Speaker 1: What the heck is happening with Twitter? Gmail gets a
Speaker 1: handy feature just in time for the holidays. Spotify might
Speaker 1: finally work properly on the Apple Watch. Plus Your tech
Speaker 1: questions Answered? What's going on on Rich Demiro And This
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer the questions you send me.
Speaker 1: I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Hope you are having a fantastic day. Ah Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.
Speaker 1: I've seen nothing absorb the the talk of the town
Speaker 1: faster than Elon Musk taking over Twitter. And it's been
Speaker 1: kind of a rough ride. I don't think the media
Speaker 1: is helping, but it's it's really been interesting, to say
Speaker 1: the least. Now, I will say that I feel like
Speaker 1: my personal experience on Twitter has not changed substantially, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of holding off on, you know, making
Speaker 1: any judgments or really you know, getting kind of all
Speaker 1: bent out of shape with the changes or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: all the all the kind of chaos that's been happening
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff happens in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was waiting to see kind of like,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on here, what's going to change for
Speaker 1: the average person. And I feel like we've now surpassed that.
Speaker 1: It's gotten to the point where I you know, and
Speaker 1: I've said this before, I don't think the average person
Speaker 1: uses Twitter. And I think that's the biggest problem with
Speaker 1: Twitter is that it's not you know, if this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff was happening with Instagram, I think it would
Speaker 1: be a big deal if it was happening, you know,
Speaker 1: with Facebook, probably a big deal. Twitter not so much.
Speaker 1: Twitter is a very inside baseball It's like a very
Speaker 1: clubby place, and so it's used by a lot of journalists,
Speaker 1: used by a lot of tech people, but it's not
Speaker 1: used by a lot of regular people. And so all
Speaker 1: these things, all these growing pains, all these things that
Speaker 1: you know, Elon's trying to get through. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: nobody's really seeing that except the inside baseball people. The
Speaker 1: average person is not, you know, sitting there using it.
Speaker 1: But I do feel like there's been some developments in
Speaker 1: the time that Elon has taken over Twitter that you know,
Speaker 1: people are leaving, advertisers are pausing, you know, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and so I think that the turning
Speaker 1: point for me was when I started to see these
Speaker 1: you know, they're having this major issue with number one,
Speaker 1: how to monetize the website or the social media platform.
Speaker 1: Number two, like, what do you do. You've got this
Speaker 1: legacy kind of verified blue check program that they try
Speaker 1: to switch over to this pay pay for play program.
Speaker 1: You know, you pay eight bucks a month, you get
Speaker 1: a blue check. Well, the problem with that is that
Speaker 1: people started just paying the eight dollars getting that blue check,
Speaker 1: which makes you think that someone is verified official, and
Speaker 1: then they started tweeting all kinds of terrible things, you know.
Speaker 1: The main one that I saw was the you know,
Speaker 1: it was like a drug company and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if it was Eli Lilly
Speaker 1: or something like that, but it's like, okay, all insulin
Speaker 1: is now free. We've made the decision. And it looked
Speaker 1: very official because maybe one or two letters were off
Speaker 1: in the name of the company or the Twitter handle,
Speaker 1: but they had that blue check, so you're like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: that's coming from the actual company. I can't believe that. Now,
Speaker 1: whether or not anyone believe that, I'm not sure whether
Speaker 1: or not anyone went to cvs to say, hey, can
Speaker 1: I get some free insulin? I'm not sure, but it
Speaker 1: did make a big enough of the rounds and the retweets,
Speaker 1: and maybe people just thought it was funny so they
Speaker 1: retweeted it. But the reality is that it made it
Speaker 1: very clear to me that there is a problem with
Speaker 1: with the new system. You can't just give people a
Speaker 1: blue check based on paying eight dollars, so there has
Speaker 1: to be something else. So now the Verge is reporting that,
Speaker 1: and all this stuff keeps changing and changing and changing,
Speaker 1: but now they basically have There's two things going on.
Speaker 1: Number One, if you tap the blue check on someone's account,
Speaker 1: you can see if they paid for that blue check
Speaker 1: or if it's in a it's kind of a verified account.
Speaker 1: So if you look at mine, for instance, and I
Speaker 1: should bring up my Twitter so I can see what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about exactly. But if you go to sort
Speaker 1: of my Twitter and I tweeted about this. Basically, there's
Speaker 1: two things that happen when you when you tap the
Speaker 1: blue check, it will either say verified account because it's
Speaker 1: notable in government, news, entertainment, or another category. It'll say that,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of like the legacy blue check. Then
Speaker 1: if you tap the blue check and it says verified account.
Speaker 1: This account is verified because it's subscribed to Twitter blue.
Speaker 1: That's when you put up your sort of like, oh
Speaker 1: uh oh, what's happening. Let me let me take a
Speaker 1: closer look at the username, because if you see that,
Speaker 1: that means that the person has All they've done is
Speaker 1: paid the eight dollars. They got the blue check, and
Speaker 1: now you know, they could be whoever they want to be.
Speaker 1: And so now, according to the Verge, they did what
Speaker 1: I think they should have done in the first place,
Speaker 1: is put an official underneath the person's name. So if
Speaker 1: you go to like Nintendo, for instance, I saw this one.
Speaker 1: So if you go to Nintendo of America, it got
Speaker 1: the blue check, and then underneath it there's now a
Speaker 1: new thing that like a gray check that says official.
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of taking the place of the
Speaker 1: blue check. Very confusing, and I think that this a
Speaker 1: very tedious process for Twitter to go through. And the
Speaker 1: same thing happened with the with the blue check originally
Speaker 1: back in the day when Twitter was owned by non
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. You know, they had to go through and
Speaker 1: manually make people a blue check. People like me, I
Speaker 1: would submit my information. I would say, hey, here's who
Speaker 1: I am, here's who I say I am, here's my account,
Speaker 1: here's my email, here's my verification whatever. I forget what
Speaker 1: they asked for, like different things, you know, like a
Speaker 1: letterhead or whatever it was back in the day I
Speaker 1: had to submit. And so now we're seeing that you'll
Speaker 1: see official people. So that is what's happening right now.
Speaker 1: We will see if this will change. I think this
Speaker 1: a better system, but I think that an easier system
Speaker 1: would be just a blue check, or say a gold check.
Speaker 1: You know, if someone's paying for Twitter blue, make it
Speaker 1: one color, make the official check another color. And I
Speaker 1: think that would just be really simple. You see the
Speaker 1: two check marks, you realize that someone has paid the money,
Speaker 1: but then the other check mark just means that that
Speaker 1: person is verified in a different way. And I think
Speaker 1: what they're really trying to get out of this is
Speaker 1: making sure that people like myself, you know, like Pony,
Speaker 1: up the eight dollars a month to have that blue check,
Speaker 1: which I'm probably not gonna do. I can't really see
Speaker 1: a reason. Now. There is something they're offering on that
Speaker 1: Twitter blue which I thought was interesting, is that you'll
Speaker 1: see less ads, which is kind of nice. But your
Speaker 1: sort of tweets and responses and all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff will bubble up to the top of people's feets,
Speaker 1: which I do think is valuable because you tweet and
Speaker 1: there is an algorithm at play that puts things in
Speaker 1: various orders. So I think that having your stuff up
Speaker 1: at the top could be worth eight dollars a month
Speaker 1: so that people see it more. Also, I have lost
Speaker 1: about three hundred followers on Twitter, so that could be
Speaker 1: people that have deactivated, people that have left the platform bots,
Speaker 1: maybe that they got rid of who knows, but I've
Speaker 1: definitely seen that portion of it change. But to me,
Speaker 1: you know, the way I've always used Twitter is that
Speaker 1: it's just kind of one of those things that when
Speaker 1: I want to tweet something, sort of inside baseball, that's
Speaker 1: where I go. It's my place where I tweet to
Speaker 1: other journalists or just get something out there officially. So
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens with Twitter moving forward, but it
Speaker 1: is definitely it is a learning curve for Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: that is for sure. All right, let's get to the
Speaker 1: first question of the podcast. Valories says, I have a
Speaker 1: new computer HP, which I just got installed yesterday, and
Speaker 1: I was told that it can listen to whatever I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If this is true, and if so, is there a
Speaker 1: way that I can stop my computer from hearing everything
Speaker 1: I say? Thank you, Valerie. So it took me a
Speaker 1: second to kind of think about this one because I
Speaker 1: don't use a Windows computer regularly, although I do have
Speaker 1: a computer on loan from Microsoft, the new Surface Laptop five.
Speaker 1: So I said, you know, at last event I went
Speaker 1: to I said, hey, Microsoft, it's been a while since
Speaker 1: I've used a Microsoft computer because my day to day
Speaker 1: is a Mac. And they said, all right, well, let's
Speaker 1: get you a Windows computer for a couple months so
Speaker 1: you can test it out, put it through the paces,
Speaker 1: try out some of the new features and Windows eleven.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, it arrived a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: and here it is. So I've been playing with that computer.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I have to say, I am
Speaker 1: quite impressed with the state of affairs on the Windows
Speaker 1: side of things. I think that Windows has come a
Speaker 1: really long way. The computer is it's very slick. It
Speaker 1: very much feels and looks and acts like my MacBook,
Speaker 1: and some aspects are even better because you don't have
Speaker 1: to deal with the whole Apple kind of taking a
Speaker 1: commanding lead in everything you do. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that sort of are easier or simpler or just
Speaker 1: you know better on the Windows side of things, like
Speaker 1: number one, Android phones, like they just work with a
Speaker 1: Windows computer that you know, using a Mac for so long,
Speaker 1: it's like an Android computer. An Android just doesn't work,
Speaker 1: It doesn't play nice with a Mac computer. You plug
Speaker 1: the thing into a Windows computer and wow, all your
Speaker 1: pictures are right there. Whatever you want to do, your
Speaker 1: text messages, you can run Android apps. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's quite impressive. What else that's it for now, but
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it's pretty nice to have everything
Speaker 1: running nicely on there, and it's it's been a it's
Speaker 1: been good for me because I need that education. So
Speaker 1: I can kind of talk about both sides of things. Okay,
Speaker 1: So back to this whole Quartana thing. So basically, yes,
Speaker 1: there is a setting on Windows that will allow Kortana
Speaker 1: to respond to I believe it's hey Kortana, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's just Kortana and is it Kortana or hey, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I should know this now because I was playing with
Speaker 1: it today. So what's the Kuortana keyword okay? Or co
Speaker 1: r t A n A keyword. I've got to look
Speaker 1: this up because yeah, it's just kortana. So you don't
Speaker 1: have to you don't have to say, hey, it's hey kuortana. Okay. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So there is a setting you can go to Settings,
Speaker 1: Privacy and Security, Voice Activation, and then it's a toggle
Speaker 1: switch for let Kortana respond to Kortana keyword and a
Speaker 1: lot of things on Windows pretty easy. You just just
Speaker 1: press that Windows button and type in Kortana and you
Speaker 1: should find the thing that you need to do. Like
Speaker 1: if you need to do a printer thing, just type
Speaker 1: in printer. If you need to do updates, type in
Speaker 1: update anything. It's just one big search for the entire
Speaker 1: computer and also your programs and also things on the web,
Speaker 1: and also the weather. But if you want to turn
Speaker 1: that feature off, go ahead, turn it off. And you know,
Speaker 1: even when your computer's listening, yes it's listening, but there's
Speaker 1: a it's kind of not you know, it's not sending
Speaker 1: everything somewhere. It's basically listening locally. And then if it
Speaker 1: hears that word, it will say, oh, I just heard
Speaker 1: the word so let's now kind of listen to see
Speaker 1: what they're saying, and then we'll process that audio if
Speaker 1: necessary on the cloud. A lot of these systems now
Speaker 1: have become because of privacy concerns, a lot of this
Speaker 1: processing is done on device, and so when you hear
Speaker 1: that term processing done on device, it means that your
Speaker 1: device is actually doing the processing of you know, what
Speaker 1: you say and then kind of transcribing it and then
Speaker 1: figuring out in like a split second, is this something
Speaker 1: that I need to do on the web or is
Speaker 1: this something I need to do locally? And so it's
Speaker 1: it's really come a long way from the days of
Speaker 1: you know, everything was sent to the cloud, and you
Speaker 1: know that that those days are are quickly getting behind
Speaker 1: us because these devices have gotten so much better. So anyway,
Speaker 1: good question, and congrats to the new computer. That's always
Speaker 1: very exciting to have a new computer. All right, what
Speaker 1: do we want to talk about next? There's there's there
Speaker 1: was like three giant stories this week. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got the Twitter drama, You've got Meta, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: cut a bunch of jobs for the first time in history,
Speaker 1: and then you've got this big cryptocurrency situation going on,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the cryptocurrency stuff. So I don't get
Speaker 1: into crypto a whole bunch on this show, but you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like when things again bubble up to you know,
Speaker 1: my my wholem o with with this tech stuff is
Speaker 1: really trying to give people, you know, give you news
Speaker 1: that you can use, you know, information that's helpful, you know,
Speaker 1: not just like the drama or the drama of it
Speaker 1: or the celebrity gossip side of things. Although sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: like I say, it gets to the to the forefront
Speaker 1: so much you kind of have to and sometimes these
Speaker 1: things to affect us in pretty big ways. And I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to this crypto stuff, it's just
Speaker 1: really kind of like danger, danger, danger. You gotta watch
Speaker 1: what you do with this crypto stuff. So FTX is
Speaker 1: a was a big cryptocurrency platform that is now filing
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy. And I'm not going to get into the
Speaker 1: whole nuance of why, but the reality is a lot
Speaker 1: of people used FTX. This was a very popular cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: platform in fact, and I can't believe this. Larry David
Speaker 1: was the commercial during the Super Bowl. He was the
Speaker 1: commercial for FTX, which is a total like This just
Speaker 1: goes to show that you can't trust celebrities with your
Speaker 1: financial decisions or even your product decisions. Because a celebrity
Speaker 1: endorses something does not mean it's good. Celebrities get paid
Speaker 1: a lot of money to talk about stuff, and quite frankly,
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's just more of like a
Speaker 1: manager thing, like they say, hey, this that we you know,
Speaker 1: we've got this really good opportunity for you. You know,
Speaker 1: you can be in this commercial. They're paying you a
Speaker 1: million bucks, they're paying you five million bucks. All you
Speaker 1: got to do is say this and said what is it? Well,
Speaker 1: it's crypto. You know a lot of people are using it. Okay,
Speaker 1: crypto cool, And next thing you know, you know you're
Speaker 1: in a crypto commercial. I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrities that are doing this stuff. I mean Kim Kardashian,
Speaker 1: Matt Damon, Larry David, and probably probably many many more.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you watch TV for five minutes, which
Speaker 1: you know, I don't see a whole lot of commercials
Speaker 1: because I don't typically watch regular TV, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: see a lot of this stuff if you watch for
Speaker 1: five minutes. In fact, we just subscribed or resubscribed to
Speaker 1: YouTube TV and my kids were watching it last night,
Speaker 1: and you know they were they were really surprised at
Speaker 1: all the commercials on their Disney channel that they were watching,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, this is regular TV. This is
Speaker 1: what it looks like now if you're getting free TV.
Speaker 1: It's funny to me that you have to pay for
Speaker 1: YouTube TV and watch commercials because you're paying so much
Speaker 1: for the service. Now, if you're watching over the air television,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the currency, right, You're getting a free
Speaker 1: channel so that you can, you know, you sit there
Speaker 1: through ads, you know, a couple of minutes of ads
Speaker 1: to watch free programming. That's fine, that's kind of like
Speaker 1: the agreement. But with cable TV, it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, why why am I paying for this
Speaker 1: and sitting through ads? That makes no sense anyway. At
Speaker 1: any rate. FTX has filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are not happy because if you have
Speaker 1: crypto in this, in this platform, what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to it? Do you get your money back? And I
Speaker 1: think this whole thing happened when people were starting to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, try to withdraw their money at
Speaker 1: a pace faster than FTX could provide it, and that's
Speaker 1: when the problems happened, you know. So this has happened many,
Speaker 1: many times over and over in our history of banking. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have you know, you know, you have the
Speaker 1: FDIIC which ensures like something like a savings or a
Speaker 1: checking account. You know, that's only up to a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money. I think it's two hundred and fifty grand.
Speaker 1: So if you've got more money than that in any
Speaker 1: of these things, it's like, oh, that that could be
Speaker 1: a problem. All right. So what happened basically filed for bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: The rival, which is named Binance. They went and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll actually scoop these people up, we'll help them, and
Speaker 1: then when they looked at their balance sheet, they said, oh,
Speaker 1: never mind, this is like way way worse than we
Speaker 1: could ever imagine. We're not buying this company. And so now, apparently,
Speaker 1: according to CNBC, in the space of just a couple
Speaker 1: of days, FTX went from a thirty two billion dollar
Speaker 1: valuation to bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, thirty two billion to bankruptcy. That
Speaker 1: is like just totally unacceptable. So it's also really sad
Speaker 1: that one of my favorite people Larry David was in
Speaker 1: the commercial for them, and the commercial was actually ironic
Speaker 1: because now looking back, Larry David apparently, you know, in
Speaker 1: the commercial. I remember it briefly in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: You know, he turned down every time someone asked him
Speaker 1: to invest in crypto, and you know, he said no,
Speaker 1: and he said, I don't think so, and I'm never
Speaker 1: wrong about this stuff, never, And now you know, of
Speaker 1: course he was right about it once again, even though
Speaker 1: he took money from them. A GameStop apparently had a
Speaker 1: partnership with FTX. They sold FTX gift cards. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So now if you've got money in this company, you know,
Speaker 1: on this platform, I'm not sure what happens. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a huge, huge expert in crypto, but I know
Speaker 1: there's like this whole thing of like whether you can
Speaker 1: have your money on a platform or your money in
Speaker 1: your own wallet. And I think it's somewhat safer to
Speaker 1: have your money in your own wallet, which is way
Speaker 1: more complicated to set up, which is why the average
Speaker 1: person pretty much which puts their money on these platforms.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's just easier because they do all
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes work of setting up your wallet
Speaker 1: and holding the crypto, but when they go out, it's like,
Speaker 1: there goes your crypto. And of course this also has
Speaker 1: ramifications on the crypto market in general. You know, bitcoin
Speaker 1: has had you know, bitcoin has just been really, really
Speaker 1: not good for a while now. So if you look
Speaker 1: at bitcoin a year to date, down sixty five percent.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty two, bitcoin is down sixty five percent, that
Speaker 1: is horrendous. Okay, last six months, been down forty percent.
Speaker 1: Five years, it's still up ninety one percent, So that's
Speaker 1: it's got that going for it. So maybe we're in
Speaker 1: this for the long haul. I mean, you've got to
Speaker 1: really stick with bitcoin for a very long time. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the problem with bitcoin is
Speaker 1: that it's you know, I think the problem is really governments.
Speaker 1: Governments don't want this to work, you know, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal,
Speaker 1: like all these companies that you know, banks, Bank of America, Chase,
Speaker 1: they don't really want bitcoin to work. Why they've got
Speaker 1: their own system that works really well, and they've got
Speaker 1: a lock on the financial system. Why would they want
Speaker 1: this other thing to come along that could be cheaper,
Speaker 1: that could be easier. They don't want this to work.
Speaker 1: So when you don't have governments wanting it to work,
Speaker 1: when you don't have major banks and financial institutions wanting
Speaker 1: it to work, it's not going to work. Not easily now,
Speaker 1: maybe because you know, I do believe that tech people
Speaker 1: are very smart people, and the people behind this could
Speaker 1: be very smart and say, look, we've created a better system.
Speaker 1: But is the general population ready for this better system?
Speaker 1: When you can't use bitcoin at any major retailer that
Speaker 1: I can think of, Amazon, Target, Best Buy, you can't
Speaker 1: use bitcoin to purchase at these things. You can't use
Speaker 1: bitcoin to buy a flight, you can't use bitcoin to
Speaker 1: buy a car. Tesla tried it for a minute, even
Speaker 1: Tesla Elon Musk, who you know was huge into crypto,
Speaker 1: you can't. Yeah, they took away that functionality. So when
Speaker 1: you've got all these things working against it, it's a
Speaker 1: tough it's a tough ride for this thing to get
Speaker 1: into a place where it's part of everyday lives and
Speaker 1: where it can be more legitimate. I'm not saying I
Speaker 1: don't like it, like I actually think it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. I just don't know if it's at where
Speaker 1: people want it to be at. You know, other than
Speaker 1: an investment for the last couple of years, and that
Speaker 1: investment is not working out very well at this point.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong in five years. But also the
Speaker 1: functionality of it would be so much better if you could.
Speaker 1: You know, I had to pay someone the other day,
Speaker 1: and I had to pay them, you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit more than I typically pay for things like Venmo
Speaker 1: and zel and all that stuff, and it was a
Speaker 1: real problem. I mean, just sitting there, you realize the limitations.
Speaker 1: You know, like something like a wire transfer right that's
Speaker 1: been around forever. It's bank to bank, it's slow, it's bulky,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a big deal. You got to fill
Speaker 1: out a bunch of stuff. I remember doing it for
Speaker 1: when we bought our house. It's just a not a
Speaker 1: simple thing to do. And so you think bitcoin you
Speaker 1: could send as much as you want instantly to anyone
Speaker 1: you want, which is kind of cool but also kind
Speaker 1: of scary. But anyway, I saw I quickly saw the
Speaker 1: limits of zell and Venmo when I tried to do this,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you want to use a credit
Speaker 1: card to send on Venmo, they're going to charge you
Speaker 1: three percent. If you want to send over a certain
Speaker 1: amount on zel. It takes a bunch longer my account
Speaker 1: was locked up. I mean, it's a whole thing. So again,
Speaker 1: there are many, many kind of things happening in the
Speaker 1: financial world that bitcoin could solve, but yet many people
Speaker 1: don't want it solved. And so when that's happening again,
Speaker 1: you've got lots of forces against you. So FTX will
Speaker 1: kind of continue to follow that whole drama, But lots
Speaker 1: of drama in the tech world this week. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the next question. Very simple question from
Speaker 1: Gil hey Rich, quick question for you. My wife needs
Speaker 1: a new iPhone charger cable. She's asking for a fast
Speaker 1: charge cable. Amazon carries off brand cables, but are they
Speaker 1: fast charge or do we have to buy the expensive
Speaker 1: Apple brand to get a fast charge? Thanks Gil, great question, Gil.
Speaker 1: There are so many people out there charging their phones
Speaker 1: at the slowest possible speeds for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: You need a one to two punch to quick charge
Speaker 1: your iPhone. And the iPhone, by the way, does not
Speaker 1: quick charge. I mean it does only a name, but
Speaker 1: compared to most Android phones out there, the iPhone is
Speaker 1: still very very slow when it comes to charging. Now,
Speaker 1: the good news is that the iPhone battery lasts a
Speaker 1: very long time. But it's it's very apparent to me
Speaker 1: when I travel or if I'm out on a very
Speaker 1: long shoot throughout the day. So let's say I go
Speaker 1: to convention, or let's say I go, you know, out
Speaker 1: out and about on a vacation. You're out all day,
Speaker 1: out of your house all day, or out of your
Speaker 1: hotel room all day. Good example, Hawaii, you know you're
Speaker 1: out sight seeing, you're hiking, you're taking pictures, you're taking videos.
Speaker 1: You come back to your hotel room before dinner, your
Speaker 1: phone's at fifteen percent. You say, cool, I'll plug in
Speaker 1: while I go take a shower, get cleaned up, ready
Speaker 1: for dinner. And you come out in your phones at
Speaker 1: thirty five percent. It's like, wait, what shouldn't this thing
Speaker 1: be way more charged? So here's the problem. Number one,
Speaker 1: if you're using the old brick that you got with
Speaker 1: your original iPhone, you got to stop doing that. So
Speaker 1: if you're using the original plug in charger for your iPhone,
Speaker 1: which is pretty small, it's got a big USB plug
Speaker 1: on it. It's basically a five watt charger, and then
Speaker 1: you're plugging that into a standard USB cable, you know,
Speaker 1: the big one USBA, and then on the other end
Speaker 1: of that is lightning. That's going to be the slowest
Speaker 1: possible charge. That's really a trickle charge at this point.
Speaker 1: For the modern iPhones, I think it's iPhone eight and
Speaker 1: up that can handle faster charging. So if you're using
Speaker 1: that original brick along with that original cable with the
Speaker 1: original USB plugging into it, that's gonna be really slow.
