007 First Light is the James Bond game we’ve been waiting for
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 130, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, don’t forget to hydrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Victor Wembanyama and mahjong and Merlin Mann’s pearls of wisdom, watching more of the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals than I expected, watching way too many videos about lighting a home studio, spending too many hours tweaking the settings in Vivaldi, belatedly cleaning up my Google Photos library, and finally — finally — getting my home office organized. Ish.
I also have for you the best new Bond game in years, an important update to a popular smart ring, a new entry in the Spider-Verse, and much more. Let’s do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / downloading / cutting into pretty shapes this week? 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.)
- 007 First Light. I have played a lot of James Bond games over the years, and been disappointed by most of them. (At least since Goldeneye, one of the best games of all time.) By virtually all accounts, this is the Bond game we’ve all been waiting for. I have no idea how I’m going to wait for the Switch 2 version to come out.
- The Oura Ring 5. My main gripe with the Oura Ring has always been its size — it’s just big enough that it seems to bonk into everything when I’m wearing it, and I never quite get used to it. The new one has some clever new features, but is also substantially lighter and smaller. That’s a big win all by itself.
- Spider-Noir. The Spider-Verse movies remain some of the coolest and most inventive superhero flicks I’ve seen in years. This new show sounds like it’s just as stylish, but maybe skimps a little on the substance… I’ll still be watching, though.
- Halide Mark III. Halide is still the gold standard for third-party camera apps, and the new update brings a very useful feature: You can now take RAW photos with other cameras and use Halide to process them with Halide’s cool new set of filters and presets. Halide is a much better photo editor than I am, I’ll tell you that.
- The Sennheiser Momentum 5. Sennheiser probably deserves more shine in the headphone world. I know a lot of people who love the Momentum 4s, and the new model comes with more battery life, better noise cancellation, and a user-upgradeable battery. Very curious to try these when they ship next month, especially to see if the ANC can really hang with Sony and Bose.
- Mina the Hollower. According to, uh, everyone, this might be the best game of the year so far. It comes from the developer behind Shovel Knight, and people are comparing it to some of the great games of all time. It’s a fairly simple-looking game that hides something huge and ambitious, and I can’t wait to dig in.
- Backrooms. I don’t know whether you should watch Kane Parsons’ incredibly cool, inventive YouTube series before you watch the movie he turned those videos into, or if you should go into the movie completely in the dark about what’s coming. Either way, this is a cool YouTube-Hollywood story, and a horror movie not to be missed.
- Spotify Articles. A bunch of curated, narrated, long-form journalism, and Premium users can listen to a handful of them free every month. There are some odd article choices in here, but also some true classics, including the great cocaine treasure hunt.
- Star City. For All Mankind is a long-standing favorite show here in the Installerverse, so this spinoff show focused on the Soviet Union might already be on your to-watch list. From what I hear, it’s not quite up to FAM’s standard, but the cool space stuff keeps coming, and I’m here for all of it.
- The Ferrari Luce. This has to be the most expensive thing in the history of Installer, right? I really don’t care for the look of Ferrari’s first EV (and it seems neither does anyone else), but there are some genuinely brilliant things going on inside of it. If you want to give me a ride in yours, I won’t complain.
I love talking shop with Danielle Steussy. Danielle is a product manager for The Verge, which means she spends her days thinking about and working on ways to make our experience, and the whole experience of journalism and storytelling on the web, better. (There’s also a non-zero chance you’ve met Danielle, now that I think about it — she spends a lot of time talking to people in the Verge community about how we can serve them better.) Danielle drove a lot of the work behind our new homepage, and has a bunch of extremely cool new features up her sleeve too. Including one, coming soon, that I know is going to make a lot of us very happy.
Anyway, I asked Danielle to share her homescreen with us, curious whether all Verge nerds are the same or whether, as a product person, she might have a totally different conception of her phone. Little of both, it turns out! Here’s Danielle’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 14 Pro in Deep Purple. I’m due for an upgrade, but I’ll ride this one out a little longer. Fun fact: I bought it while living in Australia when the 14 Pro first came out, so I ended up with the UK version that has one eSIM and one physical SIM. Moving back to the US with both of my phone numbers was a nightmare.
