The Breaker Times

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 54, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about AI slop and sports betting and Jony Ive, clearing my schedule for the new season of The Great British Bake Off, watching Sicario and Pirates of the Caribbean and A Quiet Place: Day One on plane-seat screens like their directors intended, insta-subscribing to Hasan Minhaj’s new YouTube show, and just relentlessly trolling people with Vergecast clips through Pocket Casts’ new feature. 

I also have for you a couple of new Meta gadgets, the mobile game that will eat up all your free time, a couple of hotly anticipated new movies, the best Spotify feature in forever, and much more. So much going on! Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / trying / building out of clay this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

• Meta’s Quest 3S. My biggest issues with the Quest 3 were the price and the passthrough, and this new model appears to have solved both. It’s back in “totally reasonable game console” range, and the passthrough demos looked much sharper than before. They look great, though not as good as…
• The limited-edition Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer. I already own two pairs of Meta’s smart glasses (don’t ask), but I am still lusting over this clear pair. They’re more expensive, and they actually undo some of the good non-gadget vibes of the other models, but they look so good.  
• Balatro Mobile. This might be the most recommended thing in the history of Installer — I swear, every week someone tells me how much this poker roguelike has taken over their life. And now it’s on your phone! $10, no data collected, no microtransactions, my screen time is about to go through the roof.
• Wolfs. This Clooney-Pitt Apple TV Plus movie has a fascinating backstory that says a lot about the future of Hollywood, but I also just love a big-budget flick in which movie stars say cool lines in cool ways. This appears to be exactly that.
• The new Roku Ultra. I helped review the Google TV Streamer this week, and I really love that thing. But I’m also psyched to see Roku keep pushing — the new one’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s faster and better, and that is a very good thing.
• The Wild Robot. I’d really like to tell you to go see Megalopolis this weekend, but every single indication is that the movie is hot garbage. But people seem thrilled about this one, an animated flick about a stranded robot that sounds adorable and delightful and like something I’m going to end up watching 100 times.
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. A Zelda game… in which you get to play as Zelda. That’s the dream! This game doesn’t seem to be as big or awe-inspiring or platform-defining as Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, but it sounds clever and fun just the same.
• Spotify’s AI Playlist feature. This is terrible news for my relentless quest to quit Spotify: the AI playlists are great. Now that the feature is available in the US, I’ve been using it to name a few bands or songs, plus an overall vibe, and it picks a few dozen songs that, at least so far, always seem to hit. Spotify is very, very good at this part of the music game.
• Social Studies. Being a kid is hard work. And this doc digs in with a group of students on how much… maybe not always harder, but definitely more complicated, social media has made being a kid in 2024. This comes from a good team, too, and I’m excited about it.
• The Nothing Ear Open. Nothing’s headphones have been really solid, and as a recent and aggressive convert to open earbuds, I’m pumped to see how these sound. They look so cool, too! Big week for clear gadgets.

Fun fact: Joanna Stern is the main reason I ever got a job at The Verge in the first place. (That story is long and, if I remember correctly, involves her playing a fairy in a video? But I promised her I wouldn’t tell that story.) These days, she’s a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, an Emmy winner, and most recently, the creator of Joannabot, the AI chatbot that will tell you everything you need to know about the iPhone 16. (And apparently also do some other things, if you’re clever enough, but again, we’ll leave that alone.) 

I asked Joanna to share her homescreen because she just reviewed the iPhone 16, which means she just had to set up a homescreen. And because she’s forever using new gadgets and switching between things, I was curious what always made it to the top of the pile.

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

I’m submitting my homescreen and my Control Center screen because I’m proud of the work I did on the Control Center. I may submit it for an award. But really, I’d like to just use this as a forum to complain about the all-in-one connectivity widget in the new Control Center in iOS 18. I don’t like it. I like the single buttons so I can easily just turn them on and off or long-press to get in there. Sadly, they have gotten rid of the single Wi-Fi button, but I read on this great website that it’s coming back in iOS 18.1. 

The phone: iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The wallpaper: This is my dog Browser. It isn’t the best shot of him, but the framing is nice for putting him in the middle of the screen. My lockscreen wallpaper is this awesome retro iPod made by a designer named Shane Levine. I bought it through this site last year after featuring it in my newsletter. 

The apps: WSJ, ChatGPT, Apple Notes, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Instagram, YouTube, Clock, Threads, Signal, Photos, Slack, Spotify, Phone, Safari, Messages, Gmail.

My apps are so basic and make me feel so basic. I work (Slack, Gmail). I message (Messages, Signal). I listen and watch things (YouTube, Spotify). I social media (Threads, Instagram). I work more (Google Docs, WSJ). If it isn’t on this main homescreen, I usually just search for it.

Before iOS 18, I had a widget stack on the homescreen with weather and time zone widgets, but I moved it off to another screen. I might move it back. I might not. Got to live a little. 

I also asked Joanna to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she shared:

• The Devil at His Elbow. I’m currently listening to this audiobook by my wildly talented colleague Valerie Bauerlein. It’s all about the Murdaugh murders. The writing, the details, the whole thing, is so gripping. I find myself just sitting in the garage waiting until a chapter is done.
• Full Swing. I know I’m late to Netflix’s popular golf-u-series, but I started playing golf again this summer, and I’m loving the stories of these players and how psychological the sport really is. 
• Take Your Pet to School Day. My 3-year-old loves this book. I don’t want to spoil it, but the pets take over Maple View Elementary, and, well, Ms. Ellen is pissed.

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com 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. And for even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“Sliding Seas. It’s a match-three (or four!) game but also so much more: there’s real strategy required behind your moves to beat levels at the higher end, but it’s never unfair, and while there are in-app purchases and power-ups you can buy to make a level easier, you crucially never need to. It is the most compelling and well-suited-to-mobile game I’ve ever found and a gem I recommend without reservation.” – Jamie

“Gisnep is another daily puzzle game, this time by David Friedman of Ironic Sans. It appears as a crossword-esque grid, but the words only go across and wrap around. The goal is to reveal both a quote and the source by filling in letters from vertical columns. I’ve gotten a number of my friends hooked already.” – Kyle

“Satisfactory 1.0 launched a week ago or so. A great group of devs have effectively made a game that feels like work but is fun. If you love conveyor belts and staying up all night, this might be for you.” – Matt

“Can’t believe you haven’t mentioned switching to OmniFocus! As a fellow perennial ‘task manager switcher,’ this app is a staple in my rotation.” – Pedro

“I previously recommended App in the Air as a great travel companion, but unfortunately, it’s shutting down. If you’re looking for an alternative, Flighty is excellent, especially for travel stats, and they’re building an importer for App in the Air users.” – Vivian

“We’ve been watching English Teacher on FX. Constant laughs and, so far, each episode has been better than the last. Easily one of the funniest shows on TV right now.” – Danial

“I was gifted the Humanscale FR300 Ergonomic Foot Rocker, which is a very tech-sounding name for a very manual / mechanical rocking footrest. It’s very pleasant to use. I’ve also been standing on it sometimes… which I’m not sure is safe but sure is fun!” – Wisdom

“Repeatedly putting in my Amazon cart the Black Milanese Loop for the Apple Watch Ultra 2. I was so close to buying it like three times. Now it’s out of stock. Even Apple says early November for shipping.” – Scott

“Been playing with different LLMs using LM Studio. Integrated it into my Obsidian vault to help summarize and organize things into specific formats. It’s been extremely cool!” – Cody

I’ve had back-to-back-to-back-to-back trips over the last two weeks, and I would just like to quickly shout out my new No. 1 travel hack: a wall charger that doubles as a big-ass portable battery. I have this Anker model, which is $55, charges a USB-C and a USB-A device simultaneously, and also charges itself so I can get 10,000mAh of power when there’s no outlet nearby. (There’s also a newer one with two USB-C ports and even faster charging but less battery capacity.) It’s huge and heavy, but this thing and a long cable are now the only charging gear I travel with, and they’re the only reasons my gadgets have survived trains and plane rides. Here at Installer, we love a sensible charging strategy, and this is as sensible as it gets.