Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 127, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, my Scorpion challenges your Sub-Zero to a duel, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Hasan Piker and lines and David Sacks and sleep learning, catching up on Andor (for me) and Young Jedi Adventures (for my toddler), poring over thousands of new Artemis II photos, listening to many hours of possibly the longest YouTube video ever, taking more walks thanks to Pedometer++ 8.0, losing my mind during every second of every Arsenal match, and spending far too much time setting up scenes with the Hue lights in my basement.
I also have for you an exciting comeback for a fabulous workout app, a concert doc you won’t want to miss, a new fun-sounding new board game, a book about creativity, and much more. Let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / listening to / dipping into hummus this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Zombies, Run! One of my all-time favorite fitness apps slash adventure games is back with new stories for the first time in forever. The story of the game’s rebirth is pretty awesome, and I cannot wait to start running to the game again. (I actually mean that! Wild!)
- Boox Tappy. Nifty little accessory for tapping and scrolling on your e-reader, a lot like the Kobo Remote but actually significantly more capable (and probably hackable, in a good way). These page-turners are the kind of accessory you never really think about until you have one and then immediately becomes impossible to live without.
- Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour. The latest James Cameron movie is… hang on… a concert documentary? Weird! Apparently also awesome. It’s shot in 3D, in a way that everyone seems to agree totally works, and seems to have the immersive effect everybody thought we’d only get in VR. I might need to see this one in theaters.
- The Remarkable Paper Pure. Maybe the most exciting E Ink notepad on the market. $399 is a pretty good price for this category, and Remarkable made all the right decisions – more memory, more storage, no expensive and / or crummy color screen. I’m going to end up buying one of these, I can tell.
- The Bose Lifestyle Ultra. Is it weird that I kind of forgot about Bose? It makes good headphones, certainly, but the brand seems to have lost a bit of its shine. This new speaker lineup looks really nice, though — and I like that it’s a whole speaker system designed to work with the streaming apps you already use, not add another one to your phone.
- Mortal Kombat II. Honestly, I don’t know what you could want from this movie other than a bunch of sick action scenes, incredibly mediocre dialogue, and a wildly overdramatic story. Is this a good movie? Probably not. Will I cheer loudly the first time someone says “FINISH HIM!”? You betcha.
- Mixtape. This genre of game — sort of a video game, sort of a movie, mostly a hang — is really hard to do right. I often get bored very quickly. But in the bits I’ve played so far, Mixtape has such great music and such good writing that I’m not a bit tired of it.
- Game Changer: Home Edition. Big week for all of us wannabe Dropout contestants! This new board game has some fun, Cranium-style, every-game-is-different energy to its structure and seems like it’ll fit most family game nights. It’s a Kickstarter, which always comes with risks, but I’m already making space in my game cabinet for this.
- Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. All of David Epstein’s books are excellent, but this set of stories about the importance of limits (and the peril of having none) is full of stuff I suspect you’ll find fascinating. There’s also a great excerpt in Wired, about the team at General Magic that basically invented the iPhone 10 years too early.
Adam Molina has very good taste in just about everything. He’s the productivity nerd I nod along to during the Waveform podcast (which he produces), he’s always sharing cool stuff in his Cool Supply newsletter, and he seems to have basically the exact watch collection I aspire to. What I’m saying is, he’s perfect Installer-bait.
I’ve had Adam on my Screen Share list forever, but figured this week was the perfect week — Adam just launched an app called Color Snap, which gives you a color every day and the challenge to go photograph that exact color in the real world. Extremely cool idea, extremely fun app, I suspect you’ll dig it too. And a perfect excuse to have Adam share what he’s into right now.
Here’s Adam’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
The wallpaper: A picture that someone posted on Threads of the ceiling of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola in Rome.
The apps: Signal, WhatsApp, Pocket Casts, Color Snap, Gradient Weather, Google Translate, Spotify, and YouTube.
My phone philosophy is that everything should be at most one swipe and one tap away. The first page is all about quick access to my most-used apps, and the second is all about quick information. Then I use an app called Button Mapper that turns all of my phone’s physical buttons into action buttons so I can access even more with a hold or a double-tap. For example, long-pressing volume up launches my home note in Obsidian. I clearly spend too much time thinking about all of this when I have no service on the subway.
