Speaker 1: Top tech from IFA twenty twenty three in Berlin, Germany.
Speaker 1: Apple and Google announced dates for their next big events.
Speaker 1: The day the government will blast you with an emergency
Speaker 1: text message, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich dmiro and this is rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should
Speaker 1: be interesting, useful and fun. Phone lines are now open
Speaker 1: at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also open. Just go to my website rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot TV, hit contact and your message will
Speaker 1: make it right to my inbox instantly, no delay. There.
Speaker 1: Guests this week on the show Oliver Merlin, Managing director
Speaker 1: of EFA Management, and Mark Vina, principal analyst at Smart
Speaker 1: Tech Research. They will join me to talk about what
Speaker 1: I'm doing here and where am I? Berlin, Germany. That's
Speaker 1: right coming to you live from Berlin site of IFA
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. This is Europe's version of CES. So
Speaker 1: hear me talk about CS in Las Vegas. Every year
Speaker 1: Europe does their own show called EFA and it is
Speaker 1: a big, big show. Believe me, my legs are tired
Speaker 1: from walking it. More than two thousand exhibitors from forty
Speaker 1: eight countries, twenty six halls, So when you go to
Speaker 1: CS it's a couple of big giant halls. In Las
Speaker 1: Vegas used to be three basically three giant halls plus
Speaker 1: some stuff scattered throughout the city. This is twenty six halls,
Speaker 1: different levels in each hall, and they're kind of like
Speaker 1: little little kind of rooms and you just make your
Speaker 1: way through all this one hundred and thirty thousand square
Speaker 1: meters of stuff to see. It is kind of like
Speaker 1: a tech festival. There is food, there is drink. And
Speaker 1: the big difference between this show and the show in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is that visitors are welcome. The public is
Speaker 1: invited to buy a ticket to this show, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like going to the largest best buy you've
Speaker 1: ever seen. With one hundred and eighty thousand people over
Speaker 1: five days, it's pretty pretty wild. They also have a
Speaker 1: summer garden in the middle of it all. Excuse my
Speaker 1: boord German. I haven't learned too many words since I've
Speaker 1: been here. It's been a fun trip, it's been a
Speaker 1: fun event. And I love doing stuff like this because
Speaker 1: it really gives you so much perspective on the different
Speaker 1: companies and the different brands, not just in the US
Speaker 1: but around the world. Now. Whenever I do a trip
Speaker 1: like this, I always get lots of thoughts on international travel,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the questions I get are about
Speaker 1: international travel because it's something that many people do maybe
Speaker 1: once twice a year, and I have the ability to
Speaker 1: do it a couple of times.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's actually been a lot more recently when COVID was happening,
Speaker 1: it was like everything stopped, you know, even domestic travel.
Speaker 1: But I did get to try for the first time
Speaker 1: on my way out here, my new California digital driver's license.
Speaker 1: So a couple of states, just a handful of states,
Speaker 1: have been testing digital driver's licenses, and I downloaded the
Speaker 1: what is it called, It's like the DMV my wallet app,
Speaker 1: and you download that, you scan your driver's license, you
Speaker 1: scan your face, and then somehow State of California verifies
Speaker 1: you are who you say you are, and they give
Speaker 1: you a digital copy of your driver's license on your phone. Now,
Speaker 1: before you get too excited. California, I don't know why
Speaker 1: they're not doing this, but they are not part of
Speaker 1: Apple's wallet, so many of the other states that have
Speaker 1: done this. You can get this inside your Apple wallet
Speaker 1: or eventually your Google wallet, which makes it very easy.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like using your tap to pay cards,
Speaker 1: like your debit or credit card, but this is a
Speaker 1: separate app. So I went to TSA and I, you know,
Speaker 1: went up to the guy and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I use this digital driver's license.
Speaker 1: Expecting a little bit of grief, he said, no, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Let me let me fire up the machine because I'm
Speaker 1: curious how it works. I've never used it before. And
Speaker 1: so he turned on the machine and they you know,
Speaker 1: you open up your app. It's called the California DMV app.
Speaker 1: It generates a QR code. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: couple of ways to verify. I think one of them
Speaker 1: is tap. One of them is a QR code. We
Speaker 1: use the QR code, so you scan the code with
Speaker 1: this little machine and then you look at a camera
Speaker 1: and then I guess it somehow matches those things up.
Speaker 1: But the main thing to know if you ever try
Speaker 1: to do this, and I'm sure you probably never will
Speaker 1: maybe eventually in a couple of years. But when you
Speaker 1: scan the QR code, you get a little pop up
Speaker 1: on your phone that says, hey, do you want to
Speaker 1: hand over your personal information? But the problem is you're
Speaker 1: looking at the camera and the TSA person is also
Speaker 1: looking at their screen waiting for you to do something.
Speaker 1: So the first time I did this, it timed out,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, really, you know, of course
Speaker 1: I'm holding up the line and I'm starting to like,
Speaker 1: oh no, is this not going to work? And so
Speaker 1: he said, well, let's try it again. We tried it again,
Speaker 1: and I saw the little pop up the second time,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, I have to agree to hand
Speaker 1: over my information to you. So we did it twice,
Speaker 1: but it worked very well the second time, and I've
Speaker 1: got to say it's kind of cool, although you really
Speaker 1: can't use it anywhere. The only two places I know
Speaker 1: of that you can use it right now are San
Speaker 1: Francisco Airport and LAX and of course a smattering of
Speaker 1: other airports across the nation. But it's not a very
Speaker 1: good system just yet. But I don't know if you've noticed,
Speaker 1: if you traveled. Lately, they're not even asking you to
Speaker 1: scan your boarding pass anymore. When you go to an airport,
Speaker 1: they just basically take your ID. They scan your ID
Speaker 1: somehow that matches up with the flight records, and they
Speaker 1: send you on your merry way. So that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else you travel. You really have to
Speaker 1: have a tech plan figured out in advance, because if
Speaker 1: you mess up on even one of these things, if
Speaker 1: you trip, it's gonna cost you. So Number one E
Speaker 1: SIM I talked about this. This is an electronic SIM card.
Speaker 1: Buy those before you leave. Now in the old days,
Speaker 1: you would buy a SIM when you got your destination,
Speaker 1: usually in the airport, and you would pop this little
Speaker 1: card into your phone. So Number one your cell phone provider,
Speaker 1: and many times, if you have T Mobile, your phone's
Speaker 1: just gonna work and it's gonna be included in your plan. Overseas,
Speaker 1: Verizon in AT and T typically charge about ten dollars
Speaker 1: a day to use your phone in a foreign country.
Speaker 1: That can add up very quickly, and you can purchase
Speaker 1: a prepaid eSIM for a lot cheaper than that now
Speaker 1: on your plan. Also, you may have banks of days
Speaker 1: that you get included if you've been a customer for
Speaker 1: a long time, they might accrue over time, so be
Speaker 1: sure to check before you leave and before you buy anything.
Speaker 1: If AT and T or Verizon has some like free
Speaker 1: days included in your plan. For me, as soon as
Speaker 1: I landed, it said hey, you have like sixteen days left,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh wow, that's pretty cool. So for
Speaker 1: my primary phone, I just left it on that and
Speaker 1: for my other phone, I use the eSIM. The other thing,
Speaker 1: obviously a travel plug adapter. There are two types. There's
Speaker 1: a voltage adapter and there's just a regular adapter. If
Speaker 1: you're just traveling with standard electronics like your iPhone charger
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, you just need a travel plug adapter.
Speaker 1: They're like twenty five dollars. You have to have a
Speaker 1: portable battery bank, that's for sure, and a USB cable
Speaker 1: for the plane. Now keep in mind on the plane,
Speaker 1: many of the planes are still using the old style USB,
Speaker 1: which is like the big adapter at the end. Many
Speaker 1: of us are using at home USB C because that's
Speaker 1: what the phones have been coming with. So just keep
Speaker 1: in mind if you're going to charge on the plane,
Speaker 1: you either need a USBC adapter or you need to
Speaker 1: bring an old school cable, So take one of your
Speaker 1: older cables that charges your phone. That's what I did,
Speaker 1: and so I use that. That was great. Same thing
Speaker 1: for earbuds. If you want to use the seatback entertainment
Speaker 1: and use your own Bluetooth earbuds, you're gonna need an
Speaker 1: adapter because most of the seatback entertainment systems do not
Speaker 1: allow you to connect via Bluetooth. It's still wired. Now.
Speaker 1: Some of the new planes, especially on United and some
Speaker 1: of the other carriers, are getting Bluetooth, but it's very
Speaker 1: hit or miss. So if you want to make sure
Speaker 1: you want to use your own stuff, you can get
Speaker 1: an adapter like this thing called the Airfly from a
Speaker 1: company named twelve South. The person sitting next to me
Speaker 1: was using it, and it's about fifty dollars. You plug
Speaker 1: it into the little USB and it becomes a Bluetooth
Speaker 1: receiver for your earbuds. I guess a receiver and a transmitter,
Speaker 1: so it goes back and forth. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a mid middleman between the seatback entertainment and your earbuds. Now,
Speaker 1: I will tell you something that's a little interesting about me.
Speaker 1: I do not watch movies on the seatback. I know
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing, and I feel like I've been
Speaker 1: doing it for so long where I refuse to do
Speaker 1: it that I still don't do it even if I
Speaker 1: see a movie I want to see there, I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm favoring my own entertainment. And for this trip, I
Speaker 1: took the Pixel Fold from Google. I've been testing this out.
Speaker 1: This is a foldable phone, and I wanted to see
Speaker 1: what it was like to use a foldable phone to
Speaker 1: watch a movie. So I watched the new Adam Sandler
Speaker 1: movie on Netflix, which I thought was pretty funny, although
Speaker 1: when I texted with a couple of family members on
Speaker 1: our group chat, they disagreed with me. I still think
Speaker 1: it's funny. But I watched this on the fold, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. So I love the size of this phone,
Speaker 1: and the outer screen is very usable compared to what
Speaker 1: Samsung has, which is very narrow. But the Pixel Fold
Speaker 1: is heavy. It gets hot, and it's very slippery because
Speaker 1: it's such a smooth, slick phone. But if you put
Speaker 1: a case on it, it's too big. So it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where people are trying to push the
Speaker 1: carriers and the companies are trying to push foldable phones.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they're there just yet. And there's another
Speaker 1: reason why I'm using the inside screen may a couple
Speaker 1: of times a day, whereas if you're getting a foldable phone,
Speaker 1: you probably want to use that inside screen a lot. Now.
Speaker 1: It is good for a lot of things like watching videos,
Speaker 1: looking at photos, checking your email, but I'm just not
Speaker 1: opening it enough. And by the way, in just a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks i've had this sample unit from Google,
Speaker 1: I already got something caught in the middle of the
Speaker 1: screens because it kind of pushed in in the middle.
Speaker 1: It's like a little tiny looks like a little piece
Speaker 1: of sand gotten there or something and just made an indentation.
Speaker 1: And of course that's not very fun. It looks very
Speaker 1: annoying when I look at the screen. Now, all right,
Speaker 1: we've got plenty more to talk about on my trip here.
Speaker 1: We've got plenty of guests lined up for the show.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about Apple and Google. They have
Speaker 1: both announced the dates when they are going to launch
Speaker 1: their next phones, and I'm seeing a lot of pixel
Speaker 1: phones over here in Europe, of course, a lot of
Speaker 1: iPhones as well. But first it is your turn give
Speaker 1: me a phone call at Triple A rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: It is eight eight eight seven four to two for
Speaker 1: one zero one. Give me a call if you have
Speaker 1: a question about technology. Even though I am so far
Speaker 1: away today, it will still be a free call for
Speaker 1: you anywhere you are in the US. My name is
Speaker 1: rich Dumuro and you are listening to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one, broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany today.
Speaker 1: But don't let that dissuade you from calling in. John
Speaker 1: from a Brainerd, Minnesota is online one. John, You're on.
Speaker 2: With rich.
Speaker 3: Information.
Speaker 4: The situation I got going on is I listened to
Speaker 4: podcasts in some music on my Android phone on occasion,
Speaker 4: and I have two yearbuds, separate ones, and a set
Speaker 4: of Bowen and duck headset after Shock brand name whatever.
Speaker 4: And the problem I'm having is I'll be listening to
Speaker 4: it and all of a sudden it'll shut off, it'll
Speaker 4: turn back on, it'll shut off, turn back on, random time,
Speaker 4: random length of time. And I've been buy my phone
Speaker 4: at the bottom of the phone. If I see it,
Speaker 4: it'll say Google Assistant is here to assist you.
Speaker 1: Please turn on.
Speaker 4: Well, I believe that it's something similar to Siri, and
Speaker 4: I don't want it.
Speaker 3: I don't want to listen to me.
Speaker 4: But that's beyond the point. But it keeps coming up.
Speaker 4: And one of the more annoying things is if I
Speaker 4: haven't shut off, I'll be walking around my workshop here
Speaker 4: working all of a sudden I'll hear on ear piece
Speaker 4: it says calling last number dials, and it does it,
Speaker 4: and sometimes just clicks it on for a second, or
Speaker 4: sometimes it stays on for a while. And I've gotten
Speaker 4: a point now where I call my landlines so I'm
Speaker 4: not calling somebody accidentally, or it's not calling somebody accidentally
Speaker 4: to know them. But I've never subscribed to it. I've
Speaker 4: gone on my settings. It's not turned on, but it
Speaker 4: it keeps coming up, and only when I have these
Speaker 4: the Aftershock headset on.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, a couple of things here. Number one, I
Speaker 1: just was talking with the Aftershock folks yesterday. They were
Speaker 1: here at at EPHA, so they were showing off some
Speaker 1: new new headsets. These are These are kind of uh
Speaker 1: a lot of them are aimed for like swimming and
Speaker 1: underwater and any sort of like they're very like durable
Speaker 1: in wet conditions. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I like them because like where I'm in a machining
Speaker 4: welding shop, self employed. And what I like about them
Speaker 4: is I can put in earplugs and actually the celling
Speaker 4: gets better through the through the bone induction system, and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I can still do about my work and
Speaker 4: be able to listen good in the.
