Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 128, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry this one’s so Mac-heavy, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about David Attenborough and screenwriters-turned-AI-trainers and the Subway Takes guy, listening to a lot of Productivity FM’s mixes while I work, finally writing my vibe-coding opus, testing the Poppy AI assistant (and giving it more of my data than I frankly should have), tracking my pathetic step counts with the new Fitbit Air, buying more of The Atlantic’s summer reading list than I will ever plausibly read, watching a lot of Maxinomics videos after the one on quartz went viral, drowning in the nostalgia of my all-time Spotify Wrapped playlist, and switching browsers for the first time in forever. More on that next week.
I also have for you a couple of really useful Mac utilities, a new book in the Installerverse’s favorite series, a new tool for managing the fediverse, and much more. Let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / watching / playing / listening to / cutting into nifty shapes this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Mole. I’ve been following this Mac app’s development for a while, and I’m a big fan. It does a great job of hunting down huge files, un-needed apps, memory-hungry processes, and other things mucking up your computer, without being overzealous about it (or constantly trying to upcharge you). For $9, I can’t recommend it enough.
- A Parade of Horribles. Dungeon Crawler Carl is back! I’m still catching up on the series, but I’m confident the eighth book in the story brings even more chaos to Carl and Donut. DCC is maybe the most-recommended thing in the history of Installer, so this book is huge news. I can’t wait.
- The Twelve South PowerClip. I am a big proponent of always carrying a giant backup battery, but I’m oddly charmed by this tiny $40 dongle that isn’t designed to fully charge your phone but rather to keep it from dying. Clever that it can also act as a USB-C cable, too.
- Bartender Pro. Bartender has always been a classic power-user Mac app for cleaning up your menu bar. For $15 a year, Bartender Pro does way more: It adds a bunch of small utilities, like audio controls and your calendar, to the notch in your Mac’s screen. (Or just the middle of your menu bar.) My favorite? Zero-click AirDrop from my computer to my phone, just by dragging a file.
- Subnautica 2. This underwater adventure game became one of the biggest titles on Steam literally overnight, which is very funny given how many reviews say the game (which is, in fairness, in early access!) is full of bugs and weirdness. Doesn’t seem to be stopping anybody.
- Indigo. A Bluesky app, and a Mastodon app, combined into a single timeline in a way that looks and feels great. (The same developers also make a lovely app called Croissant for posting to both services.) Apps like this are the reason I’m still so excited about the fediverse.
- “We aren’t ready for Meta glasses.” Terrific Christophe video about the cultural state of smart glasses — which my colleague Vee Song has also covered a lot — and why these devices are genuinely both thrilling and horrifying. And maybe here to stay either way.
- Snapseed 4.0. Google just did something I never thought it would again: It made an extremely cool app. It’s exactly the kind of photo editing app that’s hard to find these days: It has a lot of features but a simple, straightforward set of controls. The new look definitely won’t be for everyone, but I dig it.
- The Punisher: One Last Kill. Yeah, this Disney Plus special has gone viral for bad reasons, like a confusing VFX shot and some audio issues, but I’m always here for a gritty superhero story, and this one seems to execute the genre really well.
Today, Joanna Stern gets the most important professional accomplishment of her life. No, not the Emmy she won, or her fabulous book, I Am Not a Robot, that just came out this week and you 100 percent need to buy and read several times. Not even New Things, her new media company / newsletter / YouTube channel. None of that. Today, Joanna Stern becomes the first-ever repeat guest in Installer history. Huge day for her, honestly.
Joanna spent the last year of her life trying to use AI for absolutely everything, in an effort to figure out where AI might actually be useful. (If you want to hear some of her stories, in addition to reading the book, you can find her on, like, every podcast on planet Earth over the last two weeks.) After all the experimenting, I asked Joanna to share some of the things she’s found that truly work. Here’s what she shared:
What’s your day-to-day AI setup like? I’m a Claude person and a ChatGPT person. I use Claude Code and Claude Cowork for a lot of multi-step work and for integrating with my Google tools. I use ChatGPT more for editing and talking things through, mostly because the voice and live video mode are superior.
