of them — there’s no wheel-reinvention happening here, but the game is huge, gorgeous, and exactly what I want it to be.
- Day One for Windows. I have tried all the journaling apps, and Day One is still the best around. The Windows app is long overdue, and while I don’t think it’s the best-looking version, it’s at least pretty full-featured right out of the gate. Another excuse not to switch away.
- The Google Pixel 9A. I almost didn’t include this one, because you can’t actually buy it yet thanks to some ongoing hardware weirdness that Google ought to be a lot more forthcoming about. But the Pixel A series has long been one of the best deals in smartphones, so consider this a PSA: if you’re phone shopping, hold off. This might be worth the slightly longer wait.
- Tweek. Tweek is one of my favorite super-simple planner apps, except I’ve always hated it on mobile. Now it has some new views and design tweaks that make it really nice on mobile! I hate how much I want to go back and throw my life into this app.
- “Can You Fool A Self Driving Car?” This Mark Rober video is full of interesting and fun ideas — even though there are some very sketchy details in the methodology and results. I still liked it, even just as a way of understanding why this is such a hard problem to solve.
- The Fujifilm GFX100RF. Love seeing Fujifilm take its gorgeous X100 fixed-lens vibe and start adding it to its other camera lines. In this case, a medium format GFX camera with both looks and specs to spare. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s $4,900. I can still hope someone steals me one. (PS: our friend David Imel made a great video about this camera.)
- Gemini Canvas. I hear all the time that these live-updating canvas views are a great way to interact with AI bots — and Google’s version of the feature is instantly one of the most accessible and straightforward canvas tools I’ve seen. Gemini is… kind of good?
- Xenoblade Chronicles X. A decade-old Wii U game just made it to the Switch, where I suspect it will find new life. My colleague Andrew Webster called the game “an absolutely massive sci-fi RPG,” which is really all I need to hear.
My favorite iOS browser these days is Quiche Browser. It’s somehow both incredibly simple and one of the most customizable browsers I’ve ever tried, which is a really hard balance to pull off. I spent 10 minutes mucking around in the settings, moving all the buttons and icons into exactly the right spot for me, and now everything seems to be where my thumb expects. It’s great.
Quiche is made by Greg de Jonckheere, a solo developer living in Japan. I reached out to Greg to see if he’d share his Quiche Browser setup with me, because I wondered if he had any cool tips I didn’t know about. Then I figured he should share with all of us and asked him to share his homescreen, too. Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: Still an iPhone 15 Pro. That rumored iPhone 17 Air better be compelling and keep the USB-C port (a must for iOS app development), otherwise the old 15 Pro might have to go for another ride.
The wallpaper: I’m stuck with the iOS 18 default, not so much for its aesthetics, but because I love the idea of an animated wallpaper that transitions beautifully with the time of day. Now if only Apple could let developers create their own…
The apps: Quiche Browser (more on that below), Things (still the GOAT), Reeder Classic (same), Fantastical, Endel (in love with the new 8D Odyssey soundscape), Cosmos (like Pinterest, but with taste), Poolsuite FM (my favorite indie brand and radio), too many messaging apps (the perks of living in Asia while keeping in touch with friends and family in Europe — each country has its own go-to apps, and I need to be on all of them), plenty of Apple stock apps, and a folder full of apps to track my apps’ downloads, reviews, subscriber counts, and revenue, as well as one with development builds.
I use Spotlight and Siri suggestions a lot, as they’re surprisingly good at remembering the apps I use most depending on time and location. So, my home screen doesn’t necessarily reflect my actual usage.
