Hello friends! welcome to Installer No. 59, your guide to the best and Edge-The most important things in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I'm excited to have found us, and you can also read all the old editions in the Installer main page.)
This week I have been reading about Hot wired and DRACHM and Mike Solanalooking The diplomatinterfering with Dua Lipa's Tiny Desk Concerttrying Imposing to read news and discover interesting things, test my bandwidth limits for downloading Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and listening to the six hours of Acquired metaepisode.
I also have for you some interesting new ai search products, some new Apple gear, a couple of documentaries to watch this weekend, a calendar app for Windows, and much more.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who stopped by. the acquisition of omnivore. Which sucks. I've heard a lot of people wondering where to go next, and since I feel partially responsible for including some of you in an app that's now dying, I'll help you figure it out! But I need help: What about Omnivore, or any other reading app? Are you 100 percent? need? Tell me your wishes and I'll see if I can point us all in the right direction.
Alright, there's a lot to do this week. Come on.
(As always, the best part of Installer They are your ideas and advice. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should know? Which app should everyone use? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy InstallerForward them and tell them to subscribe here).
the drop
- ChatGPT Search. It's not called SearchGPT, unfortunately, but it's what we expected: live web search integrated into the OpenAI chatbot. So far, it looks an awful lot like Perplexity, Bing, and the rest, but I suspect a lot of people will use this just because it's right there on ChatGPT.
- Ask for maps. This is the type of ai search I'm most optimistic about: Google points Gemini to the Maps app, so you can more easily find things to do and places to go. If ai can save you from having to sift through a million reviews searching for the word “kid-friendly,” all this nonsense might be worth it.
- Great for Windows. I do most of my calendaring in one of two apps: Fantastical or Notions calendar. Notion Calendar is free and faster, but Fantastical is much more attractive and a lot more powerful. The new Windows app has all the features, all the design, and looks like a winner.
- The new Mac Mini. There are reasons to be excited the new MacBook Pro which was released this week, and I guess even the super colorful iMacBut for me, the smaller, faster Mini is the most interesting computer Apple has released this year. This thing will be my daily driver from the moment it ships.
- The new magic keyboard. Two things, both true: $149 is too much for this keyboard (let alone $199 for the black with the numeric keypad), and also once you use a Mac keyboard with Touch ID built in, there's just no going back. And it finally doesn't require a Lightning cable! What a world!
- Dragon Age: Veil Guard. our friends at Polygon described this game basically as a game about a protagonist “and his traveling Deep Roadshow of trauma-soaked weirdos (free)”, which I love. This game seems like it takes a bit of time to get started, but it's hugely rewarding once you do.
- mysterious valley. A new podcast from cablingbrought to you by a group of people we like (and a couple of exes Edge Employees!) talking about all the news and chaos happening in Silicon Valley. A surprising amount of hoodie talk in the first episode! But I'm excited to see where this goes.
- Endurance. If you haven't read Bible This new series is based on British explorer Ernest Shackleton's disastrous attempt to sail to the South Pole. Do it this weekend. I'm serious. It is an all-timer. And I've heard only good things about the doctor.
- Nintendo music. For years I liked to write while listening pirates of the caribbean soundtrack, which made everything seem a little more epic. However, from now on, I will be fully participating in the Boss Battles playlist on this lovely new streaming app.
- Music by John Williams. Turns out it's a big week for soundtracks! John Williams is a legend, and it seems that Disney has an incredible list of other legends coming to talk about how important and special he has been to the movie business. I've been excited about this since the Jaws episode. in the trailer.
- Pokémon TCG Pocket. Honestly, Pokémon trading card games have never been my favorite, but a game like this makes a lot of sense as a mobile app that you can play for a few minutes at a time. Or a few hours. Or days. Whatever works.
share screen
A few weeks ago, I went to New York City and walked into a coffee shop called coffee check. It was started by a guy named David Cogen, who you may recognize as the face of The unlocker YouTube channel. At the beginning of this year, after more than a decade as a creator, he decided to open a coffee shop. And continue being a creator. Somehow.
I spent an hour with David talking about all this, which turned into a very funny episode of The Vergecast. But I left David still wondering how he balanced everything and wondering what he could say about his priorities from his home screen. So I asked him to share!
Here's David's home screen, plus information about what apps he uses and why:
The phone: Pixel 9 Pro. I always completely switch to whatever phone I'm making a video about and since I'm so behind on reviews (see the Vergecast episode for more information on that), that's next on the docket.
The wallpaper: The one that comes by default on the phone. I change phones so frequently that I usually don't change the wallpaper unless it's ugly. In that case, I'll still grab something minimalist from Google. Wallpapers app (maybe a landscape to remind me what it looks like outside).
The applications: Spotify, Phone, Gmail, Chrome.
I usually have the multi-clock widget as it automatically shows me my current time and the time back to New York, which I find incredibly useful when I travel so much. Otherwise the tools section has Notionwhich I'm a big user of after Evernote got worse and worse over time; replaced it, along with Airtable.
Since then, that folder has recently expanded thanks to the coffee shop, as I now have Base of operations for scheduling my baristas, Poplin to collect and deliver our cleaning cloths, buy for inventory/POS/sales/obsessive data analysis, Ring for all the cameras in the space and to make sure milk deliveries arrive on time in the middle of the night (we use a service called Odekowho has a key and brings us groceries / puts milk in the refrigerators), and Pair space to ensure I can respond to inquiries about rear space rental.
I also asked David to share some things that interest him right now. This is what he sent:
- Probably not a surprise, but the coffee is. Particularly I'm going to start roasting in the cafeteria soon, so I hope to source beans from various places, get better at roasting those beans, and modify the roast to get different flavors out of them.
- I also want to take more classes and attend more coffee events to try to learn more about the world of coffee and what people in that world are experiencing as well. And finally figuring out how to balance these two worlds of coffee and YouTube, but, you know, first things first.
Collective participation
This is what Installer the community is in this week. I want to know what you're up to right now too! Email [email protected] or message me on Signal, @davidpierce.11, with your recommendations for anything, and we'll feature some of our favorites here each week. For even more recommendations, see the answers to this post in Threads.
“I saw that you had coffee-golf on the home screen of your iPad Mini. He has IAP and is doing really well. You better try Golf on Mars. It is the slightly more polished version of Golf in the desert by the same developer. “Best fast golf game ever.” -Casey
“The story about Arc disappearing in favor of a new browser prompted me to find a new home. I saw a comment about it Edge story that mentions Zen Browserpresenting it as Arc but built from Firefox. I tried it and I love it! – Thomas
“I've been playing around with different web browsers again. It all came down to Brave and vivaldi I'll try to be a daily driver for a while, but I've decided on Vivaldi. I love it. It's much more streamlined than the last time I tried it, plus it has the benefit of Chrome extensions and lots of customization while protecting privacy. “I think I found my new web browser.” -Josh
“I am a Mailbox addicted to recording movies and this week I found a really good app for recording TV. is called Marathon. The design of the app is great.” —Garrett
“I started playing Rivals of Aether IIa new indie platform fighter like Super Smash Bros.and it's *very* fun. The learning curve is steep, but it is worth it.” -Anuj
“I love the new season of Contraction on Apple TV Plus. I don't get emotional often, but they're killing it (and me. I'm not sure I want to see where the father-son story goes). Great recommendation.” – Matthew
“Downloading again Raindrop after the disappearance of Omnivore. Luckily, I saved my settings for the Obsidian plugin, so it's been an easy change.” – Tynan
“I caught as much of the World Series as I could, but the apple sports The live activity was amazing to keep track of when I couldn't see it.” – Justin
“I have been reading the red rising series because of one of my co-workers. The way the characters suck you in and each book builds on the previous ones, it has become one of my favorite series that I can't recommend enough.” -travis
Sign out
It's Election Day on Tuesday! Wild, important, fascinating, terrifying, causing many feelings in me. But one thing I unequivocally love about the election season is a new series of reports on some of the strangest and most annoying quirks of the American political process. Do you hate all political texts? The Wall Street Journal has tech/personal-tech/political-text-messages-stop-17cf2abb?mod=tech_lead_pos1″>a fun investigation on how they work, Washington Post has technology/2024/10/27/how-to-stop-political-text-spam-elections/”>good tricks to turn them offand our friends at voice made a great podcast about how they became such a scourge. Elsewhere, Cleo Abram I made a great video about why you can't vote online, which is a question that keeps coming up.
Oh, and if you haven't, you should read it. The edgeThe guide to this year's elections.. Particularly the support.
