Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about WhatsApp and Gavin Newsom and David Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz, obsessively waiting for every new episode of The Pitt, using the app Monologue to talk to my computer instead of typing to it, joyfully rewatching The Night Manager before diving into the new season, finally getting my Ikea buttons hooked up to my smart home, listening to the Halt and Catch Fire soundtrack on repeat while I write, and watching a lot of old Star Search episodes on YouTube.
I also have for you a new Star Trek show to get into, Apple’s new creative suite, a reboot of an old social network, a new Claude Code-adjacent tool worth trying, and much more. Lots going on here in mid-January! Let’s dive in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / listening to / playing / building / putting AA batteries into this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0. The latest addition to New Horizons brings a bunch of quality-of-life improvements that seem to address a lot of the things fans have been wanting for years. A perfect excuse to get back into a cozy, relaxing, quieter world than the one we live in right now.
- The Rip. Everything about this movie — the overly stacked cast, the somewhat tired plot, the fact that it’s a Netflix action movie and those are always bad — suggests this movie would be bad. But apparently it’s really good! This is my kind of action movie, and first on my list this weekend.
- Apple Creative Studio. This is kind of an astonishingly good deal? I’m not particularly into the AI features in Numbers and Pages, but between Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, and Final Cut Pro, you have a set of creative tools right up there with what Adobe offers. I agree with everyone else, though: Apple needs a Lightroom competitor to make this really shine.
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Another round in the Game of Thrones universe, this one is a prequel with a very different, much sillier vibe. It also seems to have much lower stakes, which seems smart — not everything needs to be about the fate of the universe, you know?
- Claude Cowork. For now, this is only for the most expensive Claude plans, but I think it’s a terrific idea: a Claude Code-like tool for doing stuff on your computer, but one that doesn’t require you to interact with or even look at code. Just give Cowork access to some files or folders, tell it what you need, and let it go to work. This is the AI stuff I’m into.
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It’s… Gen Z Star Trek, basically? Star Trek starring people who look like they might call each other “bruh” and have whole side quests related to aura farming? Early reviews make the show sound like it’s doing too much, and may be slightly mid, but I will always stan an attempt at a Trek glow-up.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon. Every review I’ve read of this game suggests that it is not for the faint of heart, or a newcomer to the Trails series. But if these games are your jam, this one appears to be a really solid addition to the canon.
- Digg. Its new public beta is very much still in beta, and it’s still pretty small and quiet over there, but I like a lot of what Digg is doing here. It’s like Reddit, but less chaotic, or like Twitter, but less horrible. I’m already finding lots of good new stuff through its communities.
- Relinq. A simple utility that converts links between Apple Music, Spotify, and other services, so every link translates to every service. One of those tiny apps I’m suddenly using all the time.
Have you noticed that physical keyboards are kind of having a comeback? There’s the Clicks stuff from CES this year, but also Unihertz is making a new Titan phone, and I keep hearing from people who like the Minimal Phone — there’s just something in the water about these devices that are less focused on screen and more on doing stuff.
When I think about physical keyboards, I think about Kevin Michaluk. Yes, CrackBerry Kevin himself, the man behind the Bring Back BlackBerry movement, and the founder and president of Clicks. Nobody has believed in physical keyboards longer, or more fervently, than Kevin. I asked him to share his homescreen with us, in part to see what weird keyboard phone he’s using (as you’ll see, I was very disappointed), but also to see how a true typing nut might organize his digital life.
Here’s Kevin’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: It’s an iPhone 17 Pro Max in Deep Blue, with a Clicks Keyboard in Smoke. I also have a 17 Pro in Cosmic Orange as backup, and a “RAZRBERRY” (i.e., a Moto Razr w/ Clicks Keyboard). The 17 Pro Max is my primary, so let’s look at that…
The wallpaper: It’s a wallpaper one of our designers made. Dark-mode-friendly with a bit of pizzazz. I often just make solid color wallpapers using the Color tool in the Add New Wallpaper section of iOS. Occasionally I rock a photo of my wife and/or our dog on the lockscreen (especially when I’m in the proverbial doghouse).
The apps: Photos, Google Maps, Clicks, ChatGPT, Shopify, Triple Whale, Twos, LinkedIn, Instagram, Signal, Messages, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Beeper, Phone, Gmail, Safari, Camera.
Too many apps! I usually try to do a purge early in the year while on a flight (it’s an annual tradition!) and delete unused ones and cancel any subscriptions I’m still paying for but not actively using. I have a bad habit of trying new apps on free trials and then forgetting to cancel them. I often wonder, how much subscription app revenue in the industry is tied to “zombie” customers who forget to cancel?
