Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 78, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youre new here, welcome, sorry everythings about to get so expensive, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, Ive been reading about baseball bats and work-life balance and BYD and Scarlett Johansson, watching Paradise, rekindling my love of pear-flavored jelly beans, sharing Robin Sloans AI take with anyone who will listen, grooving to the greatest unexpected Doechii remix of all time, and finally finding the monitor mount that makes my webcam upgrade work.I also have for you a couple of great new apps for streaming and gaming, a look back into Microsofts history, the latest on the Switch 2, a screed against screen time, and much more.Oh, and a programming note: Installer is off next week. Taking a little break before we ramp up for Developer Conference season. But we have lots to do today! Lets get into it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be reading / listening to / watching / downloading / sipping on this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)The DropPlex. Plex has spent a lot of time and energy trying to become a proper, legit streaming platform, and the new mobile app is by far the most mainstream-useful thing it has ever made. Mixing streaming media with my library, and lots of discovery tools, feels really nice. Fair warning, though: youll need a $4.99 monthly sub to get a lot of Plexs best features.Delta 1.7. The iPhones best game emulator, now with online multiplayer! (At least for DS games.) It also has nice screenshot support and some new N64-specific updates, which gives me great hope for the Mario Golf ROM Ive already put too many hours into.Skylight. It looks exactly like TikTok, but it runs on the same AT Protocol that powers Bluesky. That is a very enticing combination and its a really nice app for something so brand new. Bluesky is really starting to look like the fediverse.Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the companys original source code. This week was the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, and Bill Gates marked the occasion by releasing all its original Altair BASIC source code via one of the cooler retro-style websites youll ever use.The Nintendo Switch 2. I know, weve talked about this before, and I know, its not launching until June. But the new Switch a console I am outrageously, maybe unprecedentedly, excited about, especially now that weve learned more about its specs and its game lineup is officially launching in June, and I just needed you to know so you dont miss it. I will be there. You cant preorder it yet, because of chaos, but Ill keep you posted.I hate my phone so I got rid of it. Been a while since a 46-minute YouTube rant had me nodding this hard but Eddy Burback does a great job of explaining both why our phones are a problem, and why life without a phone feels increasingly impossible. Using a landline? Can you imagine?A Minecraft Movie. The reviews are meh, because of course they are. But Ill watch Jack Black in anything, and Im genuinely curious to see both what the blocky movie world looks like and how this very clearly Lego Movie-inspired flick pulls off the whole just keep building bit.DEVONthink 4.0. DEVONthink is, like, the ultimate Mac app for just storing all your junk. The designs a little 90s for my taste, but the new beta has some nice updates and a huge set of AI tools for finding, summarizing, and organizing content. Im tempted to throw my whole life back in the app.Koira. Another delightful entrant (for Steam and PS5) in one of my favorite game genres the quiet, simple puzzler that never tries to do too much but somehow seems to keep your attention forever. Plus, you get a puppy friend!Weve talked about the app Sofa a few times here in Installer. Its a really good-looking, powerful app for Apple devices that lets you manage all the stuff you want to watch, read, listen to, and everything else. Ive come to appreciate having it as the app I go to when I deliberately want to relax. Rather than just aimlessly scroll on Reddit or whatever, Sofa is just a giant list of stuff I actually want to consume.Sofas big new feature this week is a podcast player, which is full-featured enough that you can use Sofa as your one and only podcast app. Like everything else in Sofa, its really nicely made and is already as good at queue management as any app Ive tried.On the occasion of the new update, I asked Shawn Hickman, Sofas developer, to share his homescreen with us. I figured he might have some widget ideas, you know? Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:The phone: iPhone 16 Pro Max. I love the big phones and have embraced the PopSocket life.The wallpaper: My homescreen rotates images from my photo library (one of my favorite iOS features), and I use the blurred version of it as my wallpaper.The apps: Camera, Phone, Apple Maps, Clock, Wallet, Settings, Photos, Reminders, App Store, Music, Safari, 1Password, YouTube, Bear, YouTube Studio, Lightroom, Things, Blackmagic Camera, Reeder, Discord, RevenueCat, ChatGPT, Apple Sports, Mail, Messages, Sofa, Apple Notes.I keep very few apps on my homescreen and tend to rely on search more. Also, Im not a big widgets person. I have a few on my first page (Photos, Weather, and Calendar), but I prefer scanning app icons rather than widgets .Things, Bear, and Reeder are a few of my favorite apps of