Speaker 1: Chat GPT can now see and speak. Your Android phone
Speaker 1: might look a little different. I'll explain why. Details on
Speaker 1: the new fitbit and Meta's new AR headset, plus your
Speaker 1: tech questions answered.
Speaker 2: What's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, broadcasting
Speaker 1: live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is where
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. It's also the place where I answer your
Speaker 1: questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful,
Speaker 1: and of course fun. And now phone lines are open
Speaker 1: triple a Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you want to get in on
Speaker 1: the show. If you have a question about technology, you
Speaker 1: need to know something, you have a comment about something,
Speaker 1: You got a question about something. I know it sounds
Speaker 1: like me in a closet, but no, there's an entire
Speaker 1: team here. We've got Bobo on the board. Bobo say hi. Oh,
Speaker 1: he can't Kim say hi. We got Kim on phones.
Speaker 1: Kim say hi. Oh, she can't say hi either. We've
Speaker 1: got Bill somewhere overseeing this whole operation.
Speaker 2: Bill say hi.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's just me for the most part, but we
Speaker 1: do have a team that helps me, so I do
Speaker 1: appreciate their help each and every week. There we go
Speaker 1: see the whole crowd is here. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: You can go to richon tech dot tv hit the
Speaker 1: contact button there. Many of you take advantage of that,
Speaker 1: So thank you for keeping me busy twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: even when I'm not on air. I know you're probably
Speaker 1: surprised when you get a response from me directly. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do respond to your emails. It may take a
Speaker 1: bit sometimes, but I do look at each and every
Speaker 1: one of them. Guests this week, we've got Matthew Casanelli.
Speaker 1: He invented the shortcuts on the iPhone and now he's
Speaker 1: going to join up to discuss the new action button
Speaker 1: on the iPhone fifteen pro give us some ideas on
Speaker 1: how to best use that. And Wi Fi always a
Speaker 1: hot topic, how to get a better signal, how to
Speaker 1: make sure we're getting the most out of our router.
Speaker 1: We've got David Henry, president and general manager over at
Speaker 1: Netgear to talk about our Wi Fi signal. I just
Speaker 1: got back from New York City. I was there for
Speaker 1: an event and I can't tell you what the event was,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty cool. Lots of tech folks in town.
Speaker 1: I will reveal all very soon, Neilas will say, lots
Speaker 1: of experiences when I travel.
Speaker 2: Let's see here.
Speaker 1: So I've been spending about a week with the iPhone
Speaker 1: and the iPhone fifteen Promax.
Speaker 2: Has my life changed? No, it is not.
Speaker 1: It is exactly the same. In fact, this is kind
Speaker 1: of funny. So I take an Uber to the airport
Speaker 1: and my phone. I'll be honest, battery life on the
Speaker 1: iPhone fifteen Promax is not incredible.
Speaker 2: It really isn't.
Speaker 1: And Apple just acknowledge there are some issues with the
Speaker 1: overheating as well, so we'll see what happens with that,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people the phone gets very warm
Speaker 1: and the battery life is not great. So I do
Speaker 1: expect a software update to kind of help with those
Speaker 1: two aspects. But anyway, it was ironic. I'm in the
Speaker 1: uber and I my phone is already kind of like
Speaker 1: getting low. And by the way, mind you, it's only
Speaker 1: like six am in the morning. But you know, I
Speaker 1: use my phone a lot, and so I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to charge my phone. So I look in
Speaker 1: the uber for you know, sometimes they have a charger,
Speaker 1: and of course what does he have in the uber
Speaker 1: but a lightning cable. Only here, I am thinking, it's
Speaker 1: so great to switch to this universal USBC, And it's
Speaker 1: actually gotten tougher now to find a charger because USBC,
Speaker 1: as as much as it is very prominent on the
Speaker 1: Android side of things, you know, sometimes you don't find
Speaker 1: that lightning or sometimes you don't find that cable in places,
Speaker 1: and so he only had lightning, and I just thought
Speaker 1: that was so ironic. Then when I was going out
Speaker 1: with my family, I got to have dinner with my
Speaker 1: mom in New Jersey when I was out in New
Speaker 1: York City, So I took the bus over to Jersey
Speaker 1: and I get there and of course my phone is
Speaker 1: again not very The other thing is the iPhones don't
Speaker 1: charge very fast. So after a whole day out in
Speaker 1: New York City, my phone did not fully charge before
Speaker 1: I had to go out for the night. And so
Speaker 1: I'm like, no problem, I'll bring my little cable that
Speaker 1: I have. I've got this little nomad. It's like a
Speaker 1: keychain charging cable. It's really small, it fits on your keychain.
Speaker 1: So I put it in my pocket and I get
Speaker 1: to my sister's house, and I said, oh, I need
Speaker 1: a place to plug in, and I look at my
Speaker 1: cable and I took the wrong one. I took the
Speaker 1: lightning and so again I'm like, you've got to be
Speaker 1: kidding me. I'm O for two here, and my little
Speaker 1: nephew he said, oh, I have that USBC. That's how
Speaker 1: my iPad charges. I said, perfect, can you go plug
Speaker 1: in my phone? And I think it charged like maybe
Speaker 1: like three percent in the time that before we went
Speaker 1: out for dinner. Anyway, so it's growing pains. I did
Speaker 1: take the opportunity when I was in New York City
Speaker 1: to compair some phone pictures, so I took the nothing
Speaker 1: phone along with me. And then last night we went
Speaker 1: to one of these pumpkin patches, these kind of like
Speaker 1: walk through pumpkin things, which was really cool if you're
Speaker 1: in the LA area.
Speaker 2: It's called Knights of the Jack. Very fun.
Speaker 1: But of course for me, it's an opportunity to test
Speaker 1: cameras and so you know, my kids not only have
Speaker 1: to take one picture, but they have to take like
Speaker 1: three pictures.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm the not cool dad.
Speaker 1: But it's fun for Instagram because you get to see
Speaker 1: what these cameras look like against each other. So last
Speaker 1: night I brought the Pixel seven pro compared to against
Speaker 1: the iPhone Promax and you can see all of this
Speaker 1: on my Instagram at rich On Tech. I've got the
Speaker 1: iPhone versus the new iPhone versus last year's iPhone. I've
Speaker 1: got the new iPhone versus the Nothing phone, which is
Speaker 1: by the way half the price. Then I've got the
Speaker 1: new iPhone versus the Pixel. And so if you go
Speaker 1: to my Instagram at rich On Tech, you can see
Speaker 1: on my highlights it says iPhone versus. You tap that
Speaker 1: you can see all the pictures and people have been
Speaker 1: weighing in. So that was a lot of fun. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell tell you the iPhone. Look, it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where people love the phone that they have,
Speaker 1: but when you compare these things head to head, you
Speaker 1: realize that every single phone out there has its pros
Speaker 1: and cons. Every single phone out there has its advantages
Speaker 1: some places where it really excels in some places where
Speaker 1: it just doesn't do too well in different circumstances, in
Speaker 1: different lighting conditions, whether it's daytime, whether it's nighttime, and
Speaker 1: so you can see for yourself. I mean when you
Speaker 1: talk about a six hundred dollars phone. Nine times out
Speaker 1: of ten, the pictures are pretty identical to the iPhone,
Speaker 1: if not better in some cases. Now, is it good
Speaker 1: in every single circumstance low light, video, mixed lighting, Maybe not,
Speaker 1: But again that's why it's fun to compare these things.
Speaker 1: A couple things I thought were interesting when I was
Speaker 1: on my trip. Number one, I stopped at They Hotel.
Speaker 1: This is a hotel in New York City that has
Speaker 1: a luggage robot. It's nothing new, but it's really cool
Speaker 1: and it's fun. We stopped in and I said to
Speaker 1: the I didn't stay there, but I just stopped in.
Speaker 1: I said, oh my gosh, this is the luggage robot.
Speaker 1: I've seen this on Instagram. I said, can you fire
Speaker 1: it up for me? Said sure, and so we got
Speaker 1: our cameras ready, me, my friend, and we started taking
Speaker 1: video of this luggage robot. You put two dollars, I
Speaker 1: think it was two or three dollars. You put your
Speaker 1: luggage in this slot. The robot picks up your luggage.
Speaker 1: It whizzes around, and it puts it in a slot
Speaker 1: in the wall like a pull out area.
Speaker 2: And so it's all automated. It's like a bell hop.
Speaker 1: Accepted this robot and then when you want your luggage back,
Speaker 1: you type in your number on the screen.
Speaker 2: It pulls your luggage.
Speaker 1: Out of the wall and it puts it back in
Speaker 1: the little area where you can retrieve it. I've got
Speaker 1: that video on my Instagram. That was super cool. And
Speaker 1: then I went to Uniclo. They only have a handful
Speaker 1: of these stores, but I think it's like out of
Speaker 1: Asia maybe.
Speaker 2: But I went to Uniclo.
Speaker 1: I bought a little sweatshirt for my kid, this little
Speaker 1: Peanuts sweatshirt, which was really cute. It's his birthday, by
Speaker 1: the way, this weekend, Tanner, Happy Birthday, Tanner. And so
Speaker 1: he loves baseball, and so it was a baseball snoopy sweatshirt.
Speaker 2: So I get the sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: I walk up to the front register and the person says, oh,
Speaker 1: you pay him by card or cash? And I said,
Speaker 1: uh card. He goes, oh, use the self checkout. I said, what, Like,
Speaker 1: I can't even go to the human anymore. Like you
Speaker 1: literally redirected me. I was like, all right, and I
Speaker 1: don't mind self checkout as long as it's efficient. Well,
Speaker 1: this one was unlike anything I've ever seen. There's a
Speaker 1: bin and you toss all of your clothes in this bin,
Speaker 1: and instantly a machine reads little antennas on the tags
Speaker 1: on the clothing. It's called RFID, and all of your
Speaker 1: stuff is wrung up in a second at the same time,
Speaker 1: and it all shows up on the screen. So immediately
Speaker 1: it recognized the sweatshirt that I got, and it said, okay,
Speaker 1: tap to pay, and so you tap the screen, it's
Speaker 1: got the list. You pay, and you're done. You bag
Speaker 1: your own stuff and you're out of there. So this
Speaker 1: is called RFID radio frequency identification, and it's the first
Speaker 1: time I've really seen this used in a big way
Speaker 1: that is super efficient and just makes sense. You dump
Speaker 1: your clothes in this bin, it figures out what you purchase,
Speaker 1: gives you a total, and you're on your way. It
Speaker 1: was very, very efficient, And on my Instagram, I actually
Speaker 1: posted I took the tag on the clothing. It's the
Speaker 1: paper tag that hangs on the clothes. It's not embedded
Speaker 1: into the clothes, although it could be. But the tag,
Speaker 1: if you put it up to the light, you see
Speaker 1: this little antenna. And I know, for you conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: out there, you'll know that uniclo is forever tracking you
Speaker 1: with this little antenna on your clothing. But you pull
Speaker 1: the tag off and it's fine, it's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: And finally, the other thing I saw that was pretty
Speaker 1: interesting was at the airport, And I kid you not.
Speaker 1: If I did not see this with my own eyes,
Speaker 1: I would not think it was real. I went to
Speaker 1: the self checkout. You see the trend by the way
Speaker 1: of everything that is just automated. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the world we live in. But I'm at the airport.
Speaker 1: I ring up my protein bar and my water, which
Speaker 1: was overpriced. Oh, overpriced protein bar, overpriced water, and overpriced
Speaker 1: pack of gum. Those three things were like seventeen dollars okay,
Speaker 1: which if you go to the grocery store, those three
Speaker 1: things would be about four or five dollars. So I
Speaker 1: ring it up myself and I press check out, and
Speaker 1: I kid you not, the screen said do you want
Speaker 1: to leave a tip? Let me let me tell you
Speaker 1: exactly what it said said, would you like to leave
Speaker 1: a tip? And it said no tip fifteen percent, eighteen percent,
Speaker 1: or twenty percent. This is on a self checkout kiosk.
Speaker 1: My mind is blown at this point because I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: who's getting this tip. Is it the programmer of this machine?
Speaker 1: Is it the people that don't work here?
Speaker 2: Is it me?
Speaker 1: Do I get a discount if I give myself a
Speaker 1: twenty percent tip? Do they take that off my bill?
Speaker 1: Because that would make sense. But just to give a
Speaker 1: tip to a cyber robot in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 1: in Newark Airport, where it's already overpriced, did not make
Speaker 1: any sense. I had to snap a picture and put
Speaker 1: it on my Instagram because I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And boy did the responses come in. The comments came
Speaker 1: in hot and fast. Because nobody's tipping a self checkout robot. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't even believe, like someone's laughing that they even
Speaker 1: asked that question. Why would they put that on a
Speaker 1: self checkout screen? But just be prepared, because these screens
Speaker 1: are everywhere. You already know when they say, oh, hold
Speaker 1: on before you check out, there's just one question. They
Speaker 1: rotate that screen to you, and it's like the moment
Speaker 1: of truth where you're like, oh gosh, do I have
Speaker 1: to tip this person? Did they really do anything? They
Speaker 1: pulled a muffin off the shelf behind them. I mean,
Speaker 1: they didn't even make anything. Come on, all right, Triple
Speaker 1: A Rich one on one is the phone number to
Speaker 1: call Triple A seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology or you have
Speaker 1: a comment about the tipping situation that has gotten out
Speaker 1: of control. Here email rich on Tech dot TV. You
Speaker 1: are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at
Speaker 1: Triple A rich one oh one.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 2: zero one. Jen wrote in on the website, what Rich,
Speaker 2: that was a strange intro.
