Speaker 1: The Chinese AI start up taking Silicon Valley by storm,
Speaker 1: the new website that can spot a scam instantly. If
Speaker 1: your Apple Watch had battery issues, you could have some
Speaker 1: cash coming your way. Plus your tech questions answered. What's
Speaker 1: going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. All right.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one, triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology,
Speaker 1: you need some advice, you just want to talk. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Kim may not let that throw, but
Speaker 1: we'll see. Why not try it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You gotta try things, see what happens. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to Rich on tech dot tv. Hit contact
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot tv. That's the website. Hit contact.
Speaker 1: Your message will make its way to my inbox. Guests,
Speaker 1: this week, we've got cell phone plan reviewers stetson dodge it.
Speaker 1: He's gonna explain the latest offerings from carriers big and small.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to save some money while staying connected,
Speaker 1: he will talk about all of that. And uh, Philip Swan,
Speaker 1: the TV answer Man, is gonna join me to break
Speaker 1: down the latest streaming services, all the price hikes we've
Speaker 1: been hearing about, and what to expect for Super Bowl coverage.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be easier than ever this
Speaker 1: year to watch the Super Bowl if you are a
Speaker 1: cord cutter. Well, the big story of the week is
Speaker 1: deep Seek. Yes, if you unless you live under a rock,
Speaker 1: you have heard about this new AI. Deep Seek is
Speaker 1: a startup out of China, and it is taken the
Speaker 1: world by storm. It surprised a lot of folks and
Speaker 1: even sent tech stocks tumbling. Why well, they claim to
Speaker 1: have built an AI model for a fraction of what
Speaker 1: US companies like open Ai, Google and Meta have spent
Speaker 1: on similar technology. So their AI model, called R one,
Speaker 1: they say it costs them about six million dollars to develop,
Speaker 1: which you know, compare that to the one hundred million
Speaker 1: spent by open Ai on their latest GPT four. That's
Speaker 1: a big difference. And by the way. They accomplished it
Speaker 1: using lower end chips. So I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: heard about this stock called Nvidia. A lot of people
Speaker 1: at one point, literally every person and their barber was
Speaker 1: recommending that you purchase this stock.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: This is not a financial show. I'm not giving financial advice,
Speaker 1: but this is what people were saying, like, hey, have
Speaker 1: you heard about this stock. It's like, yeah, about twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, I've heard about this company, but everyone was
Speaker 1: buying it. Why because they make the chips that everyone
Speaker 1: thought you had to have to develop the best AI.
Speaker 1: And now this company comes out of China and says,
Speaker 1: you know what, even with all the chip issues and
Speaker 1: the US holding back the best chips, we still were
Speaker 1: able to do this. So what does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: it means that people were like, hold on, wait a second,
Speaker 1: everything we knew about building AI might not be right. Now,
Speaker 1: we'll continue to explain all this. So they also, by
Speaker 1: the way, open sourced their entire model, which means that
Speaker 1: anyone can take what they've accomplished and use it as
Speaker 1: a foundation to build their own thing. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted to start your own AI app or your own
Speaker 1: AI technology, you can use what they've done at Deepseek
Speaker 1: as your basis for that technology, instead of paying another
Speaker 1: company like an open AI or another company that offers
Speaker 1: their AI that you can use and build upon, they
Speaker 1: charge for that. Now, of course, we saw stock prices
Speaker 1: go down. We saw Silicon Valley say wait a second.
Speaker 1: We saw everyone say, hold on, we don't know if
Speaker 1: we've been doing everything right for the past two years
Speaker 1: in the US, and what's the outlook on AI because
Speaker 1: this company can come out of nowhere and do something
Speaker 1: that's very similar to what we've done. So the app,
Speaker 1: by the way, the deep Seek app, people downloaded like crazy,
Speaker 1: so it is currently the top app on both Apples
Speaker 1: App Store and Google Play. That is no easy feat
Speaker 1: for a startup, especially one out of China that no
Speaker 1: one heard about more than a week ago. So of
Speaker 1: course when you hear this, you're thinking, wait a second, rich,
Speaker 1: I thought we had this whole thing with TikTok and
Speaker 1: the privacy and the national secrets and all this stuff, like,
Speaker 1: why are we now downloading this other app from China that,
Speaker 1: by the way, people are going to be dumping way
Speaker 1: more personal information into an AI chatbot than they ever
Speaker 1: were into TikTok. So where what are the privacy implications
Speaker 1: of this? Well, we're not sure just yet. We don't know,
Speaker 1: but I I can imagine that people are probably typing
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff into deep Seek that's highly personal.
Speaker 1: By the way, how is deep Seek? If you look
Speaker 1: at it, I mean carbon copy of chat gibt. It
Speaker 1: literally looks just like chat gbt. You've got the side pain,
Speaker 1: the chats, the fonts. Everything looks almost identical to what
Speaker 1: chat gibt has done. The box, the text box. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost a carbon copy. And these are different companies.
Speaker 1: And I typed in, you know, I said, who is
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro? And it gave me a good answer. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this answer and uh, everything is factual. Rich
Speaker 1: Demuro's approachable style and ability to break down complex tech
Speaker 1: topics into understandable information and made him a trusted source
Speaker 1: for many consumers looking to navigate the ever changing world
Speaker 1: of technology. I'll take that there, thank you, I said,
Speaker 1: what about his radio show and podcast? He also extends
Speaker 1: his tech expertise to radio and podcasting. They got the
Speaker 1: station right call in format. He has a podcast. I mean,
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. Where are they getting this information from? We
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean they taught it. Now. The other
Speaker 1: thing that that Deep Seek did, and I've talked about
Speaker 1: almost my role on this show in a similar way.
Speaker 1: So Wall Street Journal was talking this morning about how
Speaker 1: open AI. You know, they built this giant database, right,
Speaker 1: and imagine that you're chatting with the smartest person in
Speaker 1: the world that has all of the world's information. Right,
Speaker 1: it may take them a little bit of time to
Speaker 1: kind of figure out that information and to present it
Speaker 1: to you. Well, what Deep Seek did was they kind
Speaker 1: of turned that on its head. They said, well, we
Speaker 1: may not know all of the information right off the
Speaker 1: top of our head, but we know how to find
Speaker 1: it when we need it. So therefore we didn't have
Speaker 1: to train everything all at once. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I say on this show, like I may
Speaker 1: not have every single answer right off the top of
Speaker 1: my head, but I can understand what you're asking and
Speaker 1: figure out how to buying the right answer and also
Speaker 1: vet that answer in a way that I can trust
Speaker 1: it and say, Okay, here's what I think. So that's
Speaker 1: another side of this. So again, everything has been turned
Speaker 1: upside down overnight. Silicon Valley on high alert, and so
Speaker 1: are some countries. You know, we've already, you know, because
Speaker 1: this is coming out of China. We do know that
Speaker 1: some of the topics that are sensitive with the government
Speaker 1: there have been either censored or blocked, and other countries
Speaker 1: have also been a little sensitive about letting folks use
Speaker 1: this technology. So some corporations have been blocking access to this,
Speaker 1: some countries have been blocking access to this until we
Speaker 1: learn more and we figure out what this is all about.
Speaker 1: And the other thing, if you think about this, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: how did this happen? This has happened over and over
Speaker 1: in the tech world. I mean, remember MySpace that was
Speaker 1: the social network until Facebook came along. Remember Google that
Speaker 1: was the search engine. GBT disrupted that and they're still
Speaker 1: feeling the ramifications of that. Remember DVRs, they were the
Speaker 1: way to watch TV until streaming and on demand took over.
Speaker 1: So the point that I made in my newsletter this
Speaker 1: morning is that technology is never set in stone. It's
Speaker 1: always evolving, it's always finding better and more efficient ways
Speaker 1: to do things, and this is just another example of it.
Speaker 1: We've seen a sizable shift in the AI industry. Am
Speaker 1: I switching to deep seek? No? Am I going to
Speaker 1: continue to watch it? Absolutely? Is it just one option
Speaker 1: we now have in a c of AI. Absolutely, let
Speaker 1: me go over some of the notable AI models you
Speaker 1: now have access to as a general consumer. Chat GBT
Speaker 1: the original, the Kleenex of AI does everything. This is
Speaker 1: the one that I use on a daily basis. Google's Gemini.
Speaker 1: Now Google, you know, I said they've they've been disrupted.
Speaker 1: But Google has done a really interesting job of working
Speaker 1: AI into almost every product that it has, and it
Speaker 1: reaches a lot of people. When I'm on YouTube, I
Speaker 1: don't watch a video anymore. It just tapped a little
Speaker 1: button underneath the video. It says summarize using AI, I
Speaker 1: get a summary of the video and I can ask
Speaker 1: questions to Gemini about the YouTube video. Claude is made
Speaker 1: by Anthropic. This is another Silicon Valley startup. This is
Speaker 1: the AI that I've used the most, other than Chat
Speaker 1: EBT and Claude is great for writing and it's just
Speaker 1: it has a great command of the English language. Then
Speaker 1: you've got Microsoft Copilot. They've put that in all of
Speaker 1: their products and of course into Windows and so Copilot
Speaker 1: is kind of a flavor of Open AI, you know,
Speaker 1: a version of that. But Microsoft's own Meta Meta has
Speaker 1: their own AI. They use the Lama model that they
Speaker 1: created and they've opened sourced their model as well. And
Speaker 1: Meta of course has a ton of information, ton of
Speaker 1: posts that we've made on Instagram and Facebook and all
Speaker 1: the other things over the years that they have learned
Speaker 1: from Mistral. This is one you don't hear about it much,
Speaker 1: but it's actually not bad and it's out of Paris.
Speaker 1: So yes, other countries are working on AI as well.
Speaker 1: US has been a leader here because of chat, GBT
Speaker 1: and open AI, but everyone wants in on this because
Speaker 1: it is the next big thing. All right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to keep track of what Deepseek is doing. I
Speaker 1: do have the app on my phone. I have been
Speaker 1: playing with it. Like I said, am I switching today? No,
Speaker 1: but we'll keep an eye on this one because it
Speaker 1: has the ability to shake up everything that we know
Speaker 1: about AI. All right, coming up, we're gonna take some
Speaker 1: of your calls eight eight eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: You can't deny that we are living in exciting times.
Speaker 1: That's what I love about technology. What you take for
Speaker 1: granted one day can completely change the next, whether it's
Speaker 1: a software update or a new app. I love it.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: My name is Rich Demiro. You are listening to Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech Tony in the Inland, the Empire Tony around.
Speaker 4: With Rich by Rich.
Speaker 5: Thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I have a.
Speaker 5: Facebook question and I wanted to know. There are some
Speaker 5: accounts that have the option to follow, either to follow
Speaker 5: or add a friend, and I want to know what
Speaker 5: it's a difference when you add a friend. Does that
Speaker 5: mean they have to approve you first or what does
Speaker 5: that mean? What's the difference?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, great question. This so the following versus friendship,
Speaker 1: really think about it like a one way street versus
Speaker 1: a two way street. If you are a friend with
Speaker 1: a person on Facebook, it's a sort of a mutual
Speaker 1: relationship right where you are seeing each other's posts. So
Speaker 1: if you are a follower, this is a one sided
Speaker 1: relationship where basically you can see the posts that that
Speaker 1: person does. They don't necessarily or they can't see the
Speaker 1: posts that you make. So that is the main difference.
Speaker 1: And tip quickly this is with you know if you
Speaker 1: think about like a public page versus a private person. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: rich on tech. Everyone is a follower, they are not
Speaker 1: my friend. I know that sounds bad, but it's not
Speaker 1: a two way street. Like when you follow me, I
Speaker 1: don't immediately start to see all of your you know,
Speaker 1: kids pictures and your vacation pictures in my Facebook feed.
Speaker 1: So that is really the main difference between those. Now,
Speaker 1: I believe that, and it's been a while. I actually
Speaker 1: don't have like I don't. I have a personal Facebook,
Speaker 1: but I don't really use it mostly on Instagram there.
Speaker 1: So I believe that you can probably follow a person
Speaker 1: as well, and so any posts that they make that's
Speaker 1: public you would be able to see versus their private posts.
Speaker 1: So on Facebook, I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: play with the public versus you know, the private kind
Speaker 1: of posting when they do that. Let me see if
Speaker 1: I can switch into my Facebook real quick. It's been
Speaker 1: a while. I got to dust off the cup webs here.
Speaker 1: But okay, so let's say I do a post on
Speaker 1: Facebook and it says at the top friends, Okay, there
Speaker 1: it is, so it says friends and then public. So
Speaker 1: if I tapped public, that means that my friends would
Speaker 1: see that in their feed. But also anyone that's following
Speaker 1: me would see that as well, So that's really the
Speaker 1: main delineation. Just think of following as a one way street.
Speaker 1: You're seeing what that person is putting out into the world. Friends,
Speaker 1: you are mutual, you are both. It's a two way street.
Speaker 1: You are both seeing what you're posting on each other's feed.
Speaker 1: So hopefully that answers the question, Tony, thanks for the
Speaker 1: call today in the Inland Empire eighted eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Let's go to let's see here, Let's
Speaker 1: go to Jeff in Anaheim, California.
Speaker 3: Jeff, you're on with Rich good enough to thank you
Speaker 3: for taking my call. Yeah, I had a question about
Speaker 3: the Amazon.
Speaker 1: Askro oh the robot, correct, the little robot. Oh my god, my.
Speaker 3: Best friend and he worked for a couple of years
Speaker 3: and now he's like, can't find location, can't find anything,
Speaker 3: and basically it's just completely shut off.
