Time to upgrade your reading gadgets

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 57, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy Kindle Season to all who celebrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about sports betting and designer proteins and the Ford Bronco, listening to Bon Iver’s new Sable and Brian Eno’s old Music for Airports on repeat, watching Archer and Unstable, desperately trying to find a better controller for the Nintendo Switch, and finally seriously making plans to build a whole seltzer system into my kitchen counter. It’s just time.

I also have for you an unusually gadget-heavy week: new Kindles, new iPads, new retro game consoles, and much more. Oh, and I forgot to mention this last week, but The Verge is hiring for a couple of really cool jobs, including a senior tech editor and a deputy editor overseeing our reviews and commerce programs. You should apply! Can confirm this is an awesome place to work. And if you have questions about either role, hit me up.

Anyway, gadget time. Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / playing / reading / trying this week? What should everyone else be into as much as you are? 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.)

• The Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition. I suspect the new Paperwhite will actually be the right new Kindle for most people (and it is really nice), but there’s something about the color model that is just so enticing. Particularly if you’re a comics reader, this thing looks like a winner.
• The new iPad Mini. I’ve always hoped Apple would decide to do something awesome and new with the iPad Mini. And Apple never does. But I love the Mini all the same, and at the very least, this one is a thoroughly modern iPad that can do every iPad thing. I’ll take that.
• The DJI Air 3S. The new midrange drone in DJI’s lineup has a bunch of nice upgrades but really only one purpose: to work well in the dark. The 3S is built to fly safer, capture better images, and return home more easily, all without being able to see very well. It sounds very fun and also like a very good way to prank your friends. I’m just saying.
• The Sonos Arc Ultra. Yeah, the app sucks, but Sonos still makes great-sounding stuff. And I think if you’re going to buy one piece of home stereo gear, a soundbar is the way. If the surround-sound tech works half as well as the company says, this one’s a winner.
• The Analogue 3D. I have been waiting for Analogue’s Nintendo 64 console for what feels like forever, and this 4K upscaling machine is exactly what I hoped it’d be. It doesn’t ship until next year, and you can’t preorder it until Monday, but I’m telling you now because I’d bet good money it’ll sell out in a hurry.
• Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara. Maybe I’m still in a 2004-y mood, so anything Tegan and Sara catches my eye, but this is a wild story: about a specific identity theft, about what happens when fandom gets weird, and so much more.
• Eater for iOS. This is exactly what I can never get Google Maps to be: just a million maps of cool, good restaurants. Eater’s taste often skews a little fancy and expensive, but I’ve rarely gone wrong trusting its recommendations. (I suppose I should disclose that Eater is part of Vox Media, as is The Verge, but also I just really like this app so far.)
• Shrinking season 2. One of my favorite shows of the last few years is back! If you haven’t watched the first season of this show that is somehow both very bleak and very funny, you should. And then you should watch the second season immediately and tell me all your thoughts. I’ll be ready.
• Super Mario Party Jamboree. I think Mario Party 64 might be my all-time most-played video game. (It’s either that or GoldenEye.) This new entrant in the series adds lots of new minigames and some really fun-looking new boards — it looks like a perfect group game. 

I think it’s still the case that Adi Robertson is the employee at The Verge who has worn the most AR and VR headsets. Is that a cool distinction or a horrifying one? Who knows! But the internet is filled with pictures of Adi wearing face-puters. Now, she runs our policy desk and is thinking an awful lot about how we ought to regulate, use, and make sense of all the technology in our lives. Also something about an election in a few weeks? Not sure what that’s about.

Here’s Adi’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:

The phone: Samsung Galaxy S24.

The wallpaper: My lockscreen is a rotating slideshow of my seven-month-old because I am That Mom now. My homescreen is the Continuous Monument, which is a satirical sci-fi architecture concept from the 1970s avant-garde firm Superstudio — it’s part of a series of illustrations of a huge, sterile, grid-like arcology lacing across the entire world. Sort of like a huge version of Saudi Arabia’s The Line project, except nobody was supposed to actually build it.

The apps: Libby, Google Authenticator, Amazon, The New York Times, Simplenote, Google Messages, Bluesky, Feedly, Slack, Clock, Camera, LastPass, Paprika, Phone, Wikipedia, Google Photos, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Stash2Go, Okta Verify, LibraryThing, Files, Spotify, Signal, Gmail, Firefox, Google Maps.

I have a lot of inertia in my homescreen; I kept Google Hangouts on there for months after it shut down. I also added some stuff after becoming a parent — I ordered from Amazon maybe twice a month until I had a tiny creature constantly going through diapers and formula and random items I didn’t realize babies needed.