Speaker 1: Were you really going to introduce the crew and were
Speaker 1: they all really busy or is that just a joke.
Speaker 2: By the way, it would have been good to hear
Speaker 2: a hello from Kim. What about Bobo? What about a
Speaker 2: hello from Bobo? Uh?
Speaker 1: Here, Bobo's coming in so you can actually hear what
Speaker 1: there you go if they're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: hear you from there here, Bobo actually exists. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: so does Kim. But you know this is a this
Speaker 1: is I guess they call it rich on Tech for
Speaker 1: a reason. They only gave me a mic, so they
Speaker 1: didn't give anyone else a mike let's go to Fernando
Speaker 1: in Laguna Hills, California. Fernando, you're on with Rich. Hi.
Speaker 3: Rich, thank you for taking my call. Appreciate all you
Speaker 3: do for us. Uh needing some high tech advice?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: The question I have Rich, is I always a sense
Speaker 3: this some some dry that I used to and he
Speaker 3: has a Wi Fi connection to it, and I can
Speaker 3: put a Minia's D card and active movies or photos
Speaker 3: or whatever I want.
Speaker 4: But this is some drive.
Speaker 3: Eventually it's a it's a battery power to eventually charge it,
Speaker 3: but then it's just dying. It doesn't do it doesn't
Speaker 3: hold charge anymore. So I'm trying to see I there's
Speaker 3: another device that does almost the same thing.
Speaker 1: So it's a is it do you plug it into
Speaker 1: your computer or is it Wi Fi? Okay, so you
Speaker 1: put this stuff on the SD card. You put the
Speaker 1: stuff on the SD card, and then you can access
Speaker 1: that wirelessly from your computer.
Speaker 5: It kind of.
Speaker 3: Creates a computer or from their phone also.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it creates like a little a little network.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can download a map and you have access
Speaker 3: to the to the drive with the map.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that's cool. That's an interesting feature.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I I don't know if sand disk is
Speaker 1: making that anymore. I know I have a hard drive
Speaker 1: like this, which it's like a Wi Fi hard drive.
Speaker 1: But I think the the interesting thing is that this
Speaker 1: has an SD card. It's smaller, it's slimmer. Obviously, you
Speaker 1: can put in an SD card of any size that
Speaker 1: you want, so you can expand it. But the one
Speaker 1: I am seeing on Amazon, I have not tested this
Speaker 1: one is the let's see here, where is it? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's called the New Queue. So this is called the
Speaker 1: new Q file Hub. And so it's a portable hard drive,
Speaker 1: SD card reader and mini Wi Fi. So basically you
Speaker 1: pop in an SD card into this and you can
Speaker 1: put in the files wirelessly to whatever you want. So
Speaker 1: I guess you can stream those now. What you're talking
Speaker 1: about used to be very popular. I feel like ever
Speaker 1: since the the phones have gotten more storage on board,
Speaker 1: those have not been as popular.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: You can get a regular thumb drive, by the way,
Speaker 1: and it will work on the modern phone, so both
Speaker 1: the iPhone and the androids, you can get any sort
Speaker 1: of thumb drive. For the iPhone, you'd have to get
Speaker 1: a lightning thumb drive if you have an older iPhone.
Speaker 1: But for the rest of them, you can just get
Speaker 1: a USBC thumb drive and you can plug it right
Speaker 1: into the bottom of your phone and it will access
Speaker 1: anything that's on that thumb drive, and you can stream
Speaker 1: movies and all that kind of stuf. Sand Disc, their
Speaker 1: brand is called sand disc is extra gosh, what is it?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the name of this
Speaker 1: sand disc.
Speaker 2: I Extreme.
Speaker 1: So those things are pretty popular, but what you're talking
Speaker 1: about sounds like it's more of a standalone. So I
Speaker 1: check out this new q file hub. This is eighty
Speaker 1: dollars though, so it's it's significantly more expensive than a
Speaker 1: standard sort of thumb drive that you can get for
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen dollars, but you do get that wireless compatibility.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be able to access this
Speaker 1: thing and drag files onto it, that's probably what I
Speaker 1: would do. You can also use a cloud service as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can upload these files to some sort
Speaker 1: of cloud service and stream from there. Plex is the
Speaker 1: popular one, but that's going to use data, and so
Speaker 1: that's probably not the thing that you want to do.
Speaker 2: If you're trying to avoid data.
Speaker 1: You could do on your local network as well, but
Speaker 1: again that's a little bit of a more complicated setup.
Speaker 1: But I think I check out this one. It's called
Speaker 1: new Que. It's actually got decent ratings on am on.
Speaker 1: I have not tested this personally, but that's not a
Speaker 1: bad not a bad place to start. USB storage device
Speaker 1: to back up photo and files from iPhone. But otherwise, Fernando,
Speaker 1: I might just go with the UH with a thumb
Speaker 1: drive and just plug it into the bottom of my phone,
Speaker 1: So that might be the way to do it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the question. If you have one, give me
Speaker 2: a call.
Speaker 1: It's triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four to one zero one, uh
Speaker 1: real quick. I mentioned earlier that iPhone has acknowledged, or
Speaker 1: Apple has acknowledged, that some of the iPhone fifteen Pro
Speaker 1: models are getting a little hot, and I will agree
Speaker 1: that my phone is definitely hotter than typical. And even
Speaker 1: when I was charging it, it said I can't charge
Speaker 1: anymore because your phone is too warm. And that's just
Speaker 1: randomly having the phone next to me while I was
Speaker 1: just you know, using my computer and it just said, sorry,
Speaker 1: can't charge. So there's definitely something going on here. It's
Speaker 1: got to get a little software update. So if you
Speaker 1: have the new iPhone you know, or you want to
Speaker 1: get it, maybe wait just a little bit to make
Speaker 1: sure that this is all figured out before where you
Speaker 1: purchased a new one. Rich on Tech Here, Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: talk in tech with you at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here. You can find me online on social media
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Oh is it called Twitter anymore? No, it's X I'm
Speaker 1: on x X Instagram. Instagram hasn't changed its name. I
Speaker 1: think it did it start as a different name. No,
Speaker 1: let's see what else is our Facebook? You know all
Speaker 1: those things?
Speaker 5: Oh, you know what?
Speaker 1: Hold on, let me mention this. I wouldn't typically mention this,
Speaker 1: but I just thought it was pretty funny. So the
Speaker 1: CEO of X, Linda Yakarino, she was at the Code conference,
Speaker 1: which happens in southern California every year. It's a big,
Speaker 1: big conference of all the the up and the ups
Speaker 1: in the tech world, and she didn an interview. In
Speaker 1: the interview, I'm not going to talk about that because
Speaker 1: I guess it was a mess. I didn't watch it,
Speaker 1: but apparently they brought like they brought a surprise guest.
Speaker 1: He was like the old Twitter like head of safety,
Speaker 1: which obviously putting them on stage together was not a
Speaker 1: good thing. I don't know if she walked off, whatever happened,
Speaker 1: it was kind of wild. But what I thought was
Speaker 1: interesting is that she flashed her iPhone home screen. And
Speaker 1: you would think that the CEO of X would have
Speaker 1: X on her home screen, right. Apparently some eagle eyed
Speaker 1: viewers noticed that she did not. Now I am sorry.
Speaker 1: If you are the CEO of a company, you should
Speaker 1: have that company's app on your home screen.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: She did have Starbucks, she did have Gmail, she had Signal,
Speaker 1: she had Instagram, she had Facebook, and she had a
Speaker 1: bunch of Apple apps, but no X. Maybe she changed
Speaker 1: her home screen just for the conference. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: How can you be the CEO of a company and
Speaker 1: not have your company's app on your home screen?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Now I can't verify. I was not
Speaker 2: there in person.
Speaker 1: I didn't see her phone, but this is what the
Speaker 1: people screenshoted, and believe me, it made the rounds. And
Speaker 1: I don't know and yes, you can argue that maybe
Speaker 1: she had it in her app library or on a
Speaker 1: secondary home screen. But if you're working for a company,
Speaker 1: not even do She's not even working for a company.
Speaker 1: She's the CEO of a company. You gotta believe in
Speaker 1: that company. You got to have it on your home screen.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Michael in Kenoga Park, Triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one.
Speaker 2: Michael, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Hey Michael, how you doing a brother?
Speaker 2: Who's Michael? You're Michael, I'm Rich nervous much.
Speaker 7: Welcome to the show, Rich.
Speaker 2: Yes, there we go. It's Rich on tech, not Michael
Speaker 2: on Tech. I'm just trying to do I hear you,
Speaker 2: I hear you. What's what can I help you with?
Speaker 8: So?
Speaker 6: I have Oprah Oprah Opera. I know I saved one
Speaker 6: way one one time in the next brave im it
Speaker 6: gets very mad at me.
Speaker 1: So that's Look, that's another show you got to call like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know you got it. That's that's like the therapy hour.
Speaker 1: What can I help you with?
Speaker 6: So I'm trying to download the browser onto Kindle uh
Speaker 6: fire ten plus yep, and I can't.
Speaker 9: Get it to work.
Speaker 6: I toggle the you know, download there's a toggle thing
Speaker 6: that says you can you can download unknown sources.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 6: So yes, I do that, and I go to the
Speaker 6: app store and it still doesn't It doesn't show in there.
Speaker 6: When I go to the website for Opera, I try
Speaker 6: to download it and it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so here's the deal. Uh, this is the
Speaker 1: now you've got the Fire Max eleven.
Speaker 6: Fire. No, this is the Kindle Fire ten plus.
Speaker 1: Okay, ten plus? All right, Well either way, so you
Speaker 1: got to get a decent tablet there. Now, the the
Speaker 1: Amazon tablets are great, they have you know, they're they're well, okay,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say they're right. They are a good value.
Speaker 1: And what people realize as soon as they get these
Speaker 1: tablets is that they do not come with Google apps,
Speaker 1: and they do not come with a proper app store.
Speaker 1: It is the Amazon App Store. So every app that
Speaker 1: you want to download to this device, you have to
Speaker 1: go through Amazon. Now, it's kind of like Apple. They
Speaker 1: do the same thing. You have to go through the
Speaker 1: Apple App Store when you want to install something on
Speaker 1: the iPhone. And that's fine because the app store has
Speaker 1: every app known to mankind. Amazon's app store has a
Speaker 1: lot of the popular ones, but a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is missing. You try to find Gmail, it's not in there.
Speaker 1: You try to find Chrome, it's not there. You try
Speaker 1: to find YouTube, it's not there. You have to use
Speaker 1: web versions of these because the Amazon tablets do not
Speaker 1: come with Google Play Services and they do not come
Speaker 1: with the Google Play App Store. So where does that
Speaker 1: leave you, Michael? When you want to install something like Opera,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit tricky. Now, if you're super nerdy
Speaker 1: and techie, you would do a sideload of the Google
Speaker 1: Play Services framework and you would install the Google Play Store.
Speaker 1: That is really advanced, and there's tons of tutorials on
Speaker 1: how to do it on YouTube. You can do that,
Speaker 1: and you can try to do it, and it may
Speaker 1: work and it may be fine, but precede at your
Speaker 1: own caution. Now, what you're talking about is a little
Speaker 1: bit easier, and what you need is called an APK,
Speaker 1: and APK is the file that allows you to install
Speaker 1: something on an Android device.
Speaker 2: It's basically the software.
Speaker 1: So if you're on a Windows computer, you may remember
Speaker 1: that it is called an ex file that's like a
Speaker 1: software program file from back in the day. Nowadays everything
Speaker 1: goes through app stores, so we don't really see these
Speaker 1: files as much anymore. But what you need to do
Speaker 1: is get the APK of the Opera browser. Now, I
Speaker 1: just went to the Opera website and if you search
Speaker 1: Opera APK file on Google from your tablet, it should
Speaker 1: bring you to what's called the Latest Opera Mini for Android,
Speaker 1: and that's from the official You want to get this
Speaker 1: from the official Opera website. You can get APKs from
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of websites, and the one that I
Speaker 1: like is called apk mirror dot com. But you have
Speaker 1: to remember they could be corrupt files, they could be untrusted,
Speaker 1: so be very careful when you're installing an APK on
Speaker 1: your device because if it's from an untrusted source, it
Speaker 1: could do harm to your device. It could be a
Speaker 1: security issue. So if you come from a trusted place
Speaker 1: like APK Mirror, there's a better chance that things are
Speaker 1: going to be okay, but you never know because it
Speaker 1: can happen. And also when you're trying to download these things,
Speaker 1: they could trick you. It may look like you're downloading
Speaker 1: the APK and you're not, so as you can see,
Speaker 1: you're stepping into a little bit of a of an
Speaker 1: issue here because this is not as straightforward as you want.
