Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 150, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy Halloween, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .)

This week, I was in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee on a family vacation. It was delightful (and the reason this week’s Installer is a little short). I’ve also been reading about job hunting and 30 Rock and crypto detectives , testing the DuckDuckGo browser after a bunch of you told me to add it to the list, watching the adorable new Pixar short over and over, getting caught up on VisionQuest , playing with my new Pebble Index 01 now that it finally arrived, listening to music on my rad-looking new CMF Speaker S , and eating a worrying number of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

I also have for you some new gear from Apple and Amazon, a better way to read books on your phone, a resurrected note-taking app, an absurdly expensive robovac, and much more.…