Speaker 1: So here's what you need. You need two things. Number one,
Speaker 1: you need a lightning to USB C. USBC is that
Speaker 1: tiny USB connector that you can flip up and down.
Speaker 1: It goes in either way. That's what you need for
Speaker 1: your cable. And then you need the plug that goes
Speaker 1: into the wall that is USB c as well, and
Speaker 1: not just a you know, you need a faster USBC.
Speaker 1: Most of them are you know, twenty watts and up.
Speaker 1: You need a twenty watt charger or you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a thirty watt charger and that will charge your phone fast.
Speaker 1: The fastest ones that I found are I like this
Speaker 1: one from Spegan. It's like a thirty wat brick and
Speaker 1: it's really great and it charges the phone very very fast,
Speaker 1: noticeably fast. So those are the two things. Now, do
Speaker 1: you need the Apple brand charger? No, you don't. You
Speaker 1: can just use any brand that you find on Amazon
Speaker 1: that seems legitimate. I like something like a you can
Speaker 1: go with Amazon Basics. You can go with a Spegan cable.
Speaker 1: You can go with a Belkan cable. You can go
Speaker 1: with the you know, whatever cable you want that looks reasonable.
Speaker 1: Look for something that has a lot of reviews. Maybe
Speaker 1: it says Amazon's choice on there, or just you know,
Speaker 1: most popular, something like that. So that's it. When I
Speaker 1: was in China, I remember these cables were about a dollar,
Speaker 1: and here they sell for twenty thirty bucks for a
Speaker 1: nice one, a braided one. But yeah, these things, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go for the super super cheap, like the
Speaker 1: dollar you know, the ones that you see at like
Speaker 1: the checkout counter at like certain convenience stores or like
Speaker 1: a quick you know, quick convenience store. I would maybe
Speaker 1: go with something a little bit more high quality. But really,
Speaker 1: any of these things will work. But you need that
Speaker 1: one two punch of USBC and then USBC cable to
Speaker 1: lightning that will get the fastest possible charge for your phone.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the third biggest tech story
Speaker 1: of the week. Meta first time in history, first mass
Speaker 1: layoffs in the company's eighteen year history. According to Reuters,
Speaker 1: Meta told employees on Friday that eleven thousand jobs would
Speaker 1: be cut, thirteen percent of its workforce. And you know
Speaker 1: this is not something again news you can use, but
Speaker 1: it just goes to show the current state of affair here.
Speaker 1: We've seen more tech layoffs in the past couple of
Speaker 1: weeks than we've seen in all of the past couple
Speaker 1: of years combined. I mean, this is a real indicator
Speaker 1: of things are changing with our economy, things are changing
Speaker 1: with these companies, that the tech kind of party is over.
Speaker 1: People are turning on the lights and realizing that there's
Speaker 1: a big mess to clean up. And that mess is
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of people that are employed at
Speaker 1: these companies, that the growth isn't there anymore, the profits
Speaker 1: aren't there anymore, and so they need to kind of
Speaker 1: make some changes in a big way. And when you've
Speaker 1: got Meta doing this' that's really kind of wild because
Speaker 1: these companies are just printing money for the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. But we've seen inflation, we've seen prices rise,
Speaker 1: we've seen you know, all the revenue of these major
Speaker 1: tech companies has been clipped not just by the economy,
Speaker 1: but also by changes in the greater ad marketplace. And
Speaker 1: a big part of that change is really, you know,
Speaker 1: people realizing that their privacy is more important to them,
Speaker 1: and things like Apple changing the way the iPhone lets
Speaker 1: these big companies like Google and YouTube and Instagram and
Speaker 1: Facebook target people and just regular ads. So long story short,
Speaker 1: first mass layoffs in the company's eighteen year history. You know,
Speaker 1: people aren't at home anymore for work from home, so
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of these things that they thought
Speaker 1: were going to continue forever. You know, some of these
Speaker 1: advancements we saw in kind of work from home and
Speaker 1: how people adopted things and all remember the rush on
Speaker 1: like webcams and computers and laptops and you know, outfitting
Speaker 1: your house. When people had the opportunity to get back
Speaker 1: to work, a lot of them did and they kind
Speaker 1: of dropped all these things, like you know, I went
Speaker 1: from using Zoom every day to using zoom you know,
Speaker 1: maybe once every other week. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: big changes there. Two things in this Reuter's article kind
Speaker 1: of interesting executives during a town hall meeting with employees,
Speaker 1: told told employees that the company was going to exit
Speaker 1: its portal smart display business. Those are the the Facebook
Speaker 1: kind of branded smart screens. You know, they had something
Speaker 1: that would compete with the Echo Show and the Google
Speaker 1: Nest Hub. So I guess Facebook is getting rid of those.
Speaker 1: I was at the launch event for that, and those
Speaker 1: never really took off in a big way because even
Speaker 1: though there were really good products, I think that people
Speaker 1: didn't like the privacy aspect of, you know, having a
Speaker 1: camera and microphone in their home from Facebook. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of sad that that is. You know that
Speaker 1: that kind of was a quick demise for those products.
Speaker 1: They never really took off in a big way. They
Speaker 1: weren't so bad, but you know, there you go. And
Speaker 1: then they're not going to work on smart watches either.
Speaker 1: I don't think Facebook ever came out with a smart
Speaker 1: watch that I remember, but I know there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of rumors about them coming out with a smart watch,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's not happening. But it says the
Speaker 1: wind down work on smart watches. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: sad that some of these big companies, you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many like Facebook went from you know, the the
Speaker 1: real tech darling to kind of now they are in
Speaker 1: a really tricky place because people just don't trust Facebook
Speaker 1: like they used to. They've got a lot of good businesses,
Speaker 1: They've done a lot of interesting things. They connect a
Speaker 1: lot of people on a daily basis, but people just
Speaker 1: don't trust them, and that's a problem. When you have
Speaker 1: that sort of major barrier in your relationship with customers,
Speaker 1: that's not a good thing and it's going to take
Speaker 1: a lot for Facebook to get over that. If they
Speaker 1: ever do. I'm not sure they can ever recover from
Speaker 1: kind of that whole situation with the you know what
Speaker 1: was that company, the Cambridge Analytica, that kind of scandal.
Speaker 1: I just don't I don't know, We'll see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think they have a lot of good things going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, Instagram has been tricky lately because it's changed
Speaker 1: so much to kind of compete with TikTok. Facebook Messenger
Speaker 1: is still there, but is that really a big growth
Speaker 1: area for the company. Oculus is a huge growth area,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of installed the metaverse. You know, they're
Speaker 1: spending so much money on trying to make the metaverse
Speaker 1: a thing, But is that gonna happen anytime soon. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. There are many many question marks in Meta's future,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be interesting to kind of watch them
Speaker 1: work through it. Patricia says, we are being charged sixty
Speaker 1: four ninety nine twice a month on the same visa card,
Speaker 1: but two different Google accounts since for one twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: with two different email addresses my one my husband and
Speaker 1: one myself. I've tried everything to contact them to no
Speaker 1: avail the phone number and they give a phone number
Speaker 1: is always busy, no answer, please help, and no live
Speaker 1: chat in my account. Thank you, Pat in Huntington Beach,
Speaker 1: and I believe uh oh, YouTube TV that's what okay.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say I knew the price sixty four
Speaker 1: ninety nine because I just subscribed. Sounds like YouTube TV.
Speaker 1: Uh Pat, You're not going to reach someone at YouTube TV.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna any of these things that you subscribe
Speaker 1: to online. You know, these new tech forward companies like
Speaker 1: a YouTube TV, like a Spotify, you know, any app
Speaker 1: that you subscribe to. It's very rare that you will
Speaker 1: reach a person to actually cancel these accounts with Now.
Speaker 1: The good news is that's the bad news, especially if
Speaker 1: you are of a certain general that remembers that you
Speaker 1: would subscribe to something and then you'd have to call
Speaker 1: in to get rid of it. That doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine point nine percent of companies that you subscribe online,
Speaker 1: you're able to cancel online. In fact, that is the
Speaker 1: way to cancel. Now, there are a few exceptions. You know, gyms,
Speaker 1: you still got to you know, you can easily sign
Speaker 1: up online, but oh, you got to come in and
Speaker 1: you got to fill out paperwork, and you got to
Speaker 1: do all this stuff. And the whole point with a
Speaker 1: lot of these things that they don't let you cancel online,
Speaker 1: like cable companies, let's see what else, a lot of newspapers.
Speaker 1: The point is that by the time you finally get
Speaker 1: around to canceling, they have squeezed an extra three to
Speaker 1: six months out of you. Now you're talking April first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. It's now November, So I don't know
Speaker 1: if you were trying to cancel since April or if
Speaker 1: you've just been charged since April. But I'll give you
Speaker 1: a great example. My I'll just I'll leave it at
Speaker 1: a family member every time I go home. I would
Speaker 1: kind of review my family's subscriptions on their iPhone and
Speaker 1: I'd say, hey, family member, you know you're still paying
Speaker 1: for Hulu. Oh no, I'm not. I canceled that a
Speaker 1: long time ago. People think that when they delete the app,
Speaker 1: it cancels. No, it does not. Now on Google Play,
Speaker 1: I know when you cancel an app or delete sorry,
Speaker 1: when you delete the app, it will say hey, red
Speaker 1: flag you know that this does not cancel the subscription,
Speaker 1: or it says would you like us to cancel the
Speaker 1: subscription as well. I think they do that, so that's good.
Speaker 1: On iOS, there's no real indication as far as I know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have changed that in iOS sixteen. Maybe when
Speaker 1: you delete something now it says, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to delete the associated subscription? I'm not sure. But I
Speaker 1: even know myself, and I find myself to be very
Speaker 1: or I believe myself to be pretty tech savvy, and
Speaker 1: I will tell you, in the last month or two,
Speaker 1: I have fallen victim to this. It's not a scam,
Speaker 1: it's just it's very smart and shrewd business price. Let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. You know, you subscribe to something,
Speaker 1: it's so easy, you sign up, you get thirty days
Speaker 1: free and on the thirty first day up, you forget
Speaker 1: to cancel. And so now I do use a website
Speaker 1: called privacy dot com to help me with one time
Speaker 1: credit card numbers, so that even if I forget the
Speaker 1: person on the other side, the company is going to
Speaker 1: get a decline charge. And so that at least gives
Speaker 1: me enough time when I get that decline notice saying,
Speaker 1: oh shoot, I forgot to cancel that, let me go
Speaker 1: and cancel. And this happened recently with a company, and
Speaker 1: you know they actually this was a very very aggressive company.
Speaker 1: It was something I subscribed to. It was an airline
Speaker 1: thing where you would actually like alert you when the
Speaker 1: seat you wanted on the plane would open up. And
Speaker 1: so it was like a couple bucks a month I subscribe.
Speaker 1: It was like a month free. Well, sure enough, I
Speaker 1: forgot to cancel it and on on that first day, boom,
Speaker 1: they tried to charge me. I got an email from
Speaker 1: privacy dot com saying, oh, we declined this charge. I
Speaker 1: got an email from the company saying, oh, you're your
Speaker 1: credit cards declined. Please submit a new credit card so
Speaker 1: we can you know, make sure you have no laps
Speaker 1: in your subscription. And of course I didn't thinking it
Speaker 1: would just go away. And I'm not kidding. They tried
Speaker 1: that credit card pretty much every day for you know, indefinitely,
Speaker 1: maybe a week before I finally emailed the company and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been getting this charge every single day. Can you
Speaker 1: please cancel this completely and please stop charging me? And
Speaker 1: they said, oh, okay, no problem, We're sorry, like everything's
Speaker 1: been cleared up, and sure enough it went away. So
Speaker 1: and don't discount the power of email. By the way,
Speaker 1: you can many many times email customer service and they
Speaker 1: will take care of a lot of these things for you,
Speaker 1: Like if you really can't find a way to cancel something,
Speaker 1: you know, send an email. The main thing you have
Speaker 1: to watch out for when you call these phone numbers
Speaker 1: is that you need to be very careful. There are
Speaker 1: many many scams where you google YouTube TV phone number
Speaker 1: and the first search result maybe a sponsored scam. Literally,
Speaker 1: scam artists will buy ads on Google with that phone
Speaker 1: number that seems official or seems you know, or sorry,
Speaker 1: not the phone number, but they'll buy a keyword YouTube
Speaker 1: TV customer service phone number. They will literally bid for
Speaker 1: that keyword their phone number. It'll say call one eight
Speaker 1: seven seven whatever. To cancel YouTube TV, you call that
Speaker 1: number and that's actually a scam artist on the other end,
Speaker 1: or they're trying to sell you something, a bigger subscription, whatever,
Speaker 1: So just be very careful calling random numbers. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's much safer to cancel online. So to answer your question, Pat,
Speaker 1: because I always like to give you a little bit
Speaker 1: more more basis for why I tell you the things
Speaker 1: that I tell you. You can just go into the YouTube app.
Speaker 1: Typically if you're on iOS, sometimes a little trickier because
Speaker 1: iOS is so weird about stuff. But if you're on Android,
Speaker 1: it'll let you assays sent for my iPad, so I
Speaker 1: feel like that's you're probably on iPhone. I would go
Speaker 1: to YouTube tv on the desktop up and literally go
Speaker 1: into your account, and I guarantee you there's a way
Speaker 1: to just cancel your account. Now, if you subscribed through iOS,
Speaker 1: it's a different process. If you subscribe through iOS, which
Speaker 1: I'm not sure some companies let you, some companies don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if YouTube TV lets you subscribe through iOS.
Speaker 1: But if you anything that you subscribe through iTunes Store, iOS,
Speaker 1: whatever you call iPhone, you can go into your iCloud
Speaker 1: and then you go into subscriptions and it will let
Speaker 1: me see if that's how you do it. Let me
Speaker 1: check this out here, because they changed it recently. I
Speaker 1: think they made it easier to find. So you go
Speaker 1: into settings, you tap your name at the top or
Speaker 1: it says iicloud, and then you go subscriptions and it
Speaker 1: will show you all of the subscriptions that you are
Speaker 1: currently subscribed to. Many of them have gotten more expensive
Speaker 1: in the past couple of months. But what you need
Speaker 1: to do is just you can delete any subscription that
Speaker 1: you have in there. Just tap it and just say
Speaker 1: cancel subscription, and you will be able to cancel that
Speaker 1: and typically you'll get to use it throughout the end
Speaker 1: of your subscription. Let me actually have YouTube TV on
Speaker 1: my iPhone, so let me see if you can cancel
Speaker 1: it from the iOS app. I doubt you can, but
Speaker 1: let's see. Let's just see for fun. By the way,
Speaker 1: YouTube TV is so good. I mean it's really really slick. Okay, Settings,
Speaker 1: Oh wow, refer a friend, get forty five dollars. That's
Speaker 1: quite impressive. All right, Settings, Okay, membership Nope, base plan.
Speaker 1: Please go to YouTube tv on the web to manage
Speaker 1: your account. So yep, you gotta do that, So just
Speaker 1: go to the YouTube TV on the website and literally
Speaker 1: go to your account press cancel. You should be able
Speaker 1: to take care of that. No problem. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get to the next story of the week. What do
Speaker 1: we want to talk about. Let's talk about Gmail. Gmail
Speaker 1: is getting a handy feature just in time for the holidays.
Speaker 1: It will help you track your orders placed in order today.
Speaker 1: I don't think my wife listens to this podcast, so
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I got, But I got her
Speaker 1: a pair I am. I'll just be quite honest. I
Speaker 1: am the worst gift giver in the world. I really
Speaker 1: am horrible at giving gifts. My wife is amazing at
Speaker 1: giving gifts. And there are some people that are just
Speaker 1: really thoughtful gift givers. My wife's mom my mother in
Speaker 1: law is also and my mom are very thoughtful gift givers.
Speaker 1: You know, there's two types of gift givers, right There
Speaker 1: are the people that just listen in everyday conversations for
Speaker 1: any clue as to what you might need in your life,
Speaker 1: and when they hear that, they lock it in their
Speaker 1: brain and they go rich needs a new belt. Next
Speaker 1: time there's a holiday, you have a brand new belt.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. There are other people that do this, Hey,
Speaker 1: what is your kid like these days? What do you need? Rich?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you could use? And they do their
Speaker 1: gift giving like that. It's almost like a last minute thing.
Speaker 1: Then there are people like myself who are just completely
Speaker 1: clueless and I just go to the mall looking for
Speaker 1: ideas of what to buy. Oh, perfume, that's a gift
Speaker 1: that a lot of people give during the holidays. Let
Speaker 1: me give her that. It's terrible. It's a terrible way
Speaker 1: to give gifts. So I don't know if you can
Speaker 1: change that about yourself. Maybe you could be a little
Speaker 1: bit more thoughtful and write things down. That's what I've
Speaker 1: tried to start doing. So when I hear a family
Speaker 1: member or a friend, or my wife or my kids
Speaker 1: say that they want something, I'm like, oh, a little
Speaker 1: bell goes off, and I kind of try to write
Speaker 1: it down. So anyway, my wife has needed new slippers
Speaker 1: since last Christmas when we bought slippers for each other
Speaker 1: and she got a hole in it immediately, like her
Speaker 1: toe popped out of it. Like the first day. We
Speaker 1: should have returned these things. Actually we probably still can.
Speaker 1: They're wellbean now, that I think about it, why not
Speaker 1: a new pair? Anyway, So today I got a thing
Speaker 1: like one of those catalogs from Llban in the mail,
Speaker 1: and I had a fifteen percent off discount, and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I am buying It's my first gift of the season.
Speaker 1: I am purchasing it right now. And so I went
Speaker 1: to my computer. I purchased a slippers, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: LLBean slippers. How in the world are they ninety dollars?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think they're pretty good. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a pair might have lasted many years, so
Speaker 1: I guess maybe they are worth ninety bucks. But I
Speaker 1: bought them. And anyway, so I was very proud of
Speaker 1: myself because this is a gift that I know she
Speaker 1: needs and I know she wants, and it'll probably be
Speaker 1: something she buys for herself by Christmas, but I may
Speaker 1: even give it to her early because just to make
Speaker 1: sure that she doesn't get it for herself. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: tell you that story because this will be a very
Speaker 1: handy feature inside Google, probably be the first time I'll
Speaker 1: use this. Where now, if you get in order with
Speaker 1: a tracking number, Gmail will display that status of that
Speaker 1: tracking number right in your inbox. So for instance, my
Speaker 1: LLB and email will say congrats, your order has shipped,
Speaker 1: and right underneath it'll say arriving you know, November twenty second,
Speaker 1: and you'll see that live updates. So what they're doing
Speaker 1: is they're looking in that email, they're seeing the tracking number,
Speaker 1: they're going out, they're requesting the tracking information from the carrier,
Speaker 1: and then they're putting that data in the email and
Speaker 1: they'll probably update that, you know, in live time, so
Speaker 1: you always see, you know, if there's a delay or whatever.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they say if there is a delay,
Speaker 1: they will actually bring that email back to the top
Speaker 1: of your inbox with the word you know, delayed, and
Speaker 1: so that's kind of cool. It'll also say label created
Speaker 1: arriving tomorrow, delivered today. So it's just very handy. It's
Speaker 1: very simple. It's a very it's a very basic thing,
Speaker 1: but pretty handy. Now. I think there's gonna be one
Speaker 1: big exception because this says it works with all the
Speaker 1: major US shipping carriers. I don't think that Amazon actually
Speaker 1: puts shipping numbers in their orders. Let me see. I
Speaker 1: don't think they do. So let's see Amazon your Amazon order.
Speaker 1: Here we go, here's an Amazon order, and yeah, it
Speaker 1: does not give a tracking number. It gives an order
Speaker 1: and in fact, it doesn't even tell you, by the way,
Speaker 1: what you order on Amazon. And the reason they do that,
Speaker 1: and again I'll just give you a little background. The
Speaker 1: reason why Amazon does not put items that you order
Speaker 1: in your email is because they've gotten hip to so
Speaker 1: many of these scraper companies that scrape your email inbox.
Speaker 1: You sign up with a company like I think it's
Speaker 1: like Raccoton or whatever however you say that name, but
Speaker 1: what they do is a big part of their business
Speaker 1: is like scraping your inbox. I don't know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not Rakoton, whatever, but there are companies when you grant
Speaker 1: them access to your email, which you need to be
Speaker 1: very careful about, they will scrape your inbox for different things.
Speaker 1: But part of their business is kind of selling the
Speaker 1: data of the stuff that you buy, the stuff that
Speaker 1: you order, how much things can costs. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of intelligence companies out there that do this and
Speaker 1: it's not a dirty thing. It's it's a business. But
Speaker 1: you know, you're getting a business, you're getting a product,
Speaker 1: but they're getting information, they're getting data, and so That's
Speaker 1: why Amazon doesn't do this, because they've gotten hip to
Speaker 1: this and they say, you know what, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: mess with like, you know, we're the biggest retailer out there,
Speaker 1: biggest online, probably the biggest retailer in general, and we're
Speaker 1: just gonna mess with everyone. We're just gonna not put
Speaker 1: tracking information in your email. And we're also not gonna
Speaker 1: put order information in your email because we just don't
Speaker 1: want you know, these scraping companies. You know, if they
Speaker 1: notice that number one, they can use the data and say, oh,
Speaker 1: a million people order this product today, or we noticed
Speaker 1: there is a big price drop, or we notice that
Speaker 1: the price generally goes up on this product around November.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different reasons why Amazon doesn't
Speaker 1: want this order information in their emails. Being the biggest
Speaker 1: retailer out there anyway, ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 1: other re tailors, when you order something, puts the package
Speaker 1: information in there, the tracking number, and also what you ordered.
Speaker 1: So cool, cool new feature by Gmail that you can get.
Speaker 1: It's rolling out, so you may not have it immediately.
Speaker 1: I don't have it just yet, but it just came
Speaker 1: out this week, so you should have it soon. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the next question of the podcast. All right,
Speaker 1: Apple TV four K first generation versus third generation. Paul says,
Speaker 1: I love your show and I listen every week on overcast.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great app to listen to. Overcast is
Speaker 1: a fantastic podcast app. It's only on iOS, but it's
Speaker 1: it's very thoughtfully designed. I think I think it's Marco
Speaker 1: ament m A R C O A, M and T overcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is so. Marco ament is a is a pretty
Speaker 1: prominent developer and very very sort of in sort of
Speaker 1: the iOS like Apple, you know, very what's the word
Speaker 1: I'm looking for. He doesn't just do stuff like he's
Speaker 1: very thoughtful about the design of certain things. And that's
Speaker 1: why overcast is a real good kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really slick podcast player, probably the
Speaker 1: best or one of the best that you know anyway.
Speaker 1: So he's a very prominent, uh you know, iOS developer.
Speaker 1: Follow him on social media and you know, you can
Speaker 1: kind of see what, you know, what he's up to.
Speaker 1: But he you know, I think it's just is it
Speaker 1: just overcast? He doesn't even say what he does interesting anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what is the question. Okay, love your show listen
Speaker 1: every week in overcast. I currently have a first generation
Speaker 1: Apple TV four K with the A ten chip and
Speaker 1: it's used for streaming videos and Apple Arcade games by
Speaker 1: the grand kids. In your estimation, what upgrading to the
Speaker 1: third generation Apple TV with the A teen chip bring
Speaker 1: a noticeable performance improvement? The first gen is starting to
Speaker 1: lag a little but still does the job. Okay, thinking
Speaker 1: more of future proof for iOS upgrade or OS upgrades
Speaker 1: and head off price increases. Thanks for your help. Paul
Speaker 1: in Columbus, Indiana. Paul, Yes, I've been testing the Apple
Speaker 1: TV third generation and I will tell you that it is.
Speaker 1: Look I was using the second generation and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that. Can I tell a big difference. No? Is
Speaker 1: it improved? Yes? Do the apps load a little bit faster?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Actually, this weekend I'm going to be
Speaker 1: testing the second generation versus the third generation, and we're
Speaker 1: going to open up I told my son we need
Speaker 1: to get the stop Watch out. So what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do is we're going to open up a couple of apps,
Speaker 1: like the popular apps like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, you know,
Speaker 1: close them all out and then open them up and
Speaker 1: see how long they take to load. Now, there is
Speaker 1: one defining factor. You know, people really are not very
Speaker 1: discerning when it comes to a streaming device. They just
Speaker 1: think like, oh, you buy the cheapest Fire TV stick
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever's cheap, you know, a cheap rocou stick.
Speaker 1: But what they don't realize is that they are really
Speaker 1: slow when it comes to opening up the apps. And
Speaker 1: maybe it's not a big deal, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: something that you notice, but I notice as a reviewer
Speaker 1: when I test various devices for streaming, there is a
Speaker 1: big difference in how long it takes different devices to
Speaker 1: open up these apps. A Netflix app, you know those
Speaker 1: little like intros they have on Netflix. You know, that
Speaker 1: little thing might linger for like five, six, seven seconds
Speaker 1: on some of these like really substandard and slow devices,
Speaker 1: whereas on a brand new device like the Apple TV
Speaker 1: four K third generation, it's super duper fast and it
Speaker 1: just happens instantly. So anyway, this weekend, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a little speed test Where'm going to open up
Speaker 1: a couple of these apps and then open up a
Speaker 1: couple of popular games on Arcade and just see how
Speaker 1: long it takes to load. I'm assuming the difference is
Speaker 1: only going to be a matter of seconds from the
Speaker 1: second to the third. I think on the first of
Speaker 1: the third there will be a noticeable difference, especially if
Speaker 1: you're saying it's starting to lack. The other main thing
Speaker 1: that is changed on the Apple TV third generation is
Speaker 1: the remote control. So the remote control on the Apple
Speaker 1: TV the new one is that the remote control is
Speaker 1: now USB C and so that's the big thing with that.
Speaker 1: And then it's also got more base storage. It's got
Speaker 1: two versions. You've got an Ethernet version and you've got
Speaker 1: a Wi Fi version. The Ethernet version has support for
Speaker 1: what's called Matter. So if you're doing anything with smart
Speaker 1: home in the near future, I would definitely go with
Speaker 1: the Ethernet version because Matter is this new standard for
Speaker 1: home interconnectivity where all of the smart home stuff is
Speaker 1: going to work together no matter what brand it is,
Speaker 1: which is it's a pretty big deal actually, So Apple
Speaker 1: the new Apple TV, the high end one, the Ethernet
Speaker 1: one has that built in, which is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not that much more than the other one. I think
Speaker 1: it's like twenty more dollars or something, so go with that,
Speaker 1: and then it's faster. There's no fan on it. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit smaller, and you know, Apple says it's
Speaker 1: twenty percent less in volume side by side. You know,
Speaker 1: I showed it to my kids. They didn't really notice,
Speaker 1: Like what's the difference? I said, I know, but the
Speaker 1: remote has USB C and so maybe it's easier to charge,
Speaker 1: you know, as Apple makes that move to USBC with everything.
Speaker 1: And also Apple says it consumes thirty percent less power.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I said that or not. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so that is the main difference is for Apple TV
Speaker 1: four K. But should you upgrade? I mean, look, do
Speaker 1: you need to upgrade today? Probably? Not. What I would
Speaker 1: do if I were you is I would set a
Speaker 1: price alert on the Apple TV four K third generation,
Speaker 1: and I guarantee you over the holidays here there is
Speaker 1: going to be some sort of that you can get,
Speaker 1: not from Apple. I don't think it's gonna go on
Speaker 1: sale from Apple, but I would do. What I would
Speaker 1: do is set either a Google alert on news and
Speaker 1: I would do like Apple TV four k deal and
Speaker 1: just make sure that you're getting the you know, the
Speaker 1: newest model. Because a lot of times, because Apple products
Speaker 1: in particular are kind of tricky and they all look
Speaker 1: the same, and they all don't have this, they all
Speaker 1: have the same name, and it's all about a generation,
Speaker 1: which I really don't like. It could be very tricky
Speaker 1: for purchasing. So a lot of these Black Friday and
Speaker 1: Holiday deals are going to be for the last generation
Speaker 1: of Apple products, not the current generation. But sometimes you
Speaker 1: will find some sort of special off or whatever for
Speaker 1: the current generation. And that may happen with the Apple
Speaker 1: TV four K, because you know, they want to move
Speaker 1: these things, they want to sell them, and so you
Speaker 1: know retailers like a best Buy might do it. Apple
Speaker 1: may not do it, but best Buy might or Amazon
Speaker 1: someone like that. So you can set up a Google
Speaker 1: search for Apple TV four K deal in the news
Speaker 1: and bloggers will always blog about deals, and so you
Speaker 1: can do that. Or you can go to slick deals,
Speaker 1: set a set an alert for Apple TV. You know,
Speaker 1: there's various ways of doing it, so just just or
Speaker 1: you can even go to a website and use like honey,
Speaker 1: put it on your watch list and see if the
Speaker 1: price goes down. Let's see if the if it's going
Speaker 1: if its Apple TV four K twenty twenty two, let's
Speaker 1: see if the new one. Uh yeah, so look at this,
Speaker 1: it's already a couple bucks off. So the Apple TV
Speaker 1: four k uh, it's yeah, so it's already five dollars off.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Oh whoops, wrong one. There you
Speaker 1: go five bucks. I just saved you five dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there you go. All right, Uh, let's see what
Speaker 1: are we doing. Let's get to another story here. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Windows eleven. So I told you earlier
Speaker 1: that I've been playing with when on the laptop and
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. The feature that I was playing with
Speaker 1: today is the iCloud integration. So there's always been some
Speaker 1: level of iCloud integration on Windows, but now it's gotten
Speaker 1: a lot better because I tested this couple weeks ago
Speaker 1: at the event, but now I got to try it
Speaker 1: for myself. And basically, if you log into iCloud on Windows,
Speaker 1: you have to have the iCloud app downloaded, and then
Speaker 1: the newest version of Windows software, which is Windows eleven,
Speaker 1: and the newest version of their Photos software. Now your
Speaker 1: pictures from iCloud will show up inside the Photos app
Speaker 1: on Windows. That is pretty cool because it makes it
Speaker 1: easy to manage. It will show up with all your
Speaker 1: other pictures they're designated. You can kind of look at
Speaker 1: just your iCloud photos. You can look at all your
Speaker 1: photos across various services. It's just this nice, kind of
Speaker 1: like consolidated place where you can see many of your photos.
Speaker 1: I say many because I'm not sure that Google Photos
Speaker 1: is part of that situation. Google Photos is really really
Speaker 1: bugging me because they have made themselves such a silo
Speaker 1: and it's so tough to like manage Google Photos from
Speaker 1: any other app or any other thing except Google Photos.
Speaker 1: And maybe Google has a good reason for this, but
Speaker 1: it's really annoying to me because I've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: But I want to back up my entire collection somehow,
Speaker 1: and as far as I know, there is no easy
Speaker 1: way to do that. Google Photos. You need to be
Speaker 1: able to sync to a hard drive. Give me a
Speaker 1: WiFi hard drive. I don't care if you sell it, Google.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to plug it in to
Speaker 1: my house, connect it to Wi Fi, and say, continuously
Speaker 1: sync my entire Google Photos collection to this hard drive.
Speaker 1: Please give me that feature, Google Photos. It is a
Speaker 1: million dollar feature. It is You'll sell millions of hard drives.
Speaker 1: It'll be peace of mind for people to have a backup,
Speaker 1: a local backup of your photo collection in case anything
Speaker 1: ever goes wrong with Google Photos. Believe me, it'd be
Speaker 1: very very nice. Anyway, Windows eleven, if you want to
Speaker 1: try this, just update the Photos app on Windows eleven,
Speaker 1: make sure all your apps on Windows or your your
Speaker 1: software on Windows eleven is updated, and then basically just
Speaker 1: log in and click sync iphot iCloud photos on the
Speaker 1: iCloud app and boom, all of your photos will start
Speaker 1: to show up in the app. And it's a two
Speaker 1: way sink, so if you delete something from the photos app,
Speaker 1: it's going to delete off your iCloud. And it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of cool because I went in there. I don't
Speaker 1: use iCloud for photos, but I went in and found
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of old photos that were lingering, and
Speaker 1: I went in and deleted those. I copied them over
Speaker 1: to Google Photos and then I deleted them. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of a nice little housekeeping thing. Kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But again another another way, I'm impressed with Windows. And
Speaker 1: you know, these these tech companies, they could either choose
Speaker 1: to be silos for everything, or they can choose to
Speaker 1: kind of be helpful to the consumer and actually do
Speaker 1: things that are helpful for us, and that's always nice,
Speaker 1: and it always surprises me when they actually do that. Okay, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see what else? What else? What else? Let's do
Speaker 1: this one? Oh, another question here. I got two more
Speaker 1: things before I close out the show. Here Instagram. John says,
Speaker 1: I have an iPad and I lost access to my
Speaker 1: Instagram account. They asked for a phone number, gave them that.
Speaker 1: Now they want me to write my name on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper and take a photo of my face
Speaker 1: and send it to them. Do you think this is safe?
Speaker 1: Thanks for any help or advice on this matter. Sent
Speaker 1: from my iPad. Yes, John, as long as this is
Speaker 1: Instagram doing this. This is a major major issue. The
Speaker 1: amount of emails I get from people that have had
Speaker 1: their Instagram account hacked or their Facebook account hacked is incredible.
Speaker 1: It happens. I'm not kidding. I get a dozen emails
Speaker 1: a week just on this topic. And it's gotten so
Speaker 1: bad where I really feel bad for the people that
Speaker 1: are emailing me. But also, hackers are not necessarily hacking
Speaker 1: your account. What they're doing is they're just running scripts
Speaker 1: that find your password that you've reused a thousand times
Speaker 1: on a different website. And they run it on Instagram
Speaker 1: and boom it lets them in, and so you don't
Speaker 1: have two factor authentication turned on. And that's the big problem.
Speaker 1: Got to turn on two factor authentication. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a million other ways that hackers can get in, but
Speaker 1: nobody is like trying to like, you know, get into
Speaker 1: your Instagram account to like take it over so that
Speaker 1: they can tweet things from your account or you know,
Speaker 1: Instagram things from your account. It's an automated thing. It's
Speaker 1: because eventually they might try to hit up your followers
Speaker 1: to scam them, and that's really what they're doing. The way,
Speaker 1: you know, and the other way that they get in
Speaker 1: is for you actually handing over your password. So I've
Speaker 1: had people tell me stories where they will literally either
Speaker 1: log into a text message that says, hey, your Instagram
Speaker 1: account is uh is that risk? Please log in to
Speaker 1: confirm this was you, and they quickly log in and oh,
Speaker 1: that's a mistake because the website was a phishing website,
Speaker 1: or someone texts them something and says, hey, I need help,
Speaker 1: can you please just some of your password? And people
Speaker 1: actually do it. Believe me, they actually do this stuff.
Speaker 1: So John Facebook, you know, I feel for them. In
Speaker 1: a little bit because they have to figure out ways
Speaker 1: of like verifying who people are. And a lot of
Speaker 1: times they'll ask you to hold up, you know, a
Speaker 1: newspaper with a date on it, or a picture, or
Speaker 1: a phone number or an ID or some sort of
Speaker 1: supporting information. It's really kind of wild sometimes. But I've
Speaker 1: had people tell me this personally that have gotten access
Speaker 1: to their account again, So yes, they do. They do
Speaker 1: that for sure, So do what they ask. But you know,
Speaker 1: just be careful because you don't, you know, you want
Speaker 1: to be careful about what you do. All right, All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the final story, because I tease this one,
Speaker 1: Spotify might finally work properly on the Apple Watch. Now.
Speaker 1: I am no longer a subscriber to Spotify. I've actually
Speaker 1: switched over to a combination of Apple Music and YouTube
Speaker 1: Music and now Amazon Music because they gave all the
Speaker 1: songs away for free, even though you have to shuffle them,
Speaker 1: which is fine for my so nos, you know, it's
Speaker 1: totally fine. And don't listen to specific music when I
Speaker 1: come home. I just listened to like a playlist, so
Speaker 1: I've been I've been almost exclusively listening to Amazon Music,
Speaker 1: not I mean, I subscribed to other things I pay for,
Speaker 1: so I should probably use those. But I just kind
Speaker 1: of like the playlist. They're basic, they're simple. I've got
Speaker 1: this like relaxing, you know, modern country that's just like
Speaker 1: a nice playlist when I come home. It's got easy
Speaker 1: listening songs. I like it. You know, call me old
Speaker 1: fashioned whatever. Anyway, I say that all because I got
Speaker 1: rid of Spotify, because you know, why pay for another thing.
Speaker 1: Even though I really really liked it. I was very
Speaker 1: impressed with Spotify. I think it's probably the best music
Speaker 1: service out there overall, but I just, you know, I
Speaker 1: can't justify paying for it when I've got two more
Speaker 1: that I'm paying for three more if you count Amazon. Anyway, Spotify,
Speaker 1: the one thing that bugged me about it is that
Speaker 1: it never properly worked on the Apple Watch. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm talking horrible, really really bad. I was basically I
Speaker 1: was able to download offline music. You know. My whole
Speaker 1: thing is that, you know, I have an Apple Watch
Speaker 1: with cellular, which, by the way, never works. The cellular.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I live in an area with
Speaker 1: a bad signal, but the cellular on my Apple Watch
Speaker 1: never works. It's really annoying. Like I go anywhere and
Speaker 1: I think, oh, my watch is gonna work. No, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't. So I've gotten to the point where I
Speaker 1: don't leave the house without my phone because I can't.
Speaker 1: I need my phone with me because the cellular on
Speaker 1: my Apple Watch is like never guaranteed to work. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but it's just it's just really really
Speaker 1: hit or miss. So with Spotify, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: maybe you could stream music when you're out and about
Speaker 1: which you might be able to, but I've never gotten
Speaker 1: that to work because again the cellular thing. So I
Speaker 1: downloaded music for offline listening, but there's so many restrictions
Speaker 1: on the Apple Watch and iOS and how the architecture
Speaker 1: of this that basically your phone and your watch never
Speaker 1: have a chance to download the offline music because like
Speaker 1: it never triggers it. Like Apple Music. Oh fine, because
Speaker 1: everything with Apple just seems to work so easily, like
Speaker 1: Apple Music never had a problem. You say, hey, download
Speaker 1: this playlist to my Apple Watch, and the next time
Speaker 1: you charge your Apple Watch, it's there. Spotify that never
Speaker 1: seems to work. I think it's because you have to
Speaker 1: like open the apps, go to deep sleep, you know,
Speaker 1: the third party apps, and so Spotify just goes to
Speaker 1: deep sleep and it forgets to actually upload or offline
Speaker 1: you know, get that music. So anyway, now that's all
Speaker 1: behind us, because Spotify says they have a new and
Speaker 1: improved listening experience on Apple Watch. You can more easily
Speaker 1: browse and choose your favorite music and podcasts, and more
Speaker 1: quickly download music to listen offline from the watch itself.
Speaker 1: There's larger artwork, animations, and added functionality like swiping to
Speaker 1: like a song. There you go. That is welcome. So
Speaker 1: if you have an Apple Watch and you haven't used
Speaker 1: Spotify in a while because it's just been the worst
Speaker 1: experience in the world, go ahead give it another spin.
Speaker 1: Because this is what's so wild to people like me
Speaker 1: that test stuff for a living. I never know if
Speaker 1: I'm crazy and just like totally not really understanding this
Speaker 1: stuff or doing something wrong, or if there's actually a
Speaker 1: problem with it until something like this comes out and
Speaker 1: this is your going on like two years or a
Speaker 1: year after Spotify has been on the Apple Watch for
Speaker 1: me to say, oh, I was right, it never really
Speaker 1: worked properly. Did I go off enough on this show?
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it? For this episode. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to spend a question for me to answer, go to
Speaker 1: my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: hit the big blue send email button, or go to
Speaker 1: Richontech dot tv and hit the email icon. I would
Speaker 1: love it if you would rate and review this podcast.
Speaker 1: Go to the listening app of your choice. Write a
Speaker 1: quick line about what you like about this show to
Speaker 1: help other people understand why they should listen. You can
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Speaker 1: download the free KTLA plus app on Apple, TV, fireTV,
Speaker 1: and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section
Speaker 1: and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My
Speaker 1: name is rich Demiro. I have not given up on
Speaker 1: Twitter just yet. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you spending it with me. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon. Tutan Tuta, Tuta, Tuta, Tuta tutt