Speaker 1: But once you have that APK, you're on the right path, Michael.
Speaker 1: You install from unknown sources, you allow that to happen,
Speaker 1: click that toggle, and then you can go through and
Speaker 1: install this on the device. So again, you open up
Speaker 1: the Silk browser, which is the browser on there, search
Speaker 1: for that Opera. I searched Opera APK file. It should
Speaker 1: show up latest Opera Mini for Android, and then you
Speaker 1: can download that and you should be able to run
Speaker 1: it if you have installed from unknown sources, and that
Speaker 1: should hopefully let you install it. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be perfect. I mean, it's weird that Opera is not
Speaker 1: available for the Fire Tablet. I would think they would
Speaker 1: because they're available for so many different platforms. But again,
Speaker 1: you do have to jump through some hoops to do this.
Speaker 1: It's probably going to be fine if you get that
Speaker 1: APK and get it in there and it should work.
Speaker 2: But you never know.
Speaker 1: Some of these apps, even though you get the APK,
Speaker 1: it may actually require Google on the back end. That's
Speaker 1: why it's called Google Play Services. A lot of these
Speaker 1: apps run using the Google services. I know it's very techy,
Speaker 1: it's very nerdy, but and I don't generally recommend that
Speaker 1: the average person does that. But when I cover the
Speaker 1: these things on KTLA and I talk about the fire tablets,
Speaker 1: people email me all the time to say, Rich, why
Speaker 1: do you not mention that you could just add sideload
Speaker 1: apps or you can sideload the Google Play services. Well,
Speaker 1: not every person that is of average tech knowledge is
Speaker 1: going to be able to do that, and that's why
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily recommend doing that.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the call, Michael.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate it, and hopefully you get it figured
Speaker 1: out and email me if you do so. I mentioned
Speaker 1: if you have an Android phone, it may look a
Speaker 1: little different. A couple of things are changing on there.
Speaker 1: Number one, if you have this like at a glance widget,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that smart Google widget that tells
Speaker 1: you your next appointment, or it tells you what the
Speaker 1: weather's going to be, or when you're taking a flight,
Speaker 1: it tells you that you have a flight. If you
Speaker 1: don't have this installed in your phone, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you put it on your home screen and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how to do that. So just press a hold
Speaker 1: on your home screen and where it says widgets, go
Speaker 1: to your widgets and scroll to where you see Google
Speaker 1: and let's see, I'm going to Google. And it's called
Speaker 1: Assistant at a Glance And you put that, you drag
Speaker 1: that to your home screen and it's really cool because
Speaker 1: it uses all these different things to tell you, you know,
Speaker 1: your calendar and your your upcoming flights and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and so it's very very helpful. So I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you do that. But they did just change it so
Speaker 1: it looks completely different. And in fact, I was out
Speaker 1: to dinner with my mom and I saw her phone.
Speaker 1: I said, how did you get this before me?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just showed up on my phone. So it's a
Speaker 1: really cool widget. They did redesign it. It's going to
Speaker 1: be getting some new AI smarts as well. So if
Speaker 1: you see that new sort of pill shaped widget, it changed,
Speaker 1: it transformed overnight. That's what it's all about. Google is
Speaker 1: rolling out a new design for that widget, which has
Speaker 1: not changed in probably five or six years, so it's
Speaker 1: very very helpful. It's called the Google at a Glance widget.
Speaker 2: Install it.
Speaker 1: The other thing is if you use Google Photos, you'll
Speaker 1: notice this has rolled out more widely. At the bottom
Speaker 1: of the Google's Photos tab, it now says memories, and
Speaker 1: so now you can relive all of your memories by
Speaker 1: going to that bottom tab. If you don't see it
Speaker 1: just yet, it'll say memories, and now you can scroll
Speaker 1: through and it'll use AI to generate fun memories. You
Speaker 1: may know these from the inside the app. At the
Speaker 1: top it shows a bunch of memories, but now you
Speaker 1: can access all of these at the bottom on a
Speaker 1: new tab called memories, and you can name them, and
Speaker 1: you can even use AI to help you suggest names.
Speaker 1: So if it's like, you know, Rich's fun weekend at
Speaker 1: the at you know, Santa Monica Beach or whatever, it'll
Speaker 1: suggest titles for your memories. Or you know, your kid's
Speaker 1: latest birthday party. So again, if you open up Google Photos,
Speaker 1: you go to the bottom at that bottom tab, it'll
Speaker 1: say now memories. And if you don't see this just yet,
Speaker 1: you can try to update your Google Photos app and
Speaker 1: make sure you have the latest Google Photos app and
Speaker 1: it should show up there. But again, I'm just giving
Speaker 1: you a heads up so you know that these things
Speaker 1: are changing, and when they come up on your phone,
Speaker 1: you don't say what happened? Why didn't do anything differently? No,
Speaker 1: it's just Google chaining things. It happens all right, triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two, four to one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question about tech. You got
Speaker 1: lots of folks on the line waiting to ask some questions.
Speaker 1: I got lots of emails to answer as well. You
Speaker 1: are doing something smart today. You're listening to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology on X Reform, Tweeter says
Speaker 1: that was the stupidest rant ever, bringing up that a
Speaker 1: CEO doesn't have their companies app on their home screen
Speaker 1: on their phone.
Speaker 2: WGAF.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you what that stands for,
Speaker 1: but you can figure it out. Who gives something well
Speaker 1: reformed Tweeter, you know what?
Speaker 2: Uh, you know? Good? Try it.
Speaker 1: Try to run a company without your with being invested
Speaker 1: in the app that you that you run. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like I said, I didn't see it in person,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't me. Let's go to Let's go to
Speaker 1: Jack in Goldendale, Washington.
Speaker 2: Jack, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 10: Hello, my friend, I'm old and I'm ignorant when it
Speaker 10: comes to these phones.
Speaker 8: Okay, I hope this.
Speaker 10: Is a simple question. It probably is for you. I'm
Speaker 10: getting tired of this old moto E so called smartphone,
Speaker 10: and I want to get a new one. But I
Speaker 10: was wondering, if I ordered one online, can I take
Speaker 10: this in card out of this one and plug it
Speaker 10: into the new one and it'll work.
Speaker 1: Good question, and I will say yes, it will, but
Speaker 1: with some caveats because most of the time, and I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm swapping sims all the time because I
Speaker 1: test phones. I've got a test SIM that I use
Speaker 1: and I just pop it into a phone and boom,
Speaker 1: it works. And I've been doing this for a decade
Speaker 1: now and I have never, almost almost never ever had
Speaker 1: an issue. And no, I don't call the company. I
Speaker 1: don't call Verizon, I don't call AT and T. I
Speaker 1: don't call T Mobile to say hey, I'm switching SIMS.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the world has moved to eSIMs,
Speaker 1: and most of the time it's easy to move an
Speaker 1: eSIM as well. And in many ways you can actually
Speaker 1: activate the phone yourself, even if it has an eSIM.
Speaker 1: You can go to the website of your carrier and
Speaker 1: just pop in the what's called the IMEI of your
Speaker 1: phone and it will figure out what that phone is
Speaker 1: and it will activate it and it will switch out
Speaker 1: the service. But here is the caveat the caveat Jack,
Speaker 1: is that not if you have an old, old SIM,
Speaker 1: it may not be up to date. It may not
Speaker 1: have the latest tech on that SIM to connect to
Speaker 1: the newest network. So if you're going from this old
Speaker 1: motive phone that may have been a four G phone
Speaker 1: and you're going to a five G phone, you may
Speaker 1: need a new SIM. Now, with that said, you can
Speaker 1: probably just call your carrier and get one online and
Speaker 1: they will send it to you, even if you purchase
Speaker 1: this phone third party. So you can just say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a new phone, I want to swap sims.
Speaker 1: I just want to pop it into my new phone.
Speaker 1: You know, will this old SIM work? And they'll probably
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of a run around, because
Speaker 1: ideally they probably want you to come into the source
Speaker 1: they can upsell you on stuff. But if they don't,
Speaker 1: they may say, oh, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 1: send you a new SIM. But Jack, I will tell
Speaker 1: you I've done this a thousand times, and I've never
Speaker 1: ever had an issue. The only thing is sometimes if
Speaker 1: the phone doesn't automatically figure out the new network, that
Speaker 1: could be an issue. Sometimes you have to restart the phone.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the phone, if it's an mv and O like
Speaker 1: a Mint Mobile or some of these other carriers, third
Speaker 1: party carriers, they may send what's called an APN to
Speaker 1: your via text. And sometimes the phone is very easy
Speaker 1: to install and do that. Sometimes it's not. But I
Speaker 1: will tell you. I know I'm saying a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, ninety nine point nine percent of the time,
Speaker 1: it will just work. In fact, I did this two
Speaker 1: days ago and it was just fine. You Just as
Speaker 1: soon as you pop in the new SIM, the phone says, hey,
Speaker 1: we recognize that you have new settings. Would you like
Speaker 1: us to restart your phone? And you say yes, and
Speaker 1: it should work. So that is my answer, Jack. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to work just fine, and I think
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate the new phone too, So thanks for calling
Speaker 1: in today.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. I got an email. This is really scary,
Speaker 1: James wrote in on richon tech Dot TV and said,
Speaker 1: my daughter and wife were scammed, and I have a
Speaker 1: question about our WiFi. Unfortunately, my wife figured out as
Speaker 1: a scam as it became too late. This guy had
Speaker 1: my daughter download an app that allowed him to see
Speaker 1: her on her iPhone. She thought she was talking to
Speaker 1: apple Care about her cracked screen. Then he told her
Speaker 1: that someone hacked her cash app and in order to
Speaker 1: fix it, she needed to make a transaction in the
Speaker 1: same amount, So she sent four thousand dollars to her mom,
Speaker 1: who was then supposedly supposed to send the money back
Speaker 1: with a cash app card to a number this guy
Speaker 1: gave to my wife. By the way, my wife downloaded
Speaker 1: the same app that allowed him to view her phone.
Speaker 1: I don't know or use any of these kind of apps,
Speaker 1: but I know Apple Care is not going to have
Speaker 1: any idea what's going on with my money apps. My
Speaker 1: daughter panicked. It's her first real adult situation to figure
Speaker 1: out on her own. Yeah, very unfortunate, very unfortunate way
Speaker 1: to figure this out. Question, Can this guy somehow corrupt
Speaker 1: our Wi Fi system in the same home through my
Speaker 1: wife's phone, which obviously has our Wi Fi password? My
Speaker 1: daughter is a freshman in college. The only computer with
Speaker 1: the app to access our router is my Mac computer,
Speaker 1: which has turned off every night, and it was off
Speaker 1: during this unfortunate session. By the way, I listened to
Speaker 1: your Tech show on the way home from my bowling league,
Speaker 1: and you've done a great job taken over the spot.
Speaker 1: I hope you can help. I thought it was something
Speaker 1: you might want to highlight on your show. Yes, oh, James,
Speaker 1: this is horrible. So it wasn't clear if the guy
Speaker 1: made out with the money through the cash app.
Speaker 2: I hope he didn't.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the Wi Fi, so the
Speaker 1: iPhone is actually pretty secure other than what just happened here. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you want to delete these screen sharing apps from the iPhone.
Speaker 1: I don't know what app they used, or maybe they
Speaker 1: just used a built in FaceTime screen sharing feature, but
Speaker 1: delete those off the iPhone. If he looked around the phone,
Speaker 1: maybe he could have seen the Wi Fi password, but
Speaker 1: I don't think he was able to do that on
Speaker 1: the iPhone. To see a password for the Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: you do have to use a face ID, and it's
Speaker 1: not very clear on how to do that to begin with,
Speaker 1: so I don't think he has access to your home WiFi,
Speaker 1: And I know changing your home Wi Fi passcode would
Speaker 1: be a nightmare because you know, any smart home things
Speaker 1: you have on there would definitely have to be switched
Speaker 1: as well. So I think you're okay, But I think
Speaker 1: the lesson to learn here is do not give people
Speaker 1: access to your stuff. Whether it's your phone, whether it's
Speaker 1: your computer. Almost no third party, random person is going
Speaker 1: to need access to those. Now, this is where it
Speaker 1: gets complicated because when you go to your work and
Speaker 1: they say and you say, hey, I have a problem
Speaker 1: my computer, they say, okay, can you screen share your
Speaker 1: computer to me? And someone remotely fixes your computer. So
Speaker 1: you've been trained that that is the way that people
Speaker 1: help us with our computers. But the scam artists know that,
Speaker 1: and so they flip it on us and they do
Speaker 1: the same thing. Do not call random numbers. Think before
Speaker 1: you act. Please, these scam artists are scamming twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven. Do not send them money. Do not share
Speaker 1: your screen. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology. Phone lines are open at triple
Speaker 1: eight rich.
Speaker 2: One oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You can also go to the website rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV, hit the contact button and that
Speaker 1: will send an email right to my inbox, no intermediaries,
Speaker 1: right to me.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: I see him coming up on the show. Matthew Cassanelli.
