is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 101, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like silly accessories, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Intel factories and Nobel Prize winners and ATM thieves, watching this pop-punk “Defying Gravity” cover on repeat, reliving my teenage music taste now that The Format is back, catching up on the new Critical Role campaign, taking all my calls with the delightful Pop Phone handset, watching more Love Is Blind than I’m proud of, sending this deep dive on RSS readers to anyone who hasn’t blocked me, sticking things on Google’s Pixelsnap Charger, and trying desperately to evade the cold that’s going around. Good luck to us all.
I also have for you a new way to use ChatGPT, a terrific new video game podcast, Tim Robinson’s new show, the latest Battlefield, and much more. Let’s dig in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into this week? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / sticking on the wall / cutting up with scissors? Tell me everything: email installer@theverge.com, or hit me up on Signal @davidpierce.11. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe to The Verge and come hang out with us.)
The Drop
- Apps in ChatGPT. OpenAI is starting to talk about ChatGPT as an operating system, which is both an obviously smart and ruthless tactic — it’s good business owning the OS! — and a way to make the product itself make more sense. Open the bot, address an app, and ask Spotify to make you a playlist or Expedia to find you flights. This… works for me.
- Hidden Levels. Two of my favorite podcasts — 99 Percent Invisible and Endless Thread — are teaming up to make a six-part podcast about the fascinating real-world effects of video game mechanics and gadgets. This is all of my interests colliding, I will take a thousand more episodes please and thank you.
- “A cartoonist’s review of AI art.” A really lovely, and poignant, take from The Oatmeal on the current state of generative AI. (Now that is a sentence I never thought I’d write.) It’s about what art feels, both to make and to consume, and whether AI stuff will ever feel the same.
- The Chair Company. Tim Robinson has, at least for me, entered the “I will watch anything they make no matter what” realm of comedians. Plus, what’s a more current premise than a relatively normal thing happening to a guy that sends him down a world-bending conspiracy theory rabbit hole?
- “Clean your TV Screen The Right Way.” In five minutes, (friend of Installer) Caleb Denison convinced me to stop using Windex on my TV, got me to buy some huge microfiber towels, and has my TV the cleanest it has ever been. Even the toddler fingerprints are finally gone!
- Subway Builder. If you’re ever played a game like Mini Metro or Train Valley, this game is going to rock your world. It’s a super realistic, outrageously detailed game with real-world data and simulations that puts you entirely in charge of building and maintaining the subway system.
- Battlefield 6. I haven’t played much Battlefield the last few years — I like a super tight shooter game, not giant sprawling open multiplayer online worlds. But the reviews of this one all seem to say it found a good middle ground between those things, and that the game is finally more fun than slog again.
- The Belkin Stage PowerGrip. Is this $80 external battery / camera grip for the iPhone a good idea? I don’t know. Here’s what I do know: I hate using Camera Control, one-handed landscape iPhone pictures are awkward, okay fine I’ll buy one this is a good idea.
I see Stephen Robles’ face all over the internet. He’s right there on the homepage of Riverside.fm, the platform we use to record podcasts, where he makes product videos and tutorials. And through his excellent Primary Technology podcast, and his super helpful YouTube channel, dude just always seems to be in my feeds!
I reached out to Stephen this week because he and I need to fight about Shortcuts. I think Shortcuts is a total failure of a product, while Stephen makes a lot of great content about how to make and make use of really cool Shortcuts. I complain about Shortcuts; Stephen tells me I’m wrong. We’re going to have it out on The Vergecast. But I also asked Stephen to share his homescreen, to see how he manages it all. And to see if he’s really as Shortcuts-pilled as he seems.
Here’s Stephen’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 17 Pro Max.
The wallpaper: My homescreen changes by Focus mode on the weekends / evenings. My main wallpaper is from Basic Apple Guy, September Gradients. My weekend lockscreen is the NASA image of the Pillars of Creation, ’cause it’s awesome. (Yes, I have a reminder to do Wordle every day.)
The apps: Maps, Wallet, Photos, Instagram, Perplexity, Home, Things, Reminders, YouTube, Slack, Bear, YouTube Studio, Safari, Threads, Messages, Foodnoms.
I’ve moved a large percentage of my web searching to Perplexity, so it earned a spot on the homescreen. Bear is the best notes app. I use the kanban view in Reminders for YouTube planning, but Things for project / task management, so yes I have dual task apps.
Most recently I started tracking calories and macros with Foodnoms, which had a great update for iOS 26. It’s made the process so much easier than other apps I’ve tried and have lost 30 lbs in the last few months because of it!
I also asked Stephen to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- Having only recently discovered them, Hank and John Green have started to consume much of my podcast and YouTube time. Hank’s takes on Sora and the internet as a whole are worth hearing.
- Introduced my kids to Happy Gilmore and the sequel, they’re both great.
- I read Four Thousand Weeks earlier this year and it’s still messing with me.
- My kids are playing the new Skate game, so I save TikToks of hilarious tricks and we all watch them as a family.
- Also, Shortcuts.
Crowdsourced
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 even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“A couple years ago I joined Instagram in order to follow a band, The Beths. Very quickly I started seeing posts from a strange but compelling account, The Dream Eaters, that was doing short music videos mixing goth, ‘80’s electronic, metal, and dream pop on hilarious off-the-wall topics. There’s no way I would have ever learned of them, an NYC art-rock outfit, if they hadn’t started posting short videos to TikTok and then Instagram. Now they’re one of my favorite artists ever.” — Jon
“I’ve been catching up on First, Last, Everything. It’s a great interview podcast so far with fascinating guests (and a tech angle of course).” — Roman
“This week I have fallen headfirst into what I might describe as Nouveau Retro gaming by modding a PS Vita. Incredible stuff. Loads of hacks, tweaks, plugins, homebrew. A real nerdy treasure trove.” — Simon
“Just bought a 2010 5,1 Mac Pro. Upgrading / fixing it will be a good weekend project.” — SaltedPork
“I recently upgraded my Murena 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 Proton, yet I still feel drawn to an ecosystem I prefer: Nextcloud. Its suite of online services — office, calendar, notes, tasks, creative‑note apps like Carnet, and even the beta ‘Cookbook’ feature — matches what I’ve long wanted from Google. I tried hosting my own Nextcloud instance, but the maintenance became overwhelming, so I’m happy to pay for an annual service that supports a healthier internet and phone ecosystem.” — Stephen
“I made my Switch 2 translucent with the new ExtremeRate kit!” — Sophia
“I keep a list of saved product manuals and documents. I also uploaded them all into a notebook in NotebookLM, so now I just need to ask ‘How do I de-scale the Sage coffee machine’ to get the info I need!” — Sara
“Been learning Japanese and Kana for iOS helped me a lot to learn the characters. Fun and fast, been doing quick and large quizzes all the time on my phone. Nice to see stats going up and no ads, besides other apps they have to keep learning.” — Uli
“Demo for Skate Story, possibly the sickest-looking game of the year, just dropped.” — Sophie
“I just got a jump rope, trying to re-build a fitness habit. And I immediately noticed that this is a reason to buy new workout headphones, as my AirPods Pro 2 do not stay in my ears while rope skipping. I ended up getting the Powerbeats Pro 2. Really love them so far!” — Matthias
Signing off
For years, anytime someone would ask me what movie they should watch, I would always say Somm. It’s a documentary following four people training to become Master Sommeliers — which requires passing one of the world’s most-failed tests — but it’s also a story about passion and hard work. And wine. I learned more about wine from Somm than from a million winery tours.
Nothing I’ve seen since has quite scratched the same itch, but a new show this week might come close. It’s called Knife Edge, it’s on Apple TV Plus, and it’s all about chefs trying to get, or maintain, their Michelin star. Only one episode is out, but so far the vibe is kind of Hell’s Kitchen meets Drive to Survive, if 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 does that really well. It also made me hungry approximately 60 times in the first episode.
See you next week!
