The best smartphone photos of the year

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 49, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like podcasts, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been reading about upstart baseball teams and canceled comics and Francis Ford Coppola, watching Logan Lucky, binging Teo Crawford’s camera videos,  listening to The Mess Around and thus rewatching New Girl for the millionth time, trying to plan a trip to the Nintendo Museum this fall, and giving Capacities another whirl since Casey Newton recommended it this week. 

I also have for you a bunch of new podcasts that all launched this week for some reason, some amazing smartphone photos, a reason to hit the movie theater this weekend, and a new doorbell to replace your old doorbell.

And in the spirit of this unexpectedly podcast-filled week, I have a question: who’s your favorite lesser-known creator? We all know and love Veritasium and MKBHD, but I want to hear about all the ones that deserve just as much shine. YouTube, podcast, Instagram, take your pick — if they’re tech-y and Verge-ish, great, but if not, that’s great, too! Hit me with one or two of your faves that you bet most of us don’t know. I’ll share some of my faves, too.

All right, big week of fun stuff. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

• The iPhone Photography Awards winners. The IPPA’s photographer of the year shoots on an iPhone 11! These winning photos are always an amazing source of inspiration (and wallpapers, just saying), and it’s particularly cool in this AI-heavy moment to see how awesome photographers still are. 
• The Hollywood Hack. The Sony hack was 10 years ago, and the whole entertainment business is still feeling the ramifications. Love this pod so far, which is so far roughly equal parts about what happened and what it did to Hollywood. 
• Blink Twice. Channing Tatum. Playing a tech billionaire. In a murder-y thriller. I’m getting big Glass Onion vibes from this one, and I couldn’t be more excited.
• Apple Podcasts for web. Apple made a good web app! I kind of still can’t believe it! Apple Podcasts is a great platform, and this goes a long way toward making it feel a little less locked to your specific devices. This plus the automatic transcripts has me genuinely considering switching.
• OceanXplorers. This NatGeo show feels like a mix of Planet Earth and the scene in every James Bond movie where Bond gets to test out a bunch of wildly futuristic new gadgets. I’m enjoying learning about the high-tech ship and submarines as much as I am seeing the amazing footage they’re capturing.
• “Flip Video Was Successful! So They Killed It?” I had straight-up forgotten about the Flip camera, and I had no idea how many strange twists and turns this product — and the company that made it — went through. A super fun tech time capsule, this one.
• The Wirecutter Show. I have been a loyal Wirecutter shopper forever, and the new pod fits the site’s vibe perfectly. Lots of tips and tricks, lots of behind-the-scenes testing stuff — I wound up taking furious notes during both of the first two episodes.
• “Why Everything is a Monopoly… Again.” We’re in a pretty wild antitrust moment, right? This is a brisk, broad look at how it all works and how we got to the point where no matter what you’re doing or using or buying, you’re probably encountering a monopoly. 
• The Ring Battery Doorbell. Longer battery, easier install, wider frame of video, night vision in color — it’s not a ground-breaking new idea about video doorbells, but it sure looks like a better video doorbell. If only I could convince myself to let me install one…

I talk to Liam James more than just about anybody other than my wife — and honestly, it’s a close call between the two of them. As The Verge’s supervising producer for podcasts, we do a ton of work togetber on The Vergecast, and he’s also just a big giant tech nerd in the best way. He loves to brag about his Plex server, seems to be constantly tweaking his homemade weather station, and recently described a new to-do list app to me as “just OmniFocus for dummies.” What I’m saying is, he is our people.

I asked Liam to share his homescreen with us because if I know one thing about Liam, it’s that every single icon and location has been exhaustively thought through and rigorously tested for optimal performance. Liam also just bought a Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which means he’s about to undergo a big switch — so I figured it’d be good to capture the end of his iPhone run.

Here’s Liam’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 15 Pro.

The wallpaper: I’ve used the same wallpaper for about 10 years now. It’s a silly painting of my first dog, August, in the style of Kehinde Wiley.

The apps: Photos, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Apple News, Phone, Mail, Safari, Messages.

• I’m a big fan of the large widget carousel that automatically flips to whatever iOS thinks is most relevant to me. I only keep 3 widgets within: Fantastical — which I will sorely miss when I move to a Pixel — Apple News, and Carrot Weather.
• I am constantly deleting apps I no longer use in order to maintain a single-screen layout. I have four folder buckets: social, shopping, finance, and work. I do, however, fall back to the App Library screen for rarely used apps like Plex during travel days.
• I am SO feeling the label-less icon option in the iOS 18 beta. Looks so much cleaner.  

I also asked Liam to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

• My job has forced me to use Apple Podcasts in order to keep a close eye on our shows, and you know what? It has really come a long way. In my opinion, it is the only podcast app that is capable of recommending shows you’d actually want to try out. And the new transcript and search features are very handy for finding that moment you wanted to go back to.
• Since I am running the iOS 18 public beta, I’ve been trying out the native Mail app. I wanted to see if any of the Apple Intelligence stuff could be useful to me, but that hasn’t exactly shown up yet. Instead, it’s mostly still the same old barebones, slow-to-update app it always was.
• Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus is my latest podcast obsession. Like many a celebrity podcast, it comes and goes in seasons, but unlike all the others, this one has zero filler. I highly recommend starting with the episode featuring award-winning author Isabel Allende. Some of Allende’s life lessons will stick in your head for days afterward.

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.

“I have found Dola indispensable. It’s free — what’s free anymore? It can write to Apple Calendar and is available on iMessage and WhatsApp; it’s incredibly useful as my productivity and task tracker and amazing for reminders.” — Andrew

“The Serpent Queen. This Starz show is about 16th century Queen Catherine de’ Medici of France and her travails and triumphs. There is much court intrigue, perhaps murdering, perhaps poisoning, perhaps a really good time for the viewer. It is currently in its 2nd season and stars Samantha Morton in the main role and brings in Minnie Driver as Queen Elizabeth I. Hilarity ensues.” — Romeo

“I’ve been using this app called SAOViVO that is free and open source, and what it does is: it takes videos in your YouTube Channel, makes a queue out of them, and sends them back to YouTube as a live feed. An example: I work as a consultant for newsrooms, and they have a big archive, so when the anniversary of events comes, we can make live streams with the thing they did in previous years, or when someone famous dies, we can check out the YouTube channel and live stream the stories about that person.” — Nicolas

“I have to recommend a great new YouTube channel called Graindead. A very deadpan channel about film cameras. “Buying The Cheapest Cameras In Japan” is a must-watch. Full of Classic British self-deprecating humor. “A $1000 Lens Cap” is also an interesting watch.” — Owen

“Dress to Impress on Roblox. It is like Among Us in the pandemic era, but for WFH ‘gurlies.’” — Sam 

“I am headed on a 5.5-hour flight to Hawaii, and I am very much looking forward to bringing the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 to, wait for it… play EA Sports FC the whole way! Was inspired by a podcast I had listened to recently, I think…” — Richard

“People worry about Chinese EVs coming to America, but people should keep an eye on Chinese game developers because Black Myth: Wukong just came out, and it has over 2 million players on Steam, shattering Elden Ring and Cyberpunk’s records.” — John

“Add Eddie is a simple app for creating QR codes to your social profiles, messengers, vCards, payment services, websites, and more. It is a godsend for networking in real life, especially as a widget on my phone’s homescreen and on the Apple Watch.” — Dewa

“One of several reasons I couldn’t use anything else besides Apple Music is that it’s the only one with a music locker. I have uploaded tons of stuff: Commodore 64 remixes, missing KLF, Brian May and Jean-Michel Jarre albums, bootlegs, etc. The integration is great, too (if you have Apple stuff). It uploads and then syncs to all devices automagically like any other music.” — Mathias

”I’ve been reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and I’m surprised I didn’t read it sooner! It’s so good, and I’m so interested to see how it’s going to end!” — Flávio

It’s fantasy football season, which means an alarming amount of my personality is about to be replaced by opinions on NFL players’ weekly performance. I’m in two leagues, both of them in Yahoo’s app, which is… fine. And this year, I’m realizing how much of a full-time job this stuff really is; news is spread around so many places, everybody has rankings and data about those rankings and podcasts about the data about those rankings, and it’s all just exhausting. 

Ironically, I think I get the case for AI now? If I could just say, “What’s happening with my fantasy team this week,” and ChatGPT could tell me, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Some of the apps are trying to imitate this — including Yahoo — but now that Twitter’s gone, it all feels more chaotic than ever. If you have an amazing source for all this, tell me about it! No matter how much attention I pay, though, I always seem to come in sixth… so maybe I’ll just leave it alone.

(Also, next year: Installer fantasy league? Should we? I feel like we should. It’d be awesome.)