What are some surprising things you’ve found that really worked for you? I love Projects in ChatGPT and Claude. They saved me a ton of time while book making. And yes, “book making” sounds like “baby making.” To be clear, I wrote the whole book myself. I used AI for organization, reporting, and research help, which I talk about a lot in the book, so you’ll have to buy it to find out more.
Back to Projects: I used the tools to create my “BookBots.” I uploaded research notes, academic papers, transcripts, deadlines, editor notes and more. Those BookBots kept me on track and made it easy to find things when I was writing. If I had questions about deadlines, what I should be working on, or which companies / experts my research suggested were worth talking to, I asked the BookBots.
Have you vibe-coded anything cool recently? Only the greatest website ever: joannastern.com. But seriously, I was running a pin promotion for a while, where people who pre-ordered the book could get a free pin. I vibe-coded the whole thing: an order form on the site, and a backend workflow where every submission with an uploaded receipt and address automatically added the person to a spreadsheet and emailed both me and the publisher a confirmation.
After a year of AI experiments, what’s stuck with you? I talk to ChatGPT in the car a lot via voice mode. Also Meta AI in my Meta Ray-Bans. So yeah, I talk to AI a lot. Mostly because you don’t pick up my calls.
I also asked Joanna to share a few things she’s into right now. She… did not do so. Joanna never does what I tell her to. She shared this instead:
Well, David, when you write and release a book, you will discover there is absolutely no time for anything else. I look forward to that day for you and to supporting you through it. There’s no time for other books, movies, podcasts or even recipes for how to make food. So instead, here are six podcasts I recommend because I’m on all of them and that is, in fact, what I’ve been doing with my time lately.
Also, apologies to all tech podcast listeners whose feeds I have completely taken over this week. If you buy the book, I hear they will automatically be removed from your feed. Love you all.
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. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“Like Lego and robots? Play Mars First Logistics. Build rovers to deliver increasingly complex objects across the Mars terrain. The tinkering is rewarding, and surprisingly funny when your creation spectacularly fails and it’s back to the drawing board.” — astanush
“We recently discovered Trash Truck on Netflix and it’s one of those rare pieces of kids entertainment that is funny to both me and a four year old. It’s very sweet and low key but with enough hijinks that Lennox wants to keep watching. 10/10.” — Allison
“I am documenting all of our weekly D&D adventures of the last five years, and adding adventures from the same party from before I joined this group. I am keeping these notes in a Google Doc and adding them to NotebookLM so the entire group can ask questions about past characters, past places we have visited, maps, important organizations in the world, etc. NotebookLM is absolutely perfect for this, but going through old notes is… exhausting.” — Michiel
“Really enjoying Devil May Cry 5, and the new season of the series on Netflix.” — Aron
“I recently learned about Blento, the website maker. It’s an AT Protocol alternative for Bento (RIP) and pulls in information from the apps in the ATmosphere.” — Oscar
“Reading Mason & Dixon. And it will continue to be Mason & Dixon for a very very long time” — Scott
“I’m not much of a horror viewer but I made an exception to the show Widow’s Bay on Apple TV. It blends comedy with horror extremely well and supplants horror expectations. I normally cover my eyes with my hand when I expect a jumpscare to happen but not for this show.” — John
“Graveyard Keeper was free a few weeks back on Steam and I am obsessed. Stardew Valley if you also made sandwiches and zombies out of dead bodies.” — Rob
“I’m listening to the audiobook, Apple: The First 50 Years by David Pogue on Everand. Great book, great audiobook, great alternative to Audible.” — Ryan
I took a sort of half-vacation this week, which mostly meant I didn’t go to any meetings (and took a week off of podcasting) but was still around for urgent things as they came up. I spent a lot of my free-ish time organizing my home office, which had turned into a bit of a disaster zone. I added two things that solved a lot of problems: an Anker power strip that clamps to my desk and is the best mix of minimalism and accessibility I’ve found yet; and a couple of 10-foot USB-C cables, which make it so much easier to set up a charging and power system without stretching everything to its limits. I bought mine from Anker, but you can get good long cables from anywhere — and I’m already wondering if I should upgrade to the Native Union Pop Cable, which is coiled and stretchy and won’t tangle as easily. It’s probably good for my wallet that it’s back to work on Monday.