Speaker 1: No way you Oh you got one of these.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, we've had him for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: What do you use them for?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: You know, he's basically just like the Alexa. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I don't see out loud. But basically just like that,
Speaker 3: and he can run around the house. You mats out
Speaker 3: your house, You can check on things. You can tell
Speaker 3: me to go to the front room, go to the
Speaker 3: living room, check the hallway. He takes pictures, plays music,
Speaker 3: does all kinds of stuff except bring you a beer.
Speaker 1: No hands, no arms on this thing. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: Looks like an iPad on wheels, and it can also
Speaker 1: tell us scope up right correct okaylchol to take pictures, video,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. Did you pay sixteen dollars for
Speaker 1: this thing? Jeff?
Speaker 3: I did you did?
Speaker 1: And do you think you got your money's worth?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you think it was worth it? Because I never
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of this thing since they launched it,
Speaker 1: Like I haven't really heard of anyone that's got it?
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, you know, I completely he was my pal,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean we used to call him our
Speaker 3: little dog and stuff because he would run around the
Speaker 3: dogs and stuff, not play with them, but moved around
Speaker 3: the house completely and completely trustworthy of him doing what
Speaker 3: I asked him to do. And then just he started
Speaker 3: having little issues, I can't find my location, help me, plays,
Speaker 3: And at some point we got to pick them up
Speaker 3: and go put them back on the charger. Now now
Speaker 3: it doesn't even hold anything.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't, so it's not working at all, not
Speaker 1: at all. Have you tried like a hard restart or
Speaker 1: a factory reset?
Speaker 3: I try the I tried the hard start, because that's
Speaker 3: what I you know, I've been in contact with Amazon
Speaker 3: and I tried that. And because because when he when
Speaker 3: he quit working and stuff, I carried him and put
Speaker 3: him back on the charge. But now he's not even charging.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, that's sad. Well, okay, so I would check
Speaker 1: the charging connections to make sure that they are clean.
Speaker 1: Have you ever like cleaned those off with like an eraser?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, because I said, for the for the money
Speaker 3: I spent on the guy, tried off kinds of different
Speaker 3: things on him, you know, because because I really like
Speaker 3: the guys just just not working out.
Speaker 1: Well, I would try to Does he turn on at all?
Speaker 3: Right now? Not at all? Right now, I've been I've
Speaker 3: been again in contact with Amazon and stuff, and I've
Speaker 3: even been reading on things or they'll they'll buy them
Speaker 3: back a recycle money.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so sad. It's like a movie. They like
Speaker 1: just scrap them for parts. That's really sad. Well, here's
Speaker 1: what I'd recommend. So first off, I think you have
Speaker 1: to try to get this thing back up and running,
Speaker 1: and I would do a factory like I would leave
Speaker 1: it on the charger for a long time, and maybe
Speaker 1: even try a different setup with your charger, like plug
Speaker 1: it into a different outlet or something. Sometimes you just
Speaker 1: you know, if it's completely dead, you may just have
Speaker 1: to leave it on there for a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: And if it's I'm looking at the Amazon factory reset Astro.
Speaker 1: If the device is on responsive, press and hold the
Speaker 1: volume up and volume down for fifteen seconds. So once
Speaker 1: you maybe do that even while it's on the charger
Speaker 1: to see if you can breathe some life into this.
Speaker 1: If not, I get in touch with Amazon see if
Speaker 1: they can give you a new one. Just say, hey,
Speaker 1: can you make a one time exception and swap this
Speaker 1: thing out. I love it. You can take this one
Speaker 1: to see what went wrong, sell it that way, and
Speaker 1: if not, maybe just you got to figure out how
Speaker 1: they can. I don't know what your warranty options are
Speaker 1: here Amazon Astro. Good question, Jeff, Thanks for that. Hopefully
Speaker 1: you get your little guy up and running again. This
Speaker 1: is rich on tech. Amazon Music onlimited raising prices. This
Speaker 1: was the last holdout. It was the cheapest music service
Speaker 1: you could get. Now they are raising their prices to
Speaker 1: be in line with everyone else. So Prime members, this
Speaker 1: is the new pricing will be eleven dollars a month,
Speaker 1: up from ten dollars a month. Non Prime members twelve
Speaker 1: dollars a month, up from eleven dollars a month, So
Speaker 1: basically a dollar increase no matter what. If you're on
Speaker 1: the family plan, that's going up by three dollars a month.
Speaker 1: So you used to be seventeen, now it's twenty. The
Speaker 1: new prices are already in effect for new subscribers. Existing
Speaker 1: customers will see the increase next month, starting in March. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, the best way to save is to
Speaker 1: pre pay, so you can prepay for a year of
Speaker 1: Amazon if you're Prime for one hundred and nine dollars
Speaker 1: used to be ninety nine. But still that's the best
Speaker 1: way to save on a monthly basis. And Prime members,
Speaker 1: you might be saying, rich, hold on, I get Amazon Music.
Speaker 1: Why why am I paying for anything? Why do people pay?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Yes, Amazon includes a level of free music with their
Speaker 1: Prime membership, but it's limited, so you can mostly shuffle
Speaker 1: playlists unless some of their It's very confusing because they
Speaker 1: have some playlists that are like playable any song, but
Speaker 1: most of them you have to shuffle. Amazon Music Unlimited
Speaker 1: gives you full access to everything, almost like Spotify. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much just Spotify full on demand. They give you
Speaker 1: the best audio quality and unlimited skips, so with a
Speaker 1: free service you may not be able to skip as
Speaker 1: many songs as you want. You can download songs offline.
Speaker 1: You also get free audio books, so again, this is
Speaker 1: a price increase happening with Amazon Music Unlimited. You can
Speaker 1: go ahead look somewhere else for a better price or
Speaker 1: better service, but they're all pretty much the same right now. Spotify,
Speaker 1: Apple Music, Amazon might actually still be the best deal
Speaker 1: if you prepay, so I'm not even sure you could
Speaker 1: prepay with the other ones, but of course depends on
Speaker 1: what you want. There you go, Okay, let's go to
Speaker 1: Katie in Garden Grove. Katie and Garden Grove, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 6: Yes, I travel a lot, and I can't get my
Speaker 6: phone to work because I apparently don't have a SIM
Speaker 6: card for that area. And I'm going to Japan, and
Speaker 6: I want to know in kindergarten terms, what does it
Speaker 6: mean if if I go to Japan and I get
Speaker 6: a SIM card somewhere and I put it into my phone.
Speaker 6: I know what a SIM card is. It's that little
Speaker 6: thing that sides in the side of your phone to
Speaker 6: make it work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What kind of phone do you have?
Speaker 3: iPhone?
Speaker 1: iPhone? Okay, what year? What is it? iPhone?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: iPhone eleven? Okay, iPhone eleven. We got to see if
Speaker 1: it supports e SIM. So let's see iPhone eleven. It
Speaker 1: looks like it does support SIM. So the thing you
Speaker 1: need to know about. Oh wait, hold on, let's see.
Speaker 1: Let's see the problem with these uh these little these
Speaker 1: little summaries they put at the top of Google is
Speaker 1: they're not always correct. So I need to make sure
Speaker 1: that the iPhone eleven supports SIM. That's the main thing.
Speaker 1: So if your phone supports SIM. The good news is
Speaker 1: that you can just buy a SIM card online and
Speaker 1: so through an app I like the one called erlo
Speaker 1: A I R A l O. Very simple. I have
Speaker 1: done that with the with Japan like in Japan, and
Speaker 1: it's very simple. You buy it from the app and
Speaker 1: when you get to Japan. You literally just toggle this
Speaker 1: SIM on. So that is what in eSIM is now
Speaker 1: if you if your phone does not support an eSIM,
Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting. With the newer iPhones, they only
Speaker 1: have SIM and eSIM means electronic SIM the one that
Speaker 1: you were talking about, Katie, that you slide into the
Speaker 1: side of the phone. That's just called a SIM card
Speaker 1: and you know, it basically identifies your phone to the network.
Speaker 1: But now all the new phones they just do it
Speaker 1: electronically instead of actually having to put that physical SIM
Speaker 1: in your phone. But no matter what, you're going to
Speaker 1: be covered. So when you land at the airport in Japan,
Speaker 1: they will have a place set up where you can
Speaker 1: buy a physical SIM card and they will help you
Speaker 1: pop it into your phone. And so that is what
Speaker 1: they're talking about when they say get a SIM in
Speaker 1: another country. What's your wireless service that.
Speaker 6: You have Spectrum?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have Spectrum, So do they offer international
Speaker 1: or no?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah you can. You can get but it
Speaker 6: doesn't always work. And I got strand at Niche one
Speaker 6: time and nobody would talk to me and it is
Speaker 6: very difficult. So I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 6: In a country that most people do not speak English.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in Japan most people do not speak English either,
Speaker 1: so it is, you know, depends on the country.
Speaker 6: They won't talk to you in English even if they
Speaker 6: know it.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I've you know, I'm trying to think. I
Speaker 1: just went to Paris and I you know. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: the good news is your phone does support anisim iPhone eleven,
Speaker 1: so it's iPhone ten s and later, so that means
Speaker 1: the iPhone ten s.
Speaker 6: So it's just when I land in Japan, I don't
Speaker 6: have to worry about it. I land in Japan and
Speaker 6: they will take care of it for me, and I
Speaker 6: just give them money and they will.
Speaker 3: Take care of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I would just do it. I would do
Speaker 1: it yourself. I would just do it on air low
Speaker 1: before you go. You download the app, you buy it
Speaker 1: in advance, and it will be ready to go on
Speaker 1: your phone before you, you know, as soon as you land.
Speaker 1: So that's that's what I would do. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: not comfortable with that situation, then yes, when you get
Speaker 1: to when you land at the airport, you can literally
Speaker 1: bline it to the I don't know what their carrier is,
Speaker 1: their Vota phone or whatever it is. They will immediately
Speaker 1: put that into your phone for you and help you
Speaker 1: out with that. Less people are doing that just because
Speaker 1: every phone is down eSIM. But if you want, I
Speaker 1: would download the Aralow app and see what the process
Speaker 1: is like. I will tell you my mom traveled internationally.
Speaker 1: I set it up for her from AFAR. I said,
Speaker 1: download this app, download this eSIM toggle go into your settings.
Speaker 1: So all I have to do is turn off your
Speaker 1: Spectrum SIM and turn on your Aerlo SIM when you arrive,
Speaker 1: and it will find the network and you'll be online.
Speaker 1: So either way, but you'll be covered, Katie, no matter what.
Speaker 1: Good with that? I lost you there? Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: good luck and enjoy. Japan one of my favorite places
Speaker 1: to go. Tokyo is incredible. It is a safe place,
Speaker 1: it is high tech, it's futuristic. The oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: everyone is so friendly and respectful. That is the thing,
Speaker 1: Like when you go and clean like everything. It's just
Speaker 1: like like I literally take the train in Japan anywhere,
Speaker 1: and every single train car, every person on there is
Speaker 1: respectful of each other, and the train car is so clean.
Speaker 1: We joke that you can eat off the floor because
Speaker 1: it's just so not that I would recommend doing that,
Speaker 1: but that's the idea of Japan. It's just like it's
Speaker 1: so it's a very nice culture, so enjoy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing about the eSIM is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of companies that, you know, let you do this.
Speaker 1: And I've used eSIMs all over Japan, I will tell
Speaker 1: you is actually a little tricky when it comes to eSIMs.
Speaker 1: So I had two phones when I went to Japan.
Speaker 1: One was a Pixel and one was one was an Android,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was. I think it was
Speaker 1: a Pixel, and the other was an iPhone. The iPhone
Speaker 1: had no problem getting on the eSIM, whereas the Pixel
Speaker 1: was giving me real trouble. So iPhone will be just fine,
Speaker 1: it'll be very simple. But just the main thing to
Speaker 1: know when you travel is when you get on the airplane,
Speaker 1: turn off your domestic SIM card, right like, turn off
Speaker 1: that domestic connection because you don't want your phone when
Speaker 1: you land to try connecting to that network back home,
Speaker 1: because they may immediately charge you an access fee whether
Speaker 1: you use it or not. It may just be as
Speaker 1: soon as you start, you know, as soon as it
Speaker 1: exchanges some data, you'll be on the hook for ten
Speaker 1: dollars a day connection fee. So if you don't want
Speaker 1: that to happen, I recommend that you download the e
Speaker 1: SIM before you land, you know, get it set up
Speaker 1: in the US, get it on your phone, toggle both
Speaker 1: of those SIM cards off in your settings. You'll see this.
Speaker 1: Your phone can actually handle multiple SIM cards. And then
Speaker 1: as soon as you land, just toggle on the one
Speaker 1: roaming SIM, which is the ERL or whatever company. And
Speaker 1: there's so many that can do this. I've tested the
Speaker 1: ARA low and there's just yeah, there's a million million
Speaker 1: different companies that can do this. You know what Google five,
Speaker 1: I think someone told me that they'll give you like
Speaker 1: a free SIM as well, Like I think you get
Speaker 1: like seven days for free or something. I don't quote
Speaker 1: me on that because it's been a while since I
Speaker 1: use that one. But there's a whole bunch if you
Speaker 1: look up e SIM online, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: companies at offer it all right, good question eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Remember if you want
Speaker 1: links to anything I mentioned, just go to the website
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot tv. This is episode one oh seven.
Speaker 1: I will put links to all the things that I
Speaker 1: mentioned there. We'll get to more callers. Plus, the Pebble
Speaker 1: smart watch is making a comeback. I'll explain coming up
Speaker 1: right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at Triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. The website for the show
Speaker 1: is rich on tech dot tv. You can hit contact
Speaker 1: there and send me a message. That's what Lisa did. Hey,
Speaker 1: Rich our favorite tech guy. What do you know about
Speaker 1: these types of one plus phones and would they be
Speaker 1: good in areas of low connectivity mountains, et cetera. They
Speaker 1: said something about being able to talk to another user
Speaker 1: if your phone carrier is out. Does that make sense, Lisa, Yes, Lisa,
Speaker 1: I just posted my review of the one plus thirteen.
