Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 145, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I’m happy to be done traveling for a bit, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I flew to San Francisco to try out Meta’s new hardware, including the impressive Meta VR Glasses. Along the way, I’ve been listening to Joanna Stern’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg, watching this interview with new Apple CEO John Ternus, revisiting Steve Jobs’ “Antennagate” press conference Q&A, playing games on my Steam Deck using the Xreal One Pro glasses, and reading Sarah Wynn-Williams’ Careless People when I have spare moments.
I also have for you more on Meta’s glasses, Remedy’s Control sequel, Microsoft’s updated Surface Mouse, and more.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What apps are you into right now? What are your favorite things you’ve watched / seen / listened to recently? 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.)
- Google’s Googlebooks. Google finally revealed a ton of details about its Googlebook laptops, and they seem like they could be particularly great for people looking for a laptop to pair with their Android phone. Google is promising that they’ll get 10 years of updates, which hopefully speaks to a real commitment from the company to make the platform work. The first five are from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.
- Ray-Ban Meta Audio. Meta is launching smart glasses without cameras. The glasses still have microphones and speakers, so you can still listen to music and talk with AI. Battery life is longer, and there are also some new styles. Not going to lie, I really like the Clubmaster style.
- Control Resonant. Remedy’s Control sequel moves out of the mind-bending Oldest House and into Manhattan and some strange new locations. I’ve beaten it, and while I prefer the original’s more contained setting, I love a lot about where the story goes. If you’re a Remedy fan, don’t miss this one.
- Silent Hill: Townfall. Reviews for Konami’s next big horror game, set in a town in Scotland, make it sound like another worthy addition to the franchise. It should be a great one to check out to get ready for Halloween.
- Peloton’s Tread Flex. Peloton made a folding treadmill. (Folding is all the rage these days.) Seems like a smart idea, especially for Peloton faithfuls who have smaller living spaces. It’s also Peloton’s “most affordable” treadmill, though it still costs $2,195.
- Microsoft’s Surface Mouse. The second-generation version of the Surface Mouse has haptic feedback, an action button, and can be paired with three devices. It’s a tad pricey at $79.99, but it seems like a really solid option if you just want a good mouse. The Surface Pro and Laptop got a refresh, too.
- Logitech G’s Yeti 2. The follow-up to the Blue Yeti, one of the most recognizable microphones ever, has an LED display and can track your voice with an audio proximity sensor. I just picked up a cheap mic of my own on a Whoop sale, but maybe if that one doesn’t cut it, I’ll end up snagging a Yeti 2.
Today I’m featuring The Verge’s Brad Bourque. Brad joined our commerce team for a few months to help out with our deals coverage and has been going deep into gaming tech. He’s also a fellow Portlander, so I had to feature him as one of our small but mighty Portland contingent.
I asked Brad to share his homescreen and the apps and things he cares about. Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
Images: Brad Bourque / The Verge
The phone: Pixel 9 Pro XL
The wallpaper: My homescreen wallpaper is just an included Pixel wallpaper of plants in mellow green tones. My lockscreen is a fan-made Tekken Tag Tournament poster featuring Armor King and Modelo. It doesn’t have to make sense if the vibes are right.
- Right up top you’ll find two of my favorite mobile games. The first is Idle Obelisk Miner, an idle game I recently started playing that I’ve found compelling and generous given the genre’s normal conditions. I’ve been playing for just over a month and a half and I’m only at 3.16 percent completion, so I know I have a long road ahead of me.
- The other is Nubby’s Number Factory, an oddball roguelike that I’ve sunk dozens of hours into on Steam. The game has a funky style and charm that reminds me of old Adobe Flash browser games, but with modern sensibilities and huge replayability.
- Other than that, there isn’t much exciting to discuss. I like to keep calendar and weather widgets prominently featured on my first screen, mostly because I’m bad at remembering what I have coming up on any given day and Portland is known for surprise rainstorms.
- The main screen is mostly the boring stuff that I use every day, with apps like mail, texting, and YouTube given priority positions for easy access. My dark secret is that, if you swipe one page to the right, it’s all a disorganized mess of apps with no sorting or folders. If I’m looking for a specific app, I’ll swipe up and search for it.
I also asked Brad to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- Ever since the final major Destiny 2 update, I’ve been chiseling away at some of the expansions I missed and finishing up old collections. With the recent announcement that old vaulted content would be coming back, I’m planning on continuing to sink time into one of my favorite games ever.
- The other game I’ve been playing quite a lot of over the past few months is Old School RuneScape. I didn’t play during its heyday, so I don’t actually have much nostalgia for the game, but I’ve been really sucked in by how different it is from other MMOs that I’ve been playing for years, like World of Warcraft. I also appreciate that direct user feedback is such a big part of modernizing and updating the game, which I think has helped foster an active and social community in-game.
- We’re at the end of Game Changer’s latest season. It’s Dropout TV’s groundbreaking game show where the rules change every time, so I’m watching that religiously on Monday evenings. The most recent season has been one of the strongest yet, and constantly has me laughing and occasionally crying over its sweet and incredibly creative episodes.
- For music, I’ve been on a really chill kick lately, with Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure and Tom Misch’s Full Circle headlining a lot of my morning writing and deal-hunting sessions. I’ve been listening to a lot of vinyl recently, which I’ve found gives a nice rhythm and ritual to my day that just turning on Spotify and hitting shuffle doesn’t.
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] 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 The Verge.
“I’ve been really enjoying a new app for my self-hosted media server. NostalgiaTV uses your media library to set up TV channels akin to classic cable. You turn it on and it brings up the ‘live’ TV guide/schedule and you can channel surf to choose what to watch instead of scrolling through your media library. Totally unnecessary and also way more fun than I thought it would be. They automatically set up a few channels for you, but you can also get in the weeds setting up custom channels and schedules.” — vikrael
“Currently playing: Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, only during the evenings when my son is put to sleep. Reading: The Iliad, I try to read it in bits whenever I can during the early part of the evening during the week. I read more during the weekend mornings.” — basicalexguy
“As a fan of the Planet Money podcast, I was surprised to come across their new book at my local library. Now being a few chapters into it, I am pleasantly surprised about how good of a read it is (especially if you enjoy the podcast). Title is Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life.” — YG_400
“Currently reading The God of the Woods by Liz Moore that is being adapted into a Netflix show soon. The book is so good and hard to put down as the mystery draws you in as you hope for answers with each turn of the page.” — Sabertooth
“In the final act of Star Wars Zero Company. It is VERY good.” — BV
“I just recently got back into photography after years of just shooting on my iPhone and trying to tweak the results. Wow have I missed my Ricoh GRIII and Olympus XA2. While the Ricoh gives me instant gratification of capturing a moment exactly how I envisioned it, it’s been a lot of fun shooting rolls of film (stored in the freezer of course), and having to patiently wait for the results to come back!” — Ricky
Well, after my big tip in this section last week about eating at familiar restaurants while traveling, I wasn’t able to do any of that while traveling for Meta, and I felt it. Boy was I tired and hungry. It came down to a few different things, like a busier schedule and mostly being on Meta’s campus, where eating options were limited. I did get to devour some protein bars, which are a guilty pleasure of mine. But I really was hankering for some Chipotle.