Speaker 5: Song quality I think is decent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're known, they're known to be good. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's what I think A couple of things that
Speaker 1: I think need to be done. Number one, have you
Speaker 1: downloaded the aftershocks app? Do they have a specific app
Speaker 1: that you can download to maybe update the firmware and
Speaker 1: also change any settings on these devices because built in
Speaker 1: by default it looks like these want to activate the
Speaker 1: Google Assistant. Okay, I have not.
Speaker 3: I'm not too savvy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I would go on the app. Are you
Speaker 1: on You're on Android? You said? So I would go
Speaker 1: on the Android Google Play and I would download. I
Speaker 1: would go to you know, search for the after shocks app,
Speaker 1: so look for that and then when you do that,
Speaker 1: that may unlock all of the settings for these headphones,
Speaker 1: and that's where you can go in and turn off
Speaker 1: the Google Assistant trigger. Now, I will tell you it's
Speaker 1: funny you say this because I literally have been testing
Speaker 1: these Sony headphones and I was using them on my
Speaker 1: way here, and every time you push the side of
Speaker 1: the headphone, like if they're falling out of your ear
Speaker 1: a little bit, which I don't like about these headphones.
Speaker 1: But every time I would push it, the Google Assistant
Speaker 1: would trigger, and so it would of course stop your music,
Speaker 1: interrupt things. You'd have to make sure you remain quiet
Speaker 1: so it doesn't get a false command. And so I
Speaker 1: went in, I downloaded the Sony app and I went
Speaker 1: in and disabled it from there. It took me a
Speaker 1: little bit to figure out how to do it, but
Speaker 1: that is one way.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: The other way you can do it is usually in
Speaker 1: Google Assistant. There is a setting, so if you tap in,
Speaker 1: if you open up the Google app and tap settings
Speaker 1: and then you look for Google Assistant, there is usually
Speaker 1: a setting that says over headphones or over Bluetooth, and
Speaker 1: you can disable it there as well. So those are
Speaker 1: the main things that I would do. I don't think
Speaker 1: these headphones. I don't think there's anything wrong with them.
Speaker 1: I just think it is an errant command of Google
Speaker 1: thinking that you want to activate it. And when I
Speaker 1: look on their website, it says there's a couple of
Speaker 1: ways to activate. Obviously, it's hands free if you say
Speaker 1: the hot word, which is you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say, because I don't want to activate everyone's headphones,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's usually it's something about Google. And
Speaker 1: then the other way is kind of pressing and holding
Speaker 1: a button on the side, or maybe pressing it twice.
Speaker 1: So those are the steps that I would take to
Speaker 1: try to disable this from happening. But there are there
Speaker 1: are multiple ways that Google may trigger and usually if
Speaker 1: you download the native headphones app, that should really give
Speaker 1: you the most control over these headphones. Because headphones typically
Speaker 1: don't have Google Assistant built in, it's usually a special thing,
Speaker 1: and so because of that, they usually have the special
Speaker 1: software that will allow you to disable that and also
Speaker 1: tweak it, because not everyone wants that, as we all know.
Speaker 1: Good question. Thanks so much for calling today from Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Appreciate the call.
Speaker 7: John.
Speaker 1: More of your calls coming up next at Triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. I have mentioned that
Speaker 1: I'm here in Berlin, Germany, and I'll tell you I've
Speaker 1: been testing Apple Maps versus Google Maps, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give the slight edge to Google Maps for public transportation.
Speaker 1: But i will say that if you're walking, Apple Maps
Speaker 1: is better with the turn by turn transit or turn
Speaker 1: by turn walking directions if you have an Apple Watch.
Speaker 1: But before you go to any other city, any any
Speaker 1: travel city, download Maps offline. That's a pro tip right there,
Speaker 1: so you don't need a cellular connection. More rich on
Speaker 1: Tech coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. And
Speaker 1: it's a big week if you like phones and gadgets,
Speaker 1: because both Google and Apple announced separate events. Google's holding
Speaker 1: their event on October fourth. There they will announce the
Speaker 1: Pixel eight and the Pixel watch too. Well expected to announce.
Speaker 1: They don't say what they're going to announce, but Google
Speaker 1: kind of. That'll happen in New York City. They called
Speaker 1: the Made by Google Event. It'll be ten am Eastern time.
Speaker 1: They'll live stream it. Google invited me. I typically go
Speaker 1: to these things they get that usually you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of hands on before the general public, maybe
Speaker 1: like a week or so before the phones go on sales,
Speaker 1: so that's always nice. And then Apple announced they're doing
Speaker 1: their event on September twelfth, and they're gonna announce the iPhone. Well,
Speaker 1: of course they don't say what they're gonna announce, but
Speaker 1: it's the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and maybe some other goodies.
Speaker 1: Joining me now is Mark German from Bloomberg Technology reporter,
Speaker 1: and Mark, welcome to Welcome.
Speaker 6: Back to the show for having thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: All Right, so you are the expert in all things Apple.
Speaker 1: You are known for your proven track record of basically
Speaker 1: telling people in your weekly columns at Bloomberg and your
Speaker 1: newsletter what Apple is going to announce before they announce it.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to ask you how you do
Speaker 1: it because that's probably a proprietary secret. But you do it.
Speaker 1: It's great and what can we expect from this event.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So for Apple September twelfth Wonderlust launch, there's going
Speaker 6: to be three main areas, the phone, the iPhone fifteen,
Speaker 6: the Apple Watch, as well as the AirPod. So you
Speaker 6: will see the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Plus, as well
Speaker 6: as fifteen Pro and Pro Macs. We'll see in Apple
Speaker 6: Watch Series nine, we'll see a second generation Apple Watch Ultra,
Speaker 6: and we'll also see new AirPods Pro with a USBC connector.
Speaker 6: That's the new charging port that they're bringing to all
Speaker 6: of the iPhones.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start with the iPhones because that's typically
Speaker 1: what people are most excited about. So iPhone fifteen and
Speaker 1: iPhone fifteen Pro, and then there's two versions of each
Speaker 1: of those. What is going to be different about the
Speaker 1: phones this year?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So for the base phones that's the fifteen and
Speaker 6: fifteen plus, they're going to look the same almost as
Speaker 6: the fourteen in fourteen plus with a few variations. So
Speaker 6: the back is not going to be glossy anymore. It's
Speaker 6: going to be a map back like the pro phones.
Speaker 6: And then they're also going to get some of the
Speaker 6: pro features from last year. Three main ones, the A
Speaker 6: sixteen chip from the fourteen Pro, the dynamic Island, and
Speaker 6: the new back camera system of that forty eight nigapixel camera,
Speaker 6: So basically last year's enhancements at a lower price. And
Speaker 6: then the high end phones, the Pro and Pro max
Speaker 6: is where they're actually going to make the new changes,
Speaker 6: the new stuff. It's going to have a titanium frame
Speaker 6: that makes the phone quite a bit lighter. They'll have
Speaker 6: a three nanimeter chip which is quite a bit more
Speaker 6: efficient for better battery life. You're going to have a
Speaker 6: new screen technology called LPO, which is a new manufacturing
Speaker 6: process that allows them to make the borders around the
Speaker 6: display much thinner, and you're going to get that overall
Speaker 6: new design thinks of that titanium frame. So it's going
Speaker 6: to be quite an impressive upgrade, probably the biggest upgrade
Speaker 6: in a few years. And so I think a lot
Speaker 6: of people have been holding out and waiting for this phone.
Speaker 6: So it should be a bit of a major cycle
Speaker 6: for Apple.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the base phones, the iPhone
Speaker 1: fifteen and the iPhone fifteen plus, these are the phones
Speaker 1: that presumably most people buy, most people are interested in
Speaker 1: because they are the I mean, they're not inexpensive, but
Speaker 1: they're the least expensive of the new lineup. So they
Speaker 1: get last year's chip, they get dynamic island, which is
Speaker 1: that little pill shaped area in the top of the phone,
Speaker 1: and they also get the better camera. So it's almost
Speaker 1: like last year's phone, but in a new kind of body.
Speaker 6: It's essentially last year's phone in a less premium body
Speaker 6: because it's an aluminum frame versus the steel frame of
Speaker 6: last year the titanium frame of the pros this year.
Speaker 6: So it is probably a pretty good value. My sense
Speaker 6: actually though, is that from the get go, in terms
Speaker 6: of purchases, in the first few months or so, most
Speaker 6: of those purchases actually lean towards the pro phones. Believe
Speaker 6: it or not, right, even though the thing is a
Speaker 6: bit high. Yeah, I mean it's people look at the
Speaker 6: price differences. It's about two hundred dollars three hundred dollars
Speaker 6: delta between the low end phones and the high end phones.
Speaker 6: And then most of their sales now are on monthly
Speaker 6: plans or some sort of subsidy, and so you're talking
Speaker 6: about five to fifteen dollars difference per month, and so
Speaker 6: a lot of people push up to the higher end phones. Anyways,
Speaker 6: But if you look at over time, these lower end phones,
Speaker 6: as those prices come down, but for instance, the fifteen
Speaker 6: to fifteen plus I think are going to be extraordinarily
Speaker 6: popular in like a year or two from now, right
Speaker 6: as those prices come down to the four hundred and
Speaker 6: five hundred dollars range.
Speaker 1: Right right now. One thing I'm curious about is the
Speaker 1: refresh rate on the standard phones. Has that caught up
Speaker 1: to the premium the pros No, I.
Speaker 6: Believe they're about two years away from moving to the
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty hertz. On the lower end phones,
Speaker 6: they're still going to be. I believe it's a sixty
Speaker 6: or ninety hertz refresh rate. And it's so interesting because
Speaker 6: nobody knew that they wanted one hundred and twenty hertz
Speaker 6: refresh rate until they had it on the propones and
Speaker 6: on the iPad pro right right now, it's so impressive
Speaker 6: on the propones, and it's if you compare it side
Speaker 6: by side, it is such a big difference that you
Speaker 6: wouldn't know until you look at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing. If you're using an iPhone,
Speaker 1: you know, a standard one that doesn't have the higher
Speaker 1: refresh rate, you would never really know. And my wife,
Speaker 1: so every time I basically use my wife's phone, I
Speaker 1: notice it and I'm like, wow, this almost feels like
Speaker 1: it's slower than my phone because it just doesn't have
Speaker 1: that smooth refresh rate.
Speaker 6: But if you're not refresh rates right, But the performance
Speaker 6: is pretty good overall, but like when you just look
Speaker 6: at it, it just looks so much different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. Okay, So now what about the
Speaker 1: USB C switchover? Is that going to happen with the phones?
Speaker 6: So the USBC change will happen across all four phones
Speaker 6: in the air pods, and obviously this is because of
Speaker 6: the European Union. The benefits to consumers now is you
Speaker 6: can have one charging cable that will work on your map,
Speaker 6: your iPad, and your iPhone and your ex generation AirPods.
Speaker 6: You no longer you need to jump, you know, between
Speaker 6: lightning and USBC and all that. So this is going
Speaker 6: to be quite an improvement for consumers, but also a
Speaker 6: headache for those who are now going to need to
Speaker 6: buy new charging bricks and new accessories.
Speaker 2: And the like.
Speaker 1: Now people always joke, and I'm sure the mets will
Speaker 1: come out that Apple continues to change the charging port
Speaker 1: on the bottom. I remember when it happened from the
Speaker 1: thirty pin connector to lightning. People are complaining, but it's
Speaker 1: been a while since that happened.
Speaker 6: Right, It's been eleven years since the last charging change.
Speaker 6: There was in twenty sixteen, the headphone jack removal. I
Speaker 6: have to tell you, I don't think this is a
Speaker 6: change that Apple wanted to make. I don't think this
Speaker 6: is something that they would have chosen to do on
Speaker 6: their own. I think there's a lot of drawbacks for
Speaker 6: them from moving to USBC on the iPhone. This is
Speaker 6: something that they're doing pretty much, almost exclusively to appease
Speaker 6: the European Commission. It is a law there, and then
Speaker 6: you're seeing more and more places try to bring this
Speaker 6: into law, believe it or not. I actually read the
Speaker 6: other day, actually yesterday, that California, just the state of California,
Speaker 6: they're bringing a bill to action next year related to USBC.
Speaker 6: And so this is something that was going to continue.
Speaker 6: It was going to be a drum beat, it was
Speaker 6: going to be something that would snowball and have a
Speaker 6: domino effect, and all sorts of countries were going to
Speaker 6: push it this. I believe even India was talking about
Speaker 6: USBC as well as a bill.
Speaker 1: Well, it does eventually make things easier, obviously less proprietary.
Speaker 1: What about the zoom on these phones are they going
Speaker 1: to get Is the zoom going to get any better?
Speaker 6: The zoom is the same on the first three phones.
Speaker 6: The top end phone, you're moving from a three X
Speaker 6: lens to a six NX optical zoom. And why that's
Speaker 6: so important is because if you do a digital zoom
Speaker 6: right now, you can see how the quality quickly degrades,
Speaker 6: but by using an optical hardware zoom, the quality actually
Speaker 6: does not significantly when you zoom in up to the
Speaker 6: six X and then you actually get an expanded digital
Speaker 6: zoom as well. I believe it's a twenty or thirty X,
Speaker 6: so quite impressive and better competition to the cameras on
Speaker 6: the Google devices that you mentioned, which they have pretty
Speaker 6: good cameras, and they have for years. Apple's doing a
Speaker 6: little bit of catch up.
Speaker 1: Here, Okay, speaking of ketchup, you know, we're seeing a
Speaker 1: big push with these foldable phones from Samsung, Google. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously the Chinese companies are doing a lot of foldables,
Speaker 1: and Motorola even has one, and of course one plus.
Speaker 1: So are we going to see a foldable from Apple.
Speaker 6: I think we'll see some sort of foldable device from Apple.
Speaker 6: In which form that takes, I think it's still a
Speaker 6: little unclear. It could be an iPad, it could be
Speaker 6: a type of a Mac. It could be a type
Speaker 6: of an iPhone, but I don't see anything foldable from
Speaker 6: Apple in the next twenty four months.
