Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer<\/em> No. 67, your guide to the best and Verge<\/em>-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, happy Switch week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer<\/em> homepage<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I\u2019ve been watching Black Doves<\/strong><\/em><\/a> <\/em>and The Remarkable Life of Ibelin<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, reading about Lorne Michaels<\/strong><\/a> and rodeos<\/strong><\/a> and Ben Shapiro<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>restarting Twin Peaks<\/strong><\/em><\/a> in honor of David Lynch, wading nervously into Lemon8<\/strong><\/a> and RedNote<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>catching up on old episodes of Working It Out<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>and watching altogether too many Balatro <\/em>strategy videos<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also have for you my most anticipated gadget of the year, the new season of Severance<\/em>, an incredibly cool tech design exhibit to explore, a nifty new AI productivity tool, and much more. This week has been wild, <\/em>with the potential TikTok ban and the upcoming US inauguration and seemingly 40,000 other things happening \u2014 but we\u2019ve got some great ways to decompress. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (As always, the best part of Installer<\/em> is your ideas and tips. What are you reading \/ watching \/ playing \/ cooking \/ building \/ cutting into small pieces this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com<\/a>. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer<\/em>, tell them to subscribe here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is an unintentional tradition at The Verge<\/em> that new people always seem to start in incredibly chaotic situations. Often, it\u2019ll be a writer\u2019s first day on, like, the day of the iPhone launch, or they\u2019ll be 15 minutes out of HR orientation and Elon Musk will suddenly buy Twitter. For Todd Haselton<\/strong><\/a>, our new deputy editor for reviews and commerce, the chaos was CES. Todd started at the beginning of this year and was immediately inundated with 90,000 stories about weird gadgets nobody\u2019s ever heard of. Welcome to the team!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I like to ask new Verge<\/em> staffers to share their homescreen with us to see what we can learn about them by how they use their phone. You can fake it at work, but you can\u2019t fake your phone, you know? Here\u2019s Todd\u2019s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The phone: <\/strong>iPhone 16 Pro Max. I\u2019ve been using the biggest iPhone for years. I also have an old Galaxy Z Fold 3 that I\u2019ve been thinking about upgrading to another folding phone.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The wallpaper: <\/strong>It\u2019s a picture of me at my graduation from Lehigh University with my grandfather and my uncle, who also went to Lehigh. They\u2019re my role models. It\u2019s a reminder to myself to work hard and to be thankful for what I have. (My twin brother is cut off in this shot. Sorry, bro.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My lockscreen background is a rotating picture of my family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The apps: <\/strong>Photos, Calendar, GroupMe, Xbox Cloud Gaming, ChatGPT, Gmail, The Verge, Messages, Phone, Safari, Camera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n David, are you sure you wanted me to do this? It might be the most boring homescreen you\u2019ve ever published. It\u2019s almost the default.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n GroupMe<\/strong><\/a> is for staying in touch with my college friends and also where my town\u2019s volunteer fire department keeps in touch. I haven\u2019t been as active as I\u2019d like to be since the summer. Xbox Cloud Gaming<\/strong><\/a> is there because I always tell myself I\u2019m going to have all this free time for gaming on the go. But I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The photo frame widget rotates pictures of trips I\u2019ve taken and family members. This is a shot from my brother\u2019s wedding in Santa Monica.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just in case people think it\u2019s rigged: the Verge<\/em> icon was there before I started. I\u2019ve been reading since the site was started, and I subscribed before I joined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also asked Todd to share a few things he\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what he said:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s what the <\/em>Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email <\/em>installer@theverge.com<\/em><\/a> or message me on Signal \u2014\u00a0@davidpierce.11 \u2014 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more great recommendations, check out the replies to <\/em>this post on Threads<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>this post on Bluesky<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cUnhinged<\/strong><\/a>, a delightfully simple mood tracker app that doubles as a micro-journal. I\u2019ve always struggled to stick with journaling, but this makes it effortless (it takes just 15 seconds) to capture my thoughts and details about my day.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Austin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSakamoto Days<\/strong><\/em><\/a> on Netflix. It\u2019s an anime about the best hit man in the world who retired and settled down with a family. Extremely tropey, I know. Mostly just watching to see this cutie kick ass.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Ryan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTrying to get better at Dutch, and downloaded the excellent Mochi<\/strong><\/a> app. Like Anki but so much better in every way.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Hannes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI just discovered Stremio<\/strong><\/a> and I have a profound feeling it will change my life forever. Okay, at least the way I consume media. With all the price hikes and many services not available in the Netherlands, this seems like a great alternative.\u201d \u2013 Jasper<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMacDroid<\/strong><\/a>. I always back up my full-resolution photos to an external hard drive every few months in addition to Google Photos, but damn is it a pain to do that on the Mac. Tried MacDroid today and instantly signed up for a lifetime subscription. So much time and stress saved!\u201d \u2013 Josh<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIndiana Jones and the Great Circle<\/strong><\/em><\/a> on Xbox. It\u2019s the best Indiana Jones thing made in decades. I\u2019m shocked at how much fun it is to explore and how they hit the tone perfectly. And wow did the voice actor nail young Harrison Ford. It\u2019s almost eerie.\u201d \u2013 DSquiz<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI started reading One Piece<\/strong><\/em><\/a> from the beginning last year after watching the Netflix show<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s very fun, it\u2019s lighthearted, the art\u2019s great, and the characters are all lovable and easy to latch on to.\u201d \u2013 Luis<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cGot back into Apple Arcade JUST to play Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On!<\/strong><\/em><\/a> A solitaire horse racing game developed by Game Freak (the Pokemon<\/em> people), originally for 3DS, even though it looks SO mobile. It is amazingly fun and I cannot stop playing.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Uli<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe amazing Safari extension Keyword Search<\/strong><\/a>! It allows you to run custom web searches by adding a keyword or letter, so adding \u2018wiki\u2019 or \u2018yt\u2019 will search those respective sites instead of your default search engine.\u201d \u2013 JME\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHave you tried News Tower<\/strong><\/em><\/a> yet? Total blast.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Dave<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Australian Open is happening right now, which means it\u2019s the part of the tennis calendar where I wake up in the morning and it\u2019s 6AM and somehow half the matches are already over and something really exciting is inevitably happening. It\u2019s delightful. The tennis has been great, but the real story of this year\u2019s tournament is the YouTube channel<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For complicated rights reasons, the organization behind the Open is streaming the matches on YouTube, but not like you\u2019d think: everything is live-animated and everyone looks like Wii Sports characters. It\u2019s deeply bizarre and extremely hokey, but against all odds, it totally works? The Guardian<\/em> has a good story<\/strong><\/a> on how it works and why it\u2019s necessary. I always thought these \u201calternative broadcasts\u201d were just silliness, but I think there might be something here. Next year: real tennis, but make it Mario Tennis. I\u2019ll be there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe Drop<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Screen share<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Crowdsourced<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Signing off<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n