Libby: While I fully support the idea of library-managed controlled digital lending, I can’t deny the convenient pipeline of borrowing a book from the New York and Brooklyn public libraries through Libby and having it appear instantly on my Kobo reader. You got me, public-private tech partnerships. Sometimes you’re good.

Paprika: In an era of link rot and paywalls, this is the best service I’ve found for opening a recipe on the internet, downloading a personal copy, and keeping it permanently on my phone for reference. (There’s also a desktop version.) It’s simple, no-nonsense, and includes a calendar for planning meals and an easy grocery list feature.

Stash2Go: I don’t knit as much as I used to (infants and giant needles present some obvious problems), but I’m an avid Ravelry user, and when I started knitting, this was the best third-party app I found. It maintains most of the site’s powerful pattern search options while letting me upload pictures of my projects.

Bluesky: When Twitter’s user base started splintering, I wasn’t sure Bluesky would make it! But my initial choice, Mastodon, started feeling like a chore — I’m happy for the people who love it and I hope it flourishes, my feed just filled up with one too many arguments over the ideological valence of search options and quote posts. At this point, some of my favorite Twitter communities (like tech policy Twitter) have migrated to Bluesky, and it’s become a good way to keep up with what’s going on.

LibraryThing: With absolutely no disrespect to the creator of LibraryThing: I do not like LibraryThing. I do not like the complicated sorting and annotation features I never use. I do not like that, half the time, adding a book to my library requires restarting the app. But I like keeping track of the books I’ve read, and Goodreads — with its review bombing, its harassment potential, its attempts to make me share my reading history — just feels gross. If you have a less janky alternative, please let me know.

Feedly: I keep up with news and essays on RSS. I got a Feedly account when Google Reader shut down. It works pretty well, and I’m happy with it. I am a simple woman, set in my ways.

Wikipedia: This is my Instagram. I’ve lost hours scrolling it. My current tabs include Charlotta Bass (the first Black woman to own and operate a US newspaper), Daigo Fukuryū Maru (the Japanese fishing boat, contaminated with radioactive fallout in the 1950s, that partially inspired Godzilla), and the 1995 Raven Software first-person shooter Hexen: Beyond Heretic, which I have never played.

I also asked Adi to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:

• I’m currently reading The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville. I’ve barely started, but I generally like Keanu Reeves’ taste, and China Miéville is one of my favorite authors, so a collaboration between them is too delightful a prospect to miss.
• I’m currently watching the long-awaited Adult Swim adaptation of Uzumaki. Like a lot of viewers, I enjoyed the first episode and felt a bit burned by the later animation quality decline, but so far, it’s doing a pretty good job of compressing a massive volume of creeping horror into a few hours of anime.
• I’ve just finished playing Dredge, a cozy fishing game about catching eldritch abominations to find arcane artifacts that will bring about the end of the world. I could use some more variety in the minigames and side missions, but as premises go, it’s extremely my thing.

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’ve found and been playing a whole lot of Codenames, a new app version of the board game. It is incredibly well-thought-out, with lots of fun variations and cool ideas. It’s also a one-time purchase, which I really appreciate!” – Joel

“Some former Pitchfork folks started their own thing called Hearing Things and started it off with a killer playlist of the best music of the decade so far. And before anyone asks — yes, they do have a ‘blog’ section.” – Christine

“I just finished Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four. It has to be the weirdest, most unique crime fiction I’ve ever read. Highly recommend it.” – Laszlo

“I really like DuckDuckGo AI Chat, which includes the ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, and Mixtral models, where chats are private and are never saved or used to train AI models. As a privacy-focused user, I find this really helpful.” – Shyam

“Charli XCX’s Brat remix album — the hottest guest lineup since the pandemic.” – Dariusz

“It’s dumb, overpriced, and over-engineered. I just got three of these Simplehuman trash cans for my bathrooms. It’s built like a tank, and these things will go with me to my grave.” – Brian

“Here’s a fun game you should look into: the studio is called Rusty Lake, and they have 15–20 point-and-click games that all are connected to an overall story. It deals with murder, reincarnation, and family, and they’re really good! I would start with Paradox because that’s the one I started with.” – Levi

“Discovered Netflix has a Minesweeper in their games catalog. It’s nothing special, but it’s a solid, polished version of the game, and it’s been my default mobile game for the last week.” – Justin

“Been on an Ursula K. Le Guin kick and reading The Dispossessed. It goes deep into thinking what a society based on anarchist principles would be like, plus tons of mid-century sci-fi goodness.” – Richard

I’m sure (or at least I hope) I’m the 9,000th person to tell you to watch Cabel Sasser’s talk from the XOXO conference this year. Honestly, most of the talks from XOXO are great if you care about the internet and creativity and art and stuff, but Sasser’s was my favorite. I promise you will never guess where it’s going, and I promise it’s worth the journey. I’m working on seeing the world more like Wes Cook.