Hello friends! Welcome to Installer No. 45, your guide to the best and Edge-most stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry, I love productivity apps so much, and you can also read all the back issues on the Installer Homepage.)
I’m back from a few days off feeling rested and sunburned and ready to rumble. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes! This week I’ve Made for love and stories about AI gamers And AI musicians And Electric Ferrariswatching Turning pointreplace my weather app with Lazy weather, furious with Ira Glass for listen to podcasts at 2x speedand all my feelings to the Point Artificial intelligence bot.
I also have a new phone for you, a new smart ring, a new/old podcast reunion, a sci-fi show that everyone seems to love, a fun update to an awesome recipe app, and a wild new AI pod to check out. There’s a lot to do before mid-July! Let’s dive in.
(As always, the best part of Installer are your ideas and tips. What are you working on right now? What else should everyone be reading/watching/playing/eating/downloading/storing for the winter? Tell me all: [email protected]. And if you know anyone else who would like this Installertell them to subscribe here.)
The drop
- The CMF Phone 1. A beautiful, durable Android phone for $200? With an OLED screen and swappable backplates and a bunch of really cool accessories including a kickstand? Yes. Please. In orange, of course.
- The Samsung Galaxy Ring. I’m still a fan of Samsung’s Fold and Flip phones, even though the new models are very similar and actually more expensive. But I’m most excited about the Galaxy Ring, which seems to have a pretty good handle on smart ring hardware — and even has some interesting ideas about gesture controls.
- “The Diggnation Reunion Part 1.” If you’re a tech enthusiast of a certain age, chances are you grew up watching Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get drunk and joke about tech on the couch. It was a great way to see the guys reunite. And there is a part twoat!
- Delta1.6. Delta’s game emulation is on the iPad! I’m not actually sure I’ll be using this much, since I do a lot of my retro gaming on an iPhone with a Backbone controller. But this update, with a larger screen and support for multiple games at once, sounds pretty awesome.
- Amazon’s New Echo Spot. For me, this is just the right balance for an Alexa speaker. It’s small, costs $45 (for now), has a touchscreen but no camera, and is the right size for a nightstand. I keep vowing to leave my phone out of my bedroom, and maybe this will replace it.
- Sunny. A woman loses her husband, but is given a robot by his tech company to help her through it. A strange situation ensues. What a great premise! And from all reports, this show continues the streak of great sci-fi stuff from Apple TV Plus. I’ll definitely be watching it before episode 3 comes out on Wednesday.
- Openvibe. Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and Nostr, all in one timeline in one app. This is basically a clever hack, not the interconnected social universe of my dreams, but it’s a pretty good hack! And I like that it basically hides what network people are on; it’s just people, in a timeline.
- Pestle. I love a good recipe app. I mostly use Crouton and Mela, but Pestle’s new ability to import recipes from Instagram Reels is really great. Just put in the link, give it a name, and it turns a video into a bunch of ingredients and steps.
Share screen
A million years ago I was an intern at Wired, and one of the stories that I got to work on was this wild thing where a writer decided to disappear completely and see if the internet could find him. The story turned out to be amazing, and the writer was Evan Ratliff, who has since become one of my favorite journalists. He co-founded The Atavist Magazine and did a lot of great work there, the great Persona podcast, and was until recently one of the co-hosts of Long formthe journalistic podcast I always dreamed of being invited to one day. Unfortunately.
Now Evan has released a new podcast called Shell game, in which he uses an AI clone of his voice to cause all sorts of chaos in his own life. The first episode is awesome, and I’m really excited about what’s to come. I asked Evan to share his home screen with us to see if he had any podcasting tricks I could steal from him and to see just how AI-ified his life had become.
Here’s Evans’ home screen, plus some information about the apps he uses and why:
The telephone: iPhone 13 Mini.
The wallpaper: The one I sent here is from my cat Henry, an 18-year-old icon who was once a mini-celebrity on Vine and is the sweetest creature on the planet. (Normally they’re my kids, but I don’t allow pictures of them to be posted on the public internet.)
The apps: Google Maps, Photos, Apple Notes, Slack, Settings, Clock, Phone, WhatsApp, Signal, Freedom, Google Translate, CloudBeats, Scrivener, Instapaper, Spotify, TuneIn, Libby, Gmail, Google Calendar, Messages, Brave.
My home screen rules are no social media, no news. I’m a certified news junkie, but I want it at least a little out of sight. And no Twitter app on the phone, ever. As for some apps:
- Children [group]:What they don’t tell you about raising kids in the 2020s is how many school, camp, and bus apps you’re required to purchase and monitor.