Speaker 1: He is the creator of the Shortcuts app on iPhone.
Speaker 1: He's going to discuss what shortcuts are on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: how they can help you, and also give us some
Speaker 1: ideas on how to use the iPhone fifteen pros new
Speaker 1: action button. Now, I will say the action button is
Speaker 1: in a.
Speaker 2: Not the best place for action. I'll be honest.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an awkward place to reach for
Speaker 1: a button, so it's not the fastest thing to use,
Speaker 1: even though it's called the action button. I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that Apple may change the location in a future
Speaker 1: model what we'll see, well say, I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: David Henry later on is going to join us. He
Speaker 1: is with neck Gear. He's going to talk about Wi
Speaker 1: Fi getting connected and you know all the terms you
Speaker 1: need to know. James just texted me on Instagram. He said, hey,
Speaker 1: Rich I'm listening on Oh I'm listening now. I used
Speaker 1: I took Zipbear to Japan two weeks ago. No complaints
Speaker 1: on the flight, the crew was happy. And then I
Speaker 1: spoke and understood Japanese and the uniclosed store is, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's Japanese.
Speaker 2: Okay. I knew it was somewhere there. I didn't know
Speaker 2: if it was Japanese though, but okay.
Speaker 1: And he said he has used the self service checkout
Speaker 1: at the de Lamo Mall in Torrents, so I guess
Speaker 1: they have it there too.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't need to go all the way to New
Speaker 1: York City to try the self checkout at Uniclo. But anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. James appreciate it, and I'm glad you
Speaker 1: like Zipbear. I took it last year to Japan. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, I mean, it's like almost like a
Speaker 1: Southwest airline to Japan. I know that's very oversimplifying, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a La cart very inexpensive fares
Speaker 1: to Japan, but it's kind of like you just get
Speaker 1: the seat and then everything else they charge you for.
Speaker 1: I think even a glass of water, Like I think
Speaker 1: water is like twenty yen or something. But it's very
Speaker 1: high tech. You get free Wi fi's. It's a really
Speaker 1: cool airline. So I had the opportunity they flew me
Speaker 1: out on it last year and so I did like
Speaker 1: a little reels about it. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: when they've they've taken it, they've been talking to me
Speaker 1: about it. Like Rich, I got my own experience on
Speaker 1: this airline, so that was really cool and highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go to Paul. Paul is in Brea, California. Paul,
Speaker 2: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Thank you for taking the call.
Speaker 2: Thanks for calling that question.
Speaker 7: Yeah, got a question regarding older tower computers. I've got
Speaker 7: a few of them that have been hanging around for
Speaker 7: a while. I've been afraid to get rid of them.
Speaker 7: There's a place that just popped up at a shopping
Speaker 7: center for this weekend only, So it's this is the
Speaker 7: reason for the call. I don't know how sketchy this
Speaker 7: could be if I take my electronics to a place
Speaker 7: like that. Is there any concerns that I should have
Speaker 7: with delivering that or is there any thing that I
Speaker 7: should do prior to delivering those.
Speaker 1: So these are old towers and they still have the
Speaker 1: hard drives in them. Have you reformatted these hard drives?
Speaker 1: Have you cleared out your personal info.
Speaker 7: Nope, they're they're they're older stuff that has like years old.
Speaker 7: But I'm sure there's there's information on it that is sensitive.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well it comes down to trust. So this company,
Speaker 1: it's pop up. You know a lot of these companies
Speaker 1: that do these kind of weekend collections, they will have
Speaker 1: uh sort of like a bill of rights, you know,
Speaker 1: what they're going to do with the data on there.
Speaker 1: If it's a reputable company, they are going to clean
Speaker 1: this stuff off and you know, not have anyone look
Speaker 1: at it and not have anyone search the data, download
Speaker 1: the data. And I think that's you know, if you're
Speaker 1: running one of these companies, you're not sitting there downloading
Speaker 1: all the stuff from the hard drive and you know,
Speaker 1: looking through and trying to put it, you know, on
Speaker 1: the web. But there's always a chance that that could happen.
Speaker 1: So I understand the concern. I think that if it
Speaker 1: was me personally, I would not bring these computers down
Speaker 1: there with the data still on the hard drives. So
Speaker 1: that leaves you with a couple of options. Number One,
Speaker 1: you can remove the hard drives, get a screwdriver, open
Speaker 1: up these towers, get the hard drives out, take them out,
Speaker 1: hold on to them, and figure out what to do
Speaker 1: with them in the future. You can either have a
Speaker 1: friend you know, or if you know, if you're handy,
Speaker 1: you can maybe drill a hole in them and get
Speaker 1: rid of them that way. Or you can take them
Speaker 1: to a recycling center that has a hard drive shredder,
Speaker 1: and you can look that up on Google and see
Speaker 1: if one near you has that, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool process. I've seen it happened, seen it happen,
Speaker 1: so that's really neat.
Speaker 2: The other thing you.
Speaker 1: Can do is it sounds like you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to be able to turn on these computers and get
Speaker 1: them set up, especially if you're trying to do it
Speaker 1: this weekend. But listener Dave emailed in and said that
Speaker 1: the stuff he recommends to wipe the hard drives is
Speaker 1: one called shred os, and so you can install that,
Speaker 1: boot it up to that, and you can shred the
Speaker 1: hard drive that way. But that's getting a little techy,
Speaker 1: a little bit complicated, and so that's probably not your
Speaker 1: first option. So what I would do is probably go
Speaker 1: down to the area, see what they're what they say
Speaker 1: when you talk to them, and ask them what their data,
Speaker 1: what their data privacy kind of rules and regulations are.
Speaker 1: I know that if you bring these things to something
Speaker 1: like a Staples, something like a best Buy, they do
Speaker 1: have rules in place that they say, look, we're going
Speaker 1: to handle your data securely. We're going to handle these
Speaker 1: drives securely, and we're not going to just have someone
Speaker 1: look through these hard drives and find anything they can. Now, Paul,
Speaker 1: you also said that these things are kind of old,
Speaker 1: maybe there's not that much on them. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: what you're thinking is you know, old photos, old documents,
Speaker 1: tax paperwork, maybe your social Security numbers or date of birth,
Speaker 1: driver's license, whatever. So if it has those things on them,
Speaker 1: there's always a concern, and there is a real concern
Speaker 1: that these could land in the wrong hands and someone
Speaker 1: could do something with that data. Is it gonna happen?
Speaker 1: Probably not, But in today's day and age, you can't
Speaker 1: be too safe. You can't be too secure, especially with data.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is talk to them, see
Speaker 1: what they say. If you get a good feeling, if
Speaker 1: you feel like they're going to handle these in a
Speaker 1: proper manner, go ahead, take them off your hands, get
Speaker 1: them recycled. If you don't feel like that's the case,
Speaker 1: then maybe perhaps bring them somewhere else.
Speaker 2: There are places that do this every day. Staples is
Speaker 2: one of them.
Speaker 1: Assureon that's another company that will take them off your
Speaker 1: hands for free, and best Buy, I know will take
Speaker 1: them off your hands. I'm not sure it's free in
Speaker 1: every state. I know in California maybe, but you just
Speaker 1: have to be aware. But again, I'm glad that you're
Speaker 1: thinking about this, because that's the real important thing is
Speaker 1: just think about before you do this. Now, if you're bringing,
Speaker 1: by the way, an Android phone, an iPhone, Windows computer,
Speaker 1: or a modern Mac, they all have a system on
Speaker 1: there built in to format that hard drive and get
Speaker 1: your data off of that drive before you recycle it.
Speaker 1: So Android, you can go into the settings, you can
Speaker 1: format that, it's called a factory reset. On iPhone, same
Speaker 1: thing it's called under general under settings it's transfer or
Speaker 1: reset iPhone. And then Windows also has a way to
Speaker 1: do this, it's under the it's called reset this PC.
Speaker 1: So it has a built in service to do that.
Speaker 1: And sort of the Mac computers as long as it's
Speaker 1: a newer Mac computer. So with the modern stuff, it's
Speaker 1: very easy. It's these old computers we have laying around
Speaker 1: the house that make it a little tricky, especially the towers,
Speaker 1: like you said that have these hard drives. But you know,
Speaker 1: get a screwdriver, take out the hard drive, bring it
Speaker 1: to a shredder. They'll probably charge you ten bucks to
Speaker 1: shread that hard drive. You can watch it happen. That's
Speaker 1: what I did. It was pretty cool. And yes, even
Speaker 1: I have a couple of hard drives laying around the
Speaker 1: house that need to be taken care of.
Speaker 2: I've got to bring them to that place. I've mentioned
Speaker 2: that before.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call, Paul, Triple eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one.
Speaker 2: There is a new Fitbit.
Speaker 1: We've got a Google event happening next week where they're
Speaker 1: going to unveil the Pixel phone, the Pixel eight, the
Speaker 1: Pixel eight Pro, and also the new Pixel Watch. I
Speaker 1: guess they wanted to reveal the Fitbit in advance of
Speaker 1: that so it doesn't take away from the new pixels.
Speaker 1: So they've already announced the new Fitbit Charge six fitness tracker.
Speaker 1: They say it's the most accurate heart rate tracking of
Speaker 1: any fitbit tracker because of what they learned from the
Speaker 1: pixel Watch. So the pixel Watch, I think they said,
Speaker 1: it takes your heart rate every second, and so they've
Speaker 1: learned a lot from that and now it is specifically
Speaker 1: optimized for this new fitbit.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: It can also connect to compatible gym equipment like the
Speaker 1: Order Track, the Peloton, and Tonal via bluetooth, so it
Speaker 1: can display your real time heart rate on the machine
Speaker 1: screen during workouts.
Speaker 2: That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Twenty new workout options including hit, strength training, rowing, spinning, snowboarding,
Speaker 1: so there's more than forty exercises to choose from this
Speaker 1: new fitbit. Charge six does have built in GPS, which
Speaker 1: is really nice, so that means you can run outside
Speaker 1: and not bring your phone. Some of the cheaper fitbits
Speaker 1: do not have GPS built in, so they'll take your
Speaker 1: run and they'll give you some information, but it's not exact.
Speaker 1: This will be much more precise. It also has on
Speaker 1: device controls for YouTube music, so if you want to
Speaker 1: play pause and skip songs while you're running, you can
Speaker 1: do that from your wrist, but again you will need
Speaker 1: your phone. This does not seem to store the music
Speaker 1: on the device. It also has Google Maps for turn
Speaker 1: by turn directions on your wrist and Google wallets. It
Speaker 1: also has a new zoom plus magnification accessibility feature. This
Speaker 1: means you can see the screen a lot bigger if
Speaker 1: the default text is too small. It's got daily sleep scores,
Speaker 1: and of course the sleep score is the new thing.
Speaker 1: The sleep score was kind of started by the Aura
Speaker 1: smart ring, and now everyone's all about these sleep scores.
Speaker 1: I personally don't like them because if you get your
Speaker 1: sleep score, I guarantee you'll have a bad day. You
Speaker 1: might have woken up on the best side of the
Speaker 1: bed and you, oh, you take that nice yawn, you
Speaker 1: look at your sleep score and it's terrible, and you go, oh, man,
Speaker 1: my day is gonna be horrible.
Speaker 2: So I don't like the sleep scores because of that reason.
Speaker 1: This is gonna launch in the fall one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty bucks for the new fit Bit Charge six. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking to upgrade your Fitbit for the holidays,
Speaker 1: you've got a new option. Triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one is the phone number eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about shortcuts on the iPhone, how they
Speaker 1: can make a big difference in how you do things
Speaker 1: on the phone. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech, Talking Technology. Let's go to
Speaker 1: U Bill in San Diego. Bill, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hey, Rich thanks taking my calls.
Speaker 2: Thanks for calling.
Speaker 4: I've I've got an email problem for you. My sister
Speaker 4: passed away at the end of twenty twenty one unexpectedly.
Speaker 2: Sorry to hear that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been super sad, and she has, you know,
Speaker 4: fifteen thousand emails and some of them are really interesting
Speaker 4: about family things, about things that were important to her.
Speaker 4: But I don't have time to sit through looking at
Speaker 4: each email and saving saving them that way. Is there
Speaker 4: a way that I can download all of her emails
Speaker 4: at one time onto a folder on a hard drive?
Speaker 4: Is there like a program that will help with that
Speaker 4: or a procedure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is.
Speaker 1: With Google, they have a product called Takeout, so you
Speaker 1: can actually download all of your data from different Google
Speaker 1: products and services. So if you go to Google Takeout,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming you have access to her account, because
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've looked through some of these things,
Speaker 1: so that's good news.
Speaker 2: But I'll talk about another way to do that in
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: But if you go to Google Takeout, you can click
Speaker 1: the items that you want to download. So that could
Speaker 1: be Google Photos, it could be Google Drive, it could
Speaker 1: be Gmail. And once you do that, it will and
Speaker 1: you don't have to download everything all at once. You
Speaker 1: can just say I just want Gmail or I just
Speaker 1: want my Google Photos. And so it takes a little
Speaker 1: bit because Google on the back end goes through and
Speaker 1: it compiles all of these things into one giant file,
Speaker 1: and if it's a huge amount of data, it will
Speaker 1: break them up into different files and once it's ready,
Speaker 1: it will email you. It'll say, hey, your takeout is ready,
Speaker 1: and you can download it. And you can also download it.
