Every week, David Pierce distills the internet’s best tech, entertainment, and app discoveries into a single, opinionated guide — and Installer No. 136 from The Verge might be one of the more eclectic editions yet. From an unexpectedly great film to fresh app updates and a gadget Pierce admits he loves without knowing why, this week’s edition covers a lot of ground in the most personal way possible.
Summary
Key takeaways
- Installer No. 136, published July 18, 2026, is David Pierce’s weekly technology and entertainment recommendations guide at The Verge.
- Pierce calls The Odyssey the movie of the summer — surprising even himself after going in with low expectations.
- The edition highlights a notable update to a popular note-taking app and a new app built for organizing photos.
- Pierce is currently recording the next season of the Version History podcast, with the current season’s finale dropping on Sunday.
- Readers can submit their own picks and recommendations directly to [email protected].
What Installer No. 136 is actually about
The Installer newsletter has built a quiet, loyal following at The Verge by doing something most tech publications don’t bother with: sounding like a real person. Pierce opens each edition with a loose personal update — what he’s reading, playing, watching, or fiddling with that week — before rolling into the actual recommendations. That mix of intimacy and curation is the whole point.
This week’s personal inventory is characteristically wide-ranging. Pierce has been deep in production on the next season of Version History, The Verge’s podcast — with the current season’s finale landing on Sunday. He’s also been exploring new Knockout Tour routes in Mario Kart World, setting up a Flipper Busy Bar (which he describes as something he loves but hasn’t found a use for yet), and going down rabbit holes on data center heists, the origin story of Calvin and Hobbes, and an episode of Revisionist History that apparently taught him more about Staten Island than he ever intended to know.
There’s also a detour through the history of the very first chatbot and some reading on Backyard Baseball. It’s the kind of week that would feel overwhelming in a meeting but reads effortlessly in a newsletter.
The Odyssey: A standout recommendation
The headline recommendation this week is The Odyssey, and Pierce doesn’t bury the lead. “I’ll be honest: I expected this movie to not be great,” he writes. The reasoning was sound enough — an ambitious story and the honest acknowledgment that not every ambitious film connects. But his verdict landed hard: wrong.
Calling it the movie of the summer is a significant stamp from someone who covers entertainment professionally. Pierce came in skeptical and left converted, which is arguably a stronger endorsement than enthusiasm from someone who was already sold on the premise. For anyone weighing whether to see it, that kind of reluctant praise tends to travel further than a glowing review from a fan.
App Updates and New Tools Worth Knowing
A note-taking app gets better
Pierce flags a meaningful update to a popular note-taking app this week — enough to earn a dedicated mention in the Drop section. Note-taking apps sit in a competitive, often overhyped corner of the productivity space, so a genuine improvement worth calling out is more useful signal than most app-store release notes tend to provide.
A new way to organize your photos
Alongside the notes update, Pierce spotlights a new photo organizing app. Photo management is one of those perpetual problems that every platform promises to solve and few actually do — so a fresh option aimed specifically at organization rather than editing or sharing is worth tracking, especially if it earns a spot in an edition of Installer.
What makes these mentions meaningful in context is that Pierce isn’t running a traditional review column. He’s surfacing things he’s personally used or found interesting that week. That lowers the volume of what gets through and raises the implied reliability of what does.
Reader Engagement and the Community Behind the Newsletter
One consistent feature of Installer is that Pierce treats it as a conversation rather than a broadcast. Each edition closes with an open invitation: tell him what you’re reading, watching, playing, listening to, or soldering together. The contact address is [email protected], and he actively frames reader input as the best part of the whole thing.
That posture matters more than it might seem. In a media environment where most newsletters are one-directional by design, a columnist who genuinely routes his own discovery process through reader suggestions creates a feedback loop that makes the product more durable over time. The tips he receives presumably feed future editions, which makes the engagement ask feel like something more than a boilerplate CTA.
If there’s a broader point embedded in what Installer does well, it’s this: the newsletter succeeds not because it covers the most ground, but because it covers ground that someone actually covered first. Pierce’s credibility comes from the specificity of his taste, and that specificity only holds up as long as the recommendations stay genuinely personal. Edition 136 clears that bar without much difficulty — and for a weekly column now well past its 130th entry, that consistency is harder to maintain than it looks.
FAQ
What is Installer No. 136 about?
Installer No. 136 is a technology and entertainment guide by David Pierce at The Verge, featuring personal app picks, gadget discoveries, and entertainment recommendations for the week of July 18, 2026.
Which movie does David Pierce recommend in this edition?
David Pierce highlights The Odyssey as an unexpectedly excellent film — calling it the movie of the summer after initially going in with low expectations.
Are there any app updates mentioned?
Yes. The edition mentions a notable update to a popular note-taking app and a new app designed specifically for organizing photos.
How can readers share their ideas with David Pierce?
Readers can send their ideas, tips, and recommendations directly to [email protected].
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