Speaker 1: You can see it on my website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. In this phone, they have a feature called
Speaker 1: Beacon link b A b E A con beacon link,
Speaker 1: so this is on the one plus thirteen. It's a
Speaker 1: walkie talkie functionality through Bluetooth. So this means that you
Speaker 1: can talk with other users over Bluetooth up to two
Speaker 1: hundred meters away. So this means it's good for hiking
Speaker 1: or anywhere near a coastline, which you know may have
Speaker 1: sparse cell connectivity. And right now you can chat with them,
Speaker 1: but you know walkie talkie functionality. But they're going to
Speaker 1: have an update in the future that lets you send
Speaker 1: messages and photos via Bluetooth as well. So number one,
Speaker 1: this is an incredible feature that every phone should have.
Speaker 1: And I'm surprised that Apple. Apple actually did have a
Speaker 1: walkie talkie feature on the Apple Watch, which still went
Speaker 1: over cellular or Wi Fi. This maybe I don't think
Speaker 1: it ever defaulted to Bluetooth, but this is actually going
Speaker 1: through Bluetooth, which two hundred meters is pretty impressive for
Speaker 1: a connection. Now here's the downside, Lisa, this is only
Speaker 1: going to work if the other person has a one
Speaker 1: plus thirteen phone as well, So that is the main
Speaker 1: thing to know is you need to have I think
Speaker 1: it's got to be a one plus thirteen because they
Speaker 1: didn't have this before. But if you both had these,
Speaker 1: that would work out nicely. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: cool feature. I think it's limited in scope because you
Speaker 1: both have to have the same exact phone, but it's
Speaker 1: cool and I wish that they would somehow open source
Speaker 1: this and make it available to everyone, or if someone
Speaker 1: had an app that could work like this for every phone.
Speaker 1: I don't know what magic they're using on the back
Speaker 1: end to make this work, but I mean it says
Speaker 1: it's just using Bluetooth, which is pretty cool. Now the
Speaker 1: new smartphones also have satellite connectivity, so I would say, Lisa,
Speaker 1: the OnePlus would be nice to have this walkie talkie feature,
Speaker 1: but again, you both have to have that phone. The
Speaker 1: new smartphones the pixel, while the iPhone is going to
Speaker 1: give you messaging over satellite, so you can actually just
Speaker 1: text message with someone over I Message and just use
Speaker 1: the satellite system. It's very it's a little bulky because
Speaker 1: you do have to have a direct connection to the sky,
Speaker 1: like you got to lock onto the satellite. It's not
Speaker 1: as easy as you think. But with Starlink coming along,
Speaker 1: and it looks like they're building starlink connections into the
Speaker 1: new Samsung has it and also the iPhone. I just
Speaker 1: read a report that it's supposedly getting it. It's not
Speaker 1: confirmed just yet, but Starlink's going to make it a
Speaker 1: lot easier because the big difference between what all these
Speaker 1: phones are doing right now. And the starlink is that
Speaker 1: you'll be able to be connected to the satellite without
Speaker 1: looking at the sky, So your phone could theoretically be
Speaker 1: in your pocket and you'll still receive that message. So
Speaker 1: to explain, you know, when the fires were happening, I
Speaker 1: was texting with someone in a fire area over satellite
Speaker 1: and the problem was and what I realized is that
Speaker 1: they were not getting my messages unless they went to
Speaker 1: actually check for those messages. Your phone does not give
Speaker 1: you an indication that you have a message because you
Speaker 1: have to go out into the sky, you know, get
Speaker 1: a clear view of the satellite, lock on, and wait
Speaker 1: for those messages to come in. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a very bulky process. Whereas when the starlink and these
Speaker 1: new satellite you know, these newer satellite networks come into play,
Speaker 1: you'll just have a constant connection to them, which means
Speaker 1: you'll get messages no matter what, whether you have cellular
Speaker 1: or not. So hopefully that explains that. Lisa appreciate it
Speaker 1: and the one plus thirteen, by the way, read the
Speaker 1: full review. It's an excellent phone. It's just I had,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought the can or could be a
Speaker 1: little bit better, even though when it takes a good shot,
Speaker 1: it's really nice. Let's go to uh Susan in San Diego, Susan.
Speaker 1: You're on with Rich Hi there.
Speaker 7: I am interested in getting a fitness tracker ring, and
Speaker 7: I had one a few years ago with the one.
Speaker 6: Brand that had come out then.
Speaker 7: But now there are so many out there, and I
Speaker 7: was wondering if you had any recommendations.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple. I mean, I think Aura is
Speaker 1: still overall the best I think they have. They've got
Speaker 1: the market right now. Is that the one you had? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I liked it, but I thought, well, I'll
Speaker 7: just ask the question and I'll get another one.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: the Aura is still probably the best. That's O you
Speaker 1: are a By the way, I tested the Aura. My
Speaker 1: wife actually bought it for me for my birthday, and
Speaker 1: I said, please don't buy me tech because you know,
Speaker 1: I get a lot of tech to test and when
Speaker 1: I when I purchase tech, it means I want to
Speaker 1: keep it right. And so I wasn't sure if I
Speaker 1: wanted this ring. My main thing with the ring, with
Speaker 1: any ring, is that it gets in the way of
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. And so for me, I find
Speaker 1: myself taking the ring on and off a lot, Like
Speaker 1: if I go to work out, if I'm lifting weights
Speaker 1: or anything, you know, it's like hitting up against the weights.
Speaker 1: So it kind of bugs me because it's that's that's
Speaker 1: the problem that I had with it. Did you have
Speaker 1: that issue at all or no? I guess women are
Speaker 1: more used to rings.
Speaker 7: I guess, well, true, but I did. I did lose
Speaker 7: mine because I had taken it off to wash my hands.
Speaker 7: I've forgot to put it back on in.
Speaker 4: A public restaurant.
Speaker 1: See, So there you go. See, And that's the thing,
Speaker 1: like now you do not have to take these off
Speaker 1: to wash your hands. But again, if you put lotion on,
Speaker 1: like when I do my hair, I've got that, you know,
Speaker 1: the goo that you put in your hair, like, it
Speaker 1: gets all gunked up in this ring. So there are
Speaker 1: like with a regular like my wedding ring, I have
Speaker 1: no problem. It's just thin. It's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's I've never taken it off and ten whatever
Speaker 1: how many years, and so I don't find an issue
Speaker 1: with that. But for some reason, because these rings are
Speaker 1: a little bit thicker and there's a little bit more
Speaker 1: going on with them, and of course you have to
Speaker 1: charge them. You are taking it on and awful lot,
Speaker 1: So that was kind of my issue. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, and the other thing is you look like
Speaker 1: et when you're sleeping because this thing is like blinking
Speaker 1: at night all the time, and when you're in a
Speaker 1: dark room, you're seeing like the light that it's you know,
Speaker 1: using to read your your vitals. So the good news
Speaker 1: is about these rings is that they give you a
Speaker 1: lot of information about yourself. And it's twenty four to
Speaker 1: seven right now. The main competition is the Aura Ring,
Speaker 1: the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which is if you're using an iPhone,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna that's not gonna be an option. Then
Speaker 1: there's a brand called ring Con, which I have not
Speaker 1: tested personally, but I do have friends that have tested
Speaker 1: it and they do seem to like it. And the
Speaker 1: other one that I've personally tested is called the Amaze
Speaker 1: fit Ama z Fit And what's nice about that ring
Speaker 1: is that it is a lot less expensive and I
Speaker 1: found that it was X So I would if you
Speaker 1: want something a little bit different, Susan, I might go
Speaker 1: with the Amaze fit Ama z Fi t and they
Speaker 1: have a great smart ring that you know is great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that they're all different, they're all
Speaker 1: doing the same thing in a slightly different way. But
Speaker 1: I will tell you the Amaze Fit, I wore it
Speaker 1: for a couple of months and I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a second, why is this thing half the price of
Speaker 1: the competition, Like how and that it just it just is.
Speaker 1: They just do a great job. But if you want
Speaker 1: the market leader, the Aura ring is going to work
Speaker 1: with iPhone and Android, Samsung, just Android. The Amaze Fit
Speaker 1: is going to work with iPhone and Android. And this
Speaker 1: is of course a growing area we have not seen.
Speaker 1: The thing about all this technology is that it's never
Speaker 1: truly legitimatized until Apple does it. And so right now
Speaker 1: we've had these companies come in and they've made these rings,
Speaker 1: but Apple has not done this in a big way
Speaker 1: just yet. And so the rumor is that Apple eventually
Speaker 1: come out with a smart ring, which there's no reason
Speaker 1: to believe they wouldn't. But when they come out with it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like, oh, now everyone's into smart rings.
Speaker 1: But I think the benefit of them is that they're
Speaker 1: a little slicker than the watch and you can wear
Speaker 1: them twenty four to seven versus the watch. You know,
Speaker 1: you got to take off and the battery lasts a
Speaker 1: lot longer. So you're talking, you know, up just seven
Speaker 1: days of battery life with these great question Susan. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm you're making me want to wear my ring again,
Speaker 1: the smart ring, not the wedding ring. I do wear
Speaker 1: that anyway. That sounded weird. Eighty eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. This is the show where
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. It's also the place where I answer your
Speaker 1: questions at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one, the
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Well,
Speaker 1: it's been a bit since I tested this out. Actually
Speaker 1: I went up there last month, I think the end
Speaker 1: of the month. But this Pebble flow is really cool.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not an RV guy, but I'm telling you
Speaker 1: this is such. This is the iPhone slash Tesla of RVs,
Speaker 1: and I want it because it is super cool. So
Speaker 1: Pebble Pebble got a lot of publicity when they first
Speaker 1: kind of launched this video of this device or this RV,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a couple of years ago, and everyone
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool because it
Speaker 1: does a couple of magical things. So first off, it
Speaker 1: automatically hitches itself to your car. So if you look
Speaker 1: at this RV number one, it looks very futuristic. I
Speaker 1: think it's got these rounded edges. It's very like glass
Speaker 1: kind of forward. And the company was started by a
Speaker 1: bunch of folks that worked at Tesla, Rivian, SpaceX, NASA, Apple.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are really smart people that said, wait
Speaker 1: a second, why is r V so complicated? Why is
Speaker 1: r ving so complicated? Why why do you need like,
Speaker 1: you know, you ever try to back up an RV
Speaker 1: or anything on a trailer, you have to like do
Speaker 1: it in reverse, like everything if you turn one way
Speaker 1: goes the other. Yeah. I've done the U haul thing
Speaker 1: and it's not easy for a lot of people. So
Speaker 1: I've never really had an interest in the RV because
Speaker 1: or you know, the trailer because I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: just worried about it. But this solves all of those issues.
Speaker 1: So number one, it hitches itself to the car, So
Speaker 1: you literally put this RV near the back of your car,
Speaker 1: uses cameras to self center and kind of find the hitch,
Speaker 1: and then lower itself on there. And all you have
Speaker 1: to do is connect those safety chains and you know
Speaker 1: whatever else that needs to be connected. It also moves
Speaker 1: around by remote control. So I took this thing up
Speaker 1: in a parking lot up in near San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: they gave me an iPad, and they didn't even tell
Speaker 1: me how to do it. They just said, here, try
Speaker 1: to move this thing. And there's a couple of little
Speaker 1: controllers on the iPad on the screen, and you just
Speaker 1: move it like you would a remote controlled car. And
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing when I saw this thing start to move,
Speaker 1: your brain immediately goes into this idea because anytime it's
Speaker 1: seen something big rolling by itself, it just imagines it's
Speaker 1: going to roll into a wall, right, it's gonna slide
Speaker 1: down the hill. But this thing just moves and then
Speaker 1: when you take your finger off the iPad, it stops.
Speaker 1: Move it some more, it stops. You can turn it
Speaker 1: around three hundred and sixty degrees, and the idea is
Speaker 1: that you can steer the trailer into anything you want,
Speaker 1: like a parking lot or a parking spot or your
Speaker 1: driveway without having to back it up. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: just that alone is enough to sell me on this thing.
Speaker 1: Then they've got the active toe assist. So because this
Speaker 1: thing is fully electric, it has electric motors, and so
Speaker 1: when you're driving your car and they're imagining a lot
Speaker 1: of people are probably gonna have evs with this thing.
Speaker 1: That of course, having a giant trailer behind an EV
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy off off the EV. So
Speaker 1: this has an electric motor that sort of pushes it forward.
Speaker 1: So when they enable the electric motor. When I was
Speaker 1: taking my test drive, you can feel that the car
Speaker 1: just felt lighter because it wasn't dragging six thousand pounds
Speaker 1: behind it. I mean it still was, but it was
Speaker 1: being helped. So that was really cool. And then to
Speaker 1: top it all off, when you finally get to the
Speaker 1: camp site and want to set this thing up, you
Speaker 1: press another button and it instantly levels itself out. So
Speaker 1: it has these little things that pop out of the
Speaker 1: bottom and it figures out the level nature of the
Speaker 1: ground and it just levels itself in less than two minutes.
Speaker 1: I mean really really cool stuff. Now here's the other
Speaker 1: thing it can do. I mean it doubles as a
Speaker 1: home office or a guesthouse when it's parked, because it's
Speaker 1: all electric and it has solar on the top. It's
Speaker 1: got a large battery so it can charge your EV
Speaker 1: car or it can even power your house during a blockout.
Speaker 1: So the whole idea of this pebble flow is to
Speaker 1: make rving more accessible for someone like myself who doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to deal with a traditional RV. Now. I
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of you listening that use an RV,
Speaker 1: drive an RV and you said, rich, come on, it's
Speaker 1: not that tough, it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: But there are people like myself that are intimidated by this.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do something wrong with a brand new,
Speaker 1: beautiful RV that you've either rented or purchased. By the way,
Speaker 1: the price on this not cheap starts at one hundred
Speaker 1: and nine thousand dollars. But when you think about all
Speaker 1: the possibilities of using it as a home office or
Speaker 1: mobile office or a guesthouse, yeah, might not be a
Speaker 1: bad idea anyway. It's a Pebble Flow. If you want
Speaker 1: to see my video on it, go to the website
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot tv. Check it out. I think
Speaker 1: it's really cool. I was very excited to try this thing.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Lou in Arizona. Lou, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Cool.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not gonna be a Pebble Flow, but I'm
Speaker 4: going to be driving my minivan to California to do
Speaker 4: comedy shows for veterans later this month.
Speaker 1: All right, well that's exciting. What can I help you with?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, I have a Pixel seven and I keep
Speaker 4: getting notices that say system update needed. Your system is
Speaker 4: forty four data out of date? Learn more, restart? Now?
Speaker 4: Can that be spoofed so that I would be accidentally
Speaker 4: installing some malware on my phone?
Speaker 1: Great question, Lou, It could be spoofed, It's unlikely that
Speaker 1: it's spoofed. It sounds like what you're describing is the
Speaker 1: standard update from Pixel. So if you want to be sure,
Speaker 1: you can swipe out of any screen that you are
Speaker 1: seeing on your phone, and you can swipe down from
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner. Swipe down again look for
Speaker 1: the little gear icon in the lower right hand corner
Speaker 1: that will take you to your settings, or just get
Speaker 1: into your settings any way, scroll up and you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to look for the setting that says system. You
Speaker 1: tap that, and if you scroll down a little bit,
Speaker 1: it'll say software updates. Now my pixel says your pixel
Speaker 1: is up to date. So there's no software update available
Speaker 1: right now on the one I'm using, but on yours
Speaker 1: it would say system update pending, and you can tap
Speaker 1: into there and you should see that same exact screen
Speaker 1: that you were seeing before. But now you verify that
Speaker 1: you went to the proper place to see it. So
Speaker 1: once again, go into your settings, then go into system,
Speaker 1: then go into software updates, and you should see the
Speaker 1: system update for your pixel. Now, I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: this up, Lou, because there is currently a Chrome update
Speaker 1: scam on the desktop computers. So hackers apparently have hijacked
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of WordPress sites because they have outdated plugins,
Speaker 1: and so they have figured out a way to get
Speaker 1: these websites to show a Chrome update notification claiming that
Speaker 1: the site needs something to You got to update your
Speaker 1: Chrome to function on this website. And when you click
Speaker 1: the update, you think you're updating Chrome, you're actually installing malware.
Speaker 1: So if you look closely, you'll notice that there's poor grammar,
Speaker 1: incorrect capitalization, an unnecessary comma. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: probably fall for this stuff because they're getting tricked into
Speaker 1: downloading an update. This is what I always talk about
Speaker 1: with hackers and spammers. They mimic something that we know
Speaker 1: to be real. So, yes, every one of us has
Speaker 1: seen that message on our computer or on our Chrome
Speaker 1: browser or on our phone that says, hey, you got
Speaker 1: to update, got to update the software. This software is
Speaker 1: out of date. And so they take that and they
Speaker 1: run with it, and they turn it on its side,
Speaker 1: and they trick you and they make the screen look
Speaker 1: like an update screen, but it's actually just bogus. And
Speaker 1: so that's what they're doing here on Chrome. I have
Speaker 1: not heard of that happening on the Pixel, although on
Speaker 1: the iPhone and on you know, if you're just surfing
Speaker 1: the web on your phone, you might have come across
Speaker 1: a screen that says your phone is infected, you've got
Speaker 1: viruses on your phone, you have malware on your phone,
Speaker 1: tap to update or tap to fix. And that is
Speaker 1: just either malvertizing, which is malware that's been injected into
Speaker 1: advertising or it's just a bad website that somehow is
Speaker 1: compromised and is serving up these messages. And so you
Speaker 1: need to be very careful when you see this stuff
Speaker 1: because you do not want to be tricked into downloading
Speaker 1: malware to your phone or your computer. Now, most of
Speaker 1: the time, on the phones, especially on the iPhone, it's
Speaker 1: going to be very tough to download a quote unquote
Speaker 1: virus to that phone because just the nature of the
Speaker 1: iOS operating system, you can't really install a virus on there.
Speaker 1: It's nearly impossible unless your phone is jail broken, unless
Speaker 1: you are side loading it somehow, any of the apps
Speaker 1: from the app store. I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 1: a case where it's it's hidden malware. But you know,
Speaker 1: the main thing is that they exploit vulnerabilities in something
Speaker 1: like the web browser, a PDF viewer, and that's how
Speaker 1: they get to to get take over your phone or
Speaker 1: something like that. But it's very rare, let's put it
Speaker 1: that way. So people always ask me all the time, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: join you a virus anti virus for the iPhone? No,
Speaker 1: you do not. You do not need anti virus for
Speaker 1: the iPhone. Android little bit different, a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different operating system. There's a little bit more freedom
Speaker 1: on Android, although out of the factory, the Samsungs of
Speaker 1: the world and the Googles of the world with a
Speaker 1: pixel they really lock down these phones so that it's
Speaker 1: very tough to install something on there outside of Google Play.
Speaker 1: But and what a lot of people like about Android
Speaker 1: is that you can if you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So for me personally, I was installing an app the
Speaker 1: other day outside side of the Android Google Play and
Speaker 1: it gave me a couple of warnings saying, hey, you
Speaker 1: know you have to toggle these switches on for security
Speaker 1: reasons to make sure we know that you're understanding what
Speaker 1: you're doing here by quote unquote sideloading an app. So,
Speaker 1: if you're just a regular person, when you see that message,
Speaker 1: you're going, huh wait a second, hold on, do I
Speaker 1: really want to do that? So just be careful for
Speaker 1: when it comes to Chrome. By the way, the way
Speaker 1: they update is you'll see it in the upper right
Speaker 1: hand corner. It'll it'll give you a message that as
Speaker 1: update Chrome. And if you're ever in question about that,
Speaker 1: you can go to the settings on Chrome and tap
Speaker 1: about Chrome and it will check for updates and sure enough,
Speaker 1: mine has one right now, it'll say nearly up to date.
Speaker 1: Relaunch Chrome to finish updating. So there you go. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call. Loon Arizona. I remember you from the
Speaker 1: comedian guy right you do the comedy shows. Very cool,
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work. Eighty eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you about the Pebble smart watch
Speaker 1: making a comeback. I'll tell you why why do we
Speaker 1: need the Pebble in this day and age. I'll explain
Speaker 1: right here on rich On Tech eighty eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one man two segments on Pebble. Huh another one
Speaker 1: with Pebble. Pebble smart watch is making a comeback. Pebble
Speaker 1: founder Eric Mitchakowski, who has been on this show. Uh.
Speaker 1: He talked about his plans to bring back the original
Speaker 1: smart watch because he just doesn't like what's out there,
Speaker 1: and he says the Pebble smart watch would have an
Speaker 1: always on e ink display that, of course you can
Speaker 1: see in the sunlight, multi day battery life, physical buttons
Speaker 1: for controlling music without looking at the screen. Tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of smart watch faces compared to Apple's Apple Watches
Speaker 1: zero third party face support an open source operating system,
Speaker 1: which means anyone can do whatever they want with it,
Speaker 1: build upon it. It will support iPhones. And this all
Speaker 1: happened because he, I guess, went to Google. So Pebble
Speaker 1: was a smart watch back in the day. It was
Speaker 1: one of the first reviews I did at KTLA, and
Speaker 1: it was like a big kickstarter device, and it was
Speaker 1: just a cool looking watch. I mean, now it doesn't
Speaker 1: look that cool, but it used to. But I had
Speaker 1: an e ink display all these things he's talking about.
Speaker 1: And now, of course we've gone fully futuristic with the
Speaker 1: smart watches with apps and all this other stuff. But
Speaker 1: he just wants something simple that shows you your notifications,
Speaker 1: controls your music. The battery lasts for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's just a very simple display that you can
Speaker 1: customize in a million different ways. So it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But Pebble went out of business around I think twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Fitbit purchased them during that time, and then Google ended
Speaker 1: up purchasing Fitbit for like, I don't know, a couple
Speaker 1: billion dollars a couple of years later, and so Eric,
Speaker 1: the original founder of Pebble, had to go to Google
Speaker 1: and convince them to open source the original Pebble operating
Speaker 1: system so that he can build the new Pebble smart watch.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in this, Repebble, repebble dot com
Speaker 1: is the website. I don't know. Would you trade your
Speaker 1: Apple Watch for a Pebble watch. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'd do that at this point. I mean, I like
Speaker 1: the idea of simplicity. I like the idea that works
Speaker 1: with Android and iPhone. Apple Watch is very like you know,
Speaker 1: it's iPhone centric. It's a great watch, but it's very
Speaker 1: much like just iPhone. Michelle writes in I don't trust
Speaker 1: a lot of people online talking about Apple features. Just you.
Speaker 1: I listened to your tech advice if it applies to me. Lately,
Speaker 1: I've seen video reels claiming Apple's latest update will automatically
Speaker 1: install Apple AI. Is that true? Can we really disable AI?
Speaker 1: Please ease my mind. This stuff is making me nervous. Michelle,
Speaker 1: thank you for trusting me. Your first mistake was watching
Speaker 1: reels because there's a lot of nonsense. There could be fun,
Speaker 1: but the amount of cleaning up I have to do.
Speaker 1: It's like mopping up the misinformation that people see on
Speaker 1: TikTok and reels and all this stuff. Anyone could just
Speaker 1: put something out there and people have to figure out
Speaker 1: if it's real or fake. And so with tech news,
Speaker 1: of course, it's like, oh, this scary new feature or
Speaker 1: this new thing or that or whatever. Change this setting.
Speaker 1: Without giving you the basis of why you should do
Speaker 1: that or why you shouldn't do that. They just tell
Speaker 1: you to do it. But yes, you can disable yet.
Speaker 1: So you're right. Apple is automatically enabling the Apple Intelligence
Speaker 1: with iOS eighteen point three. Used to be had to
Speaker 1: go in and toggle it on, but you can toggle
Speaker 1: it off. It's very simple. You just go into settings.
Speaker 1: You'll see an option for Apple Intelligence and Siri, and
Speaker 1: then you tap that and you'll see Apple Intelligence. You
Speaker 1: just toggle that off. Now, keep in mind, you can't
Speaker 1: even get Apple Intelligence unless you have an iPhone fifteen
Speaker 1: Pro or above, so iPhone fifteen Pro Promac and any
Speaker 1: of the iPhone sixteen models. So even if they automatically
Speaker 1: force this upon your phone, you may not have access
Speaker 1: to it because your phone may be an older model.
Speaker 1: So good question, Michelle. Thank you for putting your trust
Speaker 1: in me. I do appreciate it. Pat from Sherman Oaks
Speaker 1: writes in can you recommend a good website to chart
Speaker 1: a trip on a map? Or is an app required?
Speaker 1: Road Trippers road trippers that is the best planning tool.
Speaker 1: So that's the one I used last time. Great great
Speaker 1: features on there, so road trippers road trippers dot com.
Speaker 1: Let me make sure that's the website. Yep, road trippers
Speaker 1: dot com. Great website for planning a road trip. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we're gonna talk to We're gonna talk cell
Speaker 1: phone plans. You think you have a good plan, you
Speaker 1: want something cheaper, you want something better. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: cell phone planned reviewers stets In dodge It on the
Speaker 1: line to talk about the latest offerings from carriers big
Speaker 1: and small. This is Rich on Tech. We'll get back
Speaker 1: to the phone lines in just a moment, but first
Speaker 1: let's bring on Stetson dodge It. He is a cell
Speaker 1: phone plan reviewer. He's been doing it since twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: when he was researching the best plan to go along
Speaker 1: with his iPhone five. Just to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how long he's been covering this stuff, stets and
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Rich thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me.
Speaker 9: I'm so excited to be here and to help your
Speaker 9: listeners save money on their phone bill.
Speaker 1: So you've got your YouTube channel where obviously you're talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff. Tell me the channel name.
Speaker 8: It's just my name, stetson Dogget.
Speaker 9: Users can find that if they search for best cell
Speaker 9: phone plans on YouTube.
Speaker 8: I've been doing this for so long.
Speaker 9: A lot of my videos tend to come up and
Speaker 9: I talk about, you know, the best cell phone plans
Speaker 9: for individuals, the best unlimited plans, best plans for families.
Speaker 9: If it's related to cell phone plans, I'm talking about it,
Speaker 9: even how to get the best deal on the newest
Speaker 9: iPhone when that comes out as well.
Speaker 1: So I guess my question is what is the biggest
Speaker 1: question people have when it comes to carry I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're confused because there's so many options out
Speaker 1: there nowadays.
Speaker 9: Oh my gosh, it can feel overwhelming as a customer.
Speaker 9: There's over fifty cell phone carriers that I compare on
Speaker 9: my website, over four hundred cell phone plans, and I
Speaker 9: think the biggest question people have is like, how can
Speaker 9: these smaller carriers, these mv and os as they're called offer.
Speaker 8: Such affordable plans.
Speaker 9: I mean, you look at Verizon, their cheapest limited plan
Speaker 9: is going to be sixty five dollars a month. Then
Speaker 9: you look at something like Visible Wireless, their own limited
Speaker 9: plan is just twenty five dollars per month.
Speaker 8: How can that be?
Speaker 9: And the answer is really that the big carriers sell
Speaker 9: access to their networks to these smaller carriers so that
Speaker 9: the small carriers can create their own bundles, create more
Speaker 9: affordable options in the marketplace, and start to create plans
Speaker 9: for different demographics of consumers, so targeting different niches and
Speaker 9: market segments. And that's how you can find affordable plans
Speaker 9: that still use the big networks for coverage.
Speaker 1: And there's really I mean, so I know there's three networks.
Speaker 1: You've got T Mobile, you've got Verizon and AT and T.
Speaker 1: But then we have this new one from Boost coming up.
Speaker 1: So are they really building like their own network or
Speaker 1: are they what's the deal with that?
Speaker 9: Yes, Rachel're absolutely correct. Boost is building their own network.
Speaker 9: They're building a five G only network, So any customer
Speaker 9: who signs up for Boost, they will only be on
Speaker 9: the Boost network if they have a five G phone
Speaker 9: that's compatible with the Boost five G network. Otherwise, Boost
Speaker 9: has the agreement with AT and T at Mobile, and
Speaker 9: customers will actually roam on the AT and T network
Speaker 9: or the T Mobile network for coverage. So even if
Speaker 9: you sign up for Boost, you'll get nationwide coverage. But
Speaker 9: their specific five G network is really just starting to
Speaker 9: light up predominantly in cities and more urban areas to
Speaker 9: cover as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: I've got to imagine it's going to be pretty good
Speaker 1: because if you're building it from scratch like they are,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're using like the latest technology, so that'll
Speaker 1: be interesting to check out out. So where do you
Speaker 1: think someone should start, Like how do they figure out
Speaker 1: like what they're you know, if you let's say you're
Speaker 1: paying ninety bucks a month and you're like, I know
Speaker 1: I could be paying less than this. Like where do
Speaker 1: you think people start? Do they download their bill? Like
Speaker 1: take a look at what That is a great question.
Speaker 9: I think when you think of the telephone telephone space,
Speaker 9: your bill is made up of two things, the cost
Speaker 9: of your phone and the cost of your plan, and
Speaker 9: you want to try.
Speaker 8: And optimize both of those things.
Speaker 9: And I would say the best place to start is
Speaker 9: think about how many lines you have on your phone
Speaker 9: on your plan. If you just have one line, you
Speaker 9: typically want to be spending fifty dollars or less for
Speaker 9: both the phone and the service. I mean, you could
Speaker 9: grab a twenty five dollars unlimited plan such as Visible Base.
Speaker 9: You can finance a phone that's going to be twenty
Speaker 9: thirty dollars a month, and you're looking at maybe fifty
Speaker 9: to fifty five dollars for both your plan and your service.
Speaker 9: If you have multiple lines, that's where it can make
Speaker 9: sense to go with a big carrier like T Mobile,
Speaker 9: like AT and T, like Verizon, and you can do
Speaker 9: a phone trade deal. So every three years the new
Speaker 9: iPhone comes out, the new Samsung Galaxy comes out, you
Speaker 9: can trade in your old phone and get the new one,
Speaker 9: and the combination of the plan and doing the phone
Speaker 9: trade in deal ends up being pretty reasonable if you
Speaker 9: have four more lines. But if you've got one, two,
Speaker 9: three lines, that's when you're starting to think about, Okay,
Speaker 9: maybe I buy the phone outright and I go with
Speaker 9: one of these lower costs cell phone carriers, because I'll
Speaker 9: save a lot of money over three years in the
Speaker 9: long run.
Speaker 1: So what are you not getting when you do one,
Speaker 1: like one of these mvn os, like this Visible plan
Speaker 1: for twenty five bucks a month. What am I not
Speaker 1: getting compared to like Verizon for sixty five or eighty
Speaker 1: a month.
Speaker 9: That is another great question, like what are you missing
Speaker 9: out on? A lot of people initially think it's coverage.
Speaker 9: We kind of covered this all carriers in the United States,
Speaker 9: whether they're the mv and os or the big carriers.
Speaker 9: They're riding on AT and T, T Mobile, Verizon, or
Speaker 9: Boost Mobile for coverage, So coverage.
Speaker 8: You'll get the same network.
Speaker 9: Really, what the differences are are going to be?
Speaker 8: I think there's three big ones.
Speaker 9: Number one the phone financing deals AT and T, T Mobile, Bryzon.
Speaker 9: They're all offering one thousand dollars off the new iPhone,
Speaker 9: the latest Samsung phone, the latest Google Pixel phone when
Speaker 9: those devices release. So if you're someone who loves to
Speaker 9: finance their phone and do the trade in deals, the
Speaker 9: bigger carriers are going to be your option if you
Speaker 9: want to save money. The smaller carriers they're not going
Speaker 9: to do the one thousand dollars off promotions, but they
Speaker 9: will offer great value on the service itself, so you're
Speaker 9: not going to get the same kind of trade in
Speaker 9: deals with the smaller carriers. The second difference is how
Speaker 9: you get support the big carriers. You can go to
Speaker 9: a physical store, walk into the AT and T store
Speaker 9: and be like, Hey, I want to do this trade
Speaker 9: in deal, or I need help with my service, or
Speaker 9: I'd like to get my friends set up with this
Speaker 9: new device.
Speaker 8: They'll be able to help you.
Speaker 9: A lot of the smaller carriers they are online only,
Speaker 9: and that's one of the reasons they're able to offer
Speaker 9: such affordable plans. They're not paying to staff sales employees
Speaker 9: or key inventory for accessories.
Speaker 8: They operate online only.
Speaker 9: They have a much more streamlined process that doesn't cost
Speaker 9: them as much. They pass those savings on to the customer.
Speaker 9: And the third big thing is certain features. RCS is
Speaker 9: a brand new feature just announced. It's kind of like
Speaker 9: bringing I message features to Android devices in between iPhone
Speaker 9: and Android users. It turns out some smaller carriers they
Speaker 9: don't quite support RCS just yet, and this is actually
Speaker 9: kind of the fault of the big carriers. They need
Speaker 9: to sort of offer a bundle for the small carriers
Speaker 9: to use to enable that feature. But some features aren't
Speaker 9: quite working and sometimes you won't be able to add
Speaker 9: things such as a tablet.
Speaker 8: Line or a smart watch line.
Speaker 9: But outside of that, you're using the same network for coverage,
Speaker 9: and you really are getting just about the same experience
Speaker 9: on the small carriers as you are the big carriers.
Speaker 1: Great explanation. I found that out the hard way. By
Speaker 1: the way, I switched my wife to one of these
Speaker 1: mv and o's and she had a problem with their
Speaker 1: phone and it was like I had to chat with
Speaker 1: them through the app to get support, and then finally
Speaker 1: after chatting for like a half an hour, they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's our phone number. You can call us. And it
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my gosh. They make it hidden.
Speaker 1: So you also run a website called CoverageMap dot com
Speaker 1: and then Bestphone Plans dot net. So definitely check those
Speaker 1: out to see, you know, what service has the best
Speaker 1: coverage in your area. But I want to hear like,
Speaker 1: sort of what are your favorite budget friendly plans right now?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I've got five picks for your listeners. I
Speaker 9: think they're really going to like these options. So I
Speaker 9: personally use a plan called US Mobile Unlimited Starter twenty
Speaker 9: five dollars per month, thirty five gigs of high speed data,
Speaker 9: your choice of coverage.
Speaker 8: So you can activate this.
Speaker 9: Plan on Verizon, you can activate it on AT and T,
Speaker 9: or you can activate it on T Mobile. And I
Speaker 9: think it's just a great overall option for people to
Speaker 9: get started. And again, just twenty five dollars per month
Speaker 9: per line, all taxes and fees included. If you want
Speaker 9: something more premium, I think the best premium unlimited plan
Speaker 9: is going to be Visible.
Speaker 1: Plus.
Speaker 9: This gives you unlimited priority data on the Verizon network
Speaker 9: when you're on five g ultra wideband, fifty gigabytes of
Speaker 9: priority on LTE. It includes unlimited hotspot data at ten
Speaker 9: megabits per second, a free Apple Watch line if I'm
Speaker 9: going to be an Apple Watch user. Forty five dollars
Speaker 9: flat per month, taxes and fees included. You can even
Speaker 9: get an annual version of this plan, which brings the
Speaker 9: cost down to just thirty three dollars per month, which
Speaker 9: is pretty good if you're looking to get the best
Speaker 9: plan with a free phone.
Speaker 8: I actually really like what boost Mobile is doing.
Speaker 9: They have their Infinite Access for iPhone plan and their
Speaker 9: Infinite Access for Galaxy Plan. Listeners can walk into a
Speaker 9: Boost Mobile store sign up for this plan, you get
Speaker 9: a free iPhone or free Galaxy phone today with no
Speaker 9: trade in, and then every year after you can trade
Speaker 9: in your current phone to upgrade to the new one,
Speaker 9: pretty much for completely free, which is a really good value.
Speaker 9: This plan costs sixty five dollars per month, so a
Speaker 9: little bit more expensive, but overall rate value. If you're
Speaker 9: looking for something custom Mobile x less, you choose how
Speaker 9: many minutes, texts and megabytes of VITA you want per month,
Speaker 9: very affordable. A three gig plan would be thirteen dollars
Speaker 9: a month and again completely custom and the best cheap plan.
Speaker 9: If you want something very basic, maybe for your your
Speaker 9: kid or your grandparent who doesn't really use their phone
Speaker 9: that much. US Mobile has a two gig plan for
Speaker 9: ten dollars flat and again your choice of coverage Verizon
Speaker 9: AT and T or T Mobile. So those are five
Speaker 9: options I think your audience would be interested in and
Speaker 9: can check out.
Speaker 1: All excellent options. We're gonna leave it there. Check out
Speaker 1: the website Bestphone Plans dot net. I'll link it up online.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot tv cell phone reviewer sets in
Speaker 1: dogg It thanks so much for joining me today. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Rich, you really know your stuff. I
Speaker 1: can tell your passionate about this and I love it.
Speaker 1: So thanks for sharing that excellent information today. Really really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. You're welcome back anytime. Eighty to eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: zero one. Coming up. I'll tell you if you had
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch with some battery issues, you might have
Speaker 1: some money coming your way. I'll tell you how to
Speaker 1: figure out if you're one of them. This is rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Don't be shy. Go to
Speaker 1: the website rich on Tech dot tv. I just updated
Speaker 1: all of the mobile plans that we just talked about
Speaker 1: that Stetson. That Stetson mentioned are his favorites, ranging from
Speaker 1: ten dollars a month to sixty five dollars a month
Speaker 1: including a phone, so check them out on the website.
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech dot tv even mentioned a couple I
Speaker 1: was aware of, like that US mobile ten dollars a month. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. So I've got them all linked up there.
Speaker 1: We got an email from Steve in Durham, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: He says, Hey, Rich Friday, I and a bunch of
Speaker 1: others got an update that the T Mobile Starlink Beta
Speaker 1: I signed up for in January is now available on
Speaker 1: my Pixel nine pro. Here's an article about it, and
Speaker 1: apparently T Mobile and Starlink sent out a lot of
Speaker 1: invites to Pixel nine owners. So, if you have a
Speaker 1: Pixel nine, you've got T Mobile and you signed up
Speaker 1: for the Starlink beta, check it out right now. Once
Speaker 1: you get it, you'll be able to message through Starlink
Speaker 1: on your phone. Voice calls will come later. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's just messaging. Now, don't forget On the Pixel you
Speaker 1: do have satellite messaging, but it is for emergencies only.
Speaker 1: And on the iPhone it used to be for emergencies only,
Speaker 1: and now it's available. You know, you can use it
Speaker 1: just to text. And we still don't know the price
Speaker 1: of all these services, right, So all these carriers and
Speaker 1: phone companies have said, yeah, you've got satellite messaging, but
Speaker 1: nobody has put a price tag on this yet. And
Speaker 1: I think it's really tricky because let's say you're Apple,
Speaker 1: how do you put a price tag on if someone
Speaker 1: doesn't subscribe to this satellite messaging. They have an emergency
Speaker 1: and they need to use it. You can't keep them
Speaker 1: from using it. You don't want to do that, right,
Speaker 1: You don't want that publicity of someone being stranded. They
Speaker 1: have satellite messaging, they weren't able to use it becau
Speaker 1: they didn't pay the bill. So there has to be
Speaker 1: some sort of like one time use scenario where they
Speaker 1: can just use it on demand. But then that keeps
Speaker 1: people from subscribing to it because they know they could
Speaker 1: just use it in an emergency. So it's a really
Speaker 1: tricky situation because we have this connectivity, but how do
Speaker 1: you price it? And by the way, the new Samsung
Speaker 1: device does have the satellite connectivity as well. But right
Speaker 1: now they're doing it a little bit differently. They're doing
Speaker 1: it through the carriers. What did I do with my phone?
Speaker 1: I don't know where my Samsung phone went. It's missing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they're doing it a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: They're doing it through the carrier. So if you have
Speaker 1: a Samsung the S twenty five Ultra, I've got I
Speaker 1: see it here, Adam, I put it over there. But
Speaker 1: if you if you have the Ultra, the new one,
Speaker 1: or the S twenty five series from Samsung. You do
Speaker 1: have satellite messaging. They didn't really advertise it in a
Speaker 1: big way. That's because they're not doing their own so
Speaker 1: Google and Apple sort of like baked it into their
Speaker 1: phone doing their own deals. Samsung is saying, no, if
Speaker 1: you have Verizon, you'll do it through them. If you
Speaker 1: have T Mobile, you'll do it through them. If you
Speaker 1: have AT and T, you'll do it through them. So
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different. And the MV and o's
Speaker 1: that's an interesting delineation as well. Well. They have satellite messaging.
Speaker 1: Apple Watch Batteries swelling settlement, so if you had an
Speaker 1: Apple Watch back in the day, you could be eligible
Speaker 1: for up to fifty dollars from this new twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars settlement. Apple agreed to pay twenty million dollars on
Speaker 1: a settlement that certain Apple Watches the batteries swelled and
Speaker 1: that damaged the screens. So if you had a first
Speaker 1: generation Apple Watch through an Apple Watch Series three and
Speaker 1: you reported swelling between April twenty fourth, twenty fifteen and
Speaker 1: February sixth, twenty twenty four, you can get fifty dollars
Speaker 1: per of So the trick here is you had to
Speaker 1: have had you you had to have had reported this
Speaker 1: issue to Apple to get this fifty dollars, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like a weird, you know thing, but it
Speaker 1: says no claim form is needed, payouts will be automatic,
Speaker 1: but you should verify. You'll probably get an email. The
Speaker 1: website is watch settlement dot com. Watch Settlement dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's go to Lynn. Looks like Lynn has a question
Speaker 1: just to kind of bookend what we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the MV and o's Lynn, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 1: What's up?
Speaker 10: Hi?
Speaker 2: Rich?
Speaker 11: I love your show.
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 11: Sign up for an mb no and you're you're converting
Speaker 11: your photos and your contact via I guess it's the
Speaker 11: e simcard or some process. How easy and reliable is
Speaker 11: the process once you signed up? I don't want to
Speaker 11: get stuck or caught without having my phone and then
Speaker 11: kind of being in no man's land and lack of
Speaker 11: customer service. So tell me it's a quick and easy process.
Speaker 5: Please.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is when it works, asterisk when it works.
Speaker 1: So I have been on both ends of this. I
Speaker 1: have been on the side where you switch your SIM
Speaker 1: to another carrier and it's instant, it takes seconds and boom,
Speaker 1: your phone lights up. I have been in no man's
Speaker 1: land where you go to switch this thing and it
Speaker 1: just does not take. And I had this happen with
Speaker 1: both my main carrier and also an MV and O.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if it's an MV and O
Speaker 1: or not. The difference is with the main carrier, at
Speaker 1: some point you can march into a store and say, hey,
Speaker 1: fix this, whereas with the MV and O you are
Speaker 1: beholden to typically text chatting through their app or calling
Speaker 1: them through a phone number. Now what happened with me?
Speaker 1: My SIM got stuck in never never Land. I test
Speaker 1: a lot of phones. Sometimes I will switch my actual
Speaker 1: SIM into that phone, and if it's an e SIM,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit trickier a physical sim. You could
Speaker 1: pop out of one phone and pop into Another problem
Speaker 1: is the new iPhones do not have a physical sim anymore,
Speaker 1: so you are you are not able to do that.
Speaker 1: You have to go eSIM and when it works, it's great,
Speaker 1: it just switches it right over. But when it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: it could be a problem. So in my instance, because
Speaker 1: my SIM went off of my phone, my eSIM and
Speaker 1: it did not make it to the other phone. Next
Speaker 1: thing you know, I had no signal on my phone,
Speaker 1: and so what did that mean. I couldn't even call
Speaker 1: the carrier to get help. And when I got through
Speaker 1: the carrier because I used a different phone, they said, well,
Speaker 1: we can't verify you are who you say you are,
Speaker 1: because typically we send a text message to your phone,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, you can't because I don't have
Speaker 1: my phone line anymore. And so we ended up figuring
Speaker 1: that out. I convinced them after many I must have
Speaker 1: spent two hours on the phone with them. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling you all this len because it's supposed to work,
Speaker 1: but if you are faint at heart with any of
Speaker 1: this tech stuff, it can be a little tricky. And
Speaker 1: you know, most of the time it works, but anytime
Speaker 1: you're switching a sim, especially in eSIM, there could be
Speaker 1: something that goes wrong and it could get stuck and
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you've got to figure out how
Speaker 1: to make this work. And by the way, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever not had a phone for a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it gets really gnarly very fast. Like
Speaker 1: for me, I was going to pick up my kids
Speaker 1: at school. I had no way of hearing, you know,
Speaker 1: if the school had to call me for some reason,
Speaker 1: I couldn't get a phone call, I couldn't text them,
Speaker 1: So I mean there are implications. Now, with all that said,
Speaker 1: it sounds very scary. Most of the time this works
Speaker 1: out just fine. So I did switch my wife from
Speaker 1: a traditional carrier to Envy and Z and she was
Speaker 1: very concerned about it. And I'll tell you this is
Speaker 1: what keeps people from saving money because they're concerned just
Speaker 1: like you are, and so they just don't do it.
Speaker 1: It's that inertia of I'd rather just stick with what
Speaker 1: I got. I know it works. I don't want to
Speaker 1: save you know, it's forty bucks a month savings worth
Speaker 1: all the headache. But when it works, it works great.
Speaker 1: So to answer your question, hopefully it works. If not,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll figure it out. But your phone calls
Speaker 1: and your contacts and all your photos and stuff that
Speaker 1: is not affected. Just your cellular connection is affected. This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology and
Speaker 1: having fun while I do it. Jacqueline writes in on
Speaker 1: the website richon Tech dot TV. Hey, Rich, I've recently
Speaker 1: discovered your program on nine to ten AM radio in Michigan.
Speaker 1: I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for all you do. Here's
Speaker 1: my question. I had an iPhone twelve. It wasn't working.
Speaker 1: When I went to the store, the Exfinity store for help,
Speaker 1: they were not able to help me, and they suggested
Speaker 1: I got a new Samsung A thirty five. The phone
Speaker 1: is free. They did not have iPhone deals. The problem
Speaker 1: I have is they did not transfer all the photos
Speaker 1: from my iPhone to my Android. Initially, they told me
Speaker 1: it would take a few days for the transferring to
Speaker 1: be completed. When I called back after seven days, they
Speaker 1: told me they couldn't help with that. They had done
Speaker 1: everything they could do. Is this something you can help
Speaker 1: me with? Thanks so much for your time, Jacqueline in Heartland, Michigan. Yes, Jacqueline,
Speaker 1: hopefully you have your old phone. The on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: install Google Photos and that that is the best way
Speaker 1: to transfer. So once you install Google Photos on the
Speaker 1: iPhone twelve, have it download all of the photos from
Speaker 1: your collection, or I guess upload all the photos from
Speaker 1: your collection into Google Photos and then once it's in there,
Speaker 1: they should show up on your new Samsung phone. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a million ways of doing this, but I think
Speaker 1: that's probably the easiest. I mean, the other way you
Speaker 1: can do it is you can make sure all your
Speaker 1: photos are uploaded to iCloud on the iPhone and you
Speaker 1: can then go to iCloud dot com and download them
Speaker 1: and then upload them to photos dot Google dot com.
Speaker 1: But basically your Samsung device. I mean, there's a way
Speaker 1: that you could Gosh, there's just so many ways to
Speaker 1: do this, but the easiest, I think is to just
Speaker 1: use Google Photos and put Google Photos on the iPhone twelve,
Speaker 1: upload all the pictures from there into Google Photos, and
Speaker 1: then when you open up Google Photos on the new
Speaker 1: they should all be there. Now, if you don't want
Speaker 1: to use Google Photos for some reason, then you probably
Speaker 1: need to download the photos from the iPhone to a
Speaker 1: computer and then transfer them to the Android that way,
Speaker 1: and that would involve either plugging the Android into the
Speaker 1: computer and dragging them in from the computer folder. Or
Speaker 1: you can use a flash drive. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: so many ways of doing this. You could use one drive,
Speaker 1: but you can also use the smart switch program on Android.
Speaker 1: So on Samsung, they have a program called smart Switch,
Speaker 1: and you could run that program and then when it
Speaker 1: asks you to switch. You can say I want you
Speaker 1: could plug in your iPhone and it should kind of
Speaker 1: suck the pictures over to your device. So many many
Speaker 1: ways of doing this, but get a cable. I would
Speaker 1: try the Google Photos one first because I just like
Speaker 1: Google Photos because then your photos are backed up as well.
Speaker 1: But if you want the I guess the smart switch
Speaker 1: is probably like the easiest wirelessly or wired solution to
Speaker 1: do that. So good question. Thanks for finding me there
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Let's see what was our other question here?
Speaker 1: I thought I had another one. Alan writes in from
Speaker 1: sandmis Hey, Rich, I'm sitting at home listening to your
Speaker 1: radio show. I have a quick question. I receive the
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen Promax and an Apple Watch ten for Christmas.
Speaker 1: When I receive texts, I only get the notification on
Speaker 1: my watch when I'm wearing it and no longer on
Speaker 1: my phone. Is there a way to change the setting
Speaker 1: so I can get messages on both at the same time.
Speaker 1: Love your show, Keep up the hard work, Allan. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: by default, when you put an Apple Watch on your
Speaker 1: wrist for reasons to not drive you crazy, they typically
Speaker 1: only deliver the notification to one of those devices, it'll
Speaker 1: still deliver it to the iPhone, but it's silent if
Speaker 1: you're wearing your watch, and so your watch would vibrate
Speaker 1: or make a sound and show you the notification. The
Speaker 1: idea being that while you're wearing a watch, so that's
Speaker 1: where we're going to send the notification because that's the
Speaker 1: one that you're going to look at immediately. So that's
Speaker 1: the default. But you can change this, and you can
Speaker 1: easily change it by going into the watch app on
Speaker 1: your phone, so you know, just search Watch and then
Speaker 1: scroll down to where it says messages and instead of
Speaker 1: saying mirror my iPhone, say custom and then allow notifications
Speaker 1: and then you can do the sound, haptic, whatever. But
Speaker 1: that's the main thing is that it's basically the iPhone
Speaker 1: is deciding when your Apple Watch is off if it
Speaker 1: doesn't sense it on your wrist, it's saying, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: deliver it to the iPhone and let's make a sound
Speaker 1: or vibrate on the phone. When your Apple watches on
Speaker 1: your wrist, it's saying, oh, they're wearing their Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: let's notify that device first, and let's not notify the
Speaker 1: iPhone in the same way. Because then both would be
Speaker 1: ringing at the same time or vibrating at the same time,
Speaker 1: and that might be a little off putting. So if
Speaker 1: you want that, go ahead. But there's a reason why
Speaker 1: Apple did it is, as you know, people by default
Speaker 1: may just want a notification one place, otherwise they feel
Speaker 1: like they're getting buzzed all over the place. So good question, Alan,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, and Sandymus and appreciate that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go to uh Chris in Long Beach. Chris, you're
Speaker 1: on with rich.
Speaker 2: Hi Rich, Hi, Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I have a Mac computer that's up okay, and I
Speaker 2: usually use the Google Chrome browser. Sure, but I find
Speaker 2: I cannot print with it. It will not print anything.
Speaker 2: I have an HP printer that I just bought that
Speaker 2: took up well. I used to have an epston and
Speaker 2: it wouldn't print to the Epston And I've gone online.
Speaker 2: I've called both of their help you know numbers. I
Speaker 2: haven't gotten any results from that. It's part of the problem,
Speaker 2: I'm afraid, and I hate to say this is I
Speaker 2: had a hard time understanding of them. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: Is it just that Google will.
Speaker 1: Not connect with no Well number one Chris, you know
Speaker 1: the rule on this show we don't take printer questions,
Speaker 1: but I will make an exception for you. So printers
Speaker 1: are very tricky, notoriously tricky, and everyone has a different
Speaker 1: setup and we get the fair share. It's always a joke,
Speaker 1: like the printer questions. So that's why I say we
Speaker 1: don't take them. But here's the thing. Yes, Chrome will
Speaker 1: work with your printer. But Chrome is really just kind
Speaker 1: of the liaison for your computer. So it's just like
Speaker 1: any other program. It's actually looking at your computer setup.
Speaker 1: You said you have a Mac. Okay, Now have you
Speaker 1: gone into the system settings and looked at the printers there?
Speaker 2: I wanted toys some settings. The only print I see
Speaker 2: is the one that I have hope set.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you do see it there?
Speaker 2: Yes, I see it there.
Speaker 1: Okay. So if you see that there, the Google Chrome
Speaker 1: should see the printer. Now here's the other thing. When
Speaker 1: you initially set up Chrome, there might have been a
Speaker 1: notification can it look for things on your network? Because
Speaker 1: the way Apple works now is that they kind of
Speaker 1: like keep everything very secure, So there might there might
Speaker 1: have been a setting when you first set up Chrome
Speaker 1: that said, hey, can we find stuff on your network,
Speaker 1: and you said no by accident, and now it's that's
Speaker 1: called permissions, by the way, so that could have been
Speaker 1: what's happening and why it's blocking your printer. Now, when
Speaker 1: you go to your printers and scanners on this system settings,
Speaker 1: do you see the area that says your printer?
Speaker 2: Okay, let me get there.
Speaker 1: I do okay, yeah, okay, And you says scanner a printer.
Speaker 2: Well, it says printer scanners okay.
Speaker 1: And then and your print it.
Speaker 2: Says it shows my computer is the default computer.
Speaker 1: Okay. What does it say is the default printer?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 6: Added?
Speaker 2: It says it shows and then it says underneath ad printer.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you don't. So do you have a printer?
Speaker 1: That's so, is your printer listed there?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: It is? Okay, So when you tap the printer, let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say you go to the printer, can you can
Speaker 1: you say set as default It is my default Okay,
Speaker 1: it is your default okay. So okay, so it's ally
Speaker 1: it sounds like your printers in there, which is good.
Speaker 1: And I'm just trying to see if we can do
Speaker 1: a like a test page or something. But you've printed
Speaker 1: from this.
Speaker 2: One of the things that says in the box that
Speaker 2: I just opened here this printer on the network.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's network.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not it.
Speaker 1: That's well, that would be if you had other computers
Speaker 1: that you wanted to use this printer with. Like this
Speaker 1: is so okay. So now when you go to when
Speaker 1: you open up Chrome, if you go into your settings
Speaker 1: there and you you go into settings okay, okay, and
Speaker 1: then on the left hand side are actually in the
Speaker 1: uh let's see if I can find the printer settings here.
Speaker 1: So actually it's going to be even before you go
Speaker 1: into settings, it should just say print. You see where
Speaker 1: it says print when I go into Google. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: on your on your Google Chrome, hit the menu, and
Speaker 1: then it should bring up a whole menu for like
Speaker 1: new tab, passwords, history, there's one that says print. Do
Speaker 1: you see that?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I do.
Speaker 4: Let me open.
Speaker 1: And then when you see destination, is your printer listed there?
Speaker 2: Printer?
Speaker 1: Okay, No, it's not listed there at all. What happens
Speaker 1: when you tap see more, it's just there's no.
Speaker 2: Well, let me look the more.
Speaker 1: It's there, okay, all right, okay, So this is this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is why it's tough to do the
Speaker 1: printer questions because it's you know what I'm I can't
Speaker 1: see your screen right now, so I can't tell what's
Speaker 1: happening there. But basically, the main idea is that you
Speaker 1: need to go Chrome is just using whatever's on your computer.
Speaker 1: So if you go into that print menu, you should
Speaker 1: see something that says destination and then you can tap
Speaker 1: see more and there's a manage button there and that's
Speaker 1: going to bring you back to your system setting. So
Speaker 1: again it's all just going through your system setting. So
Speaker 1: once you pick a printer where it says select destination,
Speaker 1: that should work. Now there is one more option that
Speaker 1: you could try. Okay, there's two more. Actually, when you
Speaker 1: go into that printer that printer window, when you go
Speaker 1: to print something, it says more settings and you can
Speaker 1: tap that and then scroll down it says print using
Speaker 1: system dialogue. So now this is going to bypass Chrome
Speaker 1: and it's actually going to use your Mac. Your Mac's
Speaker 1: default and built in printer dialogue, and so you can
Speaker 1: use that, and if that doesn't work, you've got a
Speaker 1: bigger problem. But I think that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day should work because if your printer is on
Speaker 1: your Mac. It's going to honor that when because you're
Speaker 1: using your default system dialogue for that. So it all
Speaker 1: sounds very complicated, but again, go into your settings on Chrome,
Speaker 1: press print and then tap more settings and then it
Speaker 1: says print using system dialogue. If you can find your
Speaker 1: printer in there under printer, select it and then press
Speaker 1: print and you can print. That's the way you can
Speaker 1: print from Chrome from here on out. If you can't
Speaker 1: figure out how to get this to recognize your printer,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call, appreciate it. Chris long Beach eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk super Bowl. Philip Swan, the TV
Speaker 1: answer man, is going to join us to talk about
Speaker 1: how you can stream the Super Bowl this year. Plus
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who has the fastest Internet speeds in
Speaker 1: the US. This is rich On Tech, who has the
Speaker 1: fastest Internet speeds in the US? New data from UKLA.
Speaker 1: These are the folks that do speed test dot net.
Speaker 1: So when you go to speed test dot net and
Speaker 1: run a quick speed test to see they are logging
Speaker 1: all of that information on the back end so they
Speaker 1: can come up with reports about you know who has
Speaker 1: good Internet. So T Mobile ranked as the fastest mobile
Speaker 1: network in the US for the second half of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four median five G download speed of two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty one megabits per second. When it came to
Speaker 1: fixed internet, AT and T Fiber is the fastest there
Speaker 1: that clocked in at three hundred and fifty seven megabits
Speaker 1: for downloads and two eighty six for uploads. And I've
Speaker 1: talked about this before, but the main difference between a
Speaker 1: fiber connection like AT and T Fiber and a cable
Speaker 1: company connection is that typically the cable company will give
Speaker 1: you a really fast download speed but a much slower
Speaker 1: upload speed, whereas fiber connections are typically the same up
Speaker 1: and down. So when they say a five hundred plan,
Speaker 1: that's usually five hundred megabits down and up. So if
Speaker 1: you're uploading large files back to the server back to
Speaker 1: the cloud, they should be just as fast as downloading.
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh had the fastest mobile speeds at three hundred and
Speaker 1: two megabits per second. Raleigh, North Carolina, had the fastest
Speaker 1: fixed internet speeds at three hundred and twenty nine megabits.
Speaker 1: This is median, so some people at faster, some at slower.
Speaker 1: Let's see Florida, let's see Ala, Alaska had the slowest
Speaker 1: speeds for both mobile and fixed internet. That's sad. If
Speaker 1: you want to see the full speed test, I'll put
Speaker 1: on the website. It's again from Ukla Okla. Michael from Glasgow, Glasgow, Glasgow,
Speaker 1: Kentucky writes in I saw a Facebook ad for something
Speaker 1: called the car Tablet pro Max and was thinking about
Speaker 1: ordering it, but I wanted to get your feedback first.
Speaker 1: I have an older car without car play. I'm not
Speaker 1: really looking to pay for a full installation. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of this product? Thanks for all you doing prayers
Speaker 1: to everyone affected by the California wildfires. I have not
Speaker 1: heard of this car Tablet Promax. Sounds interesting? Hm? Interesting? Okay.
Speaker 1: It looks like a little car play system.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: Actually doesn't look half bad. I've just never heard of it,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's good or not, but
Speaker 1: it looks kind of cool. I would check the return
Speaker 1: policy and see if it's If you, I think you
Speaker 1: can be able to return this if it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: They say they have one hundred day return policy. I'm
Speaker 1: a little I don't know This looks kind of cool. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's basically looks like a little screen you can install,
Speaker 1: like a almost like a GPS screen from back in
Speaker 1: the day. But it's got a camera on it and
Speaker 1: also CarPlay, So if you want to try it, try
Speaker 1: it. It sounds like you don't have a screen in your car,
Speaker 1: so if you want to get a car play adapter,
Speaker 1: like if you had a screen that you wanted to
Speaker 1: use with it, there's a wireless CarPlay adapter, I like
Speaker 1: call car link it, but I think that means that
Speaker 1: you already have. Oh Kim is saying they're all over
Speaker 1: TikTok okay. So yeah, I'm a little I'm always a
Speaker 1: little weary about things, or I'm always concerned when things
Speaker 1: are advertised on these sites because there's no real way
Speaker 1: to vouch for them unless someone like me tests it
Speaker 1: and let's see if there's an actual, like legitimate review. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: the first thing is like a Reddit asking yes. See.
Speaker 1: The problem is there's no one that's like actually reviewed
Speaker 1: this thing, like from like a verge or like a wirecutter.
Speaker 1: So that tells me that I'd be concerned. I'd just
Speaker 1: be a little bit concerned about this thing. So be
Speaker 1: careful and maybe buy it with a credit card, so
Speaker 1: if there's ever an issue, you can get your money
Speaker 1: back and just you know, tell them that there's a problem.
Speaker 1: Luis writes in I enjoy your morning segments on TV.
Speaker 1: I have a question. Can you recommend a digital business
Speaker 1: card app? Hey, Luis, thank you for digital business cards.
Speaker 1: I like two of them. Poppel is the one. I
Speaker 1: use popl so they were kind of the first to
Speaker 1: the market. They started out with NFC where you tap
Speaker 1: the back of your phone. Now they all use QR
Speaker 1: pretty much. Hi Hello is the other one. That one's
Speaker 1: a little bit more business friendly. But to be honest,
Speaker 1: what I do now is I just make a note
Speaker 1: on my phone with all my info and then when
Speaker 1: I meet someone out they just take a picture of it.
Speaker 1: So it's much easier than all these other apps, and
Speaker 1: it's free. Coming up, we're going to talk Super Bowl
Speaker 1: and streaming services with the TV answer man. Right here,
Speaker 1: I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. If
Speaker 1: you want links to anything I mentioned, it's all right there.
Speaker 1: Super Bowl coming up super Bowl fifty nine. Here to
Speaker 1: talk about how to stream it, how to watch it,
Speaker 1: and all things streaming is the TV answer Man, Philip Swan.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Hi Rich, thanks for joining me
Speaker 1: once again. So did I get that right? Fifty nine? Right?
Speaker 10: Super Bowl fifteen?
Speaker 1: L L I X I am.
Speaker 10: I am so old. I actually watched the first one
Speaker 10: on a thirteen inch TV.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, no way.
Speaker 10: That's a scary thought, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine you were just a little kid, so like,
Speaker 1: was it.
Speaker 10: I mean, yes, embryonic at the time. Actually, I mean
Speaker 10: I'm not wasn't even one year old yet.
Speaker 1: Let's just go with that story, okay, and it's continued
Speaker 1: to build ever since then. So we've got Chiefs Eagles
Speaker 1: this year, New Orleans, Sunday, February ninth, three point thirty
Speaker 1: pm Pacific.
Speaker 10: Yeah, right, that is specific time, okay, thirty And it's actually,
Speaker 10: as we know with these things, we'll probably got six
Speaker 10: forty AI e t for the kickoff.
Speaker 1: But it gets you to tune in a little little early.
Speaker 1: So what is so you know, you talk about on
Speaker 1: your website all things cord cutting and you know, streaming
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. So this year, what is different?
Speaker 1: Anything new? Anything different with the Super Bowl?
Speaker 10: Yeah, there is something really different and big. I think
Speaker 10: if your four KATV lobb the Fox has announced that
Speaker 10: they're going to have a four K fee for free
Speaker 10: at the pub streaming app, which is a free ad
Speaker 10: supported app, which is pretty cool. You can just go
Speaker 10: to that app and watch it for free.
Speaker 1: A four KP not incredible.
Speaker 10: It is incredible, but probably very few people know out
Speaker 10: there that there are certain conditions. You're gonna have to
Speaker 10: have an Android TV or a Roku or k ROCU
Speaker 10: what Apple TV? Yes, yes, it's like you just can't
Speaker 10: do it with any four K TV, And a lot
Speaker 10: of people are going to go to two B on
Speaker 10: Super Bowl Day and go, oh, what the heck is
Speaker 10: going on? But you got again, have an Android TV
Speaker 10: or a four K enabled Roku or a four K
Speaker 10: enabled Fire TV or Apple TV. If you don't have
Speaker 10: one of those products, you can't watch it in four
Speaker 10: K on.
Speaker 1: Two b Okay. So okay, so I was a little
Speaker 1: ahead of you. So a Google TV, a Roku, a
Speaker 1: Fire TV, or an Apple TV, but they have to
Speaker 1: be a four K model. So a lot of these people,
Speaker 1: especially with the rokus. They've got those little streaming sticks
Speaker 1: that are not they're just HD or even with fire
Speaker 1: you know, you may have just a basic so it's not.
Speaker 10: A four K enabled device. You're out of luck. Now
Speaker 10: there's one other thing that's going to be different at
Speaker 10: to Be this year to Be. If you've ever seen it,
Speaker 10: it's pretty cool. They have all kinds of movies and
Speaker 10: shows and they're all free and you don't have to
Speaker 10: register or anything, give a credit card and all that
Speaker 10: sort of stuff. You just start watching Super Bowl, you're
Speaker 10: gonna have to register, put your email down there at
Speaker 10: create an account before you can actually start.
Speaker 2: Watching the game.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. So, I mean I get it. They're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna drive a lot of downloads of this app,
Speaker 1: but they want to get that information of the viewers.
Speaker 1: So right, if you're having a party, don't do this
Speaker 1: at three point thirty PM, like sign up, download the
Speaker 1: app and make sure. So do you have to go
Speaker 1: to the website to do this hike? How do you
Speaker 1: sign up for to b?
Speaker 10: You go to the to b app where you can
Speaker 10: go to tub dot com and do it right there
Speaker 10: on their website.
Speaker 1: Either way, what is to be explained to.
Speaker 10: B is owned by Fox, and it's one of these
Speaker 10: news services that have emerged in the last two years
Speaker 10: three years. Particularly. They're free. You can go there and
Speaker 10: watch hundreds of channels, all kinds of on demand content,
Speaker 10: and all for free. However, you have to watch the
Speaker 10: ads that come with it. It's kind of like old
Speaker 10: school television of the fifties and sixties with antennas, and
Speaker 10: so you can do that with TUV and it's it's
Speaker 10: pretty cool. It's like Pluto TV and Roku Channel and
Speaker 10: things of that kind.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I mean I just watched the show Mister Wizard,
Speaker 1: Mister Wizard's World. I don't if you remember that. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid. That was a popular show, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I think my kid might like this,
Speaker 1: and so I searched and sure enough to Be which
Speaker 1: is now owned by Viacom, which I guess owns Nickelodeon.
Speaker 1: They had the whole back catalog and it was completely free,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 10: It really is. It's incredible the amount of content and
Speaker 10: programming it's on these things, and really old stuff shows,
Speaker 10: you you know, like back in the fifties that you
Speaker 10: thought would never exist anymore. Now had the whole two
Speaker 10: or three seasons, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine someone like a Fox or Paramount they
Speaker 1: literally look in these cold vaults and they're like, how
Speaker 1: can we just you know, put these online and we'll
Speaker 1: sell the ads against them? And why not?
Speaker 10: That's it exactly. And I think we're going to talk
Speaker 10: a little bit later today about Netflix's price increase and
Speaker 10: that dovetails into what they're doing with Toby and some
Speaker 10: of these three services.
Speaker 1: Well, go ahead, yeah, no, I'm curious about that because
Speaker 1: we did just see another Netflix price increase. So now
Speaker 1: the top of the line plan I think is up
Speaker 1: to like twenty five a month.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's the four K plan. It's twenty five a month.
Speaker 10: And man, you got to really love four K to
Speaker 10: pay twenty five dollars a month for Netflix just to
Speaker 10: get four K. It's not a good value. But even
Speaker 10: their fifteen forty nine plan went to seventeen ninety nine,
Speaker 10: and even their ads included plan went from six ninety
Speaker 10: nine to seven ninety nine. But it's seven ninety nine,
Speaker 10: and that looks pretty good compared to twenty five dollars,
Speaker 10: doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, Yeah, I mean, but you can't download. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you can't download offline. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the main things for me when I travel, I want
Speaker 1: to be able to download a show. Do any of
Speaker 1: these streaming services like the two bs, they probably don't
Speaker 1: let you do that either, do that?
Speaker 10: Yeah, they don't. It's again, it's it really is like
Speaker 10: the idea whose time has come again, and it's you
Speaker 10: watch television and you get ads, and you don't get
Speaker 10: anything special with it. It's no fancy whistles, bells and whistles.
Speaker 10: You just get to watch TV and ads.
Speaker 1: But that is but that is the fastest growing aspect
Speaker 1: of streaming services, right, yes.
Speaker 10: Because people still love free. What a what a surprise,
Speaker 10: They love free, and they're going to gravitate towards free.
Speaker 10: Particularly when you have the pay TV services, cable satellite,
Speaker 10: and the streaming services raising their prices all the time.
Speaker 10: It just makes them all the more. You're going to
Speaker 10: go watch the free stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So my other question is this whole fu boo
Speaker 1: they sorry, fou boo, fu bo They just increased prices
Speaker 1: I heard, and they're also there's like a merger with Hulu,
Speaker 1: so what's happening there.
Speaker 10: Well, Fubo just raised their prices by five dollars a month.
Speaker 10: That's pretty comparable to the other live streamers, YouTube TV,
Speaker 10: Hulu Live, direct TV stream and so forth. Direct TV
Speaker 10: stream can be a little more expensive if you get
Speaker 10: the regional sports network plan. But yeah, they raised the prices,
Speaker 10: and they have agreed with Disney to merge Fubo with
Speaker 10: Hulu Alive. Probably be at least a year before it
Speaker 10: gets approved by the FEDS, but that's coming, and I
Speaker 10: think it's going to be an interesting thing what happens
Speaker 10: with the live streaming category, whether you're going to have
Speaker 10: made a direct TV stream go well, you know, maybe
Speaker 10: we should be hooking up with Sling TV to combat
Speaker 10: Fubo and Hulu.
Speaker 1: Wow, so we've already gotten far enough into the streaming
Speaker 1: where now we're seeing mergers and streaming And.
Speaker 10: Yeah, the live streaming category started ten years ago with
Speaker 10: Sling TV, and it never developed the way companies thought
Speaker 10: it would. It's really it's maybe got about twenty million
Speaker 10: tops now in subscribers when you combine them all the
Speaker 10: top five or six live streaming services, and that's not
Speaker 10: a big chunk over ten years so it's time for consolidation.
Speaker 10: So you'll have probably maybe two or three services in
Speaker 10: maybe eighteen to twenty four months. That's my prediction.
Speaker 1: Wow, I did not realize that's such a small amount
Speaker 1: of subscribers. I mean, that is not a significant amount.
Speaker 10: Well, it's not a surprise, rich because again because they
Speaker 10: have had raised prices, they're not that much different than
Speaker 10: a cable satellite does service. Now when you're talking Fubo
Speaker 10: and YouTube TV and who live eighty ninety dollars a month,
Speaker 10: you know, that's pretty much what you were paying for
Speaker 10: cable and satellite a couple of years ago or maybe
Speaker 10: even now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still a pain to find where your game
Speaker 1: is playing before I run thoughts on direct TV my sports,
Speaker 1: who's that for it is?
Speaker 10: That's a good question, because I don't think there's an
Speaker 10: audience for it if they're charging seventy dollars a month
Speaker 10: for what is basically twenty five channels, and it's a
Speaker 10: combination of sports channels and news channels basically and broadcast,
Speaker 10: and it's designed to be the kind of the all
Speaker 10: you know, great sports plan. If you are a sports lover,
Speaker 10: you'll pretty much have the channel that do all the
Speaker 10: sports program and the problem is with the plan, they
Speaker 10: don't have all the sports channels. They don't have TVs,
Speaker 10: they don't have TNT, they don't even have CBS now
Speaker 10: and so consequently, if you're a sports fan, you're gonna
Speaker 10: miss a lot of great sports on direct TV's my
Speaker 10: sports plan. So it's it's an idea that makes sense
Speaker 10: in theory, but in execution right now, it's leaves a
Speaker 10: lot to be desired.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna leave it there. Philip Swan, the
Speaker 1: TV Answerman tvanswerman dot com. Who do you have in
Speaker 1: this year Super Bowl? Before we run?
Speaker 10: I see the Eagles winning sixty three eat nothing. All right,
Speaker 10: that's what I'm hoping for. Different I think I think
Speaker 10: the Chiefs are gonna win.
Speaker 1: I have to say, all right, TV Aanswerman dot Com.
Speaker 1: Check him out. He's got all the info on all
Speaker 1: of the streaming services. Philip Swan, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, rich all right, appreciate it. Coming up, we
Speaker 1: are going to open up the feedbag, so we'll read
Speaker 1: some of the emails that you sent this week. Plus
Speaker 1: I got a couple of things here. Google's new game,
Speaker 1: the website that helps you spot a scam, and a
Speaker 1: helpful website with online tools. It's all coming up right
Speaker 1: here on rich On Tech. Let's get to a couple
Speaker 1: of items before we open up the feedbag, which is
Speaker 1: just overflowing as usual. I'll get to as many of
Speaker 1: these as I can. But first off, helpful website to
Speaker 1: help you detect scam. So if you get a text
Speaker 1: message or an email, just take a screenshot of it
Speaker 1: and upload it to this website and it will analyze
Speaker 1: it using AI and tell you if it thinks it's
Speaker 1: real or not. And so the website is scam dot Ai.
Speaker 1: It's brand new and it can tell you if a
Speaker 1: deep fake image is real, anything any image or screenshot,
Speaker 1: it'll analyze it and it's pretty good. I tried it
Speaker 1: with something and it worked. Another website that's helpful browser
Speaker 1: links online tools, so you know sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: like convert a picture or resize something, or replace text,
Speaker 1: or shuffle words or convert words to numbers. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many tools here and it's really really simple,
Speaker 1: and it's all done through the browser. It's called onlinetools,
Speaker 1: dot com bookmarket. There are just so many tools you
Speaker 1: can search for what you want to do, but they've
Speaker 1: got them all listed there. I mean, there's so many tools,
Speaker 1: PNG tools, jpeg tools, text tools, image tools, list tools,
Speaker 1: time tools. I mean, there's just everything you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: And they get pretty nerdy too, like the fractal tools,
Speaker 1: integer tools. Anyway, it's all on there online tools dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a great bookmark. And then finally, if you want
Speaker 1: to have some fun, search block Breaker on Google. They
Speaker 1: just added a hidden arcade style game and search. You
Speaker 1: don't have to download anything. Just search block Breaker on
Speaker 1: Google and tap play and it's basically, you know the
Speaker 1: old school game, the arcade style. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Atari Breakout, but you know Google's version. All right, all
Speaker 1: that's linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Let's open up the feedbag. Let's see Gary writes in
Speaker 1: I picked up the Pixel nine Pro for on sale
Speaker 1: for about nine hundred and fifty dollars. It's been a
Speaker 1: big upgrade from the Samsung S twenty four FE. The
Speaker 1: sound quality both for calls and media is better, no
Speaker 1: more shrill, tinny audio. The cameras also sharper, especially when
Speaker 1: taking pictures of my handwritten notes. The Pixel nine pros
Speaker 1: slightly smaller size and lighter weight makes it more pocketable,
Speaker 1: which I appreciate. That said, I still prefer Samsung's UI.
Speaker 1: It's more customizable and what I'm used to, but overall,
Speaker 1: I am happy with the switch. Thanks for letting me know.
Speaker 1: Gary Germo from Los Angeles writes in Uber Eats gave
Speaker 1: me the run around after a delivery fail. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a phone number to contact them, and when I
Speaker 1: finally emailed customer service, they told me I'd missed the
Speaker 1: forty eight hour window to report the issue. I disputed
Speaker 1: the charge with my credit card and got a refund.
Speaker 1: But now Uber Eats wants their money and I can't
Speaker 1: use the app unless I pay them. Oh well, not
Speaker 1: hoping for this to happen again. I think Girmo was
Speaker 1: replying to me posting on Instagram a warning because I
Speaker 1: had a problem with my delivery order. I didn't say
Speaker 1: anything for over three days, and when I did, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, sorry, forty eight hours. So if you
Speaker 1: have a problem with your Uber Eats, get in touch
Speaker 1: with them immediately, don't wait like I did. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Rick writes in I bought the Samsung Galaxy Ultra unlocked
Speaker 1: five hundred and twelve gigs from Samsung dot Com for
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars plus tax. That price includes my five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars trade in on the S twenty one, plus
Speaker 1: an eighty dollars credit for online purchases at check out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the tip. All right, enjoy Rick, I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna love it, Sarah writes in don't knock cassettes.
Speaker 1: I use a radio cassette frequently to record a radio
Speaker 1: show and listen later. No Wi Fi needed. I may
Speaker 1: not be in California, but I'm thankful for Wi Fi
Speaker 1: to catch your show. Oh you're recording my show. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's amazing. Someone's recording this show on cassette
Speaker 1: and listening to it. I love it, Sarah. I must
Speaker 1: have made fun of a cassette tape on another show,
Speaker 1: but I don't hate cassettes. I many many years using cassettes.
Speaker 1: George from Temple Rights in another family tear jerker is
Speaker 1: the Disney film Old Yeller. When I was in when
Speaker 1: it was in theaters, kids and parents alike were left crying.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen it, it's a great family movie.
Speaker 1: George is replying to my wild Robot recommendation last week,
Speaker 1: and it was great, but I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: ready for another cry. I did watch a movie last night,
Speaker 1: The Saturday Night Movie by Jason Reitman. Excellent. If you
Speaker 1: like Starday Night Live or whatever, it's just great. Goes
Speaker 1: By flies by that movie. And by the way, another
Speaker 1: recommendation the Letterboxed app. I don't know if you know
Speaker 1: this one letter Boxed. I think it's b letter box
Speaker 1: bo x D so no E letter boxed and it's
Speaker 1: for iPhone and Android. But it's now my favorite app
Speaker 1: for like following movies I want to watch and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It's really great. It's very it's just it's excellent,
Speaker 1: all right. Moving on Blair from Santa Barbara writes in
Speaker 1: stop Drop is a great product to prevent losing things
Speaker 1: under your car seat, founded on Amazon for twenty five dollars.
Speaker 1: Love your show. I think Blair was responding to the
Speaker 1: fact that I said, when I wear sweatpants in my car,
Speaker 1: I always all this stuff always drops out into the
Speaker 1: crevice between the seat and the door or the seat
Speaker 1: and the middle console. And I think stop Drop was
Speaker 1: a Shark Tank product thanks, maybe I'll get one. Let's
Speaker 1: see long, Ben wrights in. Long in the Tooth comes
Speaker 1: from the practice of checking a horse's age by examining
Speaker 1: its teeth, where seeding gums made them appear longer. Similarly,
Speaker 1: don't look a gift Horse in the Mouth advises against
Speaker 1: assessing the value of a gift, encouraging gratitude instead of scrutiny.
Speaker 1: I must have used long, long in the tooth because
Speaker 1: I was talking about sayings that we say, and long
Speaker 1: in the tooth. It's like we say this stuff and like, wait,
Speaker 1: where did that come from? Long in the tooth? Now
Speaker 1: we know horses and Robert rights In. I'm listening in
Speaker 1: Federal Heights, Colorado, while delivering mail. I love your show, well, Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you. I always wonder what the mail carriers listen
Speaker 1: to while they're delivering, because my guy does too. He's
Speaker 1: always listening to something or he's on the phone. But
Speaker 1: he always says hi, and we always say, Hey, how's
Speaker 1: it going, what's up? Always a smile on his face.
Speaker 1: John from Haines City rights in you recently talked about
Speaker 1: charging cell phones in an emergency using battery packs. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised you didn't mention the most obvious option your car.
Speaker 1: Many cars, including my twenty year old Ford X Expedition,
Speaker 1: have live twelve volt outlets even when the ignition is off.
Speaker 1: Cars typically have large batteries, ranging from fifty to ninety Ah.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's ampier hours, making them a great resource
Speaker 1: for charging phones, even for the whole neighborhood. If the
Speaker 1: battery starts to run low, just charge the engine and
Speaker 1: let it recharge at idle. Okay, you know, John, good tip,
Speaker 1: But I didn't think about that because you know, I
Speaker 1: do have an electric car, so of course you can
Speaker 1: always charge stuff from there. But I imagine in an
Speaker 1: emergency people might be conserving their gas or their battery.
Speaker 1: But yes, that is a great option. And I'm glad
Speaker 1: you didn't call it the cigarette lighter, because that's what
Speaker 1: I think of every time I see that. All right,
Speaker 1: that's going to do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to Richontech dot TV. Can find me on
Speaker 1: social media. I am at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I'm on X I'm on Facebook, very active on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and don't forget This show is also available as a podcast,
Speaker 1: so if you miss an up, just search in your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast app or audio app for Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Next week, we're going to talk to YouTuber Jimmy is Promo.
Speaker 1: You might follow him for all of his Samsung stuff.
Speaker 1: He's going to offer some Samsung tips and tricks for
Speaker 1: your new phone. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend your time. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this show possible. Adam in for Bobo this week.
Speaker 1: Kim on Phones. My name is Richdmiro. I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you real soon.