The first page is just for my most-used apps. I have the usual suspects here like YouTube, Spotify, and Pocket Casts. I’ve also been really liking the new Gradient Weather app that was featured in Installer a few weeks ago. Then WhatsApp / Signal for messaging, Google Translate — which has a new Duolingo competitor built-in that I’ve been using — and my own app, Color Snap (shameless plug). Color Snap is also the reason there is a small white widget on my homescreen: Every day the color changes, and you need to go find that color in the real world and take a picture of it. I wanted to challenge myself to take more pictures, and this seemed like a fun way to do it. (It’s Android-only right now, but I promise the iOS version is coming soon.)
The second page is all about quick glanceable information and controls. So changing songs, switching podcasts, or just checking what’s on my calendar today.
I also asked Adam to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I used to be super into anime in high school, so I’ve been trying to get back into it lately, and the one I’m currently obsessed with is Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. I just finished it last week and am already halfway through a rewatch. Highly recommend it if you’re into fantasy / anime.
- I recently discovered a new podcast called Simple and Clean, which dives deep into the Kingdom Hearts games. It has become my go-to walking-the-dog podcast.
- A YouTuber I’m obsessed with right now is @halfof8. He’s a designer that has been turning his beautifully crafted journal entries into beautifully crafted Blender videos that are less than 5 minutes long. He doesn’t post often, but they’re all bangers.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email [email protected] 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.
“I recently picked up an M5 MacBook Air — my first Mac laptop! One transition hurdle from Windows was the lack of a native ‘Always on Top’ feature, which I relied on heavily via Microsoft PowerToys. After searching for a macOS alternative, I found Floaty. It allows me to focus on my primary tasks while keeping video feeds or conversations readily accessible.” —Travis
“I don’t know how I missed Halt and Catch Fire, but we just finished the last last episode and wow. I wish there was more like this: the character development, not to mention the various awesome camera angles and shots. Amazing all around.” — Mark
“Checkout the app Blockit on Android. It’s like Brick on iOS, completely blocks you out of your phone until the timer is done.” — Gaurav
“Been really enjoying the new season of Hacks, and the weird combination of cozy / secondhand embarrassment that is Rooster, both on HBO Max.” — Pegasusisme
“I’ve placed several campaigns’ worth of D&D characters into Tomadachi Life: Living the Dream, and now I’m obligated to let the players know about all of the drama that has since unfolded.” — Nicholas
“Playing the hell out of MapTap.” — JD
“I have unfortunately stumbled back into playing Timberborn, an adorable beaver-themed survival city builder (which had its 1.0 release recently!), that runs the gamut from cute little farms to massive infrastructure projects with water physics. It’s very addictive, and those beavers are so dang cute.” — Olof
“Just got the GameSir Pocket Taco and have been rediscovering a ton of amazing GBA games. Right now I’m really into Metroid Fusion!” – Sajishnu
“I’m messing with Wirken, a project by Davi Ottenheimer (formerly of Inrupt). Kind of private by design OpenClaw-style LLM portal. Cool project!” — Rich
“I hacked my Nintendo Switch (you’ll definitely need some comfort with tearing it apart to do so) a couple months ago and I’ve been catching up on some old 3DS games thanks to RetroArch, perfect for the Switch format.” — Gabriel
I know I’ve mentioned this before here, but I’ve been having trouble falling asleep recently and have turned to a bunch of different things to help me slumber. An episode of The Office in the background is often just what my brain needs to quiet down; podcasts like Sleeping With Celebrities do it too. The problem is, I sleep in a bed with another person, who is vastly less interested in these late-night noises than I am. As a result, I’m constantly going to sleep with AirPods in and either waking up with one smushed into my ear or lost somewhere among the covers. Am I the only one facing this dilemma? Do I buy dedicated sleep headphones? One of those weird speaker-pillow things? Maybe I just need to convince my wife to love the people of Dunder Mifflin as much as I do. That’s probably the easiest answer. If you have a better one, I’m all ears.
