{"id":450583,"date":"2026-02-28T16:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/450583\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:49:13","slug":"acme-weather-looks-like-the-dark-sky-replacement-weve-been-waiting-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/450583\/","title":{"rendered":"Acme Weather looks like the Dark Sky replacement we\u2019ve been waiting for"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 117, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, please send Android tips, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This week, I\u2019ve been reading about Eileen Gu<\/a> and Ozempic<\/a> and fancy grocery stores<\/a>, trying out the beautiful Shiori<\/a> bookmarking app, trying to temper my expectations for the Scrubs<\/a> reboot, continuing my test of the Pixel 10 Pro<\/a>, building my dream to-do list app with Claude Code<\/a> (it\u2019s almost done!), enjoying the beginnings of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins<\/a>, recording the next season of Version History<\/a>, watching all of The Earliest Show<\/a> again after it showed up on my YouTube, and eating altogether too many Garden Salsa Sun Chips<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also have for you the first big phone launch of the year, a new-old weather app, a way to maybe make your YouTube a little cheaper, a bunch of stuff to watch this weekend, and much more. Missed you last week! Let\u2019s get back at it.<\/p>\n

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading \/ watching \/ playing \/ listening to \/ turning up to 11 this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com<\/a>. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Acme Weather<\/a>. Years after it was acquired by Apple and went away, there\u2019s still no good replacement for Dark Sky. (Though I have been pretty happy with Hello Weather<\/a>!) Super exciting to see the team go back out on their own, and I already like what they\u2019re up to with their new iOS app. The multi-forecast stuff in particular is just fabulous.Samsung\u2019s Galaxy S26 Ultra<\/a>. A relatively minor upgrade<\/a> this year, but I think the built-in privacy display is a genuinely great new bit of hardware. Terrible for me, an incorrigible snoop of other people\u2019s phones, but probably a good thing for society at large. And really cleverly implemented!Resident Evil Requiem<\/a>. I have really come to love a game that scares me, because it keeps me engaged like basically nothing else. By all accounts, this game is all that and even more. I will be playing alone, in the dark, terrified, as we are meant to do.Current<\/a>. This is from last week, but it feels relevant: This is the RSS app Terry Godier promised a couple of issues ago<\/a>! It\u2019s clean, it\u2019s quiet, it feels practically meditative next to most RSS readers. It\u2019s not exactly meant for my frenetic newsgathering use case, but wow is it nice to use.Wispr Flow for Android<\/a>. The more I use these cross-app, AI-powered dictation apps, the more I enjoy talking instead of typing on all my devices. There are a lot of good apps on iOS (including Monologue<\/a>, which launched last week!), but Android is woefully underserved. This is a welcome addition to the options.\u201cThe Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew<\/a>.\u201d The title is\u2026 a lot, but this Veritasium video is actually a really good primer on a lot of really important security things, and has one of the most delightful hero stories you\u2019ll find.Notion Custom Agents<\/a>. Notion is doing a really good job of bringing AI features to the tools you\u2019re already using, and I keep hearing good things about custom agents. They know where your data is, they can build almost anything, they\u2019re totally autonomous… vibe coding, but make it business.\u201cHow Red Bull Built Its Empire<\/a>.\u201d I have always wondered how an energy drink company managed to fund all the sports teams, stunts, and various shenanigans that Red Bull does. This is a fascinating history of a company that is way more than a beverage company\u2026 but is actually very much a beverage company.The New York Times Midi.<\/a> Oh, what\u2019s that? Another crossword to do every day instead of working, that won\u2019t be punishingly difficult half the time but also will take more than 34 seconds to complete? Oh okay cool sounds great I will do it every day forever thanks.YouTube Premium Lite<\/a>. This is mostly a PSA, because I didn\u2019t know this tier even existed. But now that it includes video downloads and (most importantly) background playback, Premium Lite is about half the price of Premium but has almost all of the best features. I might need to downgrade.<\/p>\n

Meredith Haggerty<\/a> is one of those people you meet and you\u2019re immediately like, Oh, you\u2019re much cooler than I am. The more I get to know Meredith, a new(ish) editor here at The Verge, the more I realize how correct my first assumption was. Meredith has written about fashion and culture and brands and TV shows and also recently made a Pride and Prejudice joke<\/a> that made me laugh so hard I spilled coffee all over my keyboard. Technically, Meredith owes me a keyboard.<\/p>\n

I asked Meredith to share her homescreen with us, both because I think it\u2019s a fun way to get to know new people here and because I want her to tell me about cool things but I don\u2019t want to just constantly badger her for TV recs. Here\u2019s her homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The phone: An iPhone 17. Until very recently, I was clinging to an iPhone 12 mini that I\u2019d gotten as a hand-me-down corporate gift from a friend; it was so tiny and good and I had the perfect phone case. (Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette in a mask. A conversation starter!) But the battery became glacial, even after a couple of trips to the Genius Bar, and I had to give it up.<\/p>\n

The wallpaper: A screenshot of Roku City, fall edition. I find Roku City very calming, so I decided to keep it with me.<\/p>\n

The apps: Spotify, Messages, Mail, Chrome.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m especially dependent on Notes, and here you can see my three main categories of Note: things I need to do, things I need to buy, thoughts I probably would have tweeted a few years ago. I love that the MTA app<\/a> will tell me when I should leave for the train, but I almost never check it before I leave my house. For the weather, I actually rely on the New York Metro Weather Instagram account<\/a>; my boyfriend hates it when I tell him what number the vibes are.<\/p>\n