Speaker 1: All right, if you're into Apple stuff and you'd like
Speaker 1: to hear what Apple's going to do before the company
Speaker 1: even announces it. Mark German is your guy, chief correspondent
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg. What's the best way for folks to follow you, Mark?
Speaker 6: No, thank you rich for having me. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Twitter dot com or x dot com slash Mark German.
Speaker 6: You can get updates most quickly there, but also subscribe
Speaker 6: to my weekly column on Sundays. It's Bloomberg dot com slash. However,
Speaker 6: on to sign up.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much for joining me today, Mark,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. There you have it, all of the
Speaker 1: rumors and the speculation on the iPhone, but it usually
Speaker 1: comes true. Mark knows his stuff. So if you're considering
Speaker 1: the upgrade, you know it's probably going to be the
Speaker 1: year to upgrade because of the entire USB c changeover.
Speaker 1: If you're like me, and especially when you travel, I
Speaker 1: literally have to think about, Oh I need that lightning
Speaker 1: cable because it's the one thing I need everything else,
Speaker 1: even the iPads have gone over to USBC in recent years,
Speaker 1: so we'll be looking forward to that. That event again
Speaker 1: happens on September twelfth, and again I'm expected to be there.
Speaker 1: So a lot of things going on in the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. All right, let's take some more of
Speaker 1: your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech live from Berlin, Germany.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you didn't. Oh man, I think we're getting
Speaker 1: all German artists on this week's show. So funny story
Speaker 1: this is This is Milli Vanilla, right, yeah, so blame
Speaker 1: it on the rain. I'll never forget we were doing.
Speaker 1: This is such a long funny story anyway, I'll save
Speaker 1: you the drama of it. But my friend and I,
Speaker 1: when we were in like middle school, we were gonna
Speaker 1: do like a talent show with this song and our teacher.
Speaker 1: We were so embarrassed to tell our teacher and then
Speaker 1: so we were gonna lip sync the song. And then
Speaker 1: we later found out that the whole thing was lip sync.
Speaker 1: So it was like this like meta kind of situation. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology from Berlin, Germany. What a
Speaker 1: great city, really really interesting, lots of history. Obviously, people
Speaker 1: here like to be out in the streets. They like
Speaker 1: to I've seen a lot of families, a lot of kids,
Speaker 1: a lot of tourists, just a lot going on here
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I took my walk the other day,
Speaker 1: my audio tour, which I really like to do when
Speaker 1: I go to these cities, and there was nobody out,
Speaker 1: I mean nobody. It was a weekday, and then today
Speaker 1: I was out and it's a weekend and there was
Speaker 1: just so many people in the same places where there
Speaker 1: was almost no one the time before. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to do these audio walking tours, which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend self guided, use your phone. The app
Speaker 1: that I use is called voicemap dot Me, so voicemap me,
Speaker 1: and it's just a really easy way you download the app.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like listening to a podcast, but it
Speaker 1: gives you step by step, turn by turn directions and
Speaker 1: if you get off court like I have it sometimes
Speaker 1: it just says, hey, you know, look at the map
Speaker 1: and get back on course. You can leave your phone
Speaker 1: in your pocket pretty much the whole time you do this.
Speaker 1: It's very very cool VOICEMAP dot em and they have
Speaker 1: them for cities around the world. I've taken them in
Speaker 1: and here, let's see where it was at Austin, and
Speaker 1: I did one more somewhere else. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to alex Innuay. Tell me if I'm saying this right,
Speaker 1: Nuevo California. I know you tried call them before. We
Speaker 1: had some trouble connecting. You're on with Rich line three.
Speaker 8: Yes, Rich, I'm having problems with an SD card I
Speaker 8: bothered about two and a half years ago. It was
Speaker 8: working fine, and last weekend it quit. I've turned off
Speaker 8: the phone, pulled the stem car SD card out, put
Speaker 8: it back in, tried to reformat it. It gets up
Speaker 8: to about twenty five percent, and then it says my
Speaker 8: phone is not compatible with their SD card.
Speaker 1: How are you trying to reformat it?
Speaker 5: When it's a little icon comes up says format SD
Speaker 5: card to use.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm saying, when you plug it into your phone,
Speaker 1: are you formatting it?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay? Have you tried formatting it using a computer?
Speaker 5: I don't have an adapter.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, so it sounds like this card has failed,
Speaker 1: but that is just my preliminary thoughts. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: you can't really tell unless you try to format this
Speaker 1: in another device. So, for example, we have a special
Speaker 1: microphone we use where you have to use an SD
Speaker 1: card in it a thirty two gig maximum, and sometimes
Speaker 1: when we put those cards in this MIC, it just
Speaker 1: goes nuts and it can't recognize it, and it kind
Speaker 1: of just the screen flashes. And there is an option
Speaker 1: to format the card on that MIC, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: always work. But if you take that same exact SD
Speaker 1: card and format it in a computer, somehow it figures
Speaker 1: it out and it formats it properly, and then it
Speaker 1: works in the MIC. So that would be what I'd
Speaker 1: recommend to do. Why did you lose anything on this card?
Speaker 1: Are you worried about the data on this card?
Speaker 5: Well, apparently all the games I downloaded went to the card,
Speaker 5: so I lost all the games, my photos and stuff
Speaker 5: I backed up to a computer.
Speaker 1: Okay, very good, and all the rest of those stuff.
Speaker 5: It's just it's annoying. Yeah, I agree, and a half
Speaker 5: two years and then all of a sudden, I'm getting
Speaker 5: this there. Stupid things it's not recognizing the SD card.
Speaker 5: Please format I try that. It gets up to about
Speaker 5: twenty five and quits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is very frustrata. And I will tell you
Speaker 1: that I've used many many SD cards in my time
Speaker 1: and I have yet to see one fail. And so
Speaker 1: I find it hard to believe that this has failed.
Speaker 1: But it could happen. Is this a micro SD card.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's a small one, like it's the size
Speaker 1: of like a SIM card almost.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's probably a core in the size of a
Speaker 5: posty stamp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean, look at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and what's the size on this card? How big is it?
Speaker 5: I think it's uh thirty thirty or thirty two?
Speaker 1: Okay, and what brand is it?
Speaker 5: I picked it up at Walmart, like I said, a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I would say, maybe bring it back to Walmart,
Speaker 1: but I think it's been past the ninety days. Do
Speaker 1: they have they may have a extended return policy. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but.
Speaker 5: What I don't think so years.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're straight up with them and just
Speaker 1: say hey, look i've had this, you know, if you
Speaker 1: go to Costco, they'll take it back. So maybe Walmart
Speaker 1: will do the same. I was actually trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what their return policy was. I looked it up
Speaker 1: the other day. I think it's ninety standard. But look,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I think if you're
Speaker 1: if you're not concerned with what's on this card, a
Speaker 1: new SD card, a thirty two gig is about ten bucks.
Speaker 1: You can get a two pack of them for twelve
Speaker 1: dollars on Amazon. So I understand it's frustrating. I understand
Speaker 1: that it's not ideal, but it could just be that
Speaker 1: this failed. It happens, especially if it maybe is an
Speaker 1: off brand. If I recommended getting an adapter, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend that because the adapter is going to cost
Speaker 1: you more than the price of this card. So my
Speaker 1: advice is to see if you have a friend that
Speaker 1: has an adapter and a card reader and try doing
Speaker 1: the formatting there on a computer, whether it's a or
Speaker 1: a PC. That might work. You can also try a
Speaker 1: disc repair on the same computer because that may work
Speaker 1: as well. But otherwise I would say, if you're not
Speaker 1: too attached, I'm glad you backed up your photos, and
Speaker 1: if you're not too attached to this thing, I would
Speaker 1: just call it a complete loss and move on because
Speaker 1: the cost of getting that adapter is going to be
Speaker 1: a lot more than just buying a new card. And
Speaker 1: hopefully this does not happen again. I rarely, rarely see
Speaker 1: these things fry like that. So thanks for the call,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Let's see what do we want to talk
Speaker 1: about real quick before we go to break here, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Google raising prices of nest Aware and nest
Speaker 1: Aware Plus. These are the subscriptions if you have nest products.
Speaker 1: The basic nest Aware is now going to cost eight
Speaker 1: dollars a month, up from six bucks a month. That's
Speaker 1: eighty dollars a year or sixty dollars a year. The
Speaker 1: nest Aware Plus is going to be fifteen a month,
Speaker 1: up from twelve dollars a month. The new price takes
Speaker 1: effect on November sixth, and uh new subscribers right now. Yep,
Speaker 1: every streaming service is going up in price. Give me
Speaker 1: a call triple eight, Rich one oh one. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Our number two. I just got word from
Speaker 1: producer Bobo that Rob Thomas is indeed German, which I
Speaker 1: didn't believe, but I looked it up and sure enough,
Speaker 1: he was born in Germany. Where's my bell? I always
Speaker 1: say that triple eight rich one O one is the
Speaker 1: phone line to call eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. There we go, We've got
Speaker 1: some boisterous applause. So this week, Verizon has come up
Speaker 1: with a new way to protect you from spammy email
Speaker 1: to texts. It's very, very simple. Have you ever gotten
Speaker 1: one of these things? It basically looks like a text
Speaker 1: message that comes from an email address and it's just annoying.
Speaker 1: Their Verizon says eighty percent of them are spam and
Speaker 1: it's just an easy way for people to spam because
Speaker 1: all it takes is for them to set up an
Speaker 1: email and so these most of the time are for
Speaker 1: like shipping confirmations, all this stuff. It's just total junk.
Speaker 1: So if you want to block these now and your
Speaker 1: this is only for Verizon customers, you text the word
Speaker 1: off off to forty forty. Again, if you want to
Speaker 1: stop these annoying spam email to text messages, just text
Speaker 1: the word off to forty forty. If you're a Verizon customer,
Speaker 1: and that will disable email to text messages to your phone.
Speaker 1: Now you might be saying, Rich, why would I do that,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get my texts. Eighty percent of
Speaker 1: those are bogus. So there may be an example of
Speaker 1: a legitimate company that uses this or legitimate use of that,
Speaker 1: but most of the time it's not. And you can
Speaker 1: always turn it back on. I believe you just text
Speaker 1: on to forty forty and it'll turn them back on.
Speaker 1: But you can look it up online and see what
Speaker 1: they say about it. I'll put the link on the website.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV keep the show notes for
Speaker 1: the show so you can see what Verizon says about
Speaker 1: all of that. But a lot of people doing it.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's go to Reggie Line too in Charleston,
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Reggie, you're on with Rich. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you say you're in Charleston, because I've fallen in
Speaker 1: love with European cities and I looked up today no joke,
Speaker 1: best US cities that feel like Europe, and Charleston was
Speaker 1: like on the top list. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: It it's a gorgeous city, a little bit flood ridden
Speaker 10: right now, but gorgeous, just the same. Oh no, your
Speaker 10: producer asked me if I had called them before, and
Speaker 10: I'll remember you helped me with the photo enhancing program.
Speaker 10: I'm a pet porch artist.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I remember, yes.
Speaker 10: And you did help me with that. But I had
Speaker 10: a bigger problem this week. I went onto my Facebook
Speaker 10: page where I do do marketing and use marketplace and
Speaker 10: all my customers contact me there, and it asked for
Speaker 10: a new password. I've done that before, put it in
Speaker 10: a word.
Speaker 1: Why did I ask you for a new one?
Speaker 10: I don't know. Maybe I just forgot it. I don't remember.
Speaker 10: But it asked me to put in my password, which
Speaker 10: I had no idea why it did that, and I
Speaker 10: may have forgotten it. So I went to put in
Speaker 10: a new password, and it told me there was no
Speaker 10: account under my email address. And I've had my email
Speaker 10: address for a long time because I'm still with AOL so.
Speaker 1: Good old al America Online.
Speaker 10: All right, I've had it since I think ninety eight.
Speaker 10: So it was gone. Everything was gone. All my customers,
Speaker 10: all my friends, all my posts I've ever done, everything
Speaker 10: had disappeared. I had no way to get You can't
Speaker 10: get in touch with them, you know, I think you
Speaker 10: know there's nook or Meta.
Speaker 1: No, nope. So wait, okay, let me get this straight.
Speaker 1: Did you lose access to your page?
Speaker 10: Yes? Completely? You know, it was gone and even the
Speaker 10: people that tried to contact me told me that it
Speaker 10: said no messaging available. They they had blocked me once
Speaker 10: before because they thought I was selling pets.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and you're not right, just to just to
Speaker 1: confirm the portraits. I know we talked about that last time. Okay,
Speaker 1: so where do you stand and what can I help
Speaker 1: you with?
Speaker 10: Well, is there any way to get in touch with them?
Speaker 10: I went, I opened a new page. I did it
Speaker 10: under my old email, which is still my email. They
Speaker 10: accept did all that, and I opened a new page
Speaker 10: altering my name just a little bit, and try and
Speaker 10: trying to get back in touch with all of my
Speaker 10: customers and people that had contacted me. But I can't
Speaker 10: get to them at all. When I posted that I
Speaker 10: had the problem on Facebook, of course I got eight
Speaker 10: hundred scammers who want three hundred and fifty dollars to
Speaker 10: find my Facebook.
Speaker 1: Page for Yeah, if you type in the word hacked
Speaker 1: on if you post the word hacked on Facebook, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: Johnny five, really helped me get unhacked, and it's like
Speaker 1: this whole scam thing. These programs just look for keywords
Speaker 1: and then post stuff on the page. Okay, so here's
Speaker 1: what I think happened. I actually think you might have
Speaker 1: gotten hacked. I think the notification that you saw was bogus.
Speaker 1: You click the notification, you put in your password that
Speaker 1: was real, and as soon as you did that, these
Speaker 1: scam art It's got a hold of your account and
Speaker 1: then immediately either try to message everyone on that account
Speaker 1: or do something with it that Facebook recognized to be bad,
Speaker 1: and so they immediately block the account. That's where I
Speaker 1: think you stand. And the reason why that you were
Speaker 1: able to create a new account and it has a
Speaker 1: slightly different username is because that old account is still
Speaker 1: percolating in the back end of the system somewhere. And
Speaker 1: so if you had like petit facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: pet portraits, you know, they gave you pet portraits one
Speaker 1: because that other username is still sort of taken up.
