Delta is the game emulator your iPhone has been missing

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 35, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re fresh here, welcome, get ready to open any tabs, and besides you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been rewatching Killing Eve now that it’s on Netflix, reading about Maggie Rogers and flying cars and the Today in Tabs newsletter, nodding along as MKBHD talks about gadget reviews, investigating the Godspeed to-do list app, talking to everyone I know about the Papyrus 2 sketch, listening on repeat to The Tortured Poets Department, and playing with the Plaud AI voice recorder.

I besides have for you a amazingly gadget-y week! We have a fresh set of earbuds to try, a fresh handheld camera, an AI memory system, a fresh audio-first social network, and much more. (Oh, also, a programming note: Installer is off next week, back May 4th.) Let’s get into it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into this week? What should everyone else be playing / reading / watching / eating / doing? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know individual else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

• Delta. This retro gaming emulator instantly earned a place on my homescreen. Leaving aside the complicated legal questions about emulators and ROMs, this app is mature and polished and supports a immense number of old consoles. The iPhone screen besides turns out to be the absolute perfect size for playing any of those old pixelated Mario games. Just saying. (This was, not surprisingly, the most recommended thing this week and possibly in the past of Installer — thanks to everyone who sent it in!)
• Airchat. I honestly don’t know how to feel about this app. Are voice-based social networks going to be a thing, or was Clubhouse just a unusual pandemic-induced haze we were all in for a week? Lots of tech folks I know are into this one, though, so it’s at least worth keeping an eye on.
• Limitless. A very different kind of AI gadget, this one. The “we’ll summarize your meetings” approach is… fine, but I think the imagination here, to figure out how to evidence and give you access to your life, is beautiful cool. I besides really dig the Limitless Pendant, which looks much little gadget-y than your average AI device.
• The Insta360 X4. Insta360 is doing some beautiful nifty stuff in the action camera world. The $500 X4 does 8K footage at 30 frames per second, which goes a long way erstwhile you’re cropping and sharing videos later. It besides has any ruggedness upgrades, which should aid the more, uh, clumsy of us out there.
• Soulver 3 for iPhone. Soulver is the coolest, smartest calculator you’ve always seen, and at long (like, weirdly long) last, the latest version is on the iPhone. $14 is simply a lot for an app like this, but this one’s worth it just for converting recipes and splitting bills.
• The Nothing Ear (a). Nothing’s earbuds have gotten beautiful good, and I am extremely into the yellow accents and case on its fresh low-end models. (Which cost $99 and appear to be just about as good as the more costly ones.) They don’t have a ton of extra platform-specific features, but as Bluetooth earbuds go, they’re a truly good bet.
• Maestro for Amazon Music. I love this as a usage for AI: just telling your music services the kind of stuff you want to perceive to. Get weird with your mood, or just type, like, “I like The 1975 and Van Morrison, play another bands” and see what happens.
• Meta AI. Say this for Mark Zuckerberg and Co.: they are not going tiny with their AI plans. The fresh bot works across platforms (and on your smart glasses) and runs on the fresh Llama 3 model that Meta says rivals everything else on the market.
• PodcastAP. A podcast app for the fediverse that can add fresh episodes to your timeline anywhere you are. It’s beautiful basic right now, and Mastodon et al. request to work on being better podcast players, but this is simply a super cool idea.
• The ellipse season 6. This is 1 of Netflix’s more unhinged reality shows, which is saying something! And this season, there’s a twist: 1 of the characters is actually an AI bot named “Max.” It’s going to get so weird.

In last week’s Installer, I asked you all to share what you usage AI for. Thanks to everyone who emailed, texted, Threads-ed, and Mastodon-ed me with your thoughts!

The main thing I heard, over and over and over again, is that you don’t use AI. quite a few you said you actively avoid it, want your favourite apps would halt integrating it, and don’t truly see much usage for it at all. I get that; that’s how I feel about quite a few AI. There are so many neat-sounding things out there that turn out to kind of suck and mostly be a hassle that, at any point, you just kind of give up.

But! I did get a bunch of cool recommendations of apps and tools y’all like, so let me share a fewer I heard about:

• Chatbots. I mean, duh. ChatGPT seems to be the overwhelming favorite, but I heard any love for Claude, too, and even a small Gemini hype. No love for Meta AI just yet, but that might change. Oh, and any definite votes for Poe as a way to usage all the bots in 1 place.
• Perplexity. This one’s half chatbot, half search engine, and it’s most likely the most popular thing I heard about this week. As a speedy way to get real-time answers to questions, it’s beautiful great.
• Arc. A bunch of you like Arc’s “browse for me” feature, which summarizes and curates websites for you. fortunate you, I think that feature is about to be in fundamentally all browser everywhere.
• Spacebar. An app that turns your IRL conversations into “memos,” with recaps and info about everything you talked about. Would it be weird to pull this out at dinner with friends? Maybe! But I heard any good things, and I’m intrigued.

