Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 129, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, come on you Gunners, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve mostly been sick, which has meant nearly a full rewatch of Parks and Recreation while alternately napping and feeling bad for myself. But I’ve also been reading about Nick Fuentes and clowns, listening to old episodes of Short History Of, testing the NextSense Smartbuds while I sleep, writing in the Outerline Markdown app beta, and eagerly looking for things to do with the upcoming Flipper One.
Today’s issue is a little short since I’ve been out, but I didn’t want to leave you completely hanging. Plus, it’s a good week, including my favorite new browser in years, a new Star Wars movie, two great new tech books, a surprisingly great set of earbuds, and more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / listening to / playing / streaming over a hotspot from the beach 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.)
- Vivaldi 8.0. For the first time in five years or so, I have a new default browser on all my devices. (RIP Arc.) I’ve liked Vivaldi for a long time — it is very fast, incredibly customizable, and full of clever organizational tools — but I’ve always just found it irredeemably ugly to look at. The new design is much cleaner out of the box, to the point I’m fully happy using it all the time. You should budget a long time to spend in settings getting Vivaldi tweaked to your liking, but this browser’s a winner.
- Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. The reviews for this are a bit all over the place, as they always seem to be for Star Wars stuff, but I am straight-up thrilled for these silly space adventures to be back on the big screen. Give me all things Grogu as big as possible, as long as possible, please and thank you.
- Steve Jobs in Exile. It is very hard to find new stories to tell about Steve Jobs, but from what I’ve read so far, Geoff Cain’s new book is full of them. This book is the story of NeXT, Pixar, Jobs’ deep personal changes, and how the guy who almost destroyed Apple came back to save it. Also just a very fun read.
- How to Rule the World. Two great tech books this week! This one is from a Stanford student, digging deep into his own world and its bizarre and problematic and outrageously successful connection to the tech industry. Stanford and Silicon Valley have always been tied together; this is an excellent look into what that really means.
- The Anker Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro. I cannot say I expected to be super excited about a pair of Anker earbuds that are roughly the same price as AirPods, but my colleague John Higgins says they are the best phone-call earbuds he’s ever used. How I am supposed to not buy them now!
- Age of Audio: The Inside Story of Podcasting. A terrific history lesson from the folks at Twenty Thousand Hertz, with some great stories from a bunch of legendary podcasters. Connected to a recent documentary of the same name that I am now very eager to find a way to see.
- Forza Horizon 6. Gorgeous, ultra-realistic cars, which you can tinker with and drive endlessly over gorgeous, ultra-realistic Japanese landscapes. Yeah, it can be a super-intense racing game, but I’ve also come to see Forza as almost… cozy. Sometimes you just need a Sunday drive, you know?
- The MacStories Shortcuts Playground. Federico Viticci and the gang at MacStories are true connoisseurs of Apple Shortcuts, and they’ve made something really cool: a way to use Claude Code or Codex to just describe the Shortcut you want, and have it magically appear. (They also released a huge set of Shortcuts they’ve made, many of which are extremely cool.) This is how Shortcuts is SUPPOSED to work!
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.
“Got an Oculus Go at a thrift store for $10. Most of the apps are nonexistent except for YouTube, and it’s surprisingly… fine? I wonder if the future AI wearables will be useful for a long time; Apple devices seem to be the only group that are still usable even after half a decade.” — Allen
“My mom gave my son a Stickerbox for his 9th birthday. My kids and their friends have spent many hours collectively making stickers for everything and everyone. I love that it embraces simplicity while still making a toy with AI and a screen. Also great that there’s no subscription!” — Matt
“A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve listened to in a long time. I don’t often run to books anymore, but I maintained my race cadence listening to the Apollo 11 moon landing section.” — James
“I’m going to be experimenting this weekend with a couple of Google Docs alternatives — Writer and Ellipsus — and working on the slog to transition away from Gmail (I’ve had my account since you needed an invite).” — Wintersong
“I bought a new pair of headphones this month: the Sony WH-1000XM5. They’re amazing, and the sound quality feels incredibly professional.” — Seb
“You recommended a cable last week, and it inspired me to tell you about the Allroundo Eco cable from Vonmahlen; a short, coiled USB-C to USB-C cable in a little case. But what makes it special is it also includes USB-A, microUSB and Lightning adaptors in the case. I don’t know what the rated speed of this cable is for power or data delivery, but it’s such a brilliant package that I’ve used for years now that it’s a moot point to me!” — Mitch
“Almost done with Light Bringer (Red Rising book 6) on my Xteink X4!” — Tynan
“Been messing about on Record Club, a European indie selling themselves as the Letterboxd of music. I wish they had a section for your vinyl / CD / cassette collections, but it’s a really nice site and the new social-sharing images are a lovely touch.” — comicallytinyhat
“Rewatching Scavengers Reign because it’s coming off Netflix at the end of the month!” – Fry
“After a few years of bouncing between multiplayer games we’d try for like six weeks and then drop, me and the homies have a standing Monday-evening Diablo IV date, which has been amped up by the new Lord of Hatred expansion.” — Luis
This was the last week of Stephen Colbert’s run on The Late Show (and also the end of The Late Show, politics politics, late night TV is dying, anyway, moving on), and for my money the brightest silver lining of the whole saga was that the Strike Force Five gang got back together. If you don’t remember: Strike Force Five was a podcast started by five late-night hosts during the writers strike in 2023, and produced at least one episode (Strike Force Wives!) that made me laugh so hard I had to stop listening for a while.
Anyway, the guys got back together for one more episode to celebrate Colbert’s run (plus a long hang on Colbert’s show), and it is predictably delightful — and made me think I should start wearing a suit for every Vergecast episode. Might be weird to do in my basement studio, though. Lots to think about.