Speaker 1: You can transfer it directly to something like Dropbox or
Speaker 1: one drive or what's the other one. It's Dropbox drive,
Speaker 1: one drive I think those are the supported cloud services,
Speaker 1: or you can just download it. And with Gmail, it's
Speaker 1: not I mean, it's not going to be that much
Speaker 1: in the Gmail even though you said she's got like
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand messages, I think it's not a ton of.
Speaker 2: Storage.
Speaker 1: Like emails are pretty small, so even the attachments are
Speaker 1: not going to be that big.
Speaker 2: But that's the way I do it.
Speaker 1: And then you can go through the gmails that way,
Speaker 1: and I would even take it a step further. You
Speaker 1: may take that that all those gmails and feed them
Speaker 1: into an AI, like I would maybe fire up Claude
Speaker 1: Claude dot ai and drop this. I mean, well, got
Speaker 1: to be careful because you know there is some private
Speaker 1: information in there, so you do need to be aware
Speaker 1: of the privacy implications there. So maybe you don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, but it would be interesting because you
Speaker 1: can ask Claude to sort of analyze some of these emails,
Speaker 1: like what are the most interesting things, what are the
Speaker 1: things my sister talked about the most, you know, who
Speaker 1: are the most important people in our lives life? I
Speaker 1: mean there's really some you know, you can ask some
Speaker 1: interesting questions, almost like a little database of these emails.
Speaker 1: But you do have to be careful because I would
Speaker 1: read up on the privacy policy because you don't want
Speaker 1: her emails shared across the AI with other people, so
Speaker 1: you got to see what the deal is with that.
Speaker 1: But with all that said, I think Takeout should do it.
Speaker 1: The other thing this would be for you know, if
Speaker 1: you're listening and you're thinking about you have a significant
Speaker 1: other or a family member that you want to have
Speaker 1: access to your account. Many people may just share their
Speaker 1: password or they may not. But another thing you could
Speaker 1: do is there is a legacy You can set up
Speaker 1: a legacy contact. And this is both for Apple and
Speaker 1: for Google, so Google calls it inactive account Manager. So
Speaker 1: if you go to Google Inactive Account Manager, if you
Speaker 1: have a Google account, you can set someone that will
Speaker 1: get access to your account if you don't access it
Speaker 1: after a certain period of time. So this may be
Speaker 1: six months, it could be three months, it could be
Speaker 1: ninety days, whatever you decide. If you don't access your
Speaker 1: account for that amount of time, this legacy contact will
Speaker 1: get an email saying, hey, we notice that Rich didn't
Speaker 1: access his email in sixty days.
Speaker 2: You are going to get.
Speaker 1: Access to his full account in the next week or so.
Speaker 1: I think there's some sort of buffer. Now, some of
Speaker 1: you may be sitting there go WHOA, I don't want that,
Speaker 1: so don't set that up. And some of you may
Speaker 1: be listening and say, oh, that sounds like a really
Speaker 1: nice thing.
Speaker 2: So it's up to you to set it up. But
Speaker 2: if you look up.
Speaker 1: Gmail or Google Inactive Account Manager, that's where you can
Speaker 1: add a legacy contact. On the iPhone, you can do
Speaker 1: the same thing for Apple. So if you go into
Speaker 1: settings under your Apple ID and it's under sign in
Speaker 1: and security, it says a legacy contact, So I don't
Speaker 1: have mind set up, I should probably do that. But
Speaker 1: a legacy contact is someone you trust to have access
Speaker 1: to the data in your account after your death. And
Speaker 1: so once you set that up again very similar, they
Speaker 1: will be alerted. And by the way, once you set
Speaker 1: this up, you'll get a reminder every couple of months saying, hey,
Speaker 1: just so you remember, you've set this person up as
Speaker 1: your legacy contact, and why do they do that. Maybe
Speaker 1: you set up a significant other that you're no longer with,
Speaker 1: you know, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, family member that maybe you
Speaker 1: know you just don't speak to anymore, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: but they will remind you who you set up as
Speaker 1: this person, and so you can say, oh, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I don't want them to have access anymore, so you
Speaker 1: can revoke that access. But again it's called Google Inactive
Speaker 1: Account Manager. On Apple it's called the Legacy Contact and
Speaker 1: it's a very similar program. But if you want someone
Speaker 1: to have access to your stuff after you pass, it
Speaker 1: might be a good idea, or you can just share
Speaker 1: some of your passwords with them, you know, if you
Speaker 1: really trust them, that's the way to do it. The
Speaker 1: problem with that is that a lot of times it's
Speaker 1: if you have two factor authentications set up, they may
Speaker 1: not have access to that second factor, especially if it's
Speaker 1: your phone or your email account or whatever that code
Speaker 1: is coming in through. So you just have to be
Speaker 1: aware of that. This is probably a much more guaranteed
Speaker 1: way of giving them access to your account. So Bill,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear about your sister, but i do
Speaker 1: think that your question does help a lot of people.
Speaker 2: So thank you for calling with that today.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, Matthew Cassonelli is going to talk
Speaker 1: about shortcuts on the iPhone, how you can optimize the
Speaker 1: use of your phone, and give us some ideas on
Speaker 1: how to use that new action button on the iPhone
Speaker 1: fifteen pro. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology. Joining me now is Matthew Cassanelli.
Speaker 1: He is creator of the Shortcuts app on the iPhone
Speaker 1: and kind of a oh.
Speaker 2: My gosh, the stuff that Matthew talks about.
Speaker 1: It's all about using this shortcuts on the iPhone to
Speaker 1: kind of automate your life, automate processes. And now that
Speaker 1: the iPhone has the iPhone fifteen pro models have this
Speaker 1: new action button which can be programmed to be a shortcut.
Speaker 1: I believe Matthew, you're probably getting a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in the shortcuts.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, thank you for having me.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's an exciting time for shortcuts and bringing
Speaker 5: it to the action button has brought it to seemingly everybody,
Speaker 5: at least if you have the iPhone fifteen Pro. So
Speaker 5: tell me it's time to get into it.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your kind of background.
Speaker 1: So did you you sort of invented this whole thing?
Speaker 5: Totally definitely. I don't want to take credit for that.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 5: I joined the team close to when they were about
Speaker 5: to get acquired by Apple, So I've done a lot
Speaker 5: of the the actual shortcuts in the app. But the
Speaker 5: it was called workflow originally back in the day.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: I basically was observing it from Afar South. The team
Speaker 5: was super talented engineers, and I could tell I was like,
Speaker 5: this is a very complicated thing. People need to understand
Speaker 5: this a little bit better. And so I joined the
Speaker 5: team to help do some of that marketing stuff, and
Speaker 5: then it got acquired by Apple in a very lucky timing,
Speaker 5: I'll say, And then since then I went independent and
Speaker 5: Shortcuts have been out and released it to the public
Speaker 5: since then inside of Apple, And basically what I do
Speaker 5: now is just teach people how to use it, because I
Speaker 5: was like, I know this tool better than almost anybody,
Speaker 5: so I might as well share with people and give
Speaker 5: away my shortcuts too. That's one of the fun parts
Speaker 5: is Shortcuts are freely distributable, so you can make your
Speaker 5: own and share it with somebody else. That's part of
Speaker 5: the power of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of fun, and it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: really it's so interesting because the iPhone is such a
Speaker 1: mass market consumer advice device, but this is such a
Speaker 1: feature that is like a real power user feature, and
Speaker 1: it reminds me of back in the day on Android,
Speaker 1: I used to tinker with that app called Tasker, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're familiar with. Oh yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: like so complicated to do anything.
Speaker 2: It was like, you know, it's just anyway.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure some Android folks listening know that they
Speaker 1: you know, they remember using that, and now, of course
Speaker 1: even on the Samsung they have like routines. Even in
Speaker 1: Google well Home they have routines. It's all kind of
Speaker 1: cut from the same cloth. But explain what shortcuts is
Speaker 1: on the iPhone first off.
Speaker 5: Sure, at its simplest, it's a way to take actions
Speaker 5: that you would normally do in your apps and then
Speaker 5: perform them outside of the app, either standalone using something
Speaker 5: like Siri, or maybe running it from the shortcuts widget
Speaker 5: on your home screen, or combining them into multiple step
Speaker 5: workflow type things that you can then press one button
Speaker 5: and have everything get set up for your work, or
Speaker 5: actually it can actually do some of the work for
Speaker 5: you at certain times. So there's a lot of potential there.
Speaker 5: And like you said, it's very an Apple in some ways,
Speaker 5: partially because it was bought and acquired rather than being
Speaker 5: developed internally, so that might be why you haven't heard
Speaker 5: about it so much until now. But in many ways,
Speaker 5: shortcuts has been getting more advanced and hooking into Siri
Speaker 5: and then now on the action button it's literally part
Speaker 5: of the device itself. So for the for the first time,
Speaker 5: it's kind of being introduced to a ton of people.
Speaker 5: It's like Oh, I have a reason to use this
Speaker 5: now there's just a button there, I can press it
Speaker 5: and it'll do anything that I want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I certainly took another look at this
Speaker 1: because you know, I've been interested in it and I
Speaker 1: think it's neat. But it's like I wasn't actively using
Speaker 1: them on a daily basis. I know you share your
Speaker 1: kind of your screens all the time, and it's it's
Speaker 1: basically like it reminds me of like a like an
Speaker 1: audio board, you know, because you have so many short
Speaker 1: cuts on our screen, you know, where you just like
Speaker 1: press these little things. What are some like basic kind
Speaker 1: of give me some ideas of how to use this basically,
Speaker 1: at least.
Speaker 5: The one you're referring to was on the Mac, and
Speaker 5: a good one is setting up your screens and your
Speaker 5: windows the way that you want. So if you have
Speaker 5: a certain thing you're doing for work, and it always
Speaker 5: you have the browser on the left and this thing
Speaker 5: on the right, you can have it open to the
Speaker 5: right page, maybe even pull some of the data for
Speaker 5: you and then arrange everything so kind of like switching
Speaker 5: contexts and getting set up to do work, especially work
Speaker 5: you don't want to do shortcuts for that.
Speaker 2: That's like brilliant.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, I can set up all my windows,
Speaker 1: like let's say when I do the radio show on
Speaker 1: the weekend, I have my windows a certain way, I
Speaker 1: open up certain apps, and then during the week I'm
Speaker 1: at the TV station, I have certain apps for that.
Speaker 1: You're saying, I could set a shortcut to just pop
Speaker 1: all those windows into the place I want them.
Speaker 5: In totally, even on the second screen. If you have
Speaker 5: it too, see, yeah, it's exactly the depth of it.
Speaker 5: I think what's hardest about shortcuts is it's like you
Speaker 5: can do anything but that. When you hear that, you
Speaker 5: that means nothing in many ways. So what I did
Speaker 5: when I first was learning the app was just looked
Speaker 5: through all of the actions that are built in, plus
Speaker 5: all of the ones from the apps I've gotten from
Speaker 5: the app store. A lot of times they can provide
Speaker 5: functionality too, So it's definitely worth checking all that out
Speaker 5: because then you can kind of feel out where the
Speaker 5: edges are because if like it can do almost anything
Speaker 5: but not everything.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 1: it to call up Google Assistant, because there is a
Speaker 1: Google Assistant app and the act button can be mapped
Speaker 1: to it, but it doesn't fire up the microphone, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like the whole point. You know, you
Speaker 1: want it to open up the app and turn on
Speaker 1: the microphone.
Speaker 5: That's a good point I could think of on the spot.
Speaker 5: You could use dictate text in shortcuts and then pass
Speaker 5: that text into the Google Assistant action. See And what's
Speaker 5: this is hilarious because I was gonna mention this as
Speaker 5: one of my clever shortcuts workarounds that Google Assistant thing does.
Speaker 5: Actually you can type in text into the Google Assistant action,
Speaker 5: And so I figured out there's no Xbox integration with shortcuts,
Speaker 5: but Google Assistant has one, and so I use shortcuts
Speaker 5: to ask Google Assistant to open a game on my
Speaker 5: Xbox remotely without opening like having to even touch the
Speaker 5: controller or anything. And it's it's kind of ridiculous, but
Speaker 5: it's also like, it's pretty funny when people people can
Speaker 5: be uh, not so forgiving about siries sometimes, which is
Speaker 5: perhaps just justly earned, but cooking it, turning in the
Speaker 5: serie button into a Google as System button, it's just funny.
Speaker 1: So how should people start, Like, if they've never explored
Speaker 1: this on their phone, how do they start like what
Speaker 1: what do you look for and what do you think
Speaker 1: they should do?
Speaker 5: First off, sure the Shortcuts comes with a starter shortcuts
Speaker 5: collection which they'll put into your library automatically that will
Speaker 5: provide just some basic ideas for you. And then there's
Speaker 5: also in app gallery. When I worked at Workflow, that
Speaker 5: was part of my job was curating that gallery. And
Speaker 5: so in many ways since I've left, I've done the
Speaker 5: same thing on my own and I've released over a
Speaker 5: thousand shortcuts on my website that you can also get,
Speaker 5: and there's tons on Reddit to like a really good
Speaker 5: way is to look at other people's shortcuts and see
Speaker 5: how they're using different functionality beyond just some of the
Speaker 5: basics that you could maybe look around and find yourself,
Speaker 5: because you do quickly get into some sort of scripting stuff,
Speaker 5: just little things that are confusing at first, but if
Speaker 5: you see someone else use it, then you can kind
Speaker 5: of learn from that. That's how I honestly started originally,
Speaker 5: was just like what are these other people doing? Then
Speaker 5: I can kind of recreate it for myself, But then
Speaker 5: just kind of observing what you actually do during the day,
Speaker 5: Like take a week and take note of what you
Speaker 5: do during the day and then make the automations afterwards.
Speaker 5: I have a bad habit of coming up with an
Speaker 5: idea and then figuring out how I can use it.
Speaker 5: But really you want to solve your actual problems first
Speaker 5: rather than something that's like theoretical, so that's always helpful.
Speaker 5: And then also starting with automations and just finding little
Speaker 5: things that happen regularly throughout your day that then you
Speaker 5: could turn on the lights when you get home or
Speaker 5: something in a specific way. One thing that happens with
Speaker 5: home automations is you can't run actions from apps, but
Speaker 5: with shortcuts personal automations now you can do location triggers,
Speaker 5: so you can like when I get home, this third
Speaker 5: party app runs a function that's new and I was seventeen.
Speaker 5: So automations are good just because it gives you the
Speaker 5: value without you ever having to do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been wanting to figure out and every time
Speaker 1: I come home from work, I do the same thing.
Speaker 1: I play music on my Sono speakers, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: there has to be a way to automatically trigger that,
Speaker 1: and I know there is, but I have yet to
Speaker 1: like put the time and effort into figuring out how
Speaker 1: to do that. But it would just it's like something
Speaker 1: I do every single day. I you know, go to
Speaker 1: my app, I open up the sonosapp, and I choose
Speaker 1: like a station that's usually my favorites, and then I
Speaker 1: adjust the grouping and I adjust the volume. I am
Speaker 1: sure I can automate that process. I just don't know
Speaker 1: how to do it, or I haven't put the time
Speaker 1: into figuring out how to do it, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's multiple ways. But it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: again what you're saying, you look at your life and
Speaker 1: you see the things that you do over and over
Speaker 1: and you say, how can I make this easier? So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're always you know, converting a photo
Speaker 1: into you know, a jpeg to a PDF or something,
Speaker 1: or PDF into a jpeg whatever, you can use shortcuts
Speaker 1: to do those kind of things too, right.
Speaker 5: Totally, those are great, especially if you are working with
Speaker 5: text or files or images. Shortcuts is really powerful with that.
Speaker 5: I may generate hundreds of icons for my website and
Speaker 5: put all of my data onto my blog in ways
Speaker 5: that there's no way I would do this without being
Speaker 5: able to automate it. So that's created my whole business model.
Speaker 5: I think what's always confusing for me is it's about shortcuts,
Speaker 5: So it gets very meta when I'm explaining it because
Speaker 5: I'm publishing shortcuts on my site. But it's still regardless
Speaker 5: if you were just making documents or things like that.
Speaker 5: Sometimes what's hard about shortcuts is sort of abstracting from
Speaker 5: the app into kind of the content that you're using
Speaker 5: in that app. So like most apps are just files
Speaker 5: or text or images or something like that, and you
Speaker 5: can use shortcuts to work with that data and then
Speaker 5: just paste it into the app if that app didn't
Speaker 5: support it too, all right, and before I forget Soro
Speaker 5: for Sonos is the app that you need. And then
Speaker 5: it also wasn't possible until iOS seventeen to do okay
Speaker 5: type of location automations. Yes, automatically, so now they can
Speaker 5: run immediately, which is great.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when I get home, okay, yeah, Sorrow for Sos,
Speaker 1: I'll be downloading that and real quick before I run
Speaker 1: what is your iPhone fifteen action button set?
Speaker 5: To mine? I have to get my current focus and
Speaker 5: then let me run other shortcuts depending on that. So
Speaker 5: something like if I'm in my personal mode, it'll turn
Speaker 5: on the TV and then if I'm in work mode
Speaker 5: when that I love It'll use a remote login on
Speaker 5: my Mac to wake my macup remotely from my phone.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: You've got a shortcut set for the shortcuts Matthew Cassinelli.
Speaker 1: Matthewcassonelli dot com is the website. If you want to
Speaker 1: subscribe to his news letter or look at his shortcuts,
Speaker 1: it'll be linked up on my website.
Speaker 2: Rich on Tech dot tv. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. This is rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eighty eight
Speaker 1: rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Blue Green sent me a
Speaker 1: DM on Instagram at rich on Tech and it was
Speaker 1: a scammer impersonating Sandra Bullock. And he said, Uh, why
Speaker 1: is this person trying so hard to meet me? What?
Speaker 1: What what happens if I chat with them? Curious if
Speaker 1: they tried chatting with you? And what happens if you
Speaker 1: talk to them? And good question number one. I don't
Speaker 1: think you should engage with these people, these scam artists
Speaker 1: that you know they're impersonating someone else on Instagram, Facebook, whatever.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is they are going to try
Speaker 1: to scam you. So I did this the other day
Speaker 1: a guy I know, he was you know, they set
Speaker 1: up a bogus account that looked just like his, grabbed
Speaker 1: his pictures, and they started chatting with me, and so
Speaker 1: of course I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: So I chatted with him. I said, Hey, how you doing,
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 1: I missed you at the last Apple event, you know,
Speaker 1: bl blah blah blah, knowing he wasn't even there.
Speaker 2: And the person's like, oh, yeah, how's work.
Speaker 1: And you know, we talked a little little niceties back
Speaker 1: and forth, and I kept trying to drop little things
Speaker 1: that I know only this person would know, the real
Speaker 1: person that this scam artist wouldn't, but he kept ignoring
Speaker 1: those parts of the questioning anyway.
Speaker 2: Finally, what did he get to, Hey, I've been really.
Speaker 1: Getting into crypto and uh, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: it would be great for you to do this.
Speaker 2: And what do they want you to do?
Speaker 1: They want you to download some app, they want you
Speaker 1: to transfer some money. They want to scam you. Be careful,
Speaker 1: be aware. And it looks like someone you know, they're
Speaker 1: not asking for help. They're not you know, just be aware.
Speaker 1: They a lot of times people do it for me,
Speaker 1: So they will they will clone my accounts and it
Speaker 1: will look like me and it'll say private or subscribe
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's not me. I am not friending you.
Speaker 1: Sorry to say, but I'm not reaching out to random
Speaker 1: people on the internet that listen to me and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: will you be my friend.
Speaker 2: I don't do that, just so you know.
Speaker 1: Uh, let's see, chat gybt is getting voice and image capabilities.
Speaker 1: Open a eyes, rolling out a new voice and image
Speaker 1: features and chat gbt. These are for paying subscribers right now.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll come to the rest of us later. So
Speaker 1: the voice feature allows you to have back and forth
Speaker 1: conversational interactions. So if you want to try this, you can,
Speaker 1: and you pay for chat GBT and you have the app,
Speaker 1: go to settings and new features. It was not in
Speaker 1: my app the last I checked. Maybe it's there now
Speaker 1: checked yesterday. The voices sound great, They're very conversational, pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: The image feature lets you send a photo to chat
Speaker 1: gbt and it can analyze it. And the coolest part
Speaker 1: is you can even draw on the picture. Like let's
Speaker 1: say you want to repair a bike and you draw
Speaker 1: you take a picture and you draw on your phone
Speaker 1: like the part that you want to replace. You can say,
Speaker 1: what's this part of this bike and we'll try to
Speaker 1: figure out what bike that is and what that part is.
Speaker 1: So cool, new features coming to chat, GBT Voice and Chat.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible, incredible to see how these AI systems
Speaker 1: are progressing at a very very fast clip. And it's scary,
Speaker 1: it really is, because they're so good, but they're so wrong.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to be careful. They do hallucinate Karen
Speaker 1: and San Pedro, San Pedro, How do you say that,
Speaker 1: San Pedro, San Pedro?
Speaker 2: Oh, you can say either one. Yes, there you go. Karen,
Speaker 2: you're on with Rich. What can I help you with?
Speaker 9: Thank you Rich for taking my call. I have actually
Speaker 9: two questions that're kind of related. I have a Galaxy
Speaker 9: A ten e, which is probably an old model. You
Speaker 9: probably know how old it is, I'm not sure, probably
Speaker 9: pre COVID. I'm having problems with charging it the original charger.
Speaker 9: I have to practically stand on my head to get
Speaker 9: it to charge. Talk to a guy at a Kiosk
Speaker 9: and he said, oh, just get another one online Amazon
Speaker 9: and that'll work. No, it did not. A friend gave
Speaker 9: me one of those chargers that have multiple charging units
Speaker 9: in it that did not work. So do I need
Speaker 9: to get a new phone? I really don't want to.
Speaker 9: And if I do need to get a new phone,
Speaker 9: what kind would I get that similar? Because when I
Speaker 9: go to the vendor, I don't want them to try
Speaker 9: to upsale me and say, oh you need this and
Speaker 9: this and this and this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, So first off, have you checked has anyone
Speaker 1: cleaned out the charging area?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, because a lot of times when things aren't charging,
Speaker 1: there's just lint in there and it's holding the it's
Speaker 1: holding the connection back, and so that is that is
Speaker 1: the number one thing to do is maybe get a
Speaker 1: little candare or a toothpick and very gently clean out
Speaker 1: that little area that is, you know, where you plug
Speaker 1: the charger in, So that's number one. If that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and then try to plug it in. Now, be careful,
Speaker 1: you don't want to ruin your phone. But you can
Speaker 1: also take a Q tip and I'm even loath to
Speaker 1: like recommend this, but a little tiny rubbing alcohol and
Speaker 1: maybe kind of clean in that area as well. That
Speaker 1: could help make sure it's very very dry. You do
Speaker 1: not want to get that wet in that area. So
Speaker 1: that's number one and plug it in see if that works.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't, you can take it to a place
Speaker 1: like I mentioned this earlier, but Asurian they will they
Speaker 1: will see what's wrong with your phone for free. So
Speaker 1: you can take it to one of those uh one
Speaker 1: of those Asurian places as U r Io n and
Speaker 1: they will say what's wrong with it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to pay them unless you get the repair done, but
Speaker 1: they can say, oh yeah, your charging port is totally
Speaker 1: is totally ruined. Now if you find out that the
Speaker 1: repair is, you know, two hundred and fifty three hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: it's not worth it for this phone. So I would
Speaker 1: recommend a new phone. So for budget phones, the one
Speaker 1: I like, I would go with the Pixel seven A.
Speaker 1: And the Pixel seven A is going to be a great,
Speaker 1: great phone. It's it's about five hundred dollars. You might
Speaker 1: be able to get it cheaper online, but that's going
Speaker 1: to be a really good phone. It's going to take
Speaker 1: great pictures, the software is going to last a long time.
Speaker 1: The other one is the one plus Nord they have
Speaker 1: a great budget phone. And then the Samsung I think
Speaker 1: it's the A. What do you have the A ten?
Speaker 1: So I think the A fourteen is the newest kind
Speaker 1: of like budget Samsung. They have a bunch of budget phones.
Speaker 1: I don't typically review too many of them, but that
Speaker 1: will work as well. But if it's if it's too
Speaker 1: expensive and it's not working, you know, you got to
Speaker 1: get the new phone. But I would take it in
Speaker 1: and see if they can diagnose it for free, but
Speaker 1: clean out the area.
Speaker 2: The lint.
Speaker 1: My kid discovered lint last night. He put his hand
Speaker 1: in his pocket. He said, Dad, I have all these
Speaker 1: like dirt in my pocket and I said, let me
Speaker 1: see it, and he shows.
Speaker 2: It to me.
Speaker 1: I go, that's called lint. How amazing. Nine year old
Speaker 1: didn't even know link was. You're 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.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven.
Speaker 1: Four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question. I've got emails. I've
Speaker 1: got so much to get through. It's like this is
Speaker 1: it's just wild how much I bring to the show
Speaker 1: every week and how much I still want to tell
Speaker 1: you even after I'm done with the show, and we
Speaker 1: pack a lot in believe me, but there's still there's
Speaker 1: a lot on the docket here. I got an email
Speaker 1: from Marci. Hey, Rich, I'm listening to you right now.
Speaker 1: I saw your Instagram stories about the new adaptive noise
Speaker 1: reduction for AirPods with iOS seventeen. I have AirPods Pro
Speaker 1: and iOS seventeen, but it's not there.
Speaker 2: I hope you can answer this.
Speaker 1: You're the best. Congrats on taking over this show. I've
Speaker 1: watched you for years on KTLA. Thanks Marcy. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what Marcy is talking about is on iOS seventeen and
Speaker 1: AirPods Pro, any version of AirPods Pro by the way,
Speaker 1: the new ones and the ones with the old charging case,
Speaker 1: there is a new feature that is just incredible. It's
Speaker 1: called adaptive noise control. And this is not invented by Apple.
Speaker 1: This is done on some other earbuds as well that
Speaker 1: I've tested over the years, but Apple's works really well.
Speaker 1: It's like uncanny because I will tell you I've gone
Speaker 1: from being able to wear the AirPods Pro for like
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes to like now all day because
Speaker 1: this adaptive audio listens to your surroundings and it will
Speaker 1: adjust accordingly. So if you've very used noise canceling headphones,
Speaker 1: you know that sometimes it can sound like you're underwater
Speaker 1: because it's just like very like you know, it just
Speaker 1: fills like your entire ears with like nothing except like
Speaker 1: your own sound of your ears, like kind of like
Speaker 1: when you put a shell up your ear listening to
Speaker 1: the ocean in it. That's what it sounds like to
Speaker 1: have a noise canceling headphones sometimes or these earbuds, I
Speaker 1: should say headphones maybe not so much, but the earbuds specifically.
Speaker 1: And so they came up with this new adaptive noise
Speaker 1: canceling or noise control, which blends active noise cancelation and
Speaker 1: transparency mode. So what's transparency mode. Transparency mode is when
Speaker 1: the earbuds let in the outside sounds that you can
Speaker 1: hear stuff, but they're not actually letting it in. They're
Speaker 1: just using the microphones to pass that sound to your ears.
Speaker 1: So that's also sounded weird in the past. But Apple
Speaker 1: somehow magically mixed these two things together and came up
Speaker 1: with this new adaptive noise control that works really really well.
Speaker 1: So Marci, to answer your question, you have to update
Speaker 1: the firmware on your air pods, and this is typically
Speaker 1: done automatically while your AirPods are charging and when they're
Speaker 1: in Bluetooth range of your phone, but that's not always
Speaker 1: the case. Maybe you charge them not near your phone
Speaker 1: and so that doesn't they don't get the new software.
Speaker 1: So if you want to go into your your Bluetooth
Speaker 1: on your iPhone, that's how you can check to see
Speaker 1: if these things are up to date. And the version
Speaker 1: that you need is six A three hundred or six
Speaker 1: A three oh one. And again this only applies to
Speaker 1: AirPods Pro second generation. I don't believe. Yeah, it's only
Speaker 1: the second generation, so it's the ones with the USBC
Speaker 1: case and also the lightning case. It's not the first
Speaker 1: generation of the AirPods Pro. So if you have those,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get this. So now, Marci, that
Speaker 1: may be the case here. You might have the first generation,
Speaker 1: So you got to figure out which generation AirPods Pro
Speaker 1: you have. But once you do that, definitely enable the
Speaker 1: adaptive audio. And the way you do that is you
Speaker 1: swipe down from the upper right hand corner of your phone,
Speaker 1: you press and hold on the volume control and at
Speaker 1: the bottom. You should see as long as you're connected
Speaker 1: to your AirPods, you should see that adaptive audio. I
Speaker 1: put this on my Instagram stories. That's where Marshy saw it.
Speaker 1: But that's what you want to do. If you're on
Speaker 1: your iPhone, you just want to go to your settings
Speaker 1: your Bluetooth and tap the eye next to the name
Speaker 1: of your AirPods and you can see in there if
Speaker 1: there is a software update.
Speaker 2: So I can go in here.
Speaker 1: And I tap the eye and once it's connected, it
Speaker 1: will show you if there is a software update for
Speaker 1: those so good question.
Speaker 2: And it really is. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 1: The cool thing about that mode is that, for instance,
Speaker 1: when you're on the plane and you're listening to something
Speaker 1: on your AirPods with the noise cancelation, or if you're
Speaker 1: an adaptive and the flight attendant comes up to you
Speaker 1: and says, hey, you know, would you like to get
Speaker 1: a meal, a snack, whatever. Most of the time you
Speaker 1: have to take your you gotta rip your air your
Speaker 1: ear pod out right, your earbud has to come out
Speaker 1: of your ear so you can talk to them. But
Speaker 1: with this mode, when you start talking, it will automatically
Speaker 1: reduce the noise cancelations so that you can hear them,
Speaker 1: and it does a really good job of it. Google
Speaker 1: is ending gmails Basic HTML version in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So Google's going to discontinue this basic HTML version of
Speaker 1: Gmail that's been around since like day one. They're getting
Speaker 1: rid of that in January twenty twenty four. HTML Basic
Speaker 1: is a stripped down version of Gmail that's was designed
Speaker 1: for slower connections and also old browsers. And Google says
Speaker 1: that this did not have all the functionality of Gmail,
Speaker 1: so they are going to get rid of it.
Speaker 11: And the.
Speaker 1: Visually impaired community has been very unhappy over this because
Speaker 1: they say that a lot of them use this HTML view.
Speaker 1: Now that's just based on some reports I've seen online.
Speaker 1: I've yet to have someone kind of email me or
Speaker 1: tell me that. But whenever something gets whenever something is
Speaker 1: changed or a company takes away something that people use,
Speaker 1: and Gmail has a lot of users, you know, people
Speaker 1: get angry.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I think Google knows how many people are using this
Speaker 1: basic HTML and it's.
Speaker 2: Probably not enough for them to continue developing it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I tried to bring up this version of Gmail.
Speaker 1: If you have a fast internet connection, it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: because it shows up at the bottom of your screen
Speaker 1: so fast that you have to be ready to tap
Speaker 1: it when you load your Gmail because it happens so fast.
Speaker 1: So I just did it, and now I'm viewing my
Speaker 1: Gmail in basic HTML and it is so weird looking.
Speaker 1: It looks like what Gmail looked like when it launched.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of fun. Actually, if you can
Speaker 1: do it, you put your mouse in the lower right
Speaker 1: hand corner of your browser and then bring up Gmail.
Speaker 1: You might have to refresh a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: you click as soon as you bring up Gmail and
Speaker 1: it says basic htmlview and it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2: So that's basic htmlview. Let's see what else.
Speaker 1: Oh, remember that whole thing with the iPhone where it
Speaker 1: was the French authorities said that there's too much radiation
Speaker 1: in the iPhone twelve. Well, Apple put out a software update.
Speaker 1: According to Reuters, it's all good now. So the suspension
Speaker 1: of iPhone sales earlier this month because of the radiation
Speaker 1: output on the iPhone twelve has been It's all been solved.
Speaker 2: So good to hear that.
Speaker 1: Triple A rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one Antonio is in Covina, California.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich Hi Rich.
Speaker 11: So this may sound like a silly question, but I'm
Speaker 11: not really tech savvy. So I got on laptop, you know,
Speaker 11: with the Labor Day sales. It was really pretty cheap,
Speaker 11: and I'm just wondering, if I'm not using it, do
Speaker 11: I keep it plugged in like with that during the
Speaker 11: battery faster or over targe a battery, or should I
Speaker 11: unplug it every time I'm not using it?
Speaker 1: Good question, you know, it's one of these things. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like an eternal debate on the internet whether
Speaker 1: to keep things plugged in, whether to take them or
Speaker 1: to unplug them. I feel like it's probably better to
Speaker 1: leave it plugged in it because your laptop is going
Speaker 1: to use the power its own power management to kind
Speaker 1: of say, okay, we've got power coming in from this cord,
Speaker 1: you know, the batteries at this percentage, and we're just
Speaker 1: gonna keep the battery topped off. In fact, Tesla recommends
Speaker 1: that you leave your car plugged in all the time
Speaker 1: when you're not using it. Let's say you go on
Speaker 1: a vacation or something like that, so it's always topped off.
Speaker 1: And it can better manage its power. If you leave
Speaker 1: this thing unplugged, what's gonna happen is it's gonna cycle
Speaker 1: through the battery every single time you unplug it, versus
Speaker 1: just topping it off a little bit as necessary. And
Speaker 1: when you go through a battery cycle, they only have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of cycles before they go bad. And
Speaker 1: so when you're constantly draining it and bringing it back
Speaker 1: up to one hundred, that puts a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on the battery. So some people believe that you should
Speaker 1: leave this plugged in all the time. I pretty much
Speaker 1: believe that I leave my stuff plugged in a majority
Speaker 1: of the time. I will say, with the newest Apple laptop,
Speaker 1: it almost doesn't need to be ever plugged in, which
Speaker 1: is kind of weird because the battery is so good.
Speaker 1: But I think it really depends on what you believe
Speaker 1: and what you want to believe. I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's better to leave it plugged in if you're using
Speaker 1: your laptop all the time and you have it on
Speaker 1: your desk. It just seems like it's easier also than
Speaker 1: trying to figure out when your battery is going to
Speaker 1: be dead. Now there's gonna be people that debate me
Speaker 1: on this. They're going to say, Rich, you should never
Speaker 1: leave your computer plugged in all the time. I just
Speaker 1: think that Antonio, by unplugging this, you're actually putting more
Speaker 1: wear and tear on the battery, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: every single time this battery drains, you are going to
Speaker 1: be using a cycle of that battery. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the look up battery cycles, and you can
Speaker 1: see how many cycles, it's a finite number. In fact,
Speaker 1: on the Mac computers, it'll tell you how many battery
Speaker 1: cycles you've used with your battery. And so if you
Speaker 1: go into the settings and then the system settings, there
Speaker 1: is a way to see on the system report how
Speaker 1: many battery cycles. Let's see mine I'm looking at Let's
Speaker 1: go to battery. Where are you a battery? Well, I
Speaker 1: can't find it, of course when I need it, I
Speaker 1: can't find it. But it'll tell you how many battery
Speaker 1: cycles you've used on your computer. And you can see
Speaker 1: I'll say, like you know, out of like I don't know,
Speaker 1: five hundred cycles.
Speaker 2: Whatever gets here? We go? Power? Is that it? There?
Speaker 2: We go battery?
Speaker 1: So it'll say fully charged, yes, charging, no state of charge, okay,
Speaker 1: Health information cycle count eighty two condition normal maximum capacity
Speaker 1: is one hundred. So that means that even though Antonio,
Speaker 1: the information I'm giving you about how I use my computer,
Speaker 1: my battery is still at one hundred percent. This computer
Speaker 1: given is only you know, six months old, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a year. I don't remember when I got this thing.
Speaker 1: You could also check on your phones for battery cycle.
Speaker 1: I already taught you how to do it on the
Speaker 1: Samsung Pixel. I believe they just built it in as well.
Speaker 1: But this idea of battery cycle is getting much more
Speaker 1: popular because people are realizing they can't use and abuse
Speaker 1: these batteries and just expect them to last forever. They
Speaker 1: do have a finite life, and especially how much we're
Speaker 1: using our phones. So if you go into settings on
Speaker 1: the iPhone and then go into battery, you can look
Speaker 1: up battery health and charging and it will tell you
Speaker 1: what your maximum capacity is of that battery and charging optimization.
Speaker 1: I would probably recommend optimized battery charging if you want
Speaker 1: your iPhone to last the longest.
Speaker 2: Triple eight Rich.
Speaker 1: One on one eighty eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Thanks to the call, Antonio, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to David
Speaker 1: Henry at Neckgear about how to get better Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech, rich DeMuro. Here you
Speaker 1: can find me online at Richontech dot tv.
Speaker 2: That's the website.
Speaker 1: It kind of has all the information you need about
Speaker 1: how to follow me on Instagram, X, Twitter, Facebook.
Speaker 2: What else is there? YouTube?
Speaker 1: I don't really do much on YouTube, but it's there.
Speaker 1: The newsletter that'll come back one day. And let's see
Speaker 1: what else is there? A lot of stuff you can
Speaker 1: go in the lower Let's see this is a little
Speaker 1: something that most people don't know. You can actually see
Speaker 1: all the stories I do for TV on there. And
Speaker 1: there's if you go in the lower right hand corner
Speaker 1: of the web page, there's two little tricks. Number one,
Speaker 1: there's a microphone you can leave a voicemail for the show.
Speaker 1: And there's also a link called shop. And that is
Speaker 1: all the stuff that I sort of like like so
Speaker 1: a lot of people ask me over and over recommend
Speaker 1: a speaker, recommend a charging cable, recommend you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: the basics and so a lot of those things I'll
Speaker 1: put on Amazon so you can, like in this Amazon shop,
Speaker 1: so you can easily access those, So that's all on
Speaker 1: the website. Rich on tech dot TV got an email
Speaker 1: from Jim. He says, are there speakers that will allow
Speaker 1: your music that's playing in one room to follow you
Speaker 1: from room to room in your house? And yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a couple I mean you could use. I mean,
Speaker 1: Son's pioneered this. Sons is kind of the best, and
Speaker 1: they're expensive. That's the problem is that they're very, very expensive,
Speaker 1: and so that's probably the best way to do it
Speaker 1: if you want the same music that's playing everywhere. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what you mean here. But you can
Speaker 1: do it with the Echo speakers. You can group those.
Speaker 1: You can do it with HomePods, you can group those,
Speaker 1: you can do it with the Google speakers, you can
Speaker 1: group those. I think that the easiest to group are
Speaker 1: probably going to be either the home pods from Apple,
Speaker 1: and they have like a big HomePod that's expensive like
Speaker 1: three hundred bucks, and they have a little one that's
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars. So if you're all Apple, that's probably
Speaker 1: an easy way to do it. The Echo speakers are
Speaker 1: going to be probably the second easiest to do because
Speaker 1: you use the app or you can actually do it
Speaker 1: just with your voice. You can say group all my
Speaker 1: speakers together. You can say play this music, you know,
Speaker 1: play pop music throughout my entire house, or you can
Speaker 1: say played on this specific speaker. And the other way
Speaker 1: is sons and Sons is probably going to be the
Speaker 1: most expensive, but it's probably the most flexible and has
Speaker 1: the most ways to listen and things like that. So
Speaker 1: my pick is so nos That's what I like, but
Speaker 1: it's very expensive, and I've built my collection over the years.
Speaker 1: It's not something that I did overnight because those speakers
Speaker 1: are pricey. Friend of the show Jared Newman writes in
Speaker 1: his Advisorator newsletter, there's a big Windows update Windows is
Speaker 1: that Microsoft is rolling out a new version of Windows
Speaker 1: eleven with only one feature that I truly care about.
Speaker 1: It brings back the never combined option for taskbar icons,
Speaker 1: so that each window can have its own text label.
Speaker 1: I previously used an app called Explorer Patcher for this purpose,
Speaker 1: one of the several Windows eleven tweaks I've recommended, but
Speaker 1: I've installed it for now. That is a great tip,
Speaker 1: Thank you Jared Newman of Advisorator. So if you know Windows,
Speaker 1: it groups together all of the similar Windows back in
Speaker 1: the day used to be able to see like at
Speaker 1: the bottom, like if you have two Chrome windows open,
Speaker 1: or two email messages open or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 1: People probably went nuts trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: separate those, and so it took Microsoft a while, but
Speaker 1: they figured it out.
Speaker 2: So now you can use that.
Speaker 1: Never combine option for taskbar icons, so everything that you
Speaker 1: have open will have its own icon in the taskbar.
Speaker 1: That is a great thing. But you do have to
Speaker 1: get out or download the new version of Windows eleven
Speaker 1: to figure that out. By the way, subscribe to Jared's newsletter.
Speaker 1: He does write it regularly, unlike me. It's called Advisorator,
Speaker 1: and it's always packed with great stuff. Facebook new AI
Speaker 1: Experiences something that's kind of fun. You should check this
Speaker 1: out if you may or may not have access to
Speaker 1: it in your Instagram. But if you go to your
Speaker 1: Instagram stories, there's a new sticker called AI stickers, And
Speaker 1: so you go into your stickers and then you tap
Speaker 1: AI stickers and you can type anything in and it
Speaker 1: will generate a sticker on the fly.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Stickers are those things you put on your stories that
Speaker 1: like animate like a baseball bat cracking a ball, or
Speaker 1: like a you know, a wow face or something like that.
Speaker 1: Whatever you type in and find stuff. But this you
Speaker 1: can type in anything and it will generate it using AI.
Speaker 1: So for instance, you can type in, you know, dogs
Speaker 1: playing baseball and it will create that. Or I did
Speaker 1: rich On Tech in New York City and that created
Speaker 1: like a nerd kind of like standing in New York
Speaker 1: City as a cartoon character. So that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: It just makes it more creative. The other two features
Speaker 1: is this restyle feature, which will transform any picture into
Speaker 1: however you want it to look like a watercolor painting
Speaker 1: or you know, something like that. And then they have
Speaker 1: this backdrop feature which changes the background, so you can
Speaker 1: literally take a picture of you in your driveway, use
Speaker 1: this backdrop feature and say make me in Italy and
Speaker 1: it will make an Italian, you know, villa backdrop for
Speaker 1: you all using AI. So this may not be available
Speaker 1: immediately on your Instagram Stories, your Facebook stories, your WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: or your Messenger app, but it will be coming. So
Speaker 1: when you see it, you can try all these new
Speaker 1: editing tools and you can remember you heard them right
Speaker 1: here on rich On Tech all right. Phone line is
Speaker 1: eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're talking to David Henry, President and general manager of
Speaker 1: Connected Home Products at Neckgear. He's going to talk about
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, how to get a better signal, what you
Speaker 1: can do, and we'll have more of your emails and
Speaker 1: your feedback coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech dot tv is the website.
Speaker 5: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you. Talking technology and Wi Fi is always
Speaker 1: at the top of mine for everyone because we're always
Speaker 1: connecting to it. We're always trying to get the best
Speaker 1: signal possible and pretty much our lives depend on this stuff.
Speaker 1: We love our WiFi and here to talk about it
Speaker 1: is David Henry, President and general manager of Connected Home
Speaker 1: Products and Services at Neckgear.
Speaker 2: David, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 8: Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Rich, Hey, thank you. So I was thinking about this today.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the USC game which I went
Speaker 1: to USC, and I was like, you know, obviously, what
Speaker 1: do people do on the weekends. They now with all
Speaker 1: the streaming and stuff, they look to see where their
Speaker 1: game is playing, right Like, it's not like it used
Speaker 1: to be. You just kind of turn on the TV
Speaker 1: and it was it was playing on the Fox Sports app.
Speaker 1: And I downloaded the app and within three, four or
Speaker 1: five seconds, I'm sitting there watching a live stream of
Speaker 1: the game and it says it's like in four k
Speaker 1: uhd or something. Anyway, my point is, I just thought
Speaker 1: about how cool it is and how far we've come
Speaker 1: that here it is, this game is accessible by anyone
Speaker 1: nationwide through this app, and it's all because of Wi
Speaker 1: Fi and streaming, and we've just we've come a long way.
Speaker 8: Now. I think you nailed it.
Speaker 12: I mean, football games is one thing, and in fact,
Speaker 12: right now there are football games, NFL games, college games
Speaker 12: that you can't even see on linear tele even if
Speaker 12: it's subscribe to cable and all those sports packages. You
Speaker 12: have to stream them. I mean Amazon Prime has games
Speaker 12: they stream only on Thursday nights. I read that there'll
Speaker 12: be at least one or two playoff games this year
Speaker 12: that will only be streamed, and so you know, Wi
Speaker 12: Fi can deliver it all. But streaming is just one
Speaker 12: thing that Wi Fi brings to us. Wi Fi brings gaming,
Speaker 12: Wi Fi brings shopping, Wi Fi brings home security. I mean,
Speaker 12: it's it really supports pretty much.
Speaker 8: Everything we do.
Speaker 12: And we learned that, you know, painfully, so during the
Speaker 12: during the pandemic shutdown.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is I think I got more questions
Speaker 1: about how to get better Wi Fi during the pandemic
Speaker 1: than any other time of my life because we were
Speaker 1: pushing our networks to the limit, to the brink, and
Speaker 1: you know, mesh networks, we're just sort of starting to
Speaker 1: come along. But let's talk about some of the basics. Okay,
Speaker 1: So first off, what is Wi Fi?
Speaker 12: Yeah, so, you know, if you think back to internet
Speaker 12: connectivity in the old days, if you're old enough, if
Speaker 12: your audience is old enough, they remember plugging into a
Speaker 12: phone line and connecting to the Internet. And then very
Speaker 12: quickly we got broadband, this high speed broadband that didn't
Speaker 12: have to use a phone line anymore. But we're all
Speaker 12: basically plugging one laptop or typically into an Internet connection.
Speaker 12: And you know, in the early two thousands, late nineties,
Speaker 12: early two thousands, we realize how powerful that was and
Speaker 12: that all of your information, your news, your communication was
Speaker 12: going to come over the internet, and so pretty quickly realized, Wow,
Speaker 12: this is a whole home.
Speaker 8: Type of connectivity that people are going to want.
Speaker 12: So we created Wi Fi in the early two thousands,
Speaker 12: late late nineties, early two thousands to get to make
Speaker 12: sure that any device in your home, whether it's your phone,
Speaker 12: your TV, your laptop, your gaming gaming console, all could connect.
Speaker 8: To the Internet wirelessly.
Speaker 12: And it's called Wi Fi, which is a standard that
Speaker 12: all of these devices use to talk.
Speaker 8: To each other.
Speaker 1: Now, it's interesting because we often hear about different flavors
Speaker 1: of Wi Fi, like, you know, we've heard of Wi
Speaker 1: Fi six. I've now heard Wi Fi seven coming along.
Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's the latest. It's the generation of Why Fi.
Speaker 12: And you know, a good analogy would be for you
Speaker 12: for your your television.
Speaker 8: You mentioned four khd.
Speaker 12: Well, before that it was you know, it was ten
Speaker 12: a top, and then it was seven twenty and before
Speaker 12: that it was you know, something else. But every few years,
Speaker 12: technology gets better, and that's set the same as true
Speaker 12: with Wi Fi. We're now in the seventh generation of
Speaker 12: Wi Fi. It's hard to believe that we're seven generations
Speaker 12: in and every few years a new technology.
Speaker 8: Standard comes to make it better.
Speaker 12: And it's really designed to figure out what are the
Speaker 12: applications and what are.
Speaker 8: The devices that are going to use Wi Fi in
Speaker 8: the future.
Speaker 12: And as an industry, we get together and develop wireless
Speaker 12: standards to make sure that we can we can deliver
Speaker 12: those things. So Wi Fi seven happens to be the
Speaker 12: latest one. And it's all about speed so that you
Speaker 12: can do all that streaming you want to do. It's
Speaker 12: about range so you can you know, connect to the
Speaker 12: Internet anywhere in your home or even in your back
Speaker 12: in your backyard. And it's about something else that people
Speaker 12: don't really consider so much, but it's very important, which
Speaker 12: is network capacity. And what I mean by network capacity
Speaker 12: is how many devices and how many applications can you
Speaker 12: run on your Wi Fi at the same time without
Speaker 12: having them slow down.
Speaker 8: So those are the three things that Wi Fi seven
Speaker 8: is all about.
Speaker 1: So if I'm using my like Wi Fi box from
Speaker 1: the cable company, it's like underneath my TV or in
Speaker 1: a cabinet.
Speaker 2: Am I doing things right?
Speaker 4: Or no?
Speaker 8: Well, I guess.
Speaker 12: First and foremost the question is is is the Wi
Speaker 12: Fi box from your cable company the right WiFi box
Speaker 12: to have? You know, depends on how long you've had it.
Speaker 12: Sometimes the cable companies or the internet companies will give
Speaker 12: you a relatively low cost to them internet box because
Speaker 12: they have to give it out to everyone. And if
Speaker 12: you have to have a large home, or you happen
Speaker 12: to have a lot of people on the network at
Speaker 12: the same time, or you're subscribing to a very very
Speaker 12: fast speed, or you do a lot of streaming, maybe
Speaker 12: that Wi Fi box is just not good enough for you.
Speaker 12: It's good enough for a lot of people, but it's
Speaker 12: not good enough for everyone. So I guess the first
Speaker 12: question is is the Wi Fi box good enough? And
Speaker 12: then the second plus the question of course will be
Speaker 12: a location. Where do you put it? And how do
Speaker 12: you configure it? But I think first and foremost people
Speaker 12: have to figure out for the Internet I'm paying for
Speaker 12: and for the applications that I run, and the number
Speaker 12: of people in my house that are using it, is
Speaker 12: my WiFi box good enough?
Speaker 1: Now, when it comes to the router placement, if you're
Speaker 1: just using the basic router that you have, or maybe
Speaker 1: you bought one, where do you put that?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Well, this is the unfortunate thing is sometimes you don't
Speaker 12: have a choice, right the Wi Fi box usually goes
Speaker 12: wherever the internet tech connection happens to come into your house,
Speaker 12: which is usually may maybe it's a coax line, or
Speaker 12: it could be a fiber line or something, and it
Speaker 12: usually comes in usually at the edge of your home,
Speaker 12: maybe near a wall that goes outside towards the garage.
Speaker 12: And in some homes that can be a very not
Speaker 12: a very good location in terms of covering your all home.
Speaker 12: And so, for example, if you have the choice, you'd
Speaker 12: want to put your wireless network, a wireless route someplace
Speaker 12: away from or not behind a door, or not behind walls,
Speaker 12: or not behind a mirror or a TV or a
Speaker 12: TV or a computer screen, because all those things can
Speaker 12: block wireless signal.
Speaker 8: But in many cases, you know, cousiners don't have a choice.
Speaker 12: My recommendation is, if you have to put it in
Speaker 12: a certain location, at least try to, you know, raise
Speaker 12: it up a few feet off the ground. Make sure
Speaker 12: there's not a lot of clutter around it, so those
Speaker 12: Internet Wi Fi waves can kind of penetrate your home.
Speaker 1: We're talking to David Henry of neck Year about Wi
Speaker 1: Fi and what about mesh networks. Can you explain briefