Apple’s new iPad Pro looks like a winning tablet

Hi friends! Welcome to installer #37, your guide to the best and Border-most important things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send me links, and also, you can read all the back issues on installer home page.)

This week, I’ve been writing about iPad It is LinkedIn Gamesreading about car shows It is typewriters It is treasure huntersattending Everybody’s in Los Angeles It is Sugar, looking for reasons to buy Yeti’s new French press even though I definitely don’t need more coffee equipment, following almost all Jerry Saltz’s favorite Instagram accounts, testing Capabilities It is Heptabase for all my note-taking needs and Plinky for all my link saves and for playing a lot Blind Motion.

I’ve also got you a totally awesome new iPad, a slick new smart home hub, a Twitter documentary to watch this weekend, a sci-fi show to check out, a cheap streaming box, and more. Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part installer are your ideas and tips. What are you reading/watching/cooking/playing/building right now? What should everyone else like too? Email me at installer@theverge.com or find me on Signal at @davidpierce.11. And if you know someone who might like Installer, and tell them to sign up here.)

• The new iPad Pro. The new Pro is easily the most impressive piece of hardware I’ve ever seen. It’s so thin and light, and that OLED screen… beautiful. It’s ridiculously expensive, and the iPad’s big problem remains its software, but that’s how you build a tablet, folks.
• Animal well. Our friends in Polygon called it “one of the most inventive games of the last decade”, which is obviously high praise! By all accounts, it is unusual, surprising, sometimes frustrating, very clever and incredibly engaging. Until the trailer It looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. (I have one very of recommendations for this this week – thanks to everyone who submitted!)
• Final Cut Camera. This was only briefly mentioned at the Apple event this week, but it’s a big deal! It’s a professional-grade original camera app for iPhones and iPads that offers lots of manual controls and editing features. It’s exactly what many creatives have been asking for. No word yet on exactly when it will be available, but I’m excited.
• The Aqara M3 Hub. The only way to manage your smart home is to ensure your devices can support as many assistants, protocols and platforms as possible. This seems like one way to do it: It’s a Matter-ready device that can handle just about any smart home gear you throw at it.
• “Battle of the Clipboard Managers.” I don’t think I’ve ever linked to a Reddit thread here, but check this one out: it’s a long discussion about why a clipboard manager is a useful tool, plus a bunch of good options to choose from. (I agree with all the people who love Raycast, but there are a lot of options and ideas here.)
• Proton pass. My ongoing #1 piece of tech advice is that everyone needs a password manager. I’m from a long time 1Password fan, but Proton’s app is starting to look tempting – this week it got a new security threat monitoring tool in addition to all the smart email hiding and sharing features it already has.
• The Onn 4K Pro. Basically all streaming boxes are full of ads, slow and bad. This Google TV box from Walmart is at least cheap, comes with voice control and support for all the specs you want, and doubles as a smart speaker. I also love a customizable button.
• Dark matter. I’ve especially loved all of the Blake Crouch sci-fi books I’ve read, so I have high hopes for this Apple TV Plus series about life in a parallel universe. By the way, Apple TV Plus? Really good at the whole sci-fi thing.
• O Word file. More than 1,000 days of Wordall ready to play and play (because, let’s be honest, who remembers Word three weeks ago?). I don’t have access to the file yet, but you better believe I’ll be replaying it in full as soon as it’s released.
• Black Twitter: the story of a people. Based on really fun Wired SeriesThis is a three-part Hulu doc ​​on how Black Twitter took over social media and a tour of the Internet experience at some of the biggest events of the last decade.

Kylie Robinson, On the edgein new senior AI reporter, tweeted a video from his old iPhone the other day this was like a perfect time capsule of a device. She had approximately 90,000 games, including several that I’m 100% sure were scams, and that iPod logo on her dock made me feel a lot of things. Those were good days.

I messaged Kylie on Slack about eight minutes after she became a Border employee, hoping I could convince her to share her current home screen – and what she did during her fun work period before starting with us.

Unfortunately, she says she tamed the chaos of the home screen before she started, because of something, something professionalism, or something. And now she swears she can’t even find a screenshot of her old home screen! Of course, Kylie. Anyway, here’s Kylie’s newly functional home screen, plus some information about the apps she uses and why.

The telephone: iPhone 14 Pro Max

The wallpaper: A black screen because I think it’s too noisy. (However, my lock screen has about 20 rotating photos.)

The apps: Apple Maps, Notes, Spotify, Messages, FaceTime, Safari, Phone.

I need calendar and weather apps right in front of me when I unlock my phone because I’m forgetful. I use Spotify for everything related to music and podcasts.

Work is life, so I also have all these apps front and center (Signal, Google Drive, Okta).

Just before I started, I rearranged my phone screen because 1) I had time and 2) I knew I would have to show it to David. All apps are sorted into folders now, but before they were completely free because I use the search bar to find apps; I rarely roll around. So imagine about 25 random apps filling every page: Pegasus for some international flight I booked, a random stuffed pepper recipe, whatever.

I also asked Kylie to share some things she likes now. Here’s what she shared:

• Valley of the Stars It took over my life during my work break.
• In fact I started 3Body Problem because of an old man installer. Plus I loved it To fall and I need more episodes.
• My serious guilty pleasure is Love Island in the UKand I’ve been watching the latest season during my vacation.

Here’s what installer community is this week. I want to know what you’re doing now too! Email installer@theverge.com or hit me up on Signal – I’m @davidpierce.11 ​​- with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. And if you want even more recommendations, check out the answers to this post on Threads.

“I’ve always thought Spotify’s recommendation algorithm and music channels were terrible; It takes a lot of hustle and adjustment when all I want is to press play and get a good diversity of songs that I’ll like. So I finally gave in and tried Pandora again. Its recommendation/station algorithm is so much better than Spotify’s (at least to me) that it’s shocking how it seems to disappear into cultural anonymity. I can’t speak for others, but if anyone is equally frustrated with Spotify playlists, I highly recommend going with Pandora.” – Go

“Everything that comes out Netflix is ​​a joke festival it was 10/10. -Mike

“Mantela mod for Skyrim (It is Fallout 4 Effect). Not so much a single mod, but a mod plus a collection of apps that gives (basically) each NPC their own lives and stories. It’s like suddenly you can join in the fun and games with Woody and Buzz, instead of them having to say the words when you pull the string.” – Jonathan

“O Crop podcast app (whose main selling point is AI-powered podcast transcription and the ability to easily capture, manage, and export snippets of text from podcasts) has a new feature that shows a name, bio, and image for podcast guests and allows so you can find more podcasts with the same guest or even follow specific guests. Very cool!” -Andy

“I recently bought a new Kindle and I’m trying to figure out how to get news about it! My current plan is to use Omnivorous like my bookmarks app which will sync with this amazing community tool that converts these bookmarks into a Kindle-compatible website.” -David

“Turtles all the way! Great representation of OCD.” – Saad

“With all the talk about Delta on iOS, I recently purchased and am currently in love with my Miyoo Mini Plus. It’s customizable and perfectly sized, and in my advanced years, with no love for Fortnite, PUBG, or any of the countless connected online games, it’s great to go back and play some of those ‘legally obtained’ games I played in my childhood.” – Benjamin

“Rusty’s Retirement is an excellent, almost idle farm simulator that sits at the bottom or side of the monitor for both Mac and Windows. Rusty simply completes small tasks on his own while you work or do other things. This rocks. Look at him, go! – Brendon

“Last week, Nicholas talked about YACReader and was asking for another great e-comic reading app for DRM-free files. After a lot of research, I decided Panels for iPad. Excellent native Apple user interface, sophisticated features and decent performance. The free version can handle a local library, but to unlock its full potential, the Pro version (sub or lifetime) supports iCloud, so you can keep all your comics in iCloud Drive, manage the files via a Mac, and Download only what you want. we’re reading it at the moment – ​​great for lower-end iPads with less storage.” -Diogo

I have spent so long over the years trying to figure out and explain to people the basics of a camera. There are a billion metaphors for ISO, shutter speed, and aperture, and they all fall short. That’s probably why a lot of the photographers I know have such fun rides around. depth of field simulator in recent days, which lets you play with aperture, focal length, sensor size, and more to understand how different settings change the way you take photos. It’s a really smart and simple way to see how it all works — and to understand what becomes possible when you really start controlling your camera. I’ll be sharing this link a lot, I suspect, and I’m learning a lot from it too.