Over the years I’ve tried to optimize my app layouts time and time again, and am pretty happy with the current structure, though I actually have a shortcut hack these days that makes the homescreen layout a bit null and void: I pretty much use Spotlight search and type for them. With the Clicks Keyboard, I just press Command + Spacebar and I just start typing the app, contact, or setting I want and I bypass apps and folders altogether. I also have tons of shortcuts on the keyboard mapped out for dialing contacts or doing deep app actions like opening Spotify directly to the playlist I want. It’s a next-level iPhone experience.
I optimize the bottom half of the phone for my most-used messaging apps — Slack / WhatsApp / Telegram — so they’re within an easy reach of the thumb. Shoutout to Beeper — I get a lot of DMs on all of the different social platforms, so use this as my universal DM inbox for X, Instagram, Discord, LinkedIn, etc. This way I can better avoid getting sucked into the feeds of those apps but still reply to messages. I also keep my smart home apps and music apps in a folder on the homescreen as I want those accessible. The one widget that earns a Page 1 slot is Calendar.
Page two is my Health / Habits page. My 2026 resolutions don’t start until I’ve recovered from CES (usually the third week of January!), which is when I try to swipe in here more often and use the fitness and food apps and trackers.
Page three is all the other apps in MY folders. I hate Apple’s auto suggested and populated App Library. I need to be able to set up my folders and put the apps in myself so I remember where to find everything later (I wish there was an option to disable the app library!).
I also asked Kevin to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- Vibe coding is my meditation. I actually love playing around with Lovable. Over the past 20 years I built up a portfolio of domain names that I never did anything with, so now I’m starting to build out apps for myself just so I put the names to use. Example: I’ve built TimeCrunch into a daily to-do list and habit tracker. I’m really starting to believe the future of apps is personal! If I had more free time I would build more things…
- I used to work in tech media, and for 15+ years typing thousands of words a day was my norm. After exiting from the media industry, I started to find myself feeling… kinda dumb. Then I figured out I had stopped producing content and just started consuming it. There’s something magic about the act of creating content — from idea to a complete draft — that makes my brain work SO MUCH BETTER. So if I ever feel like I’m having an unproductive day or I’m having trouble focusing, I try to shift into creator mode for a bit and produce something just for the hell of it. It always seems to help me get my mojo back.
- ALL THE DOG VIDEOS 🐶. I just can’t help it. My wife and friends DM them to me and I feel like the best part of social media is animal videos. I’ve probably watched this one 500x. Dogs are awesome.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! 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 every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“If you like word games, check out WurdWeb on Apple Arcade, which features a daily game. It’s part of my daily routine along with the NYT games, Apple News games and Rogue Words (a free Balatro-like Scrabble word game).” — Kurt
“Cooked is a neat tool for ingesting recipes. To use it, I prepend a recipe url with ‘cooked.wiki/.’” — BTTK
“Got myself a Walkman in 2026. I’m a music hunter at heart and while I won’t quit beloved Apple Music, I am slowly rebuilding my own library. Taking my love of intentional music listening on vinyl on the go. I’m back in my iPod era. It’s been fun.” — Manny
“Puzzmo added a new game for the new year called Ribbit, and it’s got everything. Words, frogs, a rotate button… What more could you ask for?” — Andy
“Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Specifically, the audiobooks. The narrator, Jeff Hays, is so good he will ruin all other audiobooks.” — Weddle
“I open up Sill every morning to find out what events and stories my friends and folks I follow on Bluesky and Mastodon have been sharing while I’ve been sleeping and have been otherwise unplugged.” — Mita
“I’ve been watching a lot of Landman on Paramount. I know that Billy Bob Thornton more or less plays the same guy in everything now, but I feel strongly that it is an underrated show. Plus it has Sam Elliot. The show’s biggest detriment is that it is on Paramount Plus.” — Geoff
“I’d like to make a suggestion for a great video about ASML. Who’s that? The company that makes the machines that make the etched wafers for processors. The science that goes into it is like magic. Well worth the hour view time.” — Shawn
“Hijack season two on Apple TV is finally out. Seems really good so far!” — Nathan
I’ve been traveling a bunch recently, which for me means a lot of time spent manually downloading stuff to an iPad to watch on planes. Most streaming apps now allow downloads, which is great, but you know what I’ve really been enjoying? YouTube’s “Smart Downloads” playlist, which just grabs a bunch of stuff the algorithm thinks you’ll like and dumps it on your phone. Mine is currently a little overstuffed with toddler-friendly content, and the algorithm here doesn’t seem to take big swings, but I actually appreciate that. It’s just a bunch of stuff I haven’t seen but am basically guaranteed to like.
If you have YouTube Premium, next time you travel, try turning on the Smart Downloads, and maybe also download your Watch Later list if that’s a thing you keep updated. I much prefer this to fighting with the plane’s Wi-Fi.