Speaker 1: So what I recommend couple of things. Number One, you
Speaker 1: got to be very careful with notifications on Facebook about
Speaker 1: your password. It is very rare that Facebook asks you
Speaker 1: to just randomly put in your password. It's even rareer
Speaker 1: for them to send a notification that says you need
Speaker 1: to put in your password. So yeah, there's pages that say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're logging in from a different area
Speaker 1: or device, but it's it's pretty rare and usually those
Speaker 1: pages are pretty well marked. And always look at the
Speaker 1: URL when you're logging into any website to make sure
Speaker 1: that it is the website that you should be logging into. Now,
Speaker 1: on Facebook, people really try to trick folks with these
Speaker 1: scam logins. What they'll do is they'll just they'll give
Speaker 1: you a notification that says, hey, your page, you know
Speaker 1: doesn't meet the community standards. Click here to to you know,
Speaker 1: dispute it, and then you have to log in. As
Speaker 1: soon as you log in, you're actually logging into a
Speaker 1: spammer's account or a scam artist account and they take over. Now,
Speaker 1: if this happens to you before you go ahead and
Speaker 1: create a new account. Number one to protect yourself, turn
Speaker 1: on two factor authentication. I know I'm a broken record,
Speaker 1: I say it every week on this show, but you
Speaker 1: have to turn on two factor authentication. That will actually
Speaker 1: protect you from yourself because if you do log in
Speaker 1: next time with your password and they get it, it's
Speaker 1: going to send a code to your phone, and that
Speaker 1: will stop the bad guys from actually getting in because
Speaker 1: they won't have that code. Now, if you you know,
Speaker 1: they may message you and ask you for that code,
Speaker 1: don't give it to them. Now, if you do get
Speaker 1: hacked on Facebook, you immediately want to go to Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash hacked. That is the official place to go. Now,
Speaker 1: you have to understand Facebook has almost three billion people
Speaker 1: using the platform, so to get someone on the phone
Speaker 1: is not possible. They don't do that. They do it
Speaker 1: all through email, They do it all through automated systems,
Speaker 1: and they do it all starting with Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash hacked. Go there, it'll tell you, it'll give you
Speaker 1: a questionnaire about what's happening with your account. Many times
Speaker 1: people will regain access to their account, but it can
Speaker 1: take a while because it's not always the number one
Speaker 1: priority of Facebook to help people get back into their accounts. Now,
Speaker 1: if you had a high profile account, maybe, but just
Speaker 1: you know, your everyday account, you know it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: their profile. The other thing I would do is set
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and you have any sort
Speaker 1: of business presence on Facebook. Number one, always always have
Speaker 1: two factor authentication. On number two, you have to set
Speaker 1: a secondary admin for your Facebook page. What will that
Speaker 1: do If the person that manages your page gets locked out,
Speaker 1: the other person will be able to still get in.
Speaker 1: And so now, look, if you hand over your password
Speaker 1: to the scam artists, they know to check and see
Speaker 1: if there's an admin, and they may delete that person.
Speaker 1: But it's better to have this on your page because
Speaker 1: I've gotten stories of the primary person that works at
Speaker 1: a business passing away, leaving the company, whatever happens, they
Speaker 1: get angry and they lock you out of the page.
Speaker 1: So you want someone else on there that's trusted, even
Speaker 1: if it's someone that you know, that can help you
Speaker 1: get back into your account if you get locked out.
Speaker 1: And sometimes Facebook might even text them or email them
Speaker 1: and say, hey, can you vouch for this person? Yeah,
Speaker 1: believe me. Facebook has a lot of different ways of
Speaker 1: getting people back into their accounts. It's all very strange
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is undocumented, but it's it
Speaker 1: happens because I hear the stories all the time. So Reggie,
Speaker 1: I hope you can get back into your account. That
Speaker 1: is my advice for you and keep up the good
Speaker 1: work with the pet pictures. Sounds like a fun little
Speaker 1: business you got there, all right, give me a call.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. You're listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, where I'm
Speaker 1: here for IFA coming up later in the show. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk to the show organizers so you can
Speaker 1: get a better idea of what IFA twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: is all about. More rich on Tech Next, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology live from Berlin, Germany. Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. If you want to join in,
Speaker 1: you can also go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit the contact link and you can
Speaker 1: send your email right to me. Also, if you have
Speaker 1: a comment about today's show, send it to me now
Speaker 1: and I'll get it In the feedback segment. I'm really
Speaker 1: struggling if I should change that to the feedbag. So
Speaker 1: I like the idea of mail bag plus feedback equals feedbag,
Speaker 1: but all I can think about with feedbag when I
Speaker 1: say it is like a trough with like cows, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like dumping like a bunch of food in there.
Speaker 1: I don't know maybe that's the right thing, but it's
Speaker 1: These are the things I consider in my spare time. Also,
Speaker 1: if you want to follow me on Instagram at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech is the place to go. I've posted all
Speaker 1: about my trip here to Germany, so you can see
Speaker 1: what I've been doing here, and also I post tech
Speaker 1: tips and various things there. So I've got the tech
Speaker 1: tip I'm in about how to turn off the spammy
Speaker 1: Verizon emails that is on their Instagram at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: All right, without further ado, let's go to Greg and
Speaker 1: des Moines. Iowa Line one. Greg, you're on with rich.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Rich?
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic? Can you tell in my voice?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I hear you loud and clear. Excuse me, I
Speaker 3: got a little cold. I hear you loud and clear.
Speaker 3: And Juliani day, I know.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing what technology can do? We can go
Speaker 1: live from pretty much anywhere. So what can I help
Speaker 1: you with? Greg?
Speaker 3: I'm legally blond, okay, I got two friendship for you.
Speaker 3: I'm paying on a d flip three and and Roy
Speaker 3: is not great paid off. Now they have a d
Speaker 3: flip five from Google Oteam Bowler bo pone. Uh is
Speaker 3: that a good phone? Or should I just keep the
Speaker 3: phone I have. I don't well ow any of that
Speaker 3: because of my eyesight, you know what I mean. I'm
Speaker 3: not fab here at computers.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what do you what are you doing on
Speaker 1: the phone?
Speaker 3: I had my Norse stand up some apps for me.
Speaker 3: When she comes in, I g if I want to
Speaker 3: please can if I want Pandora? I talk to my
Speaker 3: phone okay. And I don't know if this is a
Speaker 3: good phone or not. I like the I like the
Speaker 3: d flip five because it got that prolable front clean
Speaker 3: and I don't want to get your apps on it
Speaker 3: or not?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a great question. So here's the thing. So
Speaker 1: you've got the fold three, which is a couple of
Speaker 1: years back, and now we're up to the five. So
Speaker 1: the changes on the three to the five. So the
Speaker 1: inside screen is identical, it's going to be the same size.
Speaker 1: The outside screen is much bigger on the five. So
Speaker 1: are you able to see the screen at all or no?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think the bigger screen would actually be
Speaker 1: a better thing for you, especially given the the eye condition.
Speaker 3: So I'm blinded one eye and I got doc coma
Speaker 3: in my right eye down.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I think the bigger screen. I think the
Speaker 1: bigger screen would serve you well otherwise. Okay, So that's
Speaker 1: the next part I was going to get to.
Speaker 3: So, and I have one other question for you. Do
Speaker 3: it very important for me?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 3: Okay, right right? I did mine. Take I I redeede
Speaker 3: my incoming and out going calls so people don't get
Speaker 3: in my phone and be knowed, you know what I mean? Sure,
Speaker 3: And I adjectantly hit the content. Oh what do you
Speaker 3: call it? Where you save your addresses or your phone numbers?
Speaker 1: And so yeah, sure, like the contact information.
Speaker 3: Contact contact, I deleted them all. So I went in
Speaker 3: right away and said all the places that I want
Speaker 3: to uh call, you know, like my hospital, my plan,
Speaker 3: my cousins, you know. Okay, but the numbers show up
Speaker 3: and let me give you the name bad.
Speaker 1: I will, I will tell you. Okay, So let me
Speaker 1: let me answer your first question. So the first question
Speaker 1: about the upgrade, Uh, I think that the outer screen
Speaker 1: would probably be better. You'd probably enjoy it because it is bigger,
Speaker 1: and it will probably be easier to see because it
Speaker 1: is considerably larger. Now, you said you're still paying on
Speaker 1: your old phone. Samsung is giving a pretty aggressive trade
Speaker 1: in credit for your old phone six hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: be exact, So depending on how much you got to
Speaker 1: do the math. So this phone is one thousand bucks
Speaker 1: minus is six hundred dollars trading credit for your old
Speaker 1: phoneus how much you owe or I guess plus how
Speaker 1: much you owe. So you got to do the math
Speaker 1: and see if it's worth it to do that. So
Speaker 1: let's say this one thousand bucks minus six hundred, that'd
Speaker 1: be four hundred dollars. And let's say you owe two hundred.
Speaker 1: That means this phone be six hundred dollars. I know,
Speaker 1: I just did that math very quick, but you got
Speaker 1: to figure out if that's worth it. Now, there may
Speaker 1: be some additional discounts available to you if you look
Speaker 1: on the Samsung offer programs. They've got education, government, military, employee,
Speaker 1: first responder, I'm not sure maybe veteran that might apply,
Speaker 1: but you can look into those as well. Now, your
Speaker 1: second quest question about the contacts. Google stores a backup
Speaker 1: of your contacts, even if you delete them. So what
Speaker 1: I want you to do is go to Contacts dot
Speaker 1: Google dot com and you should be able to find
Speaker 1: a backup of your contacts that you deleted and you
Speaker 1: should be able to restore those contacts from there. So again,
Speaker 1: Contacts dot Google dot com is where you go to
Speaker 1: find a backup of your contacts. That is, given you're
Speaker 1: using Google Contacts, but since you're on an Android phone,
Speaker 1: that's typically how they're backed up. Greg and des Moines,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for calling today. All right, coming up next,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk to Oliver Merlin. He is
Speaker 1: the guy who basically put on IFA twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So we're here in Berlin. IFA is the big tech
Speaker 1: trade show. Coming up. Oliver Merlin, Managing director of EFA Management,
Speaker 1: will tell you all about what EFA is here for.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech, Rich DeMuro here on location in Berlin at
Speaker 1: EFA twenty twenty three. This is a massive tech show.
Speaker 1: And joining me now is Oliver Merlin, Managing director for
Speaker 1: EFA Management. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 7: Today, pleasure, Good morning, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great? So this is my first time to Berlin,
Speaker 1: first time to EFA. Explain this show to someone who
Speaker 1: hasn't been.
Speaker 7: Right sure, well, first of all, welcome, thank you for coming.
Speaker 11: EFA is the biggest consumer electronics and home appliances tech
Speaker 11: show in the world.
Speaker 1: And so twenty six floors of things to see everything
Speaker 1: from smart appliances, gadgets, healthcare. Is there any way to
Speaker 1: see it all?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Absolutely, Bring lots of pairs and comfortable shoes and download
Speaker 11: the app and you'll find your way around, no problem.
Speaker 1: Okay, So explain to me what is here and listen.
Speaker 11: Everything from gaming consoles to frich freezer's washing.
Speaker 7: Machines, smart living, Internet of Things.
Speaker 11: You've heard of all of these things, right, this is
Speaker 11: where you come to see them all living and breathing.
Speaker 1: What are the trends you're seeing with this year's exhibitors.
Speaker 11: There's been two huge trends this year that have blown
Speaker 11: almost everything else side of the world. Honestly, sustainability is
Speaker 11: obviously the first one. Almost all of our exhibitors are
Speaker 11: talking about sustainability, and the really enlightened ones are really
Speaker 11: taking this so seriously. They know that consumers have put
Speaker 11: sustainability at their number.
Speaker 7: One priority when it comes to perching.
Speaker 11: It's gone beyond brand or pricing or brand loyals or
Speaker 11: anything like that.
Speaker 7: Now sustainability is right up there.
Speaker 11: If you haven't got a credible story about it, the
Speaker 11: consumers will look elsewhere.
Speaker 7: So that's number one. The second one is AI. Right.
Speaker 11: Nobody was talking about AI year ago, and now AI
Speaker 11: is everywhere. Everybody's grandmother is an expert on AI, right,
Speaker 11: and everybody's scared AI is going to end the world.
Speaker 7: Those two are probably the biggest by far.
Speaker 1: Give me an idea for some of the numbers. This
Speaker 1: is a very large show, a lot of exhibitors, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people come from around the world to
Speaker 1: see this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 11: So this whole we've taken every square centimeter that we
Speaker 11: can good of the MESA Berlin.
Speaker 7: It's about one.
Speaker 11: Hundred and thirty thousand square meters. We've got two and
Speaker 11: fifty nine exhibitors coming from forty eight countries, and we're
Speaker 11: hoping for Again, these are projections because we don't know
Speaker 11: until we get to the.
Speaker 7: End of the five days.
Speaker 11: Something like one hundred and eighty thousand people to come
Speaker 11: through the door over the five days, right, So that's
Speaker 11: an incredible amount of people from over one hundred countries.
Speaker 11: I think maybe something like one hundred and forty countries
Speaker 11: around the world.
Speaker 7: It's a truly, truly huge event.
Speaker 11: There are very few events of this size and scale
Speaker 11: around in the industry, and certainly in this industry, and
Speaker 11: this is the biggest.
Speaker 1: One of the unique aspects of EFA is that the
Speaker 1: public is allowed to attend. Unlike a lot of other
Speaker 1: shows trade shows, public isn't invaded. So what does that
Speaker 1: add to the mix.
Speaker 11: Well, we've only believe that EFA is actually the best
Speaker 11: trade show for consumer electronics and.
Speaker 7: Home appliances in the world.