- Ships/Planes: The only AR apps I’ve ever used. I feel like a wizard just pointing Flight radar24 in the sky or Naval traffic at sea to see where ships and planes come from and where they go. My father studies logistics and made me curious about how things get from one place to another.
- CloudBeats: Essential for listening to podcast concepts while running and walking; with Shell game In production I sometimes spend hours a day on this.
- Libby: Any New Yorker who doesn’t have it is missing out. You can get e-books and audiobooks from the library and listen to them right here!
- Insta paper: Does anyone still use Instapaper? I don’t even know who owns this thing anymore. But I still read longform stuff that I’ve saved.
I also asked Evan to share a few things he’s working on right now. Here’s what he shared:
- Moss. I started a moss garden this year and I am absolutely in love with all things moss. Websites on how to care for it and its incredible properties, moss gurus (e.g. Mossin’ Annie). Moss!
- The new Charley Crockett album. Just a genius songwriter and singer, with an incredible story. Perfect to listen to while walking on your moss (which you should do).
- Currently under review The brainless megaphonethe essay collection by George Saunders, parts of which are very Shell game-relevant to me.
- My sister-in-law, who is 50x more culturally aware than I am, introduced us to this British comedy game show, TaskmasterThe perfect relaxation after a day of working with your AI doppelganger.
Crowdsourced
This is what the Installer community is in this week. I want to know where you are in now too! 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 each week. For more great recommendations, check out the answers to this post on Threads.
“I just wanted to share an app that (and this is a shock to me) no one knows about. It’s called Smooth inbox. The idea is very simple: it lets you create your own inbox, just for newsletters. I hate reading newsletters in my personal Gmail box, and this is a very handy solution to my problem.” – Denis
“I just watched all six episodes on Netflix Supacell. It’s like Heroes but grittier, set in South London, with an almost entirely black cast and created by Rapman. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year and such a fresh show in a genre that’s basically monopolized by Marvel.” – Guilherme
Currently reading The singularity is closer by Ray Kurzweil. We are fortunate to be able to see human evolution in real time.” – Matthew
“Best ball designs on Underdog fantasy. What was once a niche version of fantasy football is now an (absurdly?) popular sports betting format where players draft an entire team in an hour or less and then compete against complete strangers. It’s kind of like trying to win a March Madness bracket, but you’re drafting a fantasy football roster.” – Noah
“The habits VR exercise tracker app created by the VR Health Institute. They use scientifically proven measurements of VR activity to help you measure your VR workouts. Connects to Apple Watch and other Bluetooth fitness devices.” – Dan
“As a new father, Dungeons & Daddies resonates with me in a special way. This (self-proclaimed non-BDSM) podcast puts a hilarious spin on D&Din which four fathers navigate a fantasy realm to rescue their lost sons. It made me laugh harder than I have in a long time and cry more than once. I have binged the first season three times (that’s over 180 hours of listening) and am now re-listening to season two.” – Mark
“Just got a Boox Go 10.3 E Ink tablet and I really like it. Very slim, nicely designed, no front light and quite nice to write on when needed. It’s meant more as a competitor to the Remarkable 2 (ie a note taking device) but I do enjoy reading articles on Omnivore.” – Patrick
“I recently started reading a book called In depth work by Cal Newport on the benefits of spending time concentrating on a task with minimal distractions. My attention span, and that of many others over the years, has been wiped out, so I picked up this book to try to restore my ability to concentrate deeply.” – Dave
“Apple PenLite: The iPad before the iPad.” I’ve been watching Colin Holter’s channel for a few years now and I really like his work, but this video is something different for him. He interviewed several former Apple employees and I thought it was really well done. I was really young during the time period this is about so I don’t remember any news about this stuff, but it was so interesting to get this kind of perspective from the engineers and product managers who were working at Apple at the time.” – Ian
Sign out
I sincerely believe that “Every frame is a painting” is the best YouTube series of all time. If you haven’t watched them yet, watch them all. (If you only watch one, watch this one about Edgar Wright. Or this one about David Fincher. Or this on the sound of marvel movies. Just watch them all!) So when the channel released its first video in seven years — a short trailer for a new limited series and short film — I immediately started refreshing the page every 10 minutes and rewatching everything on the channel. It’s like going to film school at warp speed, and I can’t recommend it enough. ChairsBoys! Chairs!