Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 47, 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 Skibidi Toilet and the future of mall brands and the legacy of Bell Labs, watching Dirty Pop and catching up on Cobra Kai, downloading every single podcast episode mentioned in this excellent Reddit thread, writing stuff down with Napkin, and trying desperately to figure out what I forgot to pack for vacation. I’ve also been trying new blueberry muffin recipes all week — thanks to everyone who sent me one!
Speaking of which: As I mentioned last week, Installer is taking a summer break. I’m going to go sit outside and stare at trees for a couple of weeks. (If you have good fun books I should read, by the way, please send them my way.) I’ll be back here August 17th with a big catch-up Installer, but I hope you have a great couple of weeks, and keep telling me about everything you’re into!
Before I go, I also have for you a new way to use Apple Maps, an interesting interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the best way to watch the Olympics, some of the internet’s best and silliest websites, and much more. Let’s do it.
The Drop
- Peacock’s Olympics Multiview. Peacock is doing ~ the most ~ for the Olympics this year. Personalized highlights! AI Al Michaels! The Gold Zone! But I’ll be spending the next two weeks locked to the Multiview. Four events at a time, and I get to pick which one gets the audio? That’s the future of TV right there.
- The Asus ROG Ally X. A Windows gaming handheld that is fast, comfortable, and quiet? That’s the dream right there. Except Windows still stinks on the tiny screen, and $800 is a lot for this thing. But still! We’re making progress!
- Apple Maps for web. Apple’s new beta Maps tool is a stark, simple, lovely contrast to the cluttered mess of Google Maps. It’ll be interesting to see how much Apple tries to do here — Maps is great for navigation but rough for place discovery, but maybe this is a sign Apple wants to fix that.
- Capacities. I’ve been messing with this superpowerful note-taking app for a while, and I really like the way Capacities organizes things. Now there’s a mobile app, too, which makes it much easier to get stuff into the system. It’s definitely a power-user tool, but I’m liking it a lot.
- “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Era.” A long, unusually thoughtful interview with Mark Zuckerberg, in which Zuck has a very funny tan but also some really interesting thoughts on AI, AR, and how we think about the real world and the internet going forward. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed watching this.
- Llama 3.1. The occasion for that Zuckerberg interview was the launch of Meta’s new AI model, which is apparently better and faster in the way that every new model now is the best and fastest. But the combination of the open-source approach here, and Meta’s shockingly popular Meta AI bot, means Llama is legit one to watch.
- The Elgato Stream Deck XLR Dock. If you use an external mic for video calls, streaming, podcasting, whatever, this dock / Stream Deck combo might be the best simple USB setup I’ve ever seen. I bought one immediately.
- Deadpool & Wolverine. Right now, it looks like Twisters might be the movie of the summer. I’m a little nervous about this one, which has been so hyped and overexposed, but I still have high hopes for two of my favorite Marvel characters.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/28/24206986/watch-olympics-multiview-apple-maps-meta-ai-installer