Speaker 11: But really, you know, as events develop and face to
Speaker 11: face comes back and people really want to return to
Speaker 11: events and trade shows, that's not enough just being a
Speaker 11: trade show, right, So we really think about the consumer.
Speaker 11: We've always had the consumer at the heart of what
Speaker 11: we do, and our customers, you know, they have.
Speaker 7: To think about the consumer. This is essentially a consumer industry.
Speaker 11: So the show runs from a Friday to a Tuesday,
Speaker 11: and in the middle of that is a weekend, and
Speaker 11: obviously most consumers will tend to come on the weekend.
Speaker 11: They can actually come any of the five days, but
Speaker 11: we feel that that gives us a really really nice feel.
Speaker 11: We feel that in the future the balance between B
Speaker 11: to B and B two Z is going to blur,
Speaker 11: and so we encourage us a general mixing of all
Speaker 11: different points of view that encourage our exhibitors to really
Speaker 11: think about the consumers, not just their trade.
Speaker 7: Fuyers and charges consumers to come and.
Speaker 11: See the latest innovations and what their TVs might look
Speaker 11: like next year and the year after, what robots are happening,
Speaker 11: you know, what the latest tech really is.
Speaker 1: How do you balance the tradition of the show but
Speaker 1: also innovation for the next year. You always want to
Speaker 1: build upon it.
Speaker 11: Yeah, absolutely so. EFHA is a show that's actually been
Speaker 11: going ninety nine years. Obviously, there's a few years they've
Speaker 11: been interrupted, and for a while the show is every
Speaker 11: other year. So there's a huge amount of history and
Speaker 11: tradition that's associated with EFA. Albert Einstein, for example, was
Speaker 11: one of the first openers, the keynote speakers of ef
Speaker 11: and we've got some tremendous speakers going back through history.
Speaker 11: Various Prime ministers have opened the show and.
Speaker 7: All those sorts of things.
Speaker 11: However, the bedrock of the show is innovation, what's going
Speaker 11: to happen tomorrow, what's happening next year, what's happening in
Speaker 11: the year after, Right, So we like to pride ourselves
Speaker 11: on the fact of that, the historical association of EFO
Speaker 11: with Berlin and this amazing venue, plus with the fact
Speaker 11: that we're always looking forward.
Speaker 1: You've got also an area where you're fixing different devices.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, So one of the things that we do
Speaker 11: is that, you know, again going back to this idea
Speaker 11: of the balancing the trade show with adding some new things.
Speaker 7: So the Mend and repair shop.
Speaker 11: That you refer to, we partner with the local Menda
Speaker 11: Repair Cafe in Berlin, and the Menda Repair Shop sits
Speaker 11: within the Sustainability Village.
Speaker 7: The Sustainability Village.
Speaker 11: Is a particular zone several thousand square meters in Hall
Speaker 11: two where you can go and listen to all of
Speaker 11: our exhibitors talking about sustainability, world experts and sustainability talking
Speaker 11: on the sustainability stage. And within that there's a Menda
Speaker 11: Repair shop where I think predominantly local people, right, I
Speaker 11: don't expect people have taken the plane with their washing machine,
Speaker 11: but Berliners and German people and maybe some people have
Speaker 11: come from Europe can bring their hair dryers, gaming consoles,
Speaker 11: you know, small things they might bring that are broken
Speaker 11: or it needed a bit of a TLC and they
Speaker 11: can take them to the Menda repair shop right there.
Speaker 1: And then can you give us a sneak peak of
Speaker 1: what's to come for next year?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 11: Next year is the one hundredth year obviously of EFO,
Speaker 11: so it's going to be truly enormous. I think one
Speaker 11: of the things we haven't focused on so much this
Speaker 11: year is the outside area, which at Messer Berlin we've
Speaker 11: got a tremendous kind of opportunity to use a fantastic garden. Generally,
Speaker 11: thing ascross the weather is okay, you'll see a lot
Speaker 11: of more use of the outdoor space.
Speaker 7: I don't want to give too much away, but in
Speaker 7: terms of a kind.
Speaker 11: Of festival vibe, if you like concerts and things like that,
Speaker 11: you'll see us majoring on that. And I think just
Speaker 11: being the one hundredth year, you'll see also a lot
Speaker 11: more activations within.
Speaker 7: And in and around the city of Berlin.
Speaker 1: As you've organized this and talked to these companies and
Speaker 1: kind of gotten sneak peaks of what they're going to
Speaker 1: show off anything that's really kind of caught your eye.
Speaker 11: Well, look, I think the thing is with technology, there
Speaker 11: are periods where, you know, sort of like if you
Speaker 11: look at when the advent of the smartphone happened, right,
Speaker 11: all the technology is suddenly left right, And I think
Speaker 11: you're going to see that in the next year, probably
Speaker 11: to eighteen months with AI.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: So, a lot of our big home appliance companies have
Speaker 7: been talking about.
Speaker 11: The Internet of Things and smart things and smart homes
Speaker 11: all these things. Now I don't think that's really, you know,
Speaker 11: really caught fire.
Speaker 7: I think with the advent of AI that you're.
Speaker 11: Going to see that enormously in the next year or two,
Speaker 11: and I think that will really power their businesses and
Speaker 11: obviously for one hundred and one hundred and one as
Speaker 11: we go along like that.
Speaker 1: And finally, let's talk Berlin for a moment. I don't
Speaker 1: think you're from here, but you probably know this city
Speaker 1: pretty well at this point. So what is Berlin all about?
Speaker 11: Yeah, well, I can't quite yet do the JFK. It
Speaker 11: could be nine in Berlin. I mean, you know, so
Speaker 11: I've been here for about a year now and I
Speaker 11: love it, you know, it's I'm from London and it's
Speaker 11: it's strange. It's got a lot of similarity to London,
Speaker 11: many many different types of areas within the city, a
Speaker 11: lot of vibrancy. You feel the history and you're wandering
Speaker 11: around and you just feel that kind of you know,
Speaker 11: intensity about the city.
Speaker 7: It really kind of lives and breathes. You really feel that.
Speaker 7: And IFA has.
Speaker 11: Been here in IFA is at Berlin Institute if you like,
Speaker 11: one of the first things that I did in my role,
Speaker 11: because I've partnered with the city and you can become
Speaker 11: a partner of the City of Berlin. And we've tried
Speaker 11: to set up, as I said, this platform Berlin Tech
Speaker 11: Week where we do various activations around the city. That
Speaker 11: Iconic Platz is and there's a Soho house in Berlin
Speaker 11: so doing things there. We've got a gaming afternoon at
Speaker 11: a place called Level Lvl. There's any of your listeners
Speaker 11: that know Berlin a little bit, a big gaming impouring
Speaker 11: where we're.
Speaker 7: Doing some things there.
Speaker 11: So we're really trying to make that close association with
Speaker 11: the city.
Speaker 7: You know, we have a really good advantage Berlin.
Speaker 11: It's one of those cities that really lends itself to
Speaker 11: you know, it would be a shame to not use Berlin.
Speaker 1: If someone wants to come for next year, do you
Speaker 1: already have the dates?
Speaker 11: Yes, it's the sixth to the tenth next year, so
Speaker 11: slightly later for your listeners that want to come from
Speaker 11: the US. I think there's no clash with Labour Day,
Speaker 11: which sometimes you know, stops people coming from the US.
Speaker 11: So yeah, sixth and tenth of September, Marketing and daries
Speaker 11: please come.
Speaker 1: Oliver Merlin, Managing director for EFA Management, Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 7: Thanks very much. Be an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about IFA twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three or plan your trip for twenty twenty four, go
Speaker 1: to my website for more information. Rich on Tech dot
Speaker 1: TV more rich On Tech show coming up right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one and
Speaker 1: I'm told Green Day also German. Wow, the things you'll
Speaker 1: learn when you travel. Let's go to line three. Patty
Speaker 1: is in Santa Clarita, California, back home.
Speaker 9: Welcome to the show, Patty, Hi, thank you so much,
Speaker 9: so I'm hoping you can explain things in terms that
Speaker 9: I can understand, because I just don't get it. I
Speaker 9: got a new show because I went swimming with my
Speaker 9: old phone and my iPhone, and so I restored them backup,
Speaker 9: and none of my old text message threads came back.
Speaker 9: So I went to the Apple store and he was
Speaker 9: helping me out, and he said, it's something that needs
Speaker 9: to go to the next level because they can try
Speaker 9: to retrieve it from a different place that it gets stored.
Speaker 9: Even though I have my backups always on and I
Speaker 9: have my messages safe forever, they're no longer there. So
Speaker 9: I've had two people try to help me to try this,
Speaker 9: try this. Why didn't it back up? And how do
Speaker 9: I prevent this from happening in the future.
Speaker 6: Well, number one way to get them?
Speaker 1: Well there may be a way. So, okay, you got
Speaker 1: to explain number one, what happened to the old phone?
Speaker 1: Because phones, you know, the most of them are water
Speaker 1: resistant at this point, So what was it? An older device?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 9: It was an older one. It was an iPhone eleven
Speaker 9: and I guess it was in the water for too long.
Speaker 1: Okay, that that can explain it.
Speaker 9: So it got Yeah, so I couldn't transfer from that phone.
Speaker 1: Okay. So most phones are water resistant for about thirty
Speaker 1: minutes in the water, so now they could last longer
Speaker 1: depending on the situation and how deep it is. But basically,
Speaker 1: the deeper the phone goes and the longer it's in
Speaker 1: there are the deeper it is, the shorter it's going
Speaker 1: to be okay, because it more pressure builds up on
Speaker 1: the phone. So that's what's happening there. So the phone
Speaker 1: was a total loss, Like they couldn't retrieve anything.
Speaker 9: I could not turn anything on, and it was not
Speaker 9: like thirty minutes. It was like at the most ten
Speaker 9: minutes in the water.
Speaker 3: But I tried.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So how did you restore the new phone?
Speaker 10: To back it up?
Speaker 9: I mean went to back up from one of the
Speaker 9: previous backups, like July twenty first, I had a backup
Speaker 9: to like twenty eighth, there was a backup, okay, So
Speaker 9: we tried to life eight. Didn't happen, was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 9: From iCloud everything okay, always keep that up.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so do you have now you have that
Speaker 1: in iCloud? Do you have the uh, let's see, do
Speaker 1: you do you ever connect your phone to the computer
Speaker 1: if you have a backup there.
Speaker 9: I do have a backup there. I didn't connect it
Speaker 9: to the computer, but I try to access my messages
Speaker 9: on iCloud and I couldn't find them there. There's no
Speaker 9: there's no icon for I message when I go to iCloud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I know. This is the this is the
Speaker 1: beauty of what Apple has done here. They've made this
Speaker 1: incredible messaging service that is incredibly frustrating. Yeah, because people
Speaker 1: don't know where their messages are. They don't know how
Speaker 1: to find them. They're not. You would think you could
Speaker 1: just go to iCloud dot com and they would all
Speaker 1: be there, but of course they're not. You would think
Speaker 1: that you would be able to just open up the
Speaker 1: backup that they do on your computer and find your messages.
Speaker 1: You cannot. You would think that they would allow a
Speaker 1: third party app to go in on your phone and
Speaker 1: download your messages for safe keeping. They do not. Now
Speaker 1: some of this is because of security reasons, but most
Speaker 1: of it is because of Apple's stubbornness. Here's what I think.
Speaker 1: Number one, do you have messages in iCloud enabled on
Speaker 1: your phone? That's my first question. I do, And are
Speaker 1: you okay? So have you gone to I have to
Speaker 1: remember how to do this. I've gotta. So if you
Speaker 1: go to your Apple I D and you go to
Speaker 1: iCloud and then show all messages, is that toggled.
Speaker 9: On on my phone?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 9: Yes, well it is now at least I mean I know,
Speaker 9: I know I had it. I'm so sure that I
Speaker 9: had it because I am and how much?
Speaker 1: Okay, can you go to your phone? Can you go
Speaker 1: to your phone right now and see that? Because I'm
Speaker 1: curious what it says about managed storage?
Speaker 9: Okay?
Speaker 6: Hold on, let me check.
Speaker 1: I guess my phone. Okay. So you go to settings
Speaker 1: and then iCloud. Okay, that's the thing at the top.
Speaker 9: Okay, let me find it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean Apple ID, it says, he says settings
Speaker 1: Apple ID at the top, and then iCloud okay, and
Speaker 1: then show all apps using iCloud click show all Yes,
Speaker 1: and now that okay. Now when you tap that, does
Speaker 1: it say sync this phone? And how much managed storage
Speaker 1: are you using? Up there?
Speaker 9: It says, yes, I think this sto managed storage? One
Speaker 9: point four do the bikes?
Speaker 1: Okay? So one point four gigs? I have nine gigs, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure that your messages are are there. Right,
Speaker 1: Here's what here's what I recommend if you want to
Speaker 1: see if these are on there. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: things you do. Do you do you have an Apple computer?
Speaker 1: I do, okay, So on your Apple computer, there is
Speaker 1: the same thing. If you go into your settings and
Speaker 1: you can go into your messages and there is a
Speaker 1: little I a little selection that says messages in the cloud.
Speaker 1: You toggle that on and it will attempt to download
Speaker 1: all of your messages from iCloud to your computer. That's
Speaker 1: one way. The other way. The other way is there's
Speaker 1: an app called Amazing, and this is a paid app,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna cost you some money, but I think
Speaker 1: it's about maybe thirty bucks. But you can download that
Speaker 1: and you can take that backup that you have from
Speaker 1: your computer and you can have this app analyze it
Speaker 1: and see if those messages are there. So that's another way,
Speaker 1: but I would only do that as your last resort.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do is you can go
Speaker 1: to something like an iPad and try to toggle on
Speaker 1: and off the messages in the cloud and see if
Speaker 1: they show up. But this is this is I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: it's not just you, Patty, there is no easy way
Speaker 1: to do this, and so I'm trying to explain it
Speaker 1: in the simplest terms. But these things are locked away
Speaker 1: in a system that nobody knows how to access. And
Speaker 1: I love the Apple said, you know the escalation all
Speaker 1: this stuff like, I'm not really sure what that means,
Speaker 1: but you know, these are the places that you can
Speaker 1: look for these. But it sounds like you've got a
Speaker 1: gig of messages and I'm not sure how many messages.
