The VR game I’ve been waiting for

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 58, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, Batman forever, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about Simone Giertz and billionaire assistants and Checo Pérez and Call Her Daddy, learning about “Earthrise,” listening to Quinta Brunson and Conan O’Brien talk comedy, trying to decide whether to get super into Bluesky or just quit social altogether, and throwing myself into baseball so I can pretend I know what I’m talking about during the World Series.

I also have for you an excellent new VR game, a delightful new reading gadget, a nice RSS reader update, a new browser worth trying, and much more.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What does everyone else need to be watching / reading / playing / baking / cutting up with scissors 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.)

• Batman: Arkham Shadow. I am hopelessly biased in favor of this game, the latest in my all-time favorite series of video games. But a surprising amount of what worked for the old Arkham games works in VR, too — the story, as always, is kind of whatever, but the action is fun and intense and everything I wanted it to be. This is the most I’ve used my Quest in months.
• The Boox Palma 2. Another week, another reading gadget I’m going to feel ridiculous buying but definitely buy anyway. One of my favorite devices of the year got a faster processor, new Android… and not much else. But I still love this tiny Android e-reader.
• Hasan Minhaj: Off With His Head. I’ve been waiting for this ever since that New Yorker story, and it delivers. His whole digression into crypto bros and podcast listeners has been all over my For You pages this week, and for good reason.
• Inoreader. Inoreader is a really good RSS reader, but I always thought it was… ugly. The new redesign is really nice! It’s still very dense and text-heavy, but in a news reader, I actually like that. I’m also enjoying all the new filters, which are helping me find to-do list app news easier than ever.
• “Shrek ASMR.” One of the most off-the-wall, committed-to-the-bit things I’ve ever seen on YouTube: a full remake of Shrek, ASMR-style. I loaded up the video after reading a really fun story about it from our friends at Polygon and ended up watching the whole thing. It’s remarkable… in so many senses.
• Vivaldi. I’m still slightly torn on the new tab design, which is lovely but kind of busy. But I love the new Dashboard feature, which just lets you embed a bunch of apps and websites and see them all at once. It’s like what iGoogle used to be, only much better.
• Sonic x Shadow Generations. Sonic. And Evil Sonic. What else do you need to know? All the reviews I’ve read say this game is an excellent remaster of a classic, plus lots of new stuff including a huge new Shadow-focused campaign. I immediately cleared space on my Switch for this one.
• Notion Forms. Notion’s quest to be all things to all people continues! The new Notion Mail app looks pretty great, but day to day, I think Forms is a bigger deal. Even if you just use Notion (or Sheets or Airtable or whatever), setting up a bunch of forms for easy data input is such a simple way to make your life easier.
• Mailbird. One of the best — maybe the best — Windows email apps is now available on the Mac. The free tier is pretty limited, but at least it’ll give you a sense if the app is right for you. I’m still a Mimestream devotee, but especially if you’re balancing Outlook and Gmail, this is worth a look.
• Computer use in Claude. Anthropic’s AI bot got an upgrade this week, including a new feature that can just use your computer on your behalf. The video explaining how it works is great and a useful explainer of how simple some of this complex stuff really can be. Eventually. Someday.

I reviewed the new iPad Mini this week and, as a result, spent a bunch of time setting up a new tablet and thinking a lot about how to organize the homescreen. I’ve deliberately kept this space phone-centric so far, because I really think you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their phone, but after spending all that time thinking about my iPad life, I’m wondering if I need to broaden the scope a little bit. Maybe I should get people to share, like, their computer desktops? Or their game console homescreens? Maybe the first screen of their smart TVs? I don’t know, there are a lot of homescreens out there. We’ll try some stuff.

All that said, here’s my iPad Mini homescreen, plus some info on the apps I’m using and why:

The tablet: iPad Mini, 2024. I love the iPad Mini. I wish this one were a lot better and that Apple would care about the Mini a lot more, but here we are.

The wallpaper: Apple’s weather wallpaper, which adapts to the current weather outside. It’s a total gimmick, and I am shocked at how much I love it.

The apps: Balatro, Madden, EA Sports FC, Retro Goal, Retro Bowl, Delta, Call of Duty: Warzone, Coffee Golf, Real Racing 3, Tiny Wings, NYT Games, The New York Times, Apple News, The Washington Post, Unread, Netflix, TikTok, Disney Plus, Prime Video, Sling, YouTube, Peacock, Max, Hulu, ESPN, Arc, Kindle, Workflowy, Readwise Reader, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Mela.

