The AI search engines are here — and getting better

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 59, 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.) 

I also have for you some interesting new AI search products, some new Apple gear, a couple of documentaries to watch this weekend, a calendar app for Windows, and much more.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who reached out about the Omnivore acquisition. Which sucks. I heard from a lot of folks wondering where to go next, and since I feel partially responsible for getting some of you into an app that is now dying, I’m gonna help you figure it out! But I need help: what about Omnivore, or any other reading app, do you 100 percent need? Tell me your desires and I’ll see if I can point us all in the right direction.

All right, lots to do this week. 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: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Screen share

A few weeks ago, I went to New York City and wandered into a coffee shop called Coffee Check. It was started by a guy named David Cogen, who you might recognize as the face of TheUnlockr YouTube channel. At the beginning of this year, after more than a decade as a creator, he decided to open a coffee shop. And still keep being a creator. Somehow.

I spent an hour with David talking about all this, which turned into a really fun episode of The Vergecast. But I left David still wondering how he balanced it all — and wondering what I might be able to tell about his priorities from his homescreen. So I asked him to share!

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

The phone: Pixel 9 Pro. I always switch fully into whatever phone I am making a video about, and as I am very behind on reviews (see the Vergecast episode for more on that), that’s the next one on the docket.

The wallpaper: The one that comes on the phone by default. I switch phones so often that I usually don’t change the wallpaper unless it’s obnoxious. In that case, I’ll still grab something minimalistic from Google’s Wallpapers app (maybe a landscape to remind me what outside looks like).

The apps: Spotify, Phone, Gmail, Chrome.

I generally have the multiple-clock widget, as it automatically shows me my current time and time back in NYC, which I find incredibly helpful while traveling as much as I do. Otherwise, the tools section has Notion, which I’m a heavy user of after Evernote got worse and worse over time — it has replaced that, along with Airtable. 

That folder has since expanded recently thanks to the coffee shop as I now have Homebase for scheduling my baristas, Poplin to get our cleaning rags picked up and delivered, Shopify for inventory / POS / sales / obsessive data analyzing, Ring for all the cameras in the space and to make sure milk deliveries show up on time in the middle of the night (we use a service called Odeko, which has a key and brings supplies in / puts the milk in the fridges for us), and Peerspace to make sure I can respond to inquiries to rent out the back space.

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

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! 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. For even more recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“I saw you had Coffee Golf on your iPad Mini homescreen. It has IAP and is really just ok. You’d be better off trying Golf On Mars. It’s the slightly more polished version of Desert Golfing by the same developer. Best quick-play golf game ever.” – Casey

“The story about Arc sunsetting in favor of a new browser kicked me into gear on finding a new home. I saw a comment on the Verge story that mentioned Zen Browser, pitching it as feeling like Arc but built from Firefox. I gave it a shot, and I love it!” – Tom

“I’ve been playing with different web browsers again. It came down to Brave and Vivaldi to try as a daily driver for a while, but I’ve settled on Vivaldi. Loving it. It is much snappier than the last time I tried it, plus it has the advantage of Chrome extensions and plenty of customization while locking down privacy. I think I’ve found my new web browser.” – Josh

“I’m a Letterboxd junkie for logging movies and this week I found a really nice app for logging TV watching! It’s called Marathon. The design of the app is niiiiiice.” — Garrett

“Started playing Rivals of Aether II, a new indie platform fighter like Super Smash Bros., and it’s *so* much fun. Learning curve is steep, but it’s so worth it.” – Anuj

“Loving the new season of Shrinking on Apple TV Plus. I don’t often get emotional, but they’re killing it (and me. Not sure I want to see where the father / son storyline goes). Big recommend.” – Matthew

“Redownloading Raindrop after the demise of Omnivore. Luckily I saved my config for the Obsidian plugin so it’s been an easy switch.” – Tynan

“Caught as much of the World Series as I could, but the Apple Sports live activity was awesome for keeping track when I couldn’t watch it.” – Justin

“I’ve been reading the Red Rising series because of one of my coworkers. The way that you get sucked into the characters and that every book builds on the previous ones, it has become one of my favorite series that I can’t recommend enough.” – Travis

Signing off

It’s Election Day on Tuesday! Wild, important, fascinating, terrifying, causing me to feel a lot of feelings. But one thing I unequivocally love about election season is a fresh set of reporting about some of the stranger and more annoying quirks of the American political process. Do you hate all the political texts? The Wall Street Journal has a fun investigation into how they work, The Washington Post has good tricks for turning them off, and our friends at Vox did a great podcast about how they became such a scourge. Elsewhere, Cleo Abram made a great video about why you can’t vote online, which is a question that keeps coming up.

See you next week!