The wallpaper: Photo shuffle of my son!
The apps: Settings, Google Maps, Photos, Camera, ChatGPT, Google, Chrome, Brave, Calendar, Apple Notes, Find My, CareConnect, Phone, Messages, Spotify, Mail.
I’m attempting to spend less time on my phone by making it almost entirely utilitarian and boring.
I use Spotify for podcasts and music. I’ve been a diehard fan of Spotify for ages. I taught fitness for a decade and Spotify was my co-teacher. Definitely not a fan of the 20th anniversary icon though…
I LOVE the Hatch sound machine for my toddler. The app is pretty decent. I like curating ambiance for my kid’s bedtime routine.
I also asked Danielle to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:
- Death by Lightning. Just finished. LOVED.
- ChatPRD. An AI tool for product managers, created by Claire Vo, who has been such an interesting person to also follow in the PM/AI space. I mostly use it for rubber ducking and processing my product thoughts.
- The Techno Sapiens newsletter. Evidence-based guidance for parenting in the digital age. This is such an accessible newsletter by Jacqueline Nesi, a clinical psychologist and professor at Brown University. Makes me feel… better about raising a kid around this much technology.
- Tomato gardening. Luckily, I live on the Central Coast of California, where tomatoes practically grow themselves. I’ve got 13 plants this year: last season’s survivors, volunteers, and a few additions purchased from our local university Ag department. I’m growing Tasmanian Chocolates, Bodacious, Beauty King, and others, all meticulously tracked in a very serious Google Sheets planting matrix.
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 great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“Finally getting around to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5. Such a fun adventure game, very well performed and puzzles with just the right amount of challenge. Scratches that Uncharted itch. Really digging it.” — Colin
“With the prices of storage still insanely high, I’m rediscovering burning files / photos onto CDs and DCDs using the ImgBurn software.” — Allen
“Thinking about seeing Obsession in a cinema again after being floored by it (complimentary) on first watch.” — Kev
“I am currently obsessed with playing Huntdown: Overtime in early access on Steam. It’s an absolute blast. A retro themed, dystopian, Blade Runner-esque side scroller / shooter / platformer and it is SO addictive.” — Kent
“With the death of Allbirds, I’ve been rocking Oofos tennis shoes, which are a fantastic recovery shoe for the beach, the office, and definitely after the long run at the end of the week.” — Jimmy
“I just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s debut novel from 1952, Player Piano, about a near-future dystopia where automation has displaced all labor and engineers and management live lives of luxury despite not actually doing anything. Nothing of relevance there!!” — Andy
“I bought a Kobo Clara BW in January in an effort to read more and scroll less. I’ve largely succeeded in that goal thus far, but I’d like to recommend the Red Rising book series by Pierce Brown. I’m on the third book, Morning Star, and it’s fantastic so far. It has sci-fi, romance, and societal commentary, it’s an excellent series with an escalating plot! I’m really enjoying it so far, and reading it on my Kobo has been a delight.” — James
“Watched Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu movie yesterday. It could have just been two episodes in the show but it was good.” — Justin
“I downloaded Poppy but find it too verbose and sometimes incorrect. Some months ago I came across Extra, an AI-first app for emails and calendar. It’s finally out of Beta and I’m really liking it. “ — Jay
Spotify’s Page Match feature is my favorite new(ish) tech thing in forever. You use it by taking a picture of your book, on paper or on an e-reader, and Spotify figures out where you are in the book and immediately picks up the audiobook in the right spot. It can also do the reverse, guiding you back to the right page in your book. It rules.
I have Spotify Premium, so I get a bunch of hours of audiobooks for free every month, and being able to flip so easily between reading and listening has helped me get through books so much faster. Read in bed; listen while I walk the dog; read on the couch; listen while I fold laundry. Can’t recommend it enough.
Also: Listening to audiobooks is reading. I will not be taking questions. Yay audiobooks! See you next week!
