Speaker 1: Ring makes its cheapest video doorbell yet, but there is
Speaker 1: a catch. Who's the winner In smartphones? Another streaming service
Speaker 1: raises prices? Plus Your tech questions answered? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about, and it's where I answer the
Speaker 1: questions you send me. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech
Speaker 1: reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you're
Speaker 1: having a fantastic day. So I finally did something that
Speaker 1: I've wanted to do for so long. This has been
Speaker 1: a project that is I don't know, evaded me for many,
Speaker 1: many years. I took down my NASS, which is my
Speaker 1: network attached storage drive, probably a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: like maybe two three years ago.
Speaker 2: It's probably two years ago.
Speaker 1: I never set it back up again, and I just
Speaker 1: always wanted to, but I never got around to it.
Speaker 1: And so finally I've been running up against this problem.
Speaker 1: It's this whole Google thing charging for storage that has
Speaker 1: really gotten me to clean up my act with my
Speaker 1: cloud files. So I wanted to back up my Google
Speaker 1: Drive to the NAS and then move a bunch of
Speaker 1: files in the Google drive to the NAS, and NAS
Speaker 1: means network attached storage. It's basically a hard drive that
Speaker 1: plugs into your network so that you can access it
Speaker 1: from all your computers. And you know, you can have
Speaker 1: these big hard drives in it. Right now, I've only
Speaker 1: got like a four terabyte in there. But ideally what
Speaker 1: you do is you mirror the drives and that way,
Speaker 1: whatever you put on the one drive copies to the
Speaker 1: other drive, and so if something ever happened to one
Speaker 1: of the drives they fail, you've got the other drive,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of a fail safe method for
Speaker 1: backing up your stuff. You should also have your stuff
Speaker 1: in a third place, which is, you know, a cloud
Speaker 1: or the original file itself, which in my case would
Speaker 1: be Google Drive. But anyway, I finally did this. I
Speaker 1: finally SYNCD my Google Drive to it, and now I'm
Speaker 1: ready to move out this giant batch of files and
Speaker 1: free up some space on my Google Drive. And it's
Speaker 1: a long story what the files are, but they're basically
Speaker 1: the old Google photos files, and so I'm not sure
Speaker 1: this is what I don't know just yet. I don't
Speaker 1: know if those Google file Google photos files are actually
Speaker 1: taking up storage on my Google drive right, like my
Speaker 1: quota of two terabytes, I'm not sure. I don't know,
Speaker 1: so when I move them out, I will find out.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling they are, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Originally they were not, and then I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: they are now. So anyway, the network attached drive is
Speaker 1: great because you just have a ton of storage that
Speaker 1: you can just move files between. And it's been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. The one I have in case you're
Speaker 1: interested in, is from snology sy no l O g
Speaker 1: Y Snology. I have the disk station and it's an
Speaker 1: old one, but I looked up the new one. It's
Speaker 1: the DS two twenty plus, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: consumer solution.
Speaker 2: It holds too hard drive and was at USBC on
Speaker 2: the front.
Speaker 1: No, it's just regular and that is three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: on Amazon. I believe I paid a little bit less
Speaker 1: than that, but anyway, really cool, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to not pay extra for Google Drive at
Speaker 1: this point because now they're charging for everything in my
Speaker 1: Google Photos. They're charging for that starting soon, so I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that I don't have anything in
Speaker 1: my Google Drive. And those two terabytes I pay ten
Speaker 1: dollars a month for any more than I need in there,
Speaker 1: like I only need the absolute essentials. So I'm going
Speaker 1: through my whole drive file by file and just making
Speaker 1: sure that it's all cleaned up and ready to go.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the first story in today's podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: By the way, Apple crosses one billion active iPhone users
Speaker 1: for the first time this according to nine to five Mac,
Speaker 1: Tim Cook, in an interview with Reuter, said they have
Speaker 1: one hundred one point sixty five billion devices active, but
Speaker 1: one billion of those are iPhones. Can you imagine a
Speaker 1: billion iPhone around the world. I mean, this company is
Speaker 1: just printing money all those iCloud messages every day. Oh
Speaker 1: you have no more storage in your iCloud. We couldn't
Speaker 1: back up your phone. Oh charge me some more. They
Speaker 1: last time they mentioned how many active iPhones, it was
Speaker 1: nine hundred million in twenty nineteen. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: phones and Apple is just killing it. The latest numbers
Speaker 1: from IDC, who tracks this stuff, that's International Data Corporation.
Speaker 1: The fourth quarter was really good for smartphone makers and
Speaker 1: really really good for Apple. In the top five Apple
Speaker 1: number one, they sold ninety million phones or they shipped
Speaker 1: I should say, I don't know if that actually means
Speaker 1: they sold them, but I think that means pretty much
Speaker 1: the same ninety million devices, and mostly that was driven
Speaker 1: by the the iPhone twelve. How successful that is, So
Speaker 1: ninety million phones in one quarter, I mean, that's just phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Samsung number two with seventy three million, well, let's round
Speaker 1: it up to seventy four million now the twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: Q four. So just to give you an idea of
Speaker 1: how many people upgraded in twenty twenty versus twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: seventy three, let's say seventy four million were sold in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen the last quarter, compared to ninety million for Apple,
Speaker 1: sixty nine million. Well, let's say seventy million for Samsung
Speaker 1: versus seventy four million. So both companies did see an increase,
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing during a pandemic. But for Apple
Speaker 1: that increase was very dramatic and very pronounced. The rest
Speaker 1: of the companies, there's really no competition anymore. There's only
Speaker 1: Samsung and Apple, and the other ones are all Chinese
Speaker 1: manufacturers Jaomi.
Speaker 2: Appo and Huawei.
Speaker 1: And Huawei has been hit really hard. I think on
Speaker 1: this very podcast I mentioned how Huawei was like number
Speaker 1: one for global shipments and now for this fourth quarter
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty they're down to the one, two, three,
Speaker 1: four fifth. But if you take it big picture, for
Speaker 1: the whole year in twenty twenty, Samsung number one, Apple
Speaker 1: number two, Huaweih number three. So it's interesting. I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with smartphones. I love them.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: The Samsung Galaxy S twenty one series is out best
Speaker 1: Samsung devices in years. I will say it again. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna upgrade your Samsung, do it this year. The
Speaker 1: phones they came out with are just phenomenal. The S
Speaker 1: twenty one series is fantastic. I find that the S
Speaker 1: twenty one Ultra, as I find with a lot of
Speaker 1: these big phones nowadays, it's just too big. And I
Speaker 1: love that phone and I want to carry it around.
Speaker 1: I want to switch to it, but I can't. It's
Speaker 1: just too big. I can't carry that thing in my pocket.
Speaker 1: I always use the kind of the wedding as the example.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're dancing at a wedding, could your
Speaker 1: phone be in your pocket? With the Ultra no Way,
Speaker 1: no Way, iPhone twelve pro, Yes, Samsung S twenty one, Yes,
Speaker 1: S twenty one plus I'm not sure. I have not
Speaker 1: held that one yet, but that would be probably. I
Speaker 1: gotta say the S twenty one is a perfect size.
Speaker 1: It's the same exact size as the I Phone twelve
Speaker 1: Pro and the iPhone twelve. So if that's you know,
Speaker 1: if you like a nice size phone, nice screen size,
Speaker 1: but not giant, go with the S twenty one. It's
Speaker 1: a great little device, and I have not found any
Speaker 1: problems with it whatsoever. I wish it had a little
Speaker 1: bit more memory. It has eight gigs of RAM. I
Speaker 1: wish it had closer to the I think the Ultra
Speaker 1: comes with sixteen or twelve, but I wish it had that.
Speaker 1: I think the Ultra sixteen. But anyway, let's get to a.
Speaker 2: Question, shall we. Jody Wrights, Hello, they're rich.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for wireless earbuds
Speaker 1: that are not over one hundred dollars sent for my iPhone.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny when people send me questions, I
Speaker 1: generally get a little indication of the answer I should
Speaker 1: give them with how they're sending me. So if it
Speaker 1: says sent for my iPhone, generally I will recommend AirPods
Speaker 1: ten out of ten times times because air pods are amazing.
Speaker 1: They sync with the iPhone, they seamlessly switch between devices.
Speaker 2: They're just perfect.
Speaker 1: Now, Jody is asking me for something under one hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: and generally you can't get the air pods for under
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars. So in that case, I will defer
Speaker 1: to two different pairs of headphones that I've liked in
Speaker 1: the past year. Number one are called the Let's Fit
Speaker 1: T thirteen. They are dirt cheap under thirty dollars and
Speaker 1: they work fantastic. I will say for under thirty dollars,
Speaker 1: the Let's Fit T thirteen are just great, not a
Speaker 1: lot of fuss. They work great, they charge fast, the
Speaker 1: battery lasts, they stay in your ears, they feel good,
Speaker 1: they sound good, and actually sound amazing. So that's my
Speaker 1: number one pick.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The second pair that I like is from one Plus.
Speaker 1: They made a pair this year called or last year
Speaker 1: called the one plus buds Z. These were fifty dollars
Speaker 1: and I find myself going back to them over and over.
Speaker 1: They're excellent and they stay ears. They had a little
Speaker 1: problem at the beginning where they were pausing during workouts
Speaker 1: a lot because there's something with the sensor, but I
Speaker 1: think they fix that with the softwareupdates. I don't really
Speaker 1: see that happening much anymore. And those are fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: You might be able to get them cheaper online if
Speaker 1: you look around, but those are the two that I recommend,
Speaker 1: and they will both cost you under one hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: and I think you'll be very happy with either pair.
Speaker 2: Jody, thanks for the question. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're following what was going on
Speaker 1: this week with Robin Hood and these stocks, but these
Speaker 1: Reddit traders were pumping up the prices of these random
Speaker 1: stocks like game Stop, BlackBerry, AMC movie Theaters. I think
Speaker 1: American Airlines was in there at some point, but oh,
Speaker 1: they have them.
Speaker 2: All listed here BB. I think that's best buy.
Speaker 1: But what they did was they pumped up the prices
Speaker 1: because all of these hedge fund traders apparently. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a stock market person, believe me, I know nothing
Speaker 1: about this. I only do mutual funds. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing I invest in. I don't do individual stocks. I
Speaker 1: set it, I forget it, that's it. I don't even
Speaker 1: look at it again ever again. I just put the
Speaker 1: money in and leave it there. So that's my way
Speaker 1: of doing investing. I just don't really put a lot
Speaker 1: of thought into it. I figure, you put it in early,
Speaker 1: and you'll leave it in there for as long as
Speaker 1: humanly possible, and hopefully when I retire something will be
Speaker 1: made off of this stuff. But these people are you know,
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing, you could day trade
Speaker 1: and you could make money.
Speaker 2: I guess I, you know. I to me, it's just
Speaker 2: much too much work.
Speaker 1: So this whole thing of robin Hood is is one
Speaker 1: of these apps that people were using to buy these stocks,
Speaker 1: and apparently they stopped people from trading these random stocks
Speaker 1: like game Stop and you know all these other ones.
Speaker 1: And the Robinhood traders were pretty mad because they were
Speaker 1: all on Reddit, and you know, from everything I read
Speaker 1: what they were doing, there's really nothing wrong with you're
Speaker 1: you're allowed to unless someone was giving false information or
Speaker 1: you know, putting out misleading information or insider information about
Speaker 1: the companies. Like what they were doing seems to be
Speaker 1: legal from everything that I saw.
Speaker 2: Now, is it right? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a whole nother topic, you know, I
Speaker 1: think what the the bottom line about all this is
Speaker 1: that we are seeing the use of the Internet and
Speaker 1: social media to coordinate things in ways that we never imagined,
Speaker 1: in ways that were never possible before. And we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to see this. We are going to continue
Speaker 1: to see social media enable things that we never thought
Speaker 1: was possible in our society. And I'm telling you, the
Speaker 1: implications of this stuff is very, very far reaching. We've
Speaker 1: seen it with election We've seen it with protests, We've
Speaker 1: seen it with anything where you can get a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people together all at the same time and
Speaker 1: move things in big ways very fast. And sometimes that's
Speaker 1: good and sometimes it's not so good. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that we're going to see more of this, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that the social media companies can keep up
Speaker 1: with the implications of their technology.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is inspired by that documentary on
Speaker 1: Netflix that I watched, This Social Dilemma. It really resonated
Speaker 1: with me because we know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you'd go on the BBS, right the bulletin board system,
Speaker 1: and you'd write something, and you know, you'd go to
Speaker 1: sleep and you'd wake up and you'd see a couple
Speaker 1: replies to what you said. It was really cool. Now
Speaker 1: you talk about teenagers posting on Instagram, and they refreshed
Speaker 1: their Instagram posts so fast to see how many likes
Speaker 1: they're getting and how many comments they're getting. If they
Speaker 1: don't get enough in a certain amount of times, they
Speaker 1: delete their post. That's how immediate gratification we have gotten
Speaker 1: to in our society. And so same thing here with
Speaker 1: this Robinhood stuff. These people just banded together, they decided
Speaker 1: to do what they wanted to do, and it worked.
Speaker 1: They got these stock prices up and up and up.
Speaker 1: But then all of a sudden, robin Hood said never mind,
Speaker 1: you can't trade. And they're like, wait, hold on, is
Speaker 1: that is that what you're allowed to do? Because I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that was in part of the terms of service.
Speaker 1: So they went on Google Play. They gave it one
Speaker 1: hundred tons of one star reviews. They are asking for
Speaker 1: Apple to remove robin Hood from the App Store, and
Speaker 1: I think we're just gonna see this kind of shake
Speaker 1: out more and more because I guess they were trying
Speaker 1: to stick it to the man. The hedge fund folks,
Speaker 1: who I guess have like giant short positions in these
Speaker 1: big you know, in these in these in these troubled
Speaker 1: companies like game Stock, and when game stop stock starts
Speaker 1: going up and up and up, these hedge fund traders
Speaker 1: lose their shirts and they lose a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And I'm simplifying this in a way that I this
Speaker 1: is what I understand from this, but it just it
Speaker 1: was wild. I was looking at these stock prices and wow,
Speaker 1: uh no, it did not tempt me to jump in
Speaker 1: or jump out. And so that's that's kind of my
Speaker 1: thoughts on this stuff. But it's pretty wild to watch,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. I have a little sip of my
Speaker 1: tea here. Annabella says, Hey, rich, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you to ask what device do you recommend to
Speaker 1: download and store pictures from my iPhone? I have over
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand pictures currently on my phone. Whoa any
Speaker 1: and need to do something to save them and delete
Speaker 1: them from my phone? Anything you can recommend, TIA. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that means thanks in advance. Thank you, Annabella. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a great question, and thirty six thousand pictures
Speaker 1: on your phone that is a lot. I would recommend
Speaker 1: a couple things. So number one, you can go with
Speaker 1: something like this synology that I recommended that earlier in
Speaker 1: the show, but that seems to be a very it's
Speaker 1: kind of a a you're putting a fire hose.
Speaker 2: On a on a I don't know what would the
Speaker 2: term be? A matchstick?
Speaker 1: Is that even like a phrase sounds good though right
Speaker 1: you're using you know it's it might be too much
Speaker 1: for your what you need.
Speaker 2: So a couple of things you can do.
Speaker 1: Number one, if you want a free solution and an
Speaker 1: easy solution, just get Google Photos. Install that on your phone,
Speaker 1: let it go to work. It will back up all
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand pictures and then it will give you
Speaker 1: a message when it's done, and it will say now
Speaker 1: you can go ahead and delete all these pictures from
Speaker 1: your phone.
Speaker 2: It will actually do that for you. That's one way
Speaker 2: of doing it.
Speaker 1: The downside of that is that I would recommend at
Speaker 1: this point don't use high quality for Google Photos anymore,
Speaker 1: because there's no point that they're not giving it away
Speaker 1: for free anymore, So why you're going to degrade the
Speaker 1: quality of your pictures. So in that case, you would
Speaker 1: want to spring for Google Storage. You get fifteen gigs,
Speaker 1: which might hold your thirty six thousand pictures, depending how
Speaker 1: big they are, or you might have to pay a
Speaker 1: little bit more each month, maybe three dollars a month
Speaker 1: to store all those I think that's perfectly reasonable, and
Speaker 1: I think that's a great way to do this. If
Speaker 1: you want something that's more integrated with the iPhone, you
Speaker 1: can just go ahead and sign up for iCloud and
Speaker 1: you can get fifty gigs of iCloud storage for I
Speaker 1: think it's a couple bucks a month, three dollars a
Speaker 1: month I pay, or maybe I pay for two hundred gigs.
Speaker 1: Let's see iCloud storage pricing. Let's see how much your
Speaker 1: pricing plan is for this. So with iCloud in America,
Speaker 1: it's fifty gigs for ninety nine cents, which I think
Speaker 1: would hold your pictures, or two hundred gigs for three
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Either way, you're looking at under three
Speaker 1: hundred three dollars a month. So a year, that's thirty
Speaker 1: six dollars a year. Now, if you don't want to
Speaker 1: do the cloud route, which it sounds like you might
Speaker 1: not because you're asking me this question, so you may
Speaker 1: not want them in the cloud, I would say the
Speaker 1: next best thing is probably this device called eb that's ibi.
Speaker 1: It's made by sand Disc. It's very similar to the
Speaker 1: synology that I was talking about, but it's just for
Speaker 1: pictures and it's.
Speaker 2: It's very simple.
Speaker 1: You install the EB app on your phone, you hook
Speaker 1: up this hard drive to your Wi Fi at home,
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, every time you open up
Speaker 1: this app on your phone, it will back up the
Speaker 1: pictures to this hard drive. And it's store not in
Speaker 1: the cloud, It's stored on the drive in your house. Now,
Speaker 1: the danger of that is that your photos are not
Speaker 1: properly backed up because you need them in two places.
Speaker 1: So I'd want to see them on this hard drive
Speaker 1: and then somewhere else as well, And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: I'd probably go with the iCloud. I'd go with a
Speaker 1: combination of two things. I'd probably go with like an
Speaker 1: iCloud storage or Google Photos. Maybe do Google Photos for
Speaker 1: free as much free as you can get, and then
Speaker 1: go with the EB for the rest of it. The
Speaker 1: EB is like a hundred bucks for one terabyte, so
Speaker 1: good question. I get that a lot, but back up
Speaker 1: those pictures. Back up those pictures. You do not want
Speaker 1: to lose your pictures. I get so many emails from
Speaker 1: people saying, rich is there any way to recover my
Speaker 1: pictures anyway.
Speaker 2: And I say, did you back them up?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, it's really easy when you back them up,
Speaker 1: and they say, no, I didn't back them up, and
Speaker 1: I say, I don't know what to say because I
Speaker 1: always talk about backing them up. You're not listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, and I get it. A lot of people aren't,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people are. But I know if
Speaker 1: you're listening to the podcast, you probably are backing up now,
Speaker 1: full disclosure. Right now, at this moment in time, my
Speaker 1: Google Photos are not backed up. And so that's a
Speaker 1: big old for rich DeMuro. And again that is what
Speaker 1: I'm working on with my This is all part of
Speaker 1: my snology plan, because I am working on a plan
Speaker 1: to get my Google Photos backed up on a reasonable schedule.
Speaker 1: And you can actually do this, by the way, in
Speaker 1: something called Google Takeout.
Speaker 2: They will. It's a little complicated, but.
Speaker 1: What they can do is they can automatically export your
Speaker 1: data to a cloud service on a schedule, so on
Speaker 1: a on a regular basis, you can have your Google
Speaker 1: Photos backed up to a random you know, like these
Speaker 1: various let me see.
Speaker 2: What I think.
Speaker 1: I talked about this on the show before. But you
Speaker 1: can have your Google Photos backed up to like a
Speaker 1: cloud service. And this is my ultimate plan. So look
Speaker 1: at export every two months for one year, and you
Speaker 1: can back up to Google Drive, which is what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. So my goal is to basically I need
Speaker 1: to free up my space on Google Drive so that
Speaker 1: this can just back them up to Google Drive regularly.
Speaker 1: And then you can also do Dropbox. You can do
Speaker 1: one drive and you can do Box. So again you
Speaker 1: would just have your photos backed up every two months
Speaker 1: for a year, so you don't have to think about
Speaker 1: this and your photos are backed up in a physical place.
Speaker 1: That's what I recommend, all right, Sling TV, we talk
Speaker 1: about these streaming services. We talk about how everyone wants
Speaker 1: to cut the cord to save money. Guess what we've
Speaker 1: all learned. The cutting cord saves you exactly zero dollars
Speaker 1: unless you are only subscribed to one streaming service like
Speaker 1: you know, like Netflix or some thing. But in the end,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is that these streaming services, you
Speaker 1: have to have multiple streaming services if you want to
Speaker 1: watch all the shows that everyone's talking about. And yes,
Speaker 1: everyone's talking about Bridgerton right now. No, I have not
Speaker 1: watched it. Yes, I've heard what all the fuss is about,
Speaker 1: because it's basically kind of like the shows that used
Speaker 1: to be on like Cinemax in the Middle of the
Speaker 1: Night or HBO in the middle of the night, if
Speaker 1: you catch my drift. So all these people are talking
Speaker 1: about how great Bridgerton is, but yeah, we know why
Speaker 1: you're watching it. It is a little skin involved in
Speaker 1: that show apparently. Yeah, so anyway, if you want to
Speaker 1: watch all these shows, you got to have all these
Speaker 1: various services. And Sling TV is a cable service. I
Speaker 1: get it. It's not like a Netflix, it's not like
Speaker 1: a Disney Plus. But we've seen them raise prices as well,
Speaker 1: and SlingTV, just like the rest of them, is raising
Speaker 1: prices right now five dollars a month for new customers.
Speaker 1: So now the minimum plan is thirty five a month
Speaker 1: through them, and new customers are sorry. Existing customers will
Speaker 1: have their prices jump in July. So thank you Sling
Speaker 1: for the little runway there of six months for existing customers.
Speaker 1: But here's the funny part about this is that when
Speaker 1: Sling sent me this email, they kind of headlined it
Speaker 1: with how they're expanding free DVR storage to fifty hours
Speaker 1: versus I think it was ten before for users, and
Speaker 1: so that was the headline and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool, but is that really that Oh and then
Speaker 1: you read a little further and oh, there's the news
Speaker 1: of the five dollars there. It is buried in the email. Now,
Speaker 1: they did do something nice. They did expand, like I said,
Speaker 1: the free DVR storage to fifty hours, which is nice
Speaker 1: and that's actually quite useful. But the DVR Plus now
Speaker 1: if you pay extra five dollars a month for that,
Speaker 1: it's now two hundred hours of storage instead of fifty.
Speaker 1: So again Sling is saying, look, our hands are tied here.
Speaker 1: We had to raise our prices because the cable or
Speaker 1: the I guess they are cable TV channels are raising
Speaker 1: their programming fees to us. And this is something we've
Speaker 1: seen over and over. It's what the cable companies all
Speaker 1: all complained about. Is said, it's not us, We're not
Speaker 1: raising your rates. It's just that all these providers keep
Speaker 1: charging us more, so we have to pass that along
Speaker 1: to you. And I'm sure some of that's true and
Speaker 1: some of it's not. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what we've seen over and over is that. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It's the same old thing.
Speaker 1: If you're getting programming, the prices are going to go up,
Speaker 1: whether they go up every year or every other year
Speaker 1: or every year and a half, they go up on
Speaker 1: a regular schedule. We've seen it with Netflix, We've seen
Speaker 1: it with Disney Plus, We've seen it with everything except
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say this out loud, but
Speaker 1: the music services. The music services have not raised their
Speaker 1: prices since they started. If you think about it, Spotify
Speaker 1: Premium started at nine to ninety nine a month and
Speaker 1: it's continued at nine to ninety nine a month. The
Speaker 1: only cheaper music service out there is Amazon Music, which
Speaker 1: you can get for seven ninety nine a month. Why
Speaker 1: am I not subscribed to that for cheaper? I'm paying
Speaker 1: so much. I'm paying for Apple Music, I'm paying for
Speaker 1: Google Music, and I'm not paying for Spotify. But I'm
Speaker 1: paying for two music services and what's the other one, SiriusXM.
Speaker 1: So I'm paying like thirty thirty five dollars a month
Speaker 1: for music? Gosh, why am I doing that? I should
Speaker 1: just go with Amazon and just be done. But I
Speaker 1: haven't even used their music service. I'm guessing it's the
Speaker 1: same for eight bucks a month. Why am I not
Speaker 1: doing that?
Speaker 2: I should?
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to another question. Joseph Fina says, Hi, Rick,
Speaker 1: thank you for your services. You've been a blessing for
Speaker 1: me and I have learned a lot from you. My
Speaker 1: question is this My phone carrier is T Mobile. We've
Speaker 1: been paying for insurance protection on a plan of three
Speaker 1: of my family members for a while. Now we all
Speaker 1: have iPhones. My question is do you know of any secure,
Speaker 1: free app that we could use? T Mobile charges are high?
Speaker 1: We pay eighteen dollars a month per phone. Whoo. I
Speaker 1: think by now we've already paid the cost of the
Speaker 1: phone twice just by paying insurance. Thank you, say hi
Speaker 1: to your beautiful family, Sent from my iPhone Josephina. Josephina,
Speaker 1: you are correct in your assessment that, yes, you have
Speaker 1: already paid for a new phone in the insurance that
Speaker 1: you've been paying for.
Speaker 2: So diligently every month.
Speaker 1: So what's my recommendation, Well, I have two number one
Speaker 1: and this is the ideal recommendation. If you have any
Speaker 1: savings whatsoever, dump the insurance because if you do the
Speaker 1: math on insurance, yes you're insuring an eight hundred nine
Speaker 1: hundred dollars phone. But do the math if you actually
Speaker 1: have a problem with this phone other than a screen,
Speaker 1: you know, a screen crack, which they're going to charge
Speaker 1: you know, twenty nine bucks for whatever, or maybe even
Speaker 1: do it for free. You know, if you look at
Speaker 1: these other things that they're doing, there's a pretty deductible
Speaker 1: of probably one hundred, one hundred and twenty nine to
Speaker 1: you know, two hundred dollars depending on what needs to
Speaker 1: be done. And so if you add that up with
Speaker 1: the monthly fee, so twenty dollars a month times twelve months,
Speaker 1: is two hundred and forty dollars a year. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have one problem with that phone, let's say you
Speaker 1: spend another one hundred dollars. Now you're up to three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty dollars. So if you don't have a problem,
Speaker 1: all that rolls into the next year, and now you're
Speaker 1: up to you know, four hundred dollars for the insurance.
Speaker 1: So again, if you have any any savings whatsoever, think
Speaker 1: about maybe imagining that a portion of that savings is
Speaker 1: to protect your phone investment. And I say investment, it's
Speaker 1: not really an investment because the price drops so it's
Speaker 1: not an investment, it's a what's the thing that the
Speaker 1: car is. It's like, when you drive it off the lot,
Speaker 1: it just goes down in price. It's a it's not
Speaker 1: an investment at all. It's a it's a diminishing returns product.
Speaker 1: Right as soon as you drive it off, it's it's
Speaker 1: lost some of its value. Same thing with your phone.
Speaker 1: So again, when we look at this, this phone charge
Speaker 1: for eighteen dollars a month times a family of three,
Speaker 1: that is a lot, that's sixty dollars a month. Practically,
Speaker 1: I think you're better served doing two things. Number one,
Speaker 1: start a little fund that is just for your iPhone insurance.
Speaker 1: Put in one hundred bucks and just start with that.
Speaker 1: Then take a portion of your eighteen dollars a month,
Speaker 1: which let's say you're paying. You know you said almost sixty.
Speaker 1: Let's just say you put in twenty five dollars a month. Automatically.
Speaker 1: Just put in twenty five dollars a month. At the
Speaker 1: end of a year, you will have twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: times twelve, you'll have three hundred plus your original one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. That's four hundred dollars that should cover a
Speaker 1: repair should you need it. And I'm talking a repair outright.
Speaker 1: You just go to you break, I fix whatever, I crack,
Speaker 1: you break whatever, all those things. You go into one
Speaker 1: of those stores and they say, oh, your screens crack,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to charge you two ninety nine. You go,
Speaker 1: oh cool, I've got four hundred in this little account.
Speaker 1: Here you go cash. Now does it feel as good
Speaker 1: as paying thirty bucks because you have insurance?
Speaker 2: No? But the reality is when you really do the math.
Speaker 1: The thing about insurance is you're gonna end up paying
Speaker 1: for it, and it's gonna cost you a lot. And
Speaker 1: this a phone that you can if you save up
Speaker 1: this money eventually eclipse the cost of the insurance that
Speaker 1: you're putting in every month, and it turns out to
Speaker 1: be a much better deal. Now, if you don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, the thing that I would recommend is
Speaker 1: a company called Square Trade. They are now owned by
Speaker 1: all State, and their iPhone plan is four phones for
Speaker 1: twenty dollars a month. Four phones twenty dollars a month,
Speaker 1: covers accidents, protects a new phone, protects an old phone,
Speaker 1: and that's it. It just there is a deductible and
Speaker 1: the deductibles are kind of high, but it's one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty nine dollars deductible. So but again this is
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. If you know so one forty
Speaker 1: nine plus that twenty a month, one month in if
Speaker 1: you have a problem, you're already looking at fifty one,
Speaker 1: sixty one and seventy dollars to fix your phone. So
Speaker 1: I think it's better just to save the money and
Speaker 1: self insure, as I would call it. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, the only thing about the Square trade that
Speaker 1: I remembered when I did a story with them many
Speaker 1: years ago, and maybe they changed this is that you
Speaker 1: have to have your phone so they they will not
Speaker 1: replace a lost phone or a stolen phone. It has
Speaker 1: to be a damaged phone. So even if you had
Speaker 1: to bring your phone to them in a little plastic
Speaker 1: baggie all messed up, they will take it, and they
Speaker 1: will they will give you a new one, a refurbished one,
Speaker 1: but they can't do a lost or stolen phone. And
Speaker 1: that's how they keep their price so much cheaper than
Speaker 1: what you're paying, because I think in your plan they
Speaker 1: may give you a new phone if you lost it,
Speaker 1: but you have to check the terms of your plan.
Speaker 1: But great question. And it was funny. I was in
Speaker 1: Apple buying a phone. This was a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and I think I told this story, but you know
Speaker 1: they they were like, do you want Apple Care? And
Speaker 1: it was like ninety nine and I said, no way, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing Apple Care. I'll just self ensure. And
Speaker 1: then I proceeded to buy a case for fifty dollars
Speaker 1: half the price of the Apple Care for.
Speaker 2: The two or three years whatever, maybe a year.
Speaker 1: Amazon's Alexa device is getting smarter and smarter and smarter.
Speaker 1: And I got to say, I used to really pooh
Speaker 1: pooh the Alexa, and I think that they have really
Speaker 1: come a long way. And I think Alexa and what
Speaker 1: app Amazon is doing with Alexa is pretty good. I
Speaker 1: still think that Google responds to commands just a little
Speaker 1: bit better and a little bit smarter. But I think
Speaker 1: that Alexa has gotten really really good, and the amount
Speaker 1: of things that you can do with Alexa has just
Speaker 1: gotten so good.
Speaker 2: And the ecosystem of products.
Speaker 1: That work with Alexa and where it is and how
Speaker 1: you can access it has just gotten really really good.
Speaker 2: But some new features.
Speaker 1: Number one, Alexa has always done this thing where it's
Speaker 1: called hunches, where it would light up. Don't use Alexa
Speaker 1: a lot, so I'm not particularly sure about this, but
Speaker 1: if it thought about something proactively, it would light up
Speaker 1: and then you say, oh, what's going on a and
Speaker 1: it would say to you like, I think you left
Speaker 1: this light on. Do you want me to turn it off?
Speaker 1: And you go sure, Now it's gonna do that by itself.
Speaker 1: So I think this is brilliant. And you know, let's
Speaker 1: say you leave your house for the weekend, you forget
Speaker 1: to turn off your lights, or maybe you leave your
Speaker 1: music playing or something. You know, Alexa kind of knows
Speaker 1: your patterns and it says, huh, that's not like Rich
Speaker 1: to leave his lights on for twenty hours. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and just turn that light off. And it
Speaker 1: does and it won't ask you permission to do it,
Speaker 1: which I think is really cool. And I'm sure you
Speaker 1: can turn this off. Don't don't scream at me.
Speaker 2: And say, Rich, how dare we let these things do
Speaker 2: their own thing? They're just gonna at some point kill us. No,
Speaker 2: we'll be okay. I think we'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Now this is even cooler. This is Alexa's new feature
Speaker 1: called guard plus. This is five dollars a month. But
Speaker 1: it kind of turns any echo speaker into a security system.
Speaker 1: And what it does is it links up with ADT
Speaker 1: and when it listens for sounds and it hears something
Speaker 1: that seems like it could be part of a break
Speaker 1: in or yeah, basically burglary, break in, smoke fire, it
Speaker 1: will alert you. And it will it will listen for
Speaker 1: these sounds. It will listen for the sound of a
Speaker 1: smoke detector, it will listen for the sound of glass breaking,
Speaker 1: it will listen for the sound of when you're not home,
Speaker 1: someone talking in your house or outside your home. If
Speaker 1: it can listen that far, and it will call you. Well,
Speaker 1: it will alert you on your phone. And then once
Speaker 1: it alerts you, you can say you can listen in
Speaker 1: on your device, which is just brilliant, and then you
Speaker 1: can decide if you want to call the authorities, and
Speaker 1: with one more click you can get you know, you
Speaker 1: can reach one of these Alexa I guess it's like
Speaker 1: a you know, like one of those call centers for
Speaker 1: your for your alarm companies. It's like that, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, now handling these Alexa requests. And I probably
Speaker 1: said a way too many times. I probably set off
Speaker 1: all your smart devices. I apologize, but this is five
Speaker 1: dollars a month. I think it sounds really cool. The
Speaker 1: other thing that it can do is it can make
Speaker 1: the sound of a dog barking. So if you are
Speaker 1: not home and this thing here's someone outside your house,
Speaker 1: you're a speaker, can just start sounding like a dog.
Speaker 1: And I have not tested this, so I don't know
Speaker 1: how good it sounds. But I mean, this is just
Speaker 1: this stuff is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just getting so smart, and I mean,
Speaker 1: why would you not want that, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it just sounds it sounds like something that you would want.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the next question. Let's see here.
Speaker 1: Eric says, is there a good, totally free or very
Speaker 1: low cost VPN for an older Mac desktop? Thank you, Eric, Well,
Speaker 1: I am not fully up to speed on VPNs, and
Speaker 1: I know that the Holy Grail is is a free VPN,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure if you search for free VPN there
Speaker 1: are probably many, many of them that show up. But
Speaker 1: I would be a little concerned about a free VPN
Speaker 1: because VPNs cost money to operate and especially to keep
Speaker 1: them private and secure. So I probably would not want
Speaker 1: a free VPN. Now, with that said, there are some
Speaker 1: free VPNs out there. I know that if you have
Speaker 1: Google Drive, if you pay for storage on a certain tier,
Speaker 1: they do have a free VPN available for your Android device.
Speaker 1: And if you let me see where that page is,
Speaker 1: if you look at VPN by Google one. So if
Speaker 1: you just go just Google Google VPN, sorry, Google Google
Speaker 1: one VPN, and it's included in your price of Google
Speaker 1: one membership. And oh, oh wow, Google just chimed in.
Speaker 1: I did not say, h hg but okay, but you
Speaker 1: can turn this on.
Speaker 2: Oh look at this.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is actually this is actually pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I did not realize this. But the VPN is included
Speaker 1: on Google one membership with two terabytes in higher, which
Speaker 1: is what I pay for. That's ten dollars a month
Speaker 1: right now. The VPN is for Android phones, but it
Speaker 1: says it is coming soon to iOS, Windows and mac
Speaker 1: so that is a very good added benefit. Now you
Speaker 1: may want to debate me on do you trust Google
Speaker 1: with your VPN information.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that Google has documented exactly what they keep.
Speaker 1: It says here some minimum logging is performed to ensure
Speaker 1: quality of service, but your network traffic is never logged
Speaker 1: and your IP is not associated to your activity. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool. Maybe I'm gonna start installing this
Speaker 1: on my Android phones. That's really neat.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you can do is if you
Speaker 1: want something that's totally free. Opera, the Opera web browser
Speaker 1: has a built in VPN that's free, and there's probably
Speaker 1: some limitations on just how much you can use it
Speaker 1: for free, but that's another freeway of doing it. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'd recommend Eric, if you want some free options.
Speaker 1: If you want to pay a little bit, I'm not
Speaker 1: really an expert in the best VPNs out there, but
Speaker 1: I do hear Nord VPN over and over and over.
Speaker 1: They've got apps for everything from Android to Linux and
Speaker 1: Firefox and iOS. So if you want to pay a
Speaker 1: little bit, Nord VPN is pretty good.
Speaker 2: And it's if.
Speaker 1: You pay for a two year plan, it's three dollars
Speaker 1: and seventy one cents a month. Yeah, so it's eighty
Speaker 1: nine dollars for the first two years. If you just
Speaker 1: do it month by month, it's very expensive. It's twelve
Speaker 1: dollars a month. I'm sure that there are some deals
Speaker 1: out there, like some promo codes and stuff for NordVPN,
Speaker 1: but that's what i'd recommend. If you are a Google
Speaker 1: one subscriber, I would check into that first.
Speaker 2: Great question.
Speaker 1: Oh, speaking of Amazon, you know they own Ring. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna spend a short amount of time on this,
Speaker 1: but they came out with a new small and cheap
Speaker 1: video doorbell from Ring. It's called the Ring Video Doorbell Wired.
Speaker 1: It's their cheapest and smallest doorbell yet at just sixty dollars,
Speaker 1: you get ten ADP HD video, night vision, live view,
Speaker 1: two way talk with noise cancelation, and basically everything you
Speaker 1: need the main thing, and I would definitely definitely recommend this.
Speaker 1: If you have a doorbell on the front of your home,
Speaker 1: go with this wired Ring video doorbell versus the battery
Speaker 1: one because you'll never have to change a battery and
Speaker 1: that is a win in my book. All I know
Speaker 1: is I'm constantly charging the battery for my Ring outside
Speaker 1: and I wish it was wired. But I did not
Speaker 1: have a wired doorbell on my house when I moved here,
Speaker 1: and I talked to an electrician or several of them
Speaker 1: to get that you know, that little low voltage installed,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a pain if it's not already there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a pain because they base have to
Speaker 1: use a transformer at the top and then run that
Speaker 1: wire down. I'm sure it's not that big of a deal,
Speaker 1: but they made it seem like it was kind of
Speaker 1: a pain. And so I just said, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: just go with the battery, but I would love, you know,
Speaker 1: I might revisit this actually, And and because I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna switch over everything to ring at this point,
Speaker 1: because I really like what they're doing. And I just
Speaker 1: I'm sick of my doorbell going dead, right, It's like,
Speaker 1: why is my doorbell dead?
Speaker 2: Oh, I gotta charge it again. I've had people standing outside.
Speaker 1: Friends, not recently, but you know in the past, in
Speaker 1: the in the before days, when friends would come over
Speaker 1: and they just stand out there because they rang the
Speaker 1: doorbell and it didn't work, and they and finally you
Speaker 1: hear this little knock, like and they'd be like, I'm
Speaker 1: like someone at the door, and sure enough they'd been
Speaker 1: standing out there because the doorbell didn't work. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta get on that. I do try
Speaker 1: to I've gotten alerts before from ring to like charge
Speaker 1: my doorbell, but I didn't see one recently, and my
Speaker 1: mother in law came by and she said, your doorbell
Speaker 1: was not working.
Speaker 2: Rich, Well, maybe that was a reason.
Speaker 1: Just kidding, just kidding, all right. Uh. Marvin says, I've
Speaker 1: noticed on many occasions that Google has responded to a
Speaker 1: stream of words used in a conversation as if I
Speaker 1: had pressed the Google Assistant button on my phone? Is
Speaker 1: there a means to turning this standby mode off? Thanks
Speaker 1: sent for my iPad, Marvin. You know it just happened
Speaker 1: on this podcast. It often happens when you say the
Speaker 1: word Google and you didn't actually say the h Google.
Speaker 1: And I asked Google how they get around this. I
Speaker 1: actually asked some of my contacts at Google. I said,
Speaker 1: you're you're around these things all day, like what do
Speaker 1: you say? And they use the term hey G. So
Speaker 1: if they don't want it to activate, so hey G,
Speaker 1: hey G, and it won't activate. So I try to
Speaker 1: remember that on my show, but generally I mess it up.
Speaker 1: But if you so on the iPhone, there's a simple,
Speaker 1: simple way to do this, And on the iPhone, all
Speaker 1: you have to do if you don't want Siria to listen.
Speaker 1: Is just flip your phone over on its face and
Speaker 1: if you lay your phone face down on the table
Speaker 1: and you say H Siri, she will not spring into action.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, it's simple, it's easy. It's something that you
Speaker 1: probably have never done, but it works. Maybe you've inadvertently
Speaker 1: done that with the Google stuff. It's not that easy now.
Speaker 1: On the speakers, generally they have a little slider that
Speaker 1: you can do or I think I don't know if
Speaker 1: you can say, uh, don't listen. I'm not gonna try
Speaker 1: it right now. But anyway, if you're on your phone,
Speaker 1: if you have a speaker, generally look for a switch
Speaker 1: in the back. That's the short answer to that question.
Speaker 1: But if you are on the phone on Android, just
Speaker 1: go into your Android into Assistant settings and then under
Speaker 1: all settings, tap General and then you can turn Google
Speaker 1: Assistant on or off. There used to be a way
Speaker 1: that you can have H Google turn a Wait a second,
Speaker 1: did they did they turn off the ability to have
Speaker 1: H Google or Hey G. It used to be you
Speaker 1: could turn off. Well, maybe you can only turn it
Speaker 1: off when the screen was off.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it seems like anyway, you can go into settings
Speaker 1: and turn it off completely. If you don't use it, it's fine. Personally,
Speaker 1: I would recommend.
Speaker 2: Against turning it off. And here's why.
Speaker 1: If you ever found yourself and I know this is
Speaker 1: weird dark places, but if you ever found yourself in
Speaker 1: an emergency situation and your last chance at life was
Speaker 1: to call Google for help, right, And I'm just saying
Speaker 1: this is I don't even know if you could or
Speaker 1: if it would work or whatever, but let's just say
Speaker 1: you were in some sort of situation where you couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything except use your voice and your phone was nearby.
Speaker 1: How frustrated and sad would you be if you didn't
Speaker 1: make it because you turned off the hey g functionality
Speaker 1: on your phone. You'd be really mad, right, You'd be
Speaker 1: looking down from heaven at yourself, being like, why'd you
Speaker 1: turn that off?
Speaker 2: It could have saved you. And so I know it's a.
Speaker 1: Very small case scenario and it's weird, but you know
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: I have to think of all things.
Speaker 1: And so that's why personally, I would rather deal with
Speaker 1: the the misfirings and the the false activations of hey
Speaker 1: G versus turn it off completely on my phone but
Speaker 1: that's just me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just one person. I'm just giving you
Speaker 2: my opinion.
Speaker 1: You're tuned into the rich on Tech show, so I'm
Speaker 1: giving you what rich on Tech thinks, which is me.
Speaker 1: You may think differently, but that's what I think. And
Speaker 1: so that's you know, that's it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's you know, do as you please. But I'm just
Speaker 1: giving you all of the information, all of the information
Speaker 1: at hand, so that you can make the best possible
Speaker 1: decision with it. All right, should we take a question
Speaker 1: from the voicemail? I usually get some voicemails on the
Speaker 1: website at let's see it's rich on tech dot TV
Speaker 1: slash podcast And if you look in the lower right
Speaker 1: hand corner, you can actually leave a voicemail for me.
Speaker 1: And this one has no name, but let's just hear
Speaker 1: what it's all about.
Speaker 3: Hey, rich Chip from Long Beach. A couple weeks ago,
Speaker 3: Australian guy was asking you to have your podcast on
Speaker 3: a little bit longer hour and a half and you're
Speaker 3: explaining how hard that would be. But my question is
Speaker 3: when is KTLA gonna start giving you more time for
Speaker 3: your news segments? You only get about two and a
Speaker 3: half minutes. You need more. The weather is like six
Speaker 3: segments within the hour, So we want more time with
Speaker 3: you on your KTLA news segment.
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. Wow, Chip, you are near and dear
Speaker 1: to my heart. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you asking that. But you have to understand.
Speaker 1: You have to understand, you know, you have to understand
Speaker 1: local news. You have to understand the news business and
Speaker 1: my segment. So my segment is, for all intents purposes,
Speaker 1: a feature segment on technology. Now do I think it's
Speaker 1: the most important segment in the show.
Speaker 2: Of course I do.
Speaker 1: I think that everything that I talk about and everything
Speaker 1: I put in my segment is is super super important
Speaker 1: and it's highly you know, I craft my segments around
Speaker 1: what I think people should know when it comes to
Speaker 1: consumer technology, and so yes, what I like more time?
Speaker 2: Of course, would.
Speaker 1: Katy La like to give me more time? I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't, but you know, what can I say?
Speaker 1: The other thing is it's also the timing of the show.
Speaker 1: There are days when they say, Rich, you've got more time.
Speaker 1: But in general, you're right, you must have taken a
Speaker 1: stopwatch to my segment. But in general, yeah, It's about
Speaker 1: two minutes and thirty seconds, and I'm thankful every time
Speaker 1: it's on, honestly because I've been there for ten years
Speaker 1: and I've you know, I really feel like what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is very important to be honest the way. Yes,
Speaker 1: what I love to sit there and chat with the
Speaker 1: anchors for ten minutes about all this stuff. Yes, but
Speaker 1: it's also tricky because it gets a little nerdy, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's it is a newscast where they have
Speaker 1: a lot of pressing day of air stuff to get
Speaker 1: to as well. But with all that said, I feel like,
Speaker 1: and this is what keeps me kind of going in
Speaker 1: the scheme of things. I feel like I'm a three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degree product, not just the KTLA News.
Speaker 1: So yes, of course, the KTLA news segment is my
Speaker 1: bread and butter. But I've got the podcast, I've got Instagram,
Speaker 1: I've got Facebook, I've got Twitter, I've got Facebook Live,
Speaker 1: I've got Instagram Live. So all these little things where
Speaker 1: people can reach me and also not just see the
Speaker 1: one angle to my story that I put on KTLA,
Speaker 1: but also you know, you can maybe comment on my
Speaker 1: Instagram with a question about it, or maybe I explain
Speaker 1: it a little bit more in depth on my Facebook page,
Speaker 1: or maybe I do a video on it. So again,
Speaker 1: that's the way I see it, and so to me, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I love.
Speaker 2: More time on the show, of course, and do I
Speaker 2: ask for it, of course.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think that between everything
Speaker 1: that I do, I really.
Speaker 2: Try to feel like if you.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like the KTLA segment is a
Speaker 1: little taste and you're like, oh, that's interesting. Let me
Speaker 1: go to the website and see what are the resources
Speaker 1: Rich has on that. And that's the way that I
Speaker 1: see it. So good question. Thank you Chip for looking
Speaker 1: out for me. I feel like I should hire you
Speaker 1: as my agent.
Speaker 2: All Right.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of new features for Apple stuff
Speaker 1: this week, so I'm just gonna go through them kind
Speaker 1: of quick. Number one, if you have an Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: there's a new feature called Time to Walk And they
Speaker 1: don't call it a podcast, but for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: this is a podcast on your Apple Watch that you
Speaker 1: can listen to while you walk. And the first four
Speaker 1: were a bunch of celebrities that you know, like Shawn
Speaker 1: Mendes is on there, Draymond Green basketball, you know, very
Speaker 1: very famous basketball player and these these are stories that
Speaker 1: are so it's a story from the person twenty five
Speaker 1: to forty minutes that you're meant to like kind of walk.
Speaker 1: They're walking while they tell the story, and you're walking,
Speaker 1: and so you're just walking with them basically, and there's
Speaker 1: no host or anything. It's just them kind of talking
Speaker 1: to you in your ear. And you know, Apple says
Speaker 1: that walking is one of the easiest forms of exercise.
Speaker 2: This will get people to walk more.
Speaker 1: Now, I think it's kind of tough because it's basically
Speaker 1: a podcast, and I think people are listening to a
Speaker 1: lot of podcasts. But hey, if it's going to get
Speaker 1: people to walk more and your favorite celebrity is on there,
Speaker 1: why not. You know, I'm sure you can find a
Speaker 1: million interviews with these people that they have on regular podcasts.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know whatever, So you have to have
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch. It's part of Apple Fitness Plus. I
Speaker 1: should probably mention that, so you do need a subscription.
Speaker 1: You know that the Fitness Plus subscription to access these
Speaker 1: But if you want to see what they're all about,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is make sure your phone
Speaker 1: is updated and your Apple Watch is updated and you
Speaker 1: open up that fitness app on your watch and it
Speaker 1: should just open up and you should see the the
Speaker 1: I don't know what they call it, like a tie
Speaker 1: right at the top with one of these one of
Speaker 1: these walks time to walk on that tile and you
Speaker 1: can download them. I think they auto download your watch
Speaker 1: or you can download them so you can do it
Speaker 1: all offline.
Speaker 2: But again, I mean, it's cool.
Speaker 1: And the main difference between this and a podcast is
Speaker 1: twofold number one. It's a story and then it's like,
Speaker 1: I think three songs that the influencer or celebrity or
Speaker 1: whoever inspiring person that they're interviewing, whoever they pick, I
Speaker 1: think three songs that move them. And then those three
Speaker 1: songs are at the end of the walk. And then
Speaker 1: during the walk, while they're telling their story, there are
Speaker 1: little pictures that are synced to the story. So for example,
Speaker 1: Dolly Parton was talking about this statue that's in her
Speaker 1: I guess the city she grew up in, and you
Speaker 1: know it's in like the middle of the square and
Speaker 1: you you know, goes ding ning And while you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, it will show you the little picture of.
Speaker 2: The statue on your watch.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of unique, and that's yes, that sets
Speaker 1: it apart from your standard podcast. Uh. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that if you have a home pod, and all
Speaker 1: of these features really refer to very new Apple stuff.
Speaker 1: If you have a HomePod Mini and an iPhone eleven
Speaker 1: or twelve, there is an update for the HomePod Mini
Speaker 1: that makes hand off just a little bit slicker, a
Speaker 1: little bit cooler, and a little bit easier. So the
Speaker 1: iPhone eleven, the iPhone twelve, and the home Pod Mini
Speaker 1: have this special chip in it. I think it's called
Speaker 1: the you. I think it's called the U one chip
Speaker 1: or the UW chip, U one chip, let me see
Speaker 1: if it's the U one Yeah, U one chip, And
Speaker 1: the U one chip has ultra wideband technology, which is
Speaker 1: just fancy term for things that can tell proximity to
Speaker 1: each other. And so now your phone and your speaker
Speaker 1: know when they're close to each other and they can
Speaker 1: kind of just exchange information faster and easier because it
Speaker 1: knows that you're nearby. And so it's got this new
Speaker 1: revamped screen that you know, makes listening to stuff easier
Speaker 1: and also starting and stopping music on your HomePod easier,
Speaker 1: and setting alarms on your HomePod easier. If there's nothing
Speaker 1: playing on your HomePod and you bring your phone nearby,
Speaker 1: it will give you some suggested things to play, kind
Speaker 1: of like if you've seen that happen with AirPods. If
Speaker 1: you put them in your ear and you look at
Speaker 1: the lock screen on your phone, it suggests a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of things that you can just tap once and
Speaker 1: start playing, whether it's podcasts or music.
Speaker 2: So it does that, and.
Speaker 1: Then finally you can view the media controls without unlocking
Speaker 1: your iPhone and anyone in your home I tried to
Speaker 1: nail Apple down on an answer on this. They don't
Speaker 1: really give me a straight answer, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: anyone with an iPhone near your device can can bring
Speaker 1: up those music controls from the HomePod and press play
Speaker 1: stop or perhaps change the music on there. But I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure. Yes, see and control what's playing. Oh
Speaker 1: see and control what's playing. Okay, so you can't change
Speaker 1: the music, but you can control it. So that means like,
Speaker 1: you know, play pause, whatever. Now, if you want to
Speaker 1: get these things, your HomePod should automatically update, and if
Speaker 1: you want to manually check for the updates, just go
Speaker 1: into the home app on your iPhone, select home settings
Speaker 1: and then software update and that should find it.
Speaker 2: I did it. It's different. It's not like a huge difference.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely a little bit different and a little
Speaker 1: bit better than before. The haptics are really improved. They
Speaker 1: are very different. When you get your stuff nearby your phone,
Speaker 1: near to the HomePod Mini, I should say this doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to the regular home pod. Oh my gosh, listen
Speaker 1: to the sound of that music.
Speaker 2: You know what that means. It is the end of
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: If you would like to submit a question for me
Speaker 1: to answer, there are two ways to do just that.
Speaker 1: You can go to richon Tech dot tv slash podcast
Speaker 1: and hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, or
Speaker 1: you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send
Speaker 1: email button.
Speaker 2: It should still be there.
Speaker 1: I know Facebook just redesigned everything, but it should still
Speaker 1: be there. If not, just hello at Richontech dot tv
Speaker 1: also works. Also. I would love it if you would
Speaker 1: rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it.
Speaker 1: You can go to rate this podcast dot com slash
Speaker 1: rich on Tech to do that. You can find me
Speaker 1: online at rich on Tech if you are not already
Speaker 1: following me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the likely places
Speaker 1: you can find me there. My name is rich Dimiro.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate the
Speaker 1: little community that we have here of listeners to this show.
Speaker 1: I say little, I mean I think it's big, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I meant tight knit community,
Speaker 1: because I really do. It's amazing how many people reference
Speaker 1: the podcast when they email me or you get in
Speaker 1: touch with me, so I love it. Keep it coming,
Speaker 1: stay safe, I will talk to you real soon