all time. Ive used Reeder (now Reeder Classic) for a long time and have always been impressed with the apps craftsmanship. The new Reeder is even better. I actually like the news feed approach more than the traditional RSS feed / inbox approach. I find it to be a low-stress way to keep up with different news sources.Bear is where I write and store a lot of my work notes. I love writing in markdown, the flexibility of the apps tagging system, and its visual design. Things is my favorite app ever. Ive been using it for so long and couldnt imagine managing my work without it. Simply the best.I have a YouTube channel. Ive been experimenting with shooting Apple Log, and the Blackmagic Camera app is by far the most flexible. You need to do a bit of learning, but its pretty sweet once youve gotten a handle on it. I love photography, and really love editing photos, so I tend to spend a lot of time in Lightroom. I find it relaxing, and tend to edit photos when Im stuck on a problem. It weirdly helps me think.RevenueCat is a great service that makes implementing and managing Sofas app subscriptions much easier.I also asked Shawn to share a few things hes into right now. Heres what he sent:Severance. Its probably my favorite TV show since the first season of Stranger Things and I really want to buy one of the keyboards the MDR team uses! Now we must all endure the long wait for season 3.Ive been on a history kick, and there are a few documentaries Ive really liked: The War.Framelines: Im a photography enthusiast, and one of my favorite YouTube channels, and now magazines, is Framelines. They focus a lot on street photography but expand beyond that quite a bit. Their channel is great, and I love getting their physical magazines, too.CrowdsourcedHeres what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what youre into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal @davidpierce.11 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and well feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.I played Dungeon Pages for the first time on my iPad last night and REALLY enjoyed it! Would be even more enjoyable on paper to get away from doomscrolling for a while. DylanI initially had my heart set on the Fujifilm X100VI, but a friend suggested the X-T50. Its been a great learning experience, and Im pleased with the photos Ive taken. Im still discovering all the nuances of the Fujifilm ecosystem. PaulIf youre liking your SodaStream, you should check out Simpli Soda theyre a family business out of SE Wisconsin that does mail-in cylinder swaps for all brands (including quick-connects like your SodaStream Art uses) for less $$. CoriLate to the party, but Baldurs Gate 3. I was blown away by how quickly I got immersed, and Im only on my first playthrough. I didnt realize that it ran natively on macOS until last month. DrakeWanted to recommend a great app I have been happily using (+ paying for) for five years that no one else seems to talk about: Mealime. Its the perfect app if, like me, you struggle not only at planning recipes for the week but also the act of shopping itself. Normally, when I make a grocery list, I crisscross the grocery store looking for what I need. Mealime gives you tons of recipes, lets you filter by dietary preferences, make a meal plan, and then it makes a grocery list grouped by section of the grocery store. Its a total game-changer for me. DrewI absolutely love Li Hing pineapple rings. Im told theyre common in Hawaii, but on the East Coast, theyre new to me. Sour and delicious. I order mine from Wholesale Unlimited Hawaii, and theyre fun and delicious and unique. The store has tons of snacks Ive never seen around where I live, and everything Ive bought is really good. SteveI finished watching Reacher season 3 on Prime Video. I liked the season as an action flick, but it doesnt feel like a Reacher-level story. The investigation element was missing from this season. Season 1 was the strongest offering in this series. AnkurI just found out about the Johnny.Decimal system last night. Diving in to reorganizing my work files as I descend further down the PKM rabbit hole. DirkOtherwise Objectionable is an excellent history of Section 230. Hosted by Mike Masnick and featuring recollections from the folks who were there at the inception of the 26 words that created the Internet. Section 230 is under threat (yet again), so its a good time to learn why its so important we dont screw it up with badly written and misguided legislation. ZipSigning offIf you were extremely online during a very specific time period, the names Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld might mean a lot to you. They were two of my first favorite online comedians, part of a brilliant CollegeHumor gang that was way ahead of its time making funny stuff on the internet.If youve never watched a Jake and Amir, head to their YouTube channel, sort by oldest, and give it a whirl. But if you can quote as many of their bits as I can, you really should check out the Greatest Jake and Amir Episode Ever tournament the two guys are doing on the channel, rewatching and commenting on some of their best work. (If youre on their Patreon, you can already see who won the tournament, but as I write this, the YouTube channel is only up to the Final Four.) I was shocked at how many of these videos I can still recite, pretty much word for word, all these years later. No keeding.See you in two weeks!See More: