UE and Beats have dropped the Bluetooth speakers you need this summer

Hi friends! Welcome to installer #44, your guide to the best and Border-most important things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I’m so excited you found us, and you can also read all the back issues on the website installer home page.)

This week, I’ve been writing about because I love Boox Palmareading about hot dog contests It is the history of Markdown It is the future of streamingattending Coastal It is Federator and a lot of football (it was a very sporting week), regretting the end of Long form podcast, developing a strange obsession with salt water carameltesting the Apple Vision Pro again and trying every method I can find to make good iced coffee at home.

I also have for you some new Bluetooth speakers, the new season of Hulu’s best show, an app to turn everything into audio, and more.

Also, quick cleaning news: no installer next week. It’s a holiday here in the US (and also my birthday), so I’ll be outside grilling things and getting sunburnt. But keep the recommendations coming and we’ll be back with a big one soon.

(As always, the best part installer are your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What amazing hacks do you know that everyone should? Which app should everyone use? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone who might like installerforward it to them and tell them to sign up here.)

• The UE Wonderboom 4. A few weeks ago I said that the best advice I can give you is to buy a UE Wonderboom. I stand by this, especially now that there’s a new one that charges with USB-C! The new EverboomWith a built-in carabiner and some extra sound power, it’s very tempting, but you can’t beat it for $100.
• The Beats pill. More new speakers! I have a thing for a good-looking portable sound system, and the new Pill sounds great. Chris Welch likes the sound, and I love that it streams wired audio and charges other devices via the USB-C port. Beats did well here, even if I’m still Wonderboomin.
• Border clothing. I really try not to pretend Border There’s a lot here, but I’m genuinely excited about the new stuff we’re working on. I especially like the hoodie and mug (finally the right size). Restructuring our store was a fun project and I hope you enjoy it too!
• “Follower Death and the Future of Creativity on the Web.” I always enjoy hearing Jack Conte talk about the internet and I came across this SXSW talk where he basically explains how “following” and “subscribing” changed the world – and how we need to change it again.
• ElevenLabs reader. ElevenLabs does AI voices better than any product I’ve ever seen and built this iPhone app (with Android coming soon, apparently) in a really clever way. Just share any article, book or PDF to the app, choose a voice and it will read it out loud.
• Blackmagic Camera for Android. There’s a really annoying lack of great third-party camera apps for Android, but this one is good, with lots of manual controls and instant feedback. It’s only on a few phones for now, but I’ll take what I can get.
• Notion Websites. This is a small but very clever thing: building a Notion page and, with one click, publishing it to the web. Whether you want a one-page personal website or a quick and easy event page. This is much easier than anything else out there.
• The Bear season 3. I agree with everyone who is annoyed that Hulu dropped this season all together instead of a week at a time – drag it out, give us time to obsess over it! That being said, I’ll be watching every second of it this weekend. And then rewatch all three seasons once you’re done.
• Figma Slides. Figma got some really big updates this week: a redesign, a bunch of AI stuff, and more. But Slides is particularly cool. It’s a mix of a design tool and a presentation tool, and it seems a lot more fun to play with than PowerPoint.

I think the first Sara Dietschy The video I saw was the one where she explained it perfectly How to vlog for Casey Neistat. (That title, by the way, is like a perfect time capsule from 2016, and I still miss that YouTube era.) Since then, she’s become one of my favorite creators, talking about everything from cameras to creativity to cars and just … life. . And more recently, as a first-time mom, it’s been really cool to watch her go through the same things that are happening in my house.

I asked Sara to share her home screen with us, curious to see how she was balancing life and creator things. They’re both very demanding and we all only have one home screen, you know? Turns out there’s a bit of both – but mostly life stuff.

Here’s Sara’s home screen, plus some information about the apps she uses and why:

The telephone: iPhone 15 Pro.

The wallpaper: My wallpaper is always a rotation of cute baby pictures. She is my whole life now. I mean, look at her… right? I love widgets, so I always have rocks I’m looking at and the weather front and center.

The apps: Phone, Clock, Settings, Camera, Photos, Drive, Amazon, Blackmagic Camera, YouTube, Tesla, DoorDash, Apple Notes, Google Authenticator, Vivint, WhatsApp, Nanit, Messages, Hatch Baby, Safari, Gmail.

My home screen is reserved for the apps I use multiple times every day.

The task widget is from the Things app – where all my tasks go to death 🙂 But at least they are super organized.

I also asked Sara to share some things she’s enjoying right now. Here’s what she sent back:

• Blackmagic Camera. An AMAZING camera app that allows you to record Apple Log in a reasonable file size. (Registering photos to Apple Camera will leave you with huge ProRes HQ files.)
• Apple Notes. I recently downsized my team and became obsessed with the speed and simplicity of Notes over Notion, which I used to use religiously. Now Notion is only used for projects I’m working on that require other people.
• Nanit. The best baby monitor ever. The feature-rich app makes the expensive hardware worth it. PiP works flawlessly and you can monitor the baby monitor’s audio in the background while listening to a podcast or music.
• I’m very interested in 3D printing right now. This led me to many “creator” channels on YouTube. I’m currently binge-watching Tested by Adam Savage channel.

Here’s what installer community is this week. I want to know what you’re doing now too! 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. And for more great recommendations than I could fit here, check out the answers to this post on Threads.

“Selling chess in installer made me think of another great chess game! Very bad chess by Zach Gage is apparently very good for my brain. It’s available on iOS and Android with in-app purchase and is free if you pay through Apple Arcade!” -Harvey

“I’m sad that more people don’t know about“17776” It is “20020”, stories from the distant future about football and sapient satellites.” – Lego

“I just finished Temptation of the Force by Tessa Gratton. It is the last novel of Star Wars: The High Republic plot, and these continue to be some of my favorite books of the last 10 years, definitely in the Star Wars universe. They are set a few hundred years before the films and I would recommend them to any fan.” -Justin

“Starting to cure a pancetta and a capicola using Umai Dry vacuum bags. I don’t have a great place to cure and dry meats at our house in the city, so it’s nice to be able to do it in the fridge. Bonus: I can use the new vacuum sealer my family gave me for Father’s Day! – Timothy

“Anil Dash wrote two posts on What does a board of directors do?, and it’s fascinating! A must read if you like how corporate governance works.” – Ricardo

“I’m starting to sideload. It’s amazing what you can get with a developer ID and the cracked iPhone apps out there.” – Dawit

“I can’t stop playing Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor on PC. In this roguelike, you are a dwarf who mines precious minerals and fights hordes of insects on an alien planet. It’s ridiculously fun, easy to learn, and the weapon and skill systems are completely satisfying to navigate.” –Abhimanyu

“A while ago, I went through the same journey you seem to be on: ‘I want a Light phone, but… what if I just turned my iPhone into a lightweight phone?’ The option I like most is to build my own with Widgets Widgets. It is a very powerful application that allows you to create your own widgets. It’s not intuitive and has way more power than I would ever need, but it’s amazing to build your own Light Phone.” -Tom

“I’m halfway through Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new science fiction book, Service Model, and it’s a great story about AI and our trust in technology. I can’t put it down!” – Sighs

Before we go to bed, my wife and I sit down most nights and watch something together. Sometimes we talk about everything, sometimes we watch the show, sometimes we sit and look at our phones the whole time. It’s cool in all three ways! I suspect many people have their relaxation programs, but allow me to tell you about ours: The great food truck race on the Food Network. (Well, now Max, but you know what I mean.) It’s like a cooking show meets The amazing Race, there are 16 seasons – and the 17th season starts this weekend! – and it’s all silly and fantastic. My wife and I also developed hundreds of food truck ideas while watching the show, which is also a lot of fun.

If you need a new show to watch forever without working too hard, check out food trucks. (And if you have other shows like this that I should watch, please let me know. We’re stuck in food trucks and that’s a problem.)

A great holiday to all who celebrate. See you in two weeks!