Speaker 1: How long have you been using this new phone?
Speaker 9: Oh, just like a month?
Speaker 1: Okay. The other thing you can do is if you're
Speaker 1: still are you still on your iPhone?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 1: So if you go to iCloud okay, okay, and it
Speaker 1: says device backups. Do you see that?
Speaker 9: Get it again?
Speaker 1: It says device backups yes, and then it says iCloud backup.
Speaker 1: If you tap that, it should give you a list
Speaker 1: of the older phones. Do you see your old phone
Speaker 1: in there?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 1: Okay? How many gigs is that?
Speaker 9: It says fourteen gigs?
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's a chance there's there's a chance that
Speaker 1: your messages are still in that backup. So if you
Speaker 1: try to restore you can either. I mean, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to do this, but you can try restoring that
Speaker 1: back to your phone and see if something got hiccuped
Speaker 1: during the transfer that's annoying. You should probably use an
Speaker 1: app like I amazing to extract that backup and then
Speaker 1: see if it can find the messages. But again it
Speaker 1: depends how valuable these messages are to you, because this
Speaker 1: is a lot of work, and it may be worth
Speaker 1: it to just kind of, you know, say this didn't
Speaker 1: work out and it's unfortunate. But it's definitely frustrating, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. It's one of those things where I wish
Speaker 1: I had a simple way. People ask me all the time,
Speaker 1: how do I back up my eye messages? How do
Speaker 1: I print them out? How do I do all this stuff? Yes,
Speaker 1: third party programs can help you do it, but they
Speaker 1: are still not perfect, and they're expensive and they cost money,
Speaker 1: and they may not work. But the I Amazing is
Speaker 1: probably your best bet if you want to try to
Speaker 1: extract these messages from the old backup. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for the call today, appreciate it. Sorry that happened. I
Speaker 1: think you were doing the right thing. You had the
Speaker 1: backup on you had I message on you had the
Speaker 1: I message in the cloud on, but somehow this all
Speaker 1: got lost and it just shouldn't happen that way. Speaking
Speaker 1: of text messages, you are going to be getting an
Speaker 1: emergency test message very soon. FEMA and the FCC are
Speaker 1: conducting a test of the emergency alert system. If you
Speaker 1: are in the Los Angeles well, this is nationwide, but
Speaker 1: my point is if you are if you were in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area over the past couple of weeks
Speaker 1: when we had the earthquakes and the tropical storm and
Speaker 1: the hurricane, you got a lot of these wireless alerts,
Speaker 1: so you're pretty familiar with them. But FEMA's going to
Speaker 1: do a nationwide test and this will be sent to
Speaker 1: all cell phones in English and Spanish. They're also going
Speaker 1: to broadcast it on radio and TVs nationwide. This is
Speaker 1: the third and seventh test issued nationwide, so the third
Speaker 1: for the wireless emergency alerts, the seventh for the the
Speaker 1: one on TV, and basically they're just trying to make
Speaker 1: sure this all works. I have a feeling it does,
Speaker 1: and we're very familiar with it. But again, uh oh,
Speaker 1: I should probably tell you the date October fourth, Did
Speaker 1: I tell you that the message is going to say
Speaker 1: this is a test. It's gonna appear for thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: It'll appear for a minute on TV and cable and radio.
Speaker 1: But again, if you want to put it in your
Speaker 1: calendar October fourth, hopefully they'll do it when we're asleep.
Speaker 1: That would be very, very cruel. Hopefully it's during the day.
Speaker 1: But no matter what, even when you know this is coming,
Speaker 1: it still makes you jump because it's so jarring. You're
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Give me a call if
Speaker 1: you have a question about technology at triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich to bureau here hanging out with you talking technology.
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. You can find me
Speaker 1: online at rich on Tech, on Instagram, Twitter, slash x, Facebook,
Speaker 1: or you can go to rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open at one eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four to one zero one. You can also email me.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of folks are doing let's see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, my first time here.
Speaker 1: I've had more pretzels than I could ever imagine, than
Speaker 1: you could ever imagine. I've had pretzels for breakfast, let's
Speaker 1: just put it that way. Yesterday I had a pretzel
Speaker 1: for lunch, a butter pretzel, which I'd never had before.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's it's been a good trip. Let's
Speaker 1: go to line three, Durango, Colorado, Downtown Brown.
Speaker 12: You're on with rich Well Dudaben. Hey, I want to
Speaker 12: ask you a question about if you're traveling to another
Speaker 12: country like your you want to take your own phone.
Speaker 12: Do you need to get a new SIM card or
Speaker 12: do you need to rent a phone or what's the
Speaker 12: best way to do it?
Speaker 1: Good question. So a couple of things you need to do.
Speaker 1: Number One, call your carrier. Start with that, because depending
Speaker 1: on your carrier, many of them either include some level
Speaker 1: of international calling these days, or they'll charge you ten
Speaker 1: dollars a day if you take your phone to a
Speaker 1: different country. Now, for some people they may say, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds really easy. Just keep in mind the data
Speaker 1: is typically limited when you do that. I think it's
Speaker 1: easier to get what's called an eSIM, so if your
Speaker 1: phone supports it. An eSIM is basically something that you
Speaker 1: just activate from an app on your phone. My favorite
Speaker 1: app is called Rolo Ai r Alo. In fact, that
Speaker 1: is powering the show right now. This show is running
Speaker 1: off of an eSIM that I have purchased from them,
Speaker 1: so the data is going strong. It works well. And
Speaker 1: what you do is you buy that from your phone
Speaker 1: before you leave the country. So you download the Aerlow app.
Speaker 1: You type in the country or region that you're going to.
Speaker 1: You can you know, it's basically cheaper to buy it
Speaker 1: for the specific country than the region, and you type
Speaker 1: that in. It tells you what your plans are. It's
Speaker 1: usually pre paid. You you know, pay fifteen bucks for
Speaker 1: five gigs of data, it lasts for a week. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're paying fifty dollars for thirty days that you know,
Speaker 1: twenty gigs of data. Whatever it is. They give you
Speaker 1: the options. Once you purchase it, you then install it
Speaker 1: on your phone. And the way you install it is
Speaker 1: you just basically tap a link. It will install the
Speaker 1: SIM card, the eSIM and then you don't need to
Speaker 1: activate it until you get to the country that you're
Speaker 1: going to use it. And so once you get off
Speaker 1: the plane, what I do is I'll toggle off data
Speaker 1: roaming for my primary carrier, and that way I could
Speaker 1: still use Wi Fi calling and I'll get my texts
Speaker 1: through the Wi Fi and then you toggle on the
Speaker 1: eSIM and it will take a minute to kind of
Speaker 1: find the network and turn on and activate, and then
Speaker 1: you're good to go. Now, esimsically only work with data,
Speaker 1: but I just actually open the airlow app and now
Speaker 1: they give you a phone number two if you want,
Speaker 1: so you can also roam with a foreign phone number
Speaker 1: as well. Now I don't really think you need that
Speaker 1: because you can easily just turn on your Wi Fi
Speaker 1: calling and still get your phone calls through Wi Fi
Speaker 1: of course, and your text messages through Wi Fi as well.
Speaker 1: So it has gotten a lot easier to travel to
Speaker 1: different countries because of eSIMs, because of the way phones work,
Speaker 1: because of the roaming agreements. It used to be a
Speaker 1: very expensive, very prohibitive and phones just didn't work in
Speaker 1: different places. Now they work pretty much everywhere. Now. On
Speaker 1: a separate note, there's another way you could do it.
Speaker 1: You can get a hot spot. So I've been testing
Speaker 1: this hot spot called Solace five G. SOLS Solace five
Speaker 1: G hotspot and it looks like almost like a battery
Speaker 1: bank with a screen and this has its own SIM inside.
Speaker 1: And what you do is you go on their website
Speaker 1: and you just say where you're going to go, and
Speaker 1: you can buy data on this and it becomes your
Speaker 1: own personal hotspot. You can connect up to sixteen different devices.
Speaker 1: And I think what this is handy for is if
Speaker 1: you are traveling with a family or a group, it's
Speaker 1: much easier. Instead of buying everyone a simcard or an
Speaker 1: e SIM, you can just activate this, tell everyone to
Speaker 1: turn on their WiFi. You keep this in your backpack
Speaker 1: and everyone can hotspot off of this. So they would
Speaker 1: connect to the Wi Fi on this little device and
Speaker 1: the battery has lasted pretty long. It's also a battery
Speaker 1: bank as well. So the plans. Now, the downside to
Speaker 1: this Solas five G is that you have to go
Speaker 1: with their plans. And it's easier because it's simple, but
Speaker 1: you know it's going to cost you a little bit more. So,
Speaker 1: convenience always comes with a cost, and that's what this
Speaker 1: gives you a lot of convenience. It works everywhere you
Speaker 1: can purchase one plan, you can go to a bunch
Speaker 1: of different countries, and the data lasts, let's see by
Speaker 1: the month, the day, or the gigabyte, and so they
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of plans that you can purchase.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually really cool. If you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of devices like myself, If you bring a tablet,
Speaker 1: a laptop, a phone, you know you can connect them
Speaker 1: all to this device and it'll work no matter where
Speaker 1: you go. So you just throw it in your backpack,
Speaker 1: set it forget it now. Keep in mind, when you're
Speaker 1: in the hotel room most of the time you're going
Speaker 1: to get free Wi Fi. And in fact, around Europe
Speaker 1: and many other countries, free Wi Fi is pretty ubiquitous,
Speaker 1: so you probably need less data than you think. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the data eSIM that I bought. I bought
Speaker 1: a twenty gigabyte card and I've only used about fourteen
Speaker 1: on my phone that I was using a lot. I
Speaker 1: told you I was testing the pixel fold. I mean
Speaker 1: I was using that a lot. Oh one pro tip
Speaker 1: you want to turn off if you're backing up your photos,
Speaker 1: especially through Google Photos or these other apps. You want
Speaker 1: to turn off roaming. Do not back up your pictures
Speaker 1: while you're roaming, and maybe turn off data backups completely
Speaker 1: unless you're on Wi Fi. So there's an option in
Speaker 1: the settings to turn off cellular data backups on all
Speaker 1: these apps that back up your photos. You're on vacation
Speaker 1: or you're on a trip, you're taking a lot of pictures.
Speaker 1: If your phone is uploading all of those pictures in
Speaker 1: real time, not only is it going to burn through
Speaker 1: your battery instantly, but it's also going to burn through
Speaker 1: your data really really fast. So those are a couple
Speaker 1: of the options that you have. They used to have
Speaker 1: another option where you could rent one of these Solas
Speaker 1: five G type devices and you can rent a hotspot.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, they are not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: A lot of the companies that were renting them have
Speaker 1: gone out of business because data has gotten so cheap
Speaker 1: and eSIMs have gotten so easy, and finally, Downtown Brown,
Speaker 1: like you said, the other thing you can do is
Speaker 1: just buy a real SIM card and pop that into
Speaker 1: your phone. And so you could typically at the airport
Speaker 1: they'll have people selling SIM cards and they will help
Speaker 1: you pop that into your phone. I think that's a
Speaker 1: little tricky because not every phone is unlocked. Not every
Speaker 1: phone works in every place, not every SIM card will
Speaker 1: work on your phone. So to me, I think the eSIM,
Speaker 1: if your phone supports it, is really the surefire way.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you from experience. I don't want
Speaker 1: to put my mom on a blast here, but she
Speaker 1: went to Germany a while ago and she was able
Speaker 1: to activate her eSIM herself. And so it was one
Speaker 1: of these things where I was a little bit concerned
Speaker 1: because I set her up with it and I said,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is activate it when you
Speaker 1: get to the place you're going. And sure enough, it
Speaker 1: worked just fine, and it worked for her when people
Speaker 1: in her group could not figure out their text or
Speaker 1: their their data. So that was pretty cool. Great question.
Speaker 1: Thanks for calling from Durango, Colorado. Today. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you about Google. This was a very popular story I
Speaker 1: did on TV and I think you probably want to
Speaker 1: know about it. Google has this new feature that lets
Speaker 1: you remove your personal information from their Google Search results.
Speaker 1: This is information like your phone number, your email, your
Speaker 1: home address. Just go ahead and search yourself. You'll find
Speaker 1: all kinds of results with your personal information in it.
Speaker 1: Now Google is making it much easier to get this
Speaker 1: out of their search results. Now I say that specifically,
Speaker 1: it does not delete it from the website that posted it,
Speaker 1: but it makes it a lot tougher for people to
Speaker 1: find it because it's not going to show up when
Speaker 1: someone searches your name and address or phone number, and
Speaker 1: it won't show up in those search results. So this
Speaker 1: is a free service. It's called Results about You. Google
Speaker 1: introduced it last year. It was much more complicated. Now
Speaker 1: it is much easier. Google will actually once you tell
Speaker 1: them your name, your phone number, your address, your email.
Speaker 1: You can put in multi variations. I know you have
Speaker 1: to trust Google to give them that information, but they
Speaker 1: say they're not going to use it for anything else.
Speaker 1: But once you put that information in there, it will
Speaker 1: search the web on a daily basis to see if
Speaker 1: new sites pop up with your info, and if it does,
Speaker 1: it'll send you an alert and you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: can you get rid of that? And they will in
Speaker 1: many cases take it down, not all cases, but in many.
Speaker 1: So here's how you do this. Open up the Google
Speaker 1: app on your phone, iOS or Android, tap your profile
Speaker 1: icon in the upper right hand corner, and then select
Speaker 1: the option for Results about You. It'll say that in
Speaker 1: the menu You follow the steps to put in your
Speaker 1: personal information, and then you sit back and you wait.