To be clear, this attempt to simplify my homescreen hasn\u2019t alleviated my time-wasting at all. Beyond this page, I have a loopy number of apps, mostly put into folders to keep me away from them, which doesn\u2019t work. I\u2019m still always scrolling to the last page, to the last folder, to the last page of that last folder, so I can play a mobile game I don\u2019t enjoy called Drop the Cat<\/a>. There\u2019s maybe nothing worse in my life than the hold that mobile games I don\u2019t enjoy have on me. I\u2019m not even a cat person.<\/p>\n

I also asked Meredith to share a few things she\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what she sent back:<\/p>\n

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette<\/a>. I\u2019m appropriately ashamed of watching this show (I\u2019m sorry, Schlossberg family!), but it\u2019s a fantastic combination of cool and dumb. One second it makes smoking a cigarette in 1994 while wearing Calvin Klein look like the apex of human existence; the next, Fake JFK Jr. is pointing to an actor in a thick white wig, saying, \u201cHave you met my uncle Teddy?\u201d We shouldn\u2019t even talk about the scene where Jackie O dances to Camelot.I recently downloaded an app called Rodeo<\/a> that might actually solve a phone-based problem for me. It parses the deluge of recommendations from TikTok or Instagram, if you happen to be on the \u201cwealthy children pose with food\u201d side of those apps. You screenshot the clip, send it to Rodeo, and it grabs the relevant information and can save it in fairly handy lists.The library. This might be stolen valor from the Meredith who had not yet downloaded Drop the Cat, but a little over a year ago I moved closer to the library and have really been cashing in on how free those books are. Plus, the Brooklyn Public Library app<\/a> is so good, letting me put things on hold whenever I happen to think of them. I\u2019m currently reading Louise Erdrich\u2019s The Sentence<\/a>, which I am probably incorrectly not as into as her The Mighty Red<\/a>, and we don\u2019t have to talk about how many times I\u2019ve renewed it because I\u2019ve been playing phone games instead. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie<\/a>. I\u2019d never watched Viceland\u2019s Nirvanna the Band the Show before I went to see the movie, and you currently cannot do so legally, so probably I still haven\u2019t. I didn\u2019t need it to enjoy the movie, though, which is hilarious and sweet and made me go \u201cHow did they do that???\u201d so many times. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com<\/a> or message me on Signal \u2014 @davidpierce.11 \u2014 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarathon<\/a> (a new extraction shooter game by Bungie) is having an open play-test \/ demo this weekend so that\u2019s what I\u2019ll be into for the next few days.\u201d \u2013 Janego<\/p>\n

\u201cReally enjoying Agnes Aubert\u2019s Mystical Cat Shelter<\/a> by Heather Fawcett (author of the delightful Emily Wilde series). Feels like a cross between Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Howl\u2019s Moving Castle.\u201d \u2014 Spencer<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 1Password have upped their price I\u2019ve spent a few hours moving over to Apple Passwords<\/a> and Uplock<\/a>. Was mostly okay, but it\u2019s a shame you can\u2019t transfer over all your passkeys to Apple Passwords. Uplock having a lifetime purchase is a big plus.\u201d \u2014 Matthew<\/p>\n

\u201cBeen watching Demon Slayer<\/a> this past month, and FINALLY watched the Infinity Castle<\/a> movie in a theater, and, it\u2019s so clear how these anime movies are wildly different (and spectacular!) in tone, direction and characterization from our current crop of Hollywood blockbusters.\u201d \u2014 Anshuman<\/p>\n

\u201cI just yesterday switched my family from my grandfathered free Google Apps plan for our custom domain email to Fastmail<\/a>. Fastmail is private but supports industry standard IMAP and CalDAV protocols, so we can use the built-in mail apps on our phones and computers.\u201d \u2014 Mike<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been listening to Comedy Bang Bang!<\/a> Still super funny. Big Paul F. Tompkins fan.\u201d \u2014 Mo<\/p>\n

\u201cStar Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown<\/a>. Despite the occasionally brutal RNG, it\u2019s so fun to be able to dive into my favourite Trek stories and tweak the outcomes.\u201d \u2014 Jono<\/p>\n

\u201cReading the first book in the On the Calculation of Volume<\/a> series. It\u2019s a time loop story, like Groundhog Day but way more realistic and sorta sad but it\u2019s great so far!\u201d \u2014 Colin<\/p>\n

\u201cThe news of the YouTube app coming to the Apple Vision Pro made me re-watch the only good use of 360 video I\u2019ve seen: \u2018How TV screens made watching movies worse<\/a>,\u2019 a fully 3D-animated, 20-minute video essay about how the home releases of movies differ from their theatrical cuts and why that matters, and how the physical size of TV screens makes an impact on content. If you have a Vision Pro it\u2019s worth pulling out just for this video. After that, watch everything else that YouTuber (Noodle<\/a>) has made.\u201d \u2014 Nathan<\/p>\n

This winter has been a disaster, where I live and many other places. So much snow, so many snow days, so much chaos. First of all, I hope you\u2019ve all stayed safe and warm and well! Second of all, there is one bit of good news in all this: Casey Neistat is out in New York City vlogging again<\/a>. All these years later, nobody YouTubes quite like Casey YouTubes. Between this and the return of Paul Ford\u2019s blog<\/a>, it almost feels like the good internet is coming back. Here\u2019s hoping.<\/p>\n

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