Plus, in this week’s Installer: a new Sonos speaker, a huge Apple history book, the Bigfoot emoji, and much more.
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 119, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. This week, I’ve been reading about Pixar’s future, flight MH370, sports gambling, and YouTube Face, finally digging into Dungeon Crawler Carl after you recommended it so many times, hoping Rooster keeps being as good as its premiere, buying a MacBook Neo I definitely didn’t need, redesigning my Obsidian setup to James Bedford’s specifications, testing the Fairbuds XL headphones, and putting away all my winter clothes — only to drag them out again because it started snowing. Good times.
I also have for you a new game to add to your daily list, an enticing new Sonos speaker, a huge new book about Apple’s first half-century, a fun new way to YouTube, and much more. Let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching/reading/listening to/playing/taking on spring break 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.)
– Parseword. A new game from Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, based on cryptic crosswords. It’s harder to explain than Wordle, but satisfies word game lovers.
– The Sonos Play. Sonos’ first new speaker in more than a year is $299 but sounds ideal for living room use and portable enough for the backyard. It also does Bluetooth.
– Apple: The First 50 Years. David Pogue’s latest book is 600 pages of Apple history and new information about the company’s evolution.
– Perplexity Personal Computer. New apps like “OpenClaw, but simpler and less risky.” This one from Perplexity is easier to set up despite requiring a dedicated device.
– “Is the brand new city in California for real?” A great episode of the Volts podcast explores California Forever, a proposal to build a new city outside of San Francisco.
– The Bigfoot emoji. The Unicode 17.0 standard includes exciting new emoji, including Bigfoot. We need to decide on a reason to use it frequently.
– Channel Surfer. This app turns YouTube into an old-school TV grid, letting you flip channels. It’s great for lean-back YouTube experiences.
– My WordPress. You can now install a local version of WordPress in your browser, requiring no setup.
Screen share
Over the last few months, you’ve been requesting to see how others use AI. Here’s a peek into Brian Lovin’s setup, a designer at Notion:
– Claude. Brian uses the Claude Code app for various tasks, including interacting with Claude in the Mac’s Terminal and other tools.
– Claude Skills. Building skills is worth the effort for repeated tasks. GitHub also has many shared skills.
– Monologue. A voice-dictation app for cross-app use, helping to brain-dump tasks and projects.
– Conductor. Manages AI agents working in parallel, offering multitasking benefits.
Brian is doing back-end coding with AI and front-end work himself. He notes that AI coding tools improve rapidly and his setup might soon change.
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week:
– Omar is working with Android Studio to create a notes/to-do app.
– Bea loves watching “Cosmic Princess Kaguya” in theaters.
– Zac enjoys “All Creatures Great & Small,” a wholesome series on PBS.
– Jacob is intrigued by “Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers” by Maggie Appleton.
– Christopher recommends “The Prize,” a book about oil’s economic background.
– craigkocur reads “The Power Broker” alongside the “99% Invisible” podcast.
– Eldar plays “Rematch,” a football-related game.
– Daryl suggests “MusicBrainz Picard” or “Beets” for MP3 tagging.
– Justin appreciates the AI health and fitness app “Mist.”
Signing off
Paper notebooks are trending among productivity enthusiasts, sharing how analog writing benefits their workflow. I’m interested, but need notebook and pen recommendations. Can you help?
Let’s catch up next week!