Speaker 1: Google will send you an alert when it has crawled
Speaker 1: the web for your information, and it will say do
Speaker 1: you want us to remove these? You select the ones
Speaker 1: that you want to remove, and you press submit and
Speaker 1: Google will send you an email letting you know if
Speaker 1: they've removed them or not. This is not the end
Speaker 1: all to get your personal information off the internet, but
Speaker 1: it is a very good step in the right direction
Speaker 1: of of cleaning up some of that mess that you
Speaker 1: see on all these people find our websites. Again, it's
Speaker 1: not going to take it down off of those, but
Speaker 1: it will take it off Google search results, which is
Speaker 1: where ninety nine percent of people look when they're starting
Speaker 1: a search for someone. So again this is called Google
Speaker 1: Results About You. If you want those step by step
Speaker 1: instructions one more time, I've posted them to my Instagram.
Speaker 1: Just find me at rich on Tech and the post
Speaker 1: says do this today to protect your personal information, very
Speaker 1: very easy. Got a ton of feedback from folks. Many
Speaker 1: were skeptical, but many said rich It took me a
Speaker 1: couple of days, but it worked. I got a lot
Speaker 1: of my data off of there you are listening to
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. The phone number to call in is
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one more rich
Speaker 1: on Tech coming your way from Berlin, Germany. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at talking technology
Speaker 1: with you. Let's go to UH line to Sylvie in
Speaker 1: San Diego, California. Sylvie, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 13: I'm wondering about a recommendation for a video doorbell. The
Speaker 13: only one I'm really familiar with is ring, and then
Speaker 13: I'd also would like to plug in somehow to hear
Speaker 13: it upstairs when the doorbell rings.
Speaker 1: Okay, well it sounds like you want to ring, because
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they do. I think ring. They invented
Speaker 1: this genre of doorbells, and I still think they are
Speaker 1: one of the best. So okay, there you know some
Speaker 1: people you know. It depends kind of depends what ecosystem
Speaker 1: you're in. Are Do you have any smart home products?
Speaker 3: Yes, like what.
Speaker 13: Sonos We have another door bell, but I can't hook
Speaker 13: up to it, so I want to replace it.
Speaker 1: And what do you mean you can't hook up to it.
Speaker 13: On my phone? For some reason? Only my husband can
Speaker 13: hook up to it, and it doesn't have the option
Speaker 13: of it doesn't ring, so if I don't have my
Speaker 13: phone near me, I don't hear it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely a problem.
Speaker 13: Ring on my phone. It only rings on his.
Speaker 1: Now, do you want to do hardwired or do you
Speaker 1: want to do wireless?
Speaker 13: Probably wireless. I don't think we have the wiring.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think the ring is probably your best bet.
Speaker 1: The main thing is that you're probably going to have
Speaker 1: to subscribe to their basic service, which is I think
Speaker 1: it's anywhere between twenty to forty dollars a year at
Speaker 1: this point. I know everyone has raised prices, so i'd
Speaker 1: have to I have to check to see what the
Speaker 1: price is at this point. But what I like about
Speaker 1: the ring doorbell is it simple. It's ubiquitous. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have them, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of them out there. They work well, They work across
Speaker 1: multiple phones, so if your husband wants to check it
Speaker 1: on his phone, you want to check it on your phone,
Speaker 1: you can do that. You can keep it pretty secure
Speaker 1: because they enable a two factor by default, which means
Speaker 1: other folks can't look at what's happening on your doorbell
Speaker 1: and they have that chime. So if you want to
Speaker 1: have it ring upstairs where you want to be, that's
Speaker 1: a good way to do it. You just plug in
Speaker 1: the little chime, you hook it up. It's very very simple,
Speaker 1: activate it in the app, and now you can hear
Speaker 1: your doorbell anywhere in the home. It's funny because they
Speaker 1: didn't have that when it first came out. And when
Speaker 1: I first got this thing, I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I have to have my phone, Like, what if there's
Speaker 1: like a babysitter in the house, how are they going
Speaker 1: to hear the doorbell? Not that I really want them
Speaker 1: opening the door, but you know what I mean, Yes,
Speaker 1: does that sound like something that will work?
Speaker 13: Yes, it does. I know Ring was sold and so
Speaker 13: I didn't know if it was still the same good company.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, look it's it's owned by Amazon now,
Speaker 1: so there is some debate over you know, and the
Speaker 1: founder recently left. So I mean that, you know, it
Speaker 1: tells you something. But I will tell you that I
Speaker 1: test a lot of stuff. I still think that the
Speaker 1: Ring video doorbell has some of the best features. It's
Speaker 1: the simplest and they, you know, as much as they
Speaker 1: are now pushing the subscription side of things. More, I
Speaker 1: think that they've got a lot of accessories, They've got
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: using them, and so I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: different versions too, So it depends you can you can choose.
Speaker 1: You can go on their website and see all the
Speaker 1: different doorbells they have. They used to have one, but
Speaker 1: now they've got, you know, several doorbells. And the cool
Speaker 1: thing is too, is that it does work with Alexa,
Speaker 1: it does work with other items in sort of their
Speaker 1: their ecosystem is is huge at this point, and so
Speaker 1: you can get lights, you can get cameras, so you
Speaker 1: can build upon the video doorbell, which is of course
Speaker 1: what they want you to do. So the basic video
Speaker 1: doorbell looks like it's about seventy bucks. They go up
Speaker 1: to one hundred and sixty. The new one is the
Speaker 1: video Doorbell four and those are the wireless ones. And
Speaker 1: what I recommend pro tip is to get two batteries
Speaker 1: so that you can swap out the battery without having
Speaker 1: to wait to recharge. And I can't take credit for
Speaker 1: that idea. What's up?
Speaker 13: Well, I was going to ask you you can put
Speaker 13: them anywhere you don't need a power source because their
Speaker 13: battery yep, rechargeable.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yep, yep. Now I wish the battery recharged faster,
Speaker 1: and I wish to recharge with USBC. Maybe the new
Speaker 1: ones do, but mine does not. But I can't take
Speaker 1: credit for the two battery set up. That was my
Speaker 1: friend Brian when he came over and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, oh, my ring. The only thing
Speaker 1: is that you guys switched the battery out. Depending on
Speaker 1: the battery lasts anywhere between three and six months. Now
Speaker 1: that is a wide range, and it could last even
Speaker 1: less depending on how all often you have your device
Speaker 1: set to record, how long you're making these recordings, and
Speaker 1: also if your doorbells in direct sunlight, that will wear
Speaker 1: down the battery faster too, But in general you'll probably
Speaker 1: get around three to six months, depending on how much
Speaker 1: you're using this thing. I find that I get on
Speaker 1: the lower end. I would say probably at this point,
Speaker 1: I'm getting like two months. But my batteries are a
Speaker 1: little bit older, and I do have it. My car
Speaker 1: got hit outside my house. That was a story I
Speaker 1: told in this radio show. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: I like to have my thing running a little bit
Speaker 1: more these days because of that incident where it did
Speaker 1: not record because I had it set to not record
Speaker 1: as much. Anyway, that's my problem, Sylvie, not yours. Are
Speaker 1: you excited for this doorbell?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, I think you'll like it all right. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the call, Sylvie. Check it out ring video doorbell and
Speaker 1: also get the chime and the secondary battery and I
Speaker 1: think you'll be set up pretty well. Coming up on
Speaker 1: the show, we are going to talk to Mark Vina.
Speaker 1: He is the principal analyst at his own company, tech
Speaker 1: smart Tech Research. Mark is a great guy. Met him
Speaker 1: this week at IFA. Very smart guy. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the show. We're gonna talk about what Apple's doing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about AI whole bunch of stuff coming up.
Speaker 1: Right here, you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro on location here
Speaker 1: in Berlin at IFA twenty twenty three. We are on
Speaker 1: the show floor. Joining me now is Mark Vina, principal
Speaker 1: analyst at Smart Tech Research. Mark. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me.
Speaker 2: Rich, Thank you for having me all right.
Speaker 1: So, IFA twenty twenty three, this is my first year here.
Speaker 1: This is a large show, the only thing I really
Speaker 1: have to compare it to is CEES. How are they different?
Speaker 14: It's a tough compare because she yes, Obviously, it really
Speaker 14: caters to a US audience. It's a very much a
Speaker 14: B to B type of event, so consumers technically can't
Speaker 14: go to CEES. What I love about efan I've been
Speaker 14: coming here many years, is that it's got a tremendous
Speaker 14: international flavor, a lot of legacy. The show goes back
Speaker 14: to nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 2: The first color.
Speaker 14: Television was introduced here, the first European car radio was
Speaker 14: introduced here, So it really has kind of a not
Speaker 14: only an international flavor, but it has a strong entrepreneurial
Speaker 14: and innovative spirit. So not to say the cs IS
Speaker 14: doesn't have an equal level of innovation, but it really
Speaker 14: is a kind of different show because of the cultural
Speaker 14: international aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they really play up the fact that it takes
Speaker 1: place in Berlin and also the public is allowed to
Speaker 1: come to this show, which is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: questions I get about CES every year. People see it
Speaker 1: on TV and they say can I go, And I
Speaker 1: say sorry, it's press only in analysts. What do you
Speaker 1: make of the fact that the public is invited here.
Speaker 14: I think that's a huge differentiator and I wish CES
Speaker 14: would do that, but they will. I think it's a
Speaker 14: great way to be able to see things in action.
Speaker 14: There's no substitute. Despite the Internet, despite surfing and exploring
Speaker 14: and getting information on the web, there's nothing like touching
Speaker 14: and feeling products. And for example, if you're interested in
Speaker 14: the smart appliance for your kitchen, seeing just the incredible breadth.
Speaker 2: Of products around here, there's no substitute.
Speaker 1: For seeing that in person and also being able to
Speaker 1: talk to someone immediately. So if you're on YouTube, if
Speaker 1: you're online, you're reading a whole bunch of stuff. But
Speaker 1: to be able to talk to someone from the company
Speaker 1: and ask the questions that you have to me as
Speaker 1: a journalist, I always find that invaluable.
Speaker 2: That's a huge deal.
Speaker 14: And in addition to that, I would also say competitive comparisons.
Speaker 14: So you can go to LG, you can go to
Speaker 14: with Samsung Boo if you can see Hire, which is
Speaker 14: obviously a big European brand out here, and actually see
Speaker 14: the different models that compete with each other in one
Speaker 14: exact in one location.
Speaker 1: How has this show changed over the years, because in
Speaker 1: years past. When I tell people about EPA, they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of appliances. Has that changed?
Speaker 2: It has changed.
Speaker 14: I'd be going to the show for about just five
Speaker 14: years and the show has evolved quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Now it has a.
Speaker 14: Very strong smart home flavor to it, a very strong
Speaker 14: smart home component to it. I would say focus on sustainability.
Speaker 14: Just about every vendor here is not only offering great
Speaker 14: technology products that solve real problems, but sustainability, which is
Speaker 14: a huge, huge deal Europe, is absolutely reflected in the
Speaker 14: products that you see here. So that's become a big,
Speaker 14: big tenant here.
Speaker 1: There's the irony of sustainability with you know, products that
Speaker 1: you throw out or you know, people don't repair their
Speaker 1: tech as much these days.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, That's exactly right. And I think the
Speaker 2: thing that folks.
Speaker 14: Don't realize just we're talking about smart smart appliances, it's
Speaker 14: not just about convenience. The smart applying products, just to
Speaker 14: focus on that for a second, are incredibly efficient. I mean,
Speaker 14: without even ignoring the productivity advantages you get from the
Speaker 14: smart aspect of it.
Speaker 2: That it can do certain.
Speaker 14: Things with AI and other capabilities that are interesting. Now,
Speaker 14: if you're replacing a refrigerator at that's fifteen or twenty
Speaker 14: years old, You're going to see your savings and I
Speaker 14: would I would encourage people to check that out because
Speaker 14: it's just a huge opportunity that some people just don't appreciate.
Speaker 1: AI is obviously a big part of things. What do
Speaker 1: you make of the recent developments in AI? And do
Speaker 1: you see that here?
Speaker 2: Yes, you do.
Speaker 14: I think you see in a very smart and intelligent
Speaker 14: way here. Uh, the AI category I'm in love with.
Speaker 14: I think it offers enormous advantages and productivity benefits.
Speaker 2: There are aspects of AI that.
Speaker 14: Concern me a bit in terms of deep fakes and
Speaker 14: things like that that have obviously have a very negative
Speaker 14: connotation to it. But the AI thing is here to stay,
Speaker 14: and you see it actually integrated and a lot of
Speaker 14: different products that are very very practical. For example, I
Speaker 14: saw a demo the other day that they showed a
Speaker 14: robot vacuum that was intelligent enough to know that Let's
Speaker 14: say you it scanned your you gave it access to
Speaker 14: your email. Let's say you had a party the night
Speaker 14: before without you telling it, it would know the following
Speaker 14: day you know you had a party, so you probably
Speaker 14: want to get to the living room back. So that's
Speaker 14: a very very interesting productive way that you were seeing
Speaker 14: and doing. It's being integrated into products in a very
Speaker 14: useful manner.
Speaker 1: I would have never thought vacuum would want access to
Speaker 1: my email, but maybe my calendar. I'll start out slow now.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's really interesting about all of
Speaker 1: these tech trade shows is Apple. They pretty much don't
Speaker 1: attend in a big way with a booth or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but they really have an impact on every show.
Speaker 2: That's very interesting.
Speaker 14: You know, Apple does cast a very long shadow even
Speaker 14: when they're not here, they are here.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to.
Speaker 14: Go into a booth here, regardless of what the product
Speaker 14: is and not see that the vendor or fering the solution,
Speaker 14: regardless of what it is, is not compatible in the
Speaker 14: Apple ecosystem in some way.
Speaker 7: You have to be.
Speaker 2: It's almost like table stakes.
Speaker 14: If you're not part of the Apple ecosystem and you're
Speaker 14: not compatible in some way, you know pretty much you
Speaker 14: box yourself out from a pretty significant portion of the market.
Speaker 14: So even though they're not here, and by the way,
Speaker 14: there probably is Apple people here kind of checking things out.
Speaker 14: You know, they don't wear identification, But I am sure
Speaker 14: there are Apple pbo here because it's such.
Speaker 2: A big event.
Speaker 14: But every vendor here has an Apple element or an
Speaker 14: Apple attribute to their presence here at the show.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of Apple, a couple of big changes. We
Speaker 1: have a big event coming up from them on September twelfth.
Speaker 1: USB C is rumored to be a major switch for
Speaker 1: the iPhone and also Apple Vision Pro. Will we get
Speaker 1: an update on that? First off, the USB C, what
Speaker 1: impact do you think that's going to have on the
Speaker 1: electronics world.
Speaker 14: Well, I can tell you for myself personally, They'll probably
Speaker 14: be about ten pounds worth of cable, so I'll be
Speaker 14: able to get out of my bag as we kiss
Speaker 14: Lightning the Lightning interface goodbye.
Speaker 2: You know again.
Speaker 14: I doubt that will be the only announcement they make
Speaker 14: as part of the iPhone fifteen refresh. There are rumors
Speaker 14: around a much better camera, a telescoping lens for better
Speaker 14: zooming quality that I'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1: They're not going to go one hundred times like Samsung though, Oh.
Speaker 2: I doubt they'll do that.
Speaker 14: I think that's going to be interesting is that there
Speaker 14: is some rumors that the price points may be going up.
Speaker 14: They may be adding kind of a iPhone Pro ultra Moniker,
Speaker 14: which that's a translation for we can raise the price
Speaker 14: one hundred and two hundred dollars. So I know the
Speaker 14: Apple's not immune to inflation. It's probably infecting them that way.
Speaker 14: But they want to continue to innovate, of course, and
Speaker 14: I think they'll be bringing some interesting technology. And they
Speaker 14: have to because, as you know, the smartphone category is
Speaker 14: flattening out. They have a very strong presence in the
Speaker 14: high end part of the smartphone market, and the only
Speaker 14: way you maintain that presidency you have to continue to innovate.
Speaker 1: Apple Vision Pro this is there. They don't call it VR,
Speaker 1: but it's VR ar headset. You got a demo, I
Speaker 1: got a demo. It's pretty incredible. Do you think we'll
Speaker 1: get an update on the progress at this year's event.
Speaker 2: I think we'll see something.
Speaker 14: I think we'll get some type of feedback on how
Speaker 14: they're doing with developers. I mean, there's been some news
Speaker 14: reported recently that the developers who have gotten demo units
Speaker 14: are freaking out in a positive way over.
Speaker 2: What they get, what they can play with.
Speaker 14: Because I'll remind the audience here that Vision is a
Speaker 14: literally a spatial computer that sits on your head. This
Speaker 14: is not just an accessory like an Oculus quest or
Speaker 14: some of the other hear this out there. It's really
Speaker 14: meant to be a computer in many, many different ways.
Speaker 14: And when you're if you're a developer and you have
Speaker 14: access to that type of technology, the applications are.
Speaker 2: Just mind blowing in terms of what we'll see.
Speaker 14: So I suspect we'll probably get an update on the
Speaker 14: developer component to it that they announced at WWDC.
Speaker 1: Okay, back here to IFA, twenty six different halls, one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand square meters. There is a lot
Speaker 1: to see here? Is there any way to see it all?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 14: The advice I give people who are lucky enough to
Speaker 14: come to this show is you have to almost treat.
Speaker 2: It like a trip to Disney World.
Speaker 14: You know, you've got the Magic Kingdom, you've got to
Speaker 14: have Cut Center, and then a.
Speaker 2: Number of other parks.
Speaker 14: You really can't knock it off from one day.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, maybe I'm nostalgic about, you know, the
Speaker 1: days of tech past, But because I was watching that
Speaker 1: movie BlackBerry, and then I watched Tetris. You've been doing
Speaker 1: this for a while. How do you think the tech
Speaker 1: industry has changed over the years.
Speaker 14: In some ways, it's different in many ways. It's rise
Speaker 14: and repeat, you know, from a technology standpoint. You know,
Speaker 14: when I walk around and I look at going to
Speaker 14: and see different products. You know, I was involved with
Speaker 14: a lot of the early consumer computers at Compac and
Speaker 14: at Dell years ago. And while the devices have gotten
Speaker 14: smaller and more efficient, the battery life have gotten longer.
Speaker 14: You know, silicon and silicon software is software. There's much
Speaker 14: more of a consumer flavor today than there was maybe
Speaker 14: twenty years ago with different products. So the consumerization of
Speaker 14: technology is much more prominent today than it was back
Speaker 14: in the day.
Speaker 1: Mark Vina, a principal analyst at Smart Tech Research. How
Speaker 1: can folks find your podcast?
Speaker 14: They can find me on my YouTube channel at a
Speaker 14: smart Tech Check podcast, Very very popular.
Speaker 2: Well, it's free, please.
Speaker 14: Sign up and you can find me on Twitter or
Speaker 14: x as it's now called at Marketing the Tech don
Speaker 14: All right.
Speaker 1: Mark, thanks so much for joining me today at IFA
Speaker 1: more Rich on Tech come in your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here closing
Speaker 1: out the show from Berlin, Germany, wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: about one product that I saw here that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: A lot of people know it's getting a lot of
Speaker 1: press because it's kind of nice. You can turn your
Speaker 1: old speakers into Airplay compatible speakers. It's from a company
Speaker 1: named Eve. They make a bunch of smart home devices.
Speaker 1: They announce the Eve Play. So this adds Airplay two
Speaker 1: capabilities to existing speakers with digital and analog outputs. It
Speaker 1: has Wi Fi, Ethernet, optical coacs, and RCAA connectors, so
Speaker 1: that means that you can connect basically your old speakers
Speaker 1: and make them modern. So with Airplay too, you could
Speaker 1: do multi room audio. You can also pair them with
Speaker 1: HomePods and other Airplay speakers. This is going to go
Speaker 1: on sale November fourteenth, twenty twenty three. That's well, that's
Speaker 1: this year for one hundred and fifty bucks. This is
Speaker 1: called eve Play ev E. I've got a couple of
Speaker 1: things from Eve in the house. They were a big
Speaker 1: home kit producer and now they're doing everything with matter
Speaker 1: so that's the new smart home standard. Anyway, Eve Play.
Speaker 1: If you've got some old speakers you want to bring
Speaker 1: them into the modern world, you can do that with
Speaker 1: their new system. Gosh, I saw a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'll talk more about the products I saw
Speaker 1: next week because that'll give me time to put them
Speaker 1: on KTLA and then that way you can see video
Speaker 1: of these things. But I'm also going to post them
Speaker 1: to my social media as well. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: to the feedback segment. Let's see Paul says, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I'm preparing for a cross country trip. I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you know of any route planning sites or app
Speaker 1: that would be good for identifying tourist attractions along possible
Speaker 1: routes for the trip.
Speaker 7: Oh, yes, I do.
Speaker 1: I did a story about this a couple years ago,
Speaker 1: and I've used a bunch of these apps. The first
Speaker 1: one is Roadsideamerica dot com. This will give you offbeat
Speaker 1: kind of things to find, you know, like the largest
Speaker 1: ball of twine. Then there's Atlas Obscura. This has twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand curious and unexpected places. You can get that
Speaker 1: on your phone as well. Atlas Obscura road Trippers is
Speaker 1: a good planning guide. They have three hundred extraordinary places.
Speaker 1: They also say they've been to these places, so they
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit more about that. Indispensable is
Speaker 1: an app called I Exit. This is an app that
Speaker 1: will tell you what's up ahead at the exit. So
Speaker 1: if you want to find that Krispy Kreme or that
Speaker 1: Chick fil A or that specific as food place, that cinnabon,
Speaker 1: this will tell you what's up ahead and the gas prices,
Speaker 1: so you may be able to save a couple of
Speaker 1: bucks just by stop at a gas station. That's you know,
Speaker 1: two exits ahead instead of one. And finally, another one
Speaker 1: is called Audio a u TiO. Kevin Costner actually had
Speaker 1: a hand in this app. This is ten thousand location
Speaker 1: based audio stories. So when you're driving through a place,
Speaker 1: it will give you little audio snippets of cool things
Speaker 1: that happened or the history or you know, interesting attractions.
Speaker 1: That's called Audio au TiO. Used to be called here
Speaker 1: here I believe, and now it's called audio. The other
Speaker 1: one I would I would tell you that's incredible and
Speaker 1: I've been using it on this trip well, and we
Speaker 1: talked about on the show we didn't interview, but it's
Speaker 1: called guide geek dot ai and if you want a
Speaker 1: really smart travel assistant to ask a bunch of stuff too.
Speaker 1: I have been using this all week here in Berlin
Speaker 1: and it is really really cool. So there you go.
Speaker 1: I'll put all those on the website as well. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Stephanie says, I'm currently going on a work related trip
Speaker 1: and we'll be leaving my children at the care of
Speaker 1: their nanny. Do you have any suggestions for a good
Speaker 1: discrete camera that has a long lasting battery for about
Speaker 1: two weeks? Stephanie, Well, I don't know. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can condone the spying on the nannycam,
Speaker 1: but if you have to, there's a website called spyguy
Speaker 1: dot com. Spy guy dot com. They made their name
Speaker 1: with a little camera thing that you can look for
Speaker 1: hidden cameras and airbnbs and it's called Scout. But they
Speaker 1: also sell a whole bunch of hidden cameras that you
Speaker 1: can prouse on their website again, spy guy dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, now for some comments, let's see. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: so many. Greg says, I took your recommendation for the
Speaker 1: Google Pixel tablet on Amazon Prime Day. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the recommendation. It's my first tablet. I'm very happy. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: The Google Pixel is their return to tablets. Tom says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: glad you had a safe journey to Berlin. I assume
Speaker 1: you went on United all the way. Did you have
Speaker 1: a chance to check out other carriers en route? Could
Speaker 1: you please tell me the name of that twelve South
Speaker 1: bluetooth transmitter for the airplane? Thank you, Tom. I did
Speaker 1: take United all the way very smooth. It was a
Speaker 1: connecting flight and I had no issues whatsoever. It was
Speaker 1: I love when that happens, when it was just literally
Speaker 1: comfortable from takeoff to landing both times and really really
Speaker 1: no issues whatsoever. Thank you United for that. It's called
Speaker 1: the twelve airfly by twelve twelve South airfly is the
Speaker 1: bluetooth transmitter. Let's see em says when you're talking about
Speaker 1: the Rob Thomas being from Germany, you said, where's my bell?
Speaker 1: But they had applause instead. We could hear the applause.
Speaker 1: H Bobo, that's that's you know what. Look when you're
Speaker 1: when you're doing a show from Berlin. We've got people
Speaker 1: all over the world doing this show right now coordinating.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm just glad we got the show. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna work on drops a little bit more. Bobo,
Speaker 1: I know likes doing them. We haven't really coordinated that
Speaker 1: so we will, we will coordinate more drops.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Stephen says Rich, I listened to you all the time,
Speaker 1: but could you improve your show by pausing between sentences
Speaker 1: some silence and try to cut out. But you know
Speaker 1: and so well, but you know, so Stephen, you do
Speaker 1: the show. It's tough. I'm a TV guy. I'm learning radio,
Speaker 1: so you know. There you go. Jim says, hey, it's
Speaker 1: actually pronounced yeomen. Oh this was from last week. I
Speaker 1: said yeoman. I guess what does that mean? Yeomen yeoman.
Speaker 1: That means uh, a servant in a royal or noble household. Okay, oh,
Speaker 1: someone called me a yeoman. I called a yeoman. It's
Speaker 1: a yeoman. Thanks for that. Let's see. Ron says, I
Speaker 1: have a Note on my Samsung nine. I'm disappointed that
Speaker 1: I've had the phone three years, bought it new for
Speaker 1: one thousand bucks. Now they say they're not going to
Speaker 1: support it and do updates. These phone companies expect you
Speaker 1: to renew your phone every couple of years. I guess
Speaker 1: this phone for one thousand dollars should last me ten years.
Speaker 1: I like the Note nine because it has a headphone jack,
Speaker 1: which the new ones do not. And if you want
Speaker 1: to get radio like talk radio. Yeah, I like that,
Speaker 1: and over the airwaves. The headphone acts like the antenna.
Speaker 1: In addition, when you upgrade to new phones, you lose
Speaker 1: information and apps. You have to redo everything. It's a
Speaker 1: real pain in the neck. Oh I should know, Ron,
Speaker 1: because I do that like every three weeks when I'm
Speaker 1: testing out a new phone. I agree, But I do
Speaker 1: think phones last pretty long. Three years and a lot
Speaker 1: of the carriers now are or a lot of the
Speaker 1: phone makers are given like four years maybe five of
Speaker 1: security updates. I got to check on Samsung, though, but
Speaker 1: they are doing pretty well. Note nine has been out
Speaker 1: for a while. Let's see here. Randy says, someone asked
Speaker 1: about clean up tools for their Windows PC. Let me
Speaker 1: give you my list. Did I already mention this? Bleach bit,
Speaker 1: auto runs, glary utilities, malware bytes, revo on installer, cleaning
Speaker 1: out all of the apps you do not use in
Speaker 1: the Window. Apps that come with Windows should be removed
Speaker 1: if you do not use them. I would agree with that,
Speaker 1: all right, if you can believe it, that is going
Speaker 1: to do it for this episode of the show. You
Speaker 1: can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to richontech dot TV. This is show number
Speaker 1: thirty five. We're still a baby here. You can find
Speaker 1: me on social media. I am at rich on tech.
Speaker 1: If you want to see my Berlin trip in quite detail,
Speaker 1: I just made a highlight so if you go to
Speaker 1: my profile it says Berlin It's got the Pretzel. You
Speaker 1: can check out all the cool stuff I did here.
Speaker 1: I'll be back in the States next week gearing up
Speaker 1: for events from Apple and Google. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
Speaker 1: with me. I know, believe me. I just read a
Speaker 1: small sample of the many, many messages I get every
Speaker 1: week via email, Instagram, text, whatever. Thank you. Thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone who makes this show possible, including Kim, Bobo,
Speaker 1: Bill and an army of engineers, especially when I'm halfway
Speaker 1: across the world from Berlin, Germany. My name is rich Dumuro.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you real soon.