I also asked Greg to share his Quiche Browser setup. Here it is:
- A compact, one-row toolbar that fully disappears on scroll for full-screen, distraction-free reading
- A left-handed-friendly button layout. From left to right: tab overview, new tab, search / edit URL, address bar, close tab
- The address bar shows the page domain, title, and read time, but it doesn’t open the keyboard. Instead, it’s a large button that opens a menu with everything I need occasionally: history, downloads, settings, find on page, search this site, reader mode, move tab to private mode, copy URL, share, disable blocker, disable JavaScript, toggle dark mode, reload, undo close tab (phew)
- No back/forward buttons. I use gestures instead
- In night mode, the toolbar switches to full black with low-contrast buttons, and dark mode is enabled on all websites. Right now, I’m using a dark blue and orange custom theme, quite cozy for reading at night
And finally, I asked Greg to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- Severance. Fun fact: because season 1 had nine episodes, and last week’s episode was the ninth and ended on the exact same line, I was dead sure I’d just watched the season 2 finale… and spent an entire day feeling utterly frustrated.
- Drive to Survive and Formula 1. I skipped last year’s season as I didn’t want to relive the dull 2023 F1 season, but the latest episodes are good. After that first epic race of 2025, I’m absolutely hyped for what’s to come.
- Targz’s generative pen-plotting. My good friend and mentor mixes generative art and pen-plotting to create incredible work (like physical art, on actual canvas and all). He recently showcased his latest piece at a very prestigious exhibition at Paris’ Grand Palais, and his timelapse videos are mesmerizing to watch.
- Imagining Arc by The Browser Company. A fascinating dive, especially in hindsight, into what went through the founder’s mind just weeks before the company’s biggest pivot and presumably its most challenging period yet.
- Conversations on Quality on YouTube. I can’t get enough of digital product people talking about their craft.
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.
“I just picked up a Supernote Nomad, which is hitting the sweet spot for an e-ink reader and notetaker for me. Being able to read EPUBs and PDFs while drawing on them like a physical book is exactly what I want out of an e-reader. Though it did start me down a rabbit hole of moving all my ebooks to Calibre, getting the metadata just right, and customizing the epub formatting with the right layout and custom font to make reading on my Nomad perfect.” — Sage
“I recently stopped relying on algorithms for music discovery and instead I subscribed to a Patreon for a (don’t like this term but) tastemaker named Derrick Gee.” — Mike
“Adolescence on Netflix. Amazing drama with hour long episodes filmed in one shot, single camera. Even includes a camera passover to a drone just to make things more complicated.” — Paul
“I’ve been using Ladder, and I’ve found it generally perfect. My coach drops six workouts each week and prioritizes three. On top of this, the iOS app is such a great experience. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it takes over your Apple Watch, integrates with Spotify / Apple Music, and tracks your vitals intra-workout, such as % of max heart rate. There are warm ups and cool downs, and I believe it’s as close to getting a personal trainer who creates a progressive training plan as is achievable in an app.” — Kevin
“URList, a little tool for making lists.” — Itay
“I finished rewatching FX’s Legion and was as glued to it as the first watch. What particularly caught my attention is some of the scenes narrated by Jon Hamm in Season 2 and how unfortunately prescient they are.” — Zayd
“I was absolutely fascinated by this 1970’s BBC documentary about how the coming age of the microchip would lead to ‘our children growing up without jobs to go to.’ Interesting echoes of the AI debate.” — Mike
“This week I am happily listening to Into the Aether, a low-key video game podcast. They are known for marathon GOTY-casts and console retrospectives. This week they announced they’re joining a podcast network, so I’m just really happy for them.” — Dan
“I’m going to Japan next week for my honeymoon, and have been using a couple tools to pick up basic Japanese. One of them is a game, Shashingo, which helps you learn through photography.” — Cameron
One of my favorite niche genres of YouTube is “I got a tour of a Disney lab.” There are tons of these videos out there — Cleo Abram and CrunchLabs both published some in the last two weeks, The Wall Street Journal and MKBHD did them last year, and there are so many more a quick search away — and I gladly watch them all. Even after watching the official Imagineering documentary, The Imagineering Story, I still can’t get enough of seeing the mix of practical, weird, useful, and just cool stuff happening inside the labs. It does feel like Disney’s cachet is not what it once was, but there’s still some amazing stuff happening inside the House of Mouse. Plus: everybody ends up doing some kind of lightsaber demo, and I am always here for a lightsaber demo.