More broadly, there were a fewer usage cases I heard a bunch of times, not necessarily tool-specific but alternatively just something useful you can do with AI:

• Summarize stuff. This appears to be your go-to usage case for AI, and it’s definitely mine, too. What was the gist of that long article you read and already kind of forgot? What’s this actual crime doc about?
• Planning things. My another favourite usage case: just ask the bot what people like to do wherever you’re going and start your itinerary from there. I loved the email I got from Jeff, who utilized ChatGPT to summarize a bunch of people’s ideas about where to go in Europe and got a travel itinerary out of it.
• Test your knowledge. This is kind of related to the last one, but I heard from a fewer folks who said they’ll upload a doc to ChatGPT or Gemini and then have the bot quiz them on its contents. A fun survey tool!
• Check your writing. Lots and lots of grammar checkers out there, it seems. I heard from folks utilizing AI tools to gut check ideas, check for errors, and just make certain all the sentences make sense.
• Make your own art. Whether you’re making playlists, decorating Notion pages, or sketching character ideas for your novel, I heard from folks who love having an endless fountain of fresh art at their disposal.

The overarching subject of your responses was that AI is useful… as a starting point. It’s a good tool to go from “I gotta do a thing” to “I have now done a first, not very good, version of a thing.” Which is progress! If you’d alternatively edit an email than compose 1 or tweak your presentation alternatively than build it from scratch, AI can be a help. But do not trust it to finish the job. You’ll end up submitting Shrimp Jesus in the quarterly report, and nobody needs that.

I’ve been working on any stuff about another good AI tools, too, so stay tuned — and keep sending recommendations!

One of my favourite things about Parker Ortolani, a product manager for consumer products here at Vox Media, is that he usually has better ideas about Apple products than Apple does. (Except for his profoundly confusing love for the imagination Pro, but we’ll let that 1 go.) He’s always doing concept art for Apple apps, fixing dumb things about iOS, and even thinks Siri might someday be great. I love this for him.

Anyway, I asked Parker to share his homescreen with us due to the fact that I figure Parker’s the kind of guy who might spend way besides much time reasoning about the layout and organization of everything. And I figured he’d have a bunch of customized icons and stuff no 1 even knew existed. I was right!

Here’s Parker’s homescreen, plus any info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: I’m presently utilizing an iPhone 15 Pro in natural titanium. It’s easy my favourite iPhone since the X. Though I barely usage the Action Button, the much lighter frame and USB-C have been game-changers.

The wallpaper: On the homescreen, I am utilizing a dark knit background shared by the folks over at Impending who make the excellent Clear to-do list app, which is besides my task manager of choice. I like a dark background generally, but utilizing the pure black can get boring, so it’s good to add a small texture. iOS just feels smoother with a black wallpaper.

The apps: Messages, Photos, YouTube, Instagram, Fantastical, Soulver, Slack, Transit, Maps, Copilot, Perplexity, Delta, Bulletin, Clear, Overcast, Arc, X, Threads, Apple Music.

I primarily usage X to keep up with news, startups, the hot AI companies, and folks just building cool things, while Threads has become the best app for keeping up with amusement and interacting with writers and journalists. Instagram is floating around there, too, but that’s more for just keeping up with friends and mindlessly scrolling through adorable dog videos.

Living in fresh York, knowing the current subway times is simply a must. I’ve tried all of the fresh York subway apps, even the fresh authoritative MTA 1 that’s amazingly good, but ultimately, nothing comes close to Transit. It has far and distant the best user interface, updates fast, and always has what I want right at the surface. A large bonus is that it has an excellent Apple Watch app as well.

Fantastical has been 1 of my favourite apps for years. It’s just 1 of those tools you’ll gotta pry from my cold, dead hands. The ticker and list UI is the absolute best calendar experience out there. And there are native counterparts on all Apple platform (sans tvOS, for apparent reasons).

There’s lots of AI stuff here, too. While folks tend to laud Arc Search’s AI-generated webpages that can replace conventional search (which are indeed awesome), I personally just love the care that’s gone into the user interface. I supplement Arc Search with Perplexity, which I tend to usage as my go-to for complex deep searches. I find that it’s best at that. Bulletin is simply a comparatively fresh RSS reader with powerful AI features and a gorgeous plan — the progressive blurs just make me swoon.

Apple Weather and Apple Maps have gotten truly good over the past fewer years, so I feel little compelled to usage third-party alternatives these days. I like Apple Weather so much that I’ve given it a giant widget slot at the top for the hourly forecast. (I have a love / hatred relation with widgets on iOS: they take up quite a few space, and I frequently find more value in having a bunch of app icons.) I’ve tried Spotify a bunch of times but always come back to Apple Music.

I like my podcasts to be separated from music, though. And while I’ve been playing around with the fresh Apple Podcasts transcripts feature, I’ve come back to Overcast. I perceive to so many shows that a dense, truly customizable interface is simply a must-have for me.

I besides asked Parker to share a fewer things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:

• If you’re into LLMs, you’re most likely aware of Hugging Face. The squad late released their first native mobile app, HuggingChat, that lets you usage the open-source models that they host like Llama 3 and Gemma. The app is truly nicely designed and a good change of pace from ChatGPT or Poe. In fact, it has no message limit. It’s rather powerful and lets you easy swap models on the fly. You can even build your own bots. It besides shares the large haptic feedback that the ChatGPT app introduced.
• I love smartwatches, but I have a individual affinity for conventional watches. Recently, I got fortunate and landed a white Snoopy edition MoonSwatch. Not only is it the first all-white bioceramic version but it besides has an adorable small Snoopy complication. It’s a delightful reprieve from constant bits and boops.
• I stopped utilizing the authoritative Apple MagSafe wallet due to the fact that it just doesn’t supply a full lot of value. But I picked up the Satechi Magnetic Wallet that has a built-in stand, and it’s awesome. It has an additional slot for more cards than the Apple one.

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 +1 203-570-8663 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature any of our favorites here all week. Also, for even more recommendations than I could fit here, check out this Threads… thread.

“I’ve been watching Delicious in Dungeon on Netflix, and I’m super loving it! besides been playing Helldivers 2 and the fresh Destiny 2 stuff and poking at a bunch of iPhone 15 reviews to see if I should get that over a 13 now that my 2020 SE has a fundamentally defunct battery and I’ve never actually had a ‘flagship’ device.” – Tyler

“I’ve been truly enjoying the fresh podcast from Seth Meyers and The Lonely Island. As well as being profoundly silly, it’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of SNL at what went into making the legendary SNL Digital Shorts. It’s inventively called The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast.” – Jonathan

“I urge that you check out Lunch Money. I’ve been utilizing this solopreneur-built app to organize my finances for the past couple of years. It’s been wonderful to usage and has taught me financial discipline. It’s 1 of the fewer subscriptions that I’m happy to pay for.” – Akshobhya

“Recently played around with augmented reality to put together a mixed-space painting session. It was truly fun. Footage here for anyone curious about it.” – K

“On the advice of my fav gaming podcast, The Besties, I’ve been playing Slice & Dice for iOS — it’s an RPG battler where all attacks, both yours and your enemies’, are determined by actual dice rolling around a virtual dice tray, and alternatively of leveling up to get better weapons, you get better dice. truly neat thought done well, large couch companion.” – Nick

“I wanted to share the app CropSize for iOS. I find myself taking multiple screenshots on social media (usually memes) and find it super cumbersome to gotta crop all tweet or Instagram post so my friends don’t see the entirety of my feed. CropSize lets you batch-process images super easy and quickly. It is unfortunately $2.99, but tbh I’m just glad it’s not a subscription service. Time saver!” – Keyser

“Just finished the latest video from MKBHD’s “The Studio,” where Mariah [Zenk] talks about the future of food automation tech.” – Josh

“I changed podcast providers to AntennaPod from Pocket Casts, just got sick of the upselling and paywalls in the app. Weird to think I’d alternatively have an app that was little feature-rich than 1 that offered the extras for a subscription fee. besides it’s a very good app and I’m happy I made the change.” – Benjamin

“​​The Fallout show got me hooked to head back into the Wasteland again… Gone back to my favorite, Fallout 3.” – Max

“Reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, setting up my first NAS, and hoping that the weather cooperates for me to go play Disc Golf this weekend.” – Dylan

My home is full of Ikea furniture. Shelves, beds, tables, chairs, you name it, it’s mostly Ikea. (It was a large minute in my adult life erstwhile we graduated from “the inexpensive Ikea stuff” to “the fancy Ikea stuff,” and if you store at Ikea, you know what I mean.) So, of course, I’m already looking around my basement office to see where I can fit stuff from the fresh Brännboll collection of rolling loungers, toy shelves, and profoundly weird donut chairs that can’t possibly be comfortable. I don’t know why most of this qualifies as “gaming” furniture, but I do know I request that rolling pegboard cart thing as shortly as possible. Forget the bar cart. I’m ready for a VR cart.