I feel like there are two ways you can go with your iPad. You can use it to try and do laptop things, or you can decide to use your iPad mostly as a way to avoid doing laptop things. I’ve picked the latter: roughly 100 percent of my iPad use is reading, watching, and playing. I don’t have Gmail or Slack or Google Docs on here; nothing is allowed to send me notifications. My iPad is a place for relaxation and fun, period.

I like and use all these apps, but there are a few to call out specifically: I’ve tried a lot of recipe apps, and Mela is still the simplest and the best at pulling recipes out of websites; Balatro is the most addicting game I’ve downloaded in years; I finally became an Apple News Plus subscriber and am blown away by how much I’m using it; the iPad Mini is the perfect tablet to use as a steering wheel, and Real Racing 3 is a fabulous driving game. 

My dock is reserved for the apps I use at least close to every day, which means it’s reading, notes, recipes, podcasts, and music. (I just realized I should move Workflowy, so it’s not between the reading apps — I’ll get to that.) The most-used non-dock app right now is probably Peacock, which has Community and Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and is, thus, the streaming service I have on in the background basically all the time.

For years, I tried to turn my iPad into something like a laptop replacement. But the more I’ve leaned into it being a purely recreational device, the screen for when I don’t want to be stressed out by screens, the more I find myself using it. It’s a weird and expensive strategy, but it’s working for me.

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.

“I saw Adi ask for a Goodreads alternative and wanted to suggest The StoryGraph! It’s really great at showcasing stats about what you read, rather than the updates-sharing focus of GR, and it has really nice monthly summaries!” – Aurora

“Reading about Adi’s suffering with LibraryThing, I remembered that just a few days ago, I started using Hardcover, and so far, I’m finding it really cool.” – AH

“Taskly is a very straightforward list app for iOS with absolutely nothing else. I have been looking for something to manage my grocery list or just things I need to buy. Twodos is another such app, except it has a very clever way to separate the list into two categories: Sooner and Later. That’s something I really love about it.” – Karan

“I just put about six hours into Wagotabi, and I’m wildly impressed. It is one of the most clever and effective Japanese learning games I’ve ever played. It’s structured like Pokémon, but instead of catching monsters, you’re learning Japanese words and grammar. Instead of battling, you’re engaging in social interactions that put your new skills to the test. Over time, it replaces more and more English text with Japanese. And it’s genuinely fun! Duolingo be damned; Wagotabi is the king.” – Tom

“I grabbed a Steam Deck OLED a few weeks back and have been diving into games I just kind of missed. Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were great. Now digging into the modern Tomb Raider trilogy. I guess I like adventure games when FIFA isn’t available.” – Andi

“I upgrade phones every two to three years, and one way I keep it fresh is to get a new case every year. This year’s case upgrade was from Keyway Designs. They make gorgeous wood and metal phone cases (and other goodies). Check them out!” – Bill

“Trying a new second brain app, Sublime, that adds a few interesting features. Will try for a few weeks and see how it grows on me.” – Miguel

“I have a seriously good Switch controller for you: the GuliKit Zen Pro is awesome, supports everything the Pro Controller does, and has Hall effect sticks to boot. It’s also a lot cheaper than the Pro Controller, so I’d recommend it for anyone buying a new Switch, too!” – Ben

“I’ve been using Capture for iOS, and it’s low-key amazing. Like should be a built-in feature-level amazing. Anything I come across online, I can set aside, hold it off to the side, and then send it where it needs to go later.” – Max

“The premise of MovieCart is simple: it’s for watching full-length movies on an actual Atari 2600. The reality is quite complex. It’s the work of a mad genius, and you may feel like one, too, once you actually get a film running!” – Tom

Approximately every single person on the internet has been talking about the Chicken Shop Date episode with Andrew Garfield, which really is as charming as you can imagine. (Garfield has a history of great YouTube moments, like his convo about grief with Stephen Colbert.) The episode sent me down the rabbit hole of all things Chicken Shop Date, and it turns out, host Amelia Dimoldenberg has been through a truly fascinating ride as a creator.

Last year, she did a great interview with Colin and Samir, which doubles as a (very funny and silly) masterclass in how to turn a YouTube channel into a show at the very center of pop culture. All my favorite creator stories are equal parts ruthless execution and constant aimless experimentation, and Dimoldenberg is a perfect example of both.