Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 72, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Hasan Piker and calculator apps and car thieves and the real economics of YouTuber life, using my month of Paramount Plus to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Yellowjackets, replacing my big podcast headphones with the Shure SE215 in-ear headphones, switching all my reading out of the Kindle ecosystem for increasingly obvious reasons, and taking copious notes on Kevin Kelly’s 50 years of travel tips.
I also have for you Apple’s slightly confusing latest smartphone, a couple of new things to watch this weekend, the best new Xbox game in a while, and much more. Also, the first part of our group project on all the ways we listen to music. Let’s do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / hot-gluing this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- The Apple iPhone 16E. I’m torn on this one. I like that it’s $599, I like that it has good battery life, I like that it has Face ID and USB-C. But only one camera? And an Action Button but no MagSafe? Some odd tradeoffs here, and for a higher price than the old SE, but this’ll surely be the phone for a lot of iPhone users.
- Avowed. It’s been a while since an Xbox game felt like it was everywhere on my social feeds. But it seems like everyone’s into Avowed, a properly huge and complicated RPG that, according to my colleague Andrew Webster, doesn’t blow up the format but executes it well.
- Memes & Nightmares. A satirical true crime documentary! About a meme that was everywhere and then suddenly disappeared! It’s giving Documentary Now! and American Vandal, except about NBA Twitter and GIFs. Truly the intersection of all my interests.
- The Americas. There are few things in the world I enjoy more than the Planet Earth series. I watch them all, I watch all the copycats, I only wish there were more of them. And now I get a version of it in my own backyard! With Tom Hanks narrating! That’s my Sunday nights sorted for a while.
- The Oppo Find N5. A foldable phone I’ll likely never be able to buy but will lust after nonetheless. It’s impossibly thin, outrageously expensive, and a genuinely exciting sign that foldable design can continue to go cool places.
- The King Jim Pomera DM250US. I have long had romantic ideas about buying a digital typewriter and just buggering off to some Airbnb in the woods to write. This one, from Japanese stationary brand King Jim, is pretty expensive but has a good track record in Japan and looks alarmingly close to the device I’d want it to be.
- Grand Theft Hamlet. A documentary, now streaming on Mubi, about two actors who decided, during the pandemic, to… do all of Hamlet inside of GTA. (Look, we all got weird during covid.) The whole thing takes place inside the game, and the gimmick actually really works. I don’t love the whole thing, but I’ve certainly never seen anything quite like it.
- Sober Ringtones. This one is specifically for my mother-in-law (hi, Diane!) who has the most ear-splitting ringtone of all time. In her defense, all built-in ringtone options suck. I think you’re a monster if your phone is on anything but vibrate, but I like the sound of these chiller, more melodic options.
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I confess I knew nothing about the Radiophonic Workshop until I saw this new library of their work appear online, but wow is there a cool (and decades-long) history to this pioneering group of electronic musicians. I’d bet you start to hear some of these old-school sounds show up all over, and soon.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to share your music setups. The apps you use, the gear you love, the weird quirky speakers you can’t get rid of. And you delivered. Oh, did you deliver. You all sent more emails than I’ve ever gotten about anything in this newsletter. Thank you so much to everyone who reached out! I didn’t get to respond to everyone, but I promise you I read and appreciated every single email — and I can’t believe how much good stuff you all shared.
So much good stuff, in fact, that we’re actually going to break this group project into two parts. Today, we’re going to talk about software: the apps and services you all like and use. Next week? Hardware. So if you have some sweet gear recommendations, keep ‘em coming!
First, I heard from a lot of people about their music streaming services. Here’s what I learned:
- Spotify is the clear leader here. Apple Music was a pretty close second though, and the Apple Music users seem a lot happier than the Spotify users… The funniest thing I heard over and over was “I tried YouTube Music because I get it for free, but it’s not very good.” Which, same. I feel you. Also, shoutout to the one Qobuz subscriber I heard from.
- You know what got the most effusive love? Tidal! Tidal’s audio quality was a differentiator for a lot of folks, as was the fact that it’s an app for music and music only. I’m good on podcasts with Pocket Casts, personally, and have been convinced to give Tidal a real try.
- For buying music, Bandcamp and Discogs both came up a bunch. A few of you also like using Discogs’ collection-tracking stuff, which looks pretty cool.
You also shared a lot of apps for managing and building your own music collections, which I confess seems to still be a much more popular activity than I expected. Evidently I need to buy a NAS and start rebuilding my album collection! I’m gonna do it. Here are a few favorites:
- Plexamp and Roon both came up a lot as a way to manage and access your music collection from anywhere. (Supersonic also has some fans.) Plexamp in particular was probably the most-recommended piece of software in my inbox this week.
- There’s also Astiga, which I heard from a few folks is a useful single-player streaming service. Just dump some files somewhere, and stream them on your phone.
- There are a few Apple-only apps that people really liked for managing their Apple Music collections: Albums makes everything feel like a CD collection again, Marvis makes everything crazy customizable, and one person described MusicBox as “a read later app for music.”
- XLD and Exact Audio Copy got a lot of love as a way to rip CDs, and Mp3tag seems to be a great way to manage all kinds of tags and metadata.
Based on everything I heard the last two weeks, if I were starting my music journey from scratch, I’d get a Tidal account, spin up a Plex / Plexamp setup for my local music, and then spend way too much time perfectly cataloging everything. Sounds like a pretty nice way to spend a winter.
Next week: the gear you all use to listen to all this great music. I have some seriously fun stuff to share. And I’m going to be broke by the end of this process.
I quit the guitar in eighth grade when my teacher told me she didn’t want to help me anymore unless I agreed to actually practice. (I was a super fun teenager.) Since then, nobody has taught me more about music than Charlie Harding. Charlie is a music journalist, a songwriter, an NYU professor, the cohost of the fabulous Switched on Pop podcast, and a frequent and delightful guest on The Vergecast.
Since we’re doing a lot of music stuff here this week, I asked Charlie to share his homescreen, which I assumed would have a million, like, synthesizer apps. He totally misunderstood the assignment in the best possible way and sent over a screenshot of his desktop instead. He argues it’s both more useful and more revealing, and you know what? I agree. So here’s Charlie’s desktop, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The computer: MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip. I make music with lots of sample libraries that require a lot of RAM and CPU. It was stupid expensive but game-changing for making large audio productions.
The wallpaper: The blue marble! Something vaguely inspiring and completely innocuous. I share my screen with students all the time and would hate to embarrass myself more than I already do every day.
The apps: Finder, Messages, Preview, Chrome, Calendar, Mimestream, TickTick, Apple Notes, Readwise Reader, Slack, Contacts, Photos, FaceTime, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, ProTools, Descript, Fission, Audio Hijack, Spotify, Loopback, 1Password, UAD, Settings
Descript: The only way we manage to make a podcast. Descript transcribes our audio and makes it super fast to edit, like a combination of Google Docs + ProTools (where we always do our final mix).
Ableton Live: My main Digital Audio Workstation for scoring and sound design. While I also use ProTools and Logic Pro, Live is like an instrument itself and makes creating music so enjoyable.
Audio Hijack: This lets me capture audio from any source and record it. We’ve recorded the podcast for almost a decade using Hijack, and it has never crashed.
Loopback: This is like a digital mixer that lets me send audio from anywhere to anywhere so I can play music over Zoom, etc.
Fission: The lightest-weight, easiest-to-use audio editor. It is my default app for whenever I open a piece of audio because I couldn’t stand how long it takes for Apple Music to open and play an MP3 or WAV.
TickTick: My to-do list for everything. I have it connected to Apple Reminders so I can tell my phone things I need to do. My life falls apart without TickTick.
Apple Notes: I am a Notes power user and have it organize my entire life: every thought, script, note, song, whatever.
I also asked Charlie to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- I am on my third read through Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh. This is the ultimate text if you want to know the lineage of today’s music. I teach it in my pop history course at NYU, where I can’t believe I get to lecture on Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Public Enemy, and Daddy Yankee.
- I am listening to Taper’s Choice. They are a supergroup that feels like what would happen if Warhol made a jam band.
- My kids and I watch the YouTube channel Bogdan in the Forest. The guy makes elaborate tree forts out of hand tools, including a full re-creation of The Shire. It is ASMR for city people who wish they were in the wilderness, being creative.
- My favorite way to decompress from reporting and teaching about music: making mindless beats with hardware drum machines and synthesizers. I am obsessed with the Elektron Rytm MKII and the UDO Super 6.
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’m super excited for the Framework event on the 25th. I picked up a 13-inch Intel Core Ultra laptop when it launched last year and have been loving it. Big fan of Framework’s mission, and I hope this event brings even more people to their products.” — Ben
“I’m a big fan of the animated series Invincible on Amazon Prime, which just kicked off its third season. It centers on a superhero who inherits his powers from his alien father, and aside from the crime-fighting aspect it gets into some complicated family dynamics and the balance between being good and ‘good-ish.’ The comic is also really well done, and as a bonus I was able to read the entire series through my local library.” — Jon
“These days I’m reading about the history of Silicon Valley, especially about the start of the semiconductor industry.” — Filip
“I did a deep dive into Obsidian this week and ended up moving all my Apple Notes over to it. I’m particularly excited about the Graph and Canvas features. It’s like having a second brain. I don’t want to be dramatic, but this might have changed my life.” — Nick
“After the ridiculous enjoyable new album of FKA Twigs — ‘Eusexua’ — I discovered two additional Eusexua World Apple Music mixes curated by Koreless and FKA Twigs. Worth a listen. More to come apparently.” — Rob
“I know Civ VII is the new hotness, but I learned this week with a Netflix account you can play Civ VI on your phone. It’s a crazy platform for Civ, and amazing it works, but why not break up some doomscrolling by being slaughtered by barbarians that are tougher than you remember?” — DLS
“I’m using Tldraw a lot lately — been loving it. It’s basically an infinite canvas but cooler. I really recommend it.” — Elouan
“Right now, I’m trying out Linux (KDE Neon for its looks and customization). It definitely takes more time to make it work, but not as much as I feared. I’m positively surprised with its snappiness and better battery life (primarily in sleep mode) compared to Windows. Because of the Steam Deck and the help of AI in troubleshooting, Linux seems more accessible than ever.” — Jakub
I was a pretty good chess player, once upon a time. Now I am a garbage chess player, but I’m trying to get back into it! (I’m even starting to play on chess.com again — if you ever feel like beating a really easy opponent, hit me up.) I love the slow and deliberate strategy of the game, which feels like it uses the opposite part of my brain from the always-scrolling news junkie I am the rest of the time. But I’ve also come to really enjoy the overarching history and culture of chess. I found this great Half as Interesting video about the evolution of what you might call “mainstream chess strategy” and was riveted by it. Over a hundred years, chess hasn’t changed a bit and yet has changed entirely.
One thing I’ve learned in life as a reporter is that there are complicated, sometimes invisible forces that make everything tick and evolve, and if you can figure them out — or at least learn to sense them — you can usually find an advantage. I swear, I’ve played like eight games of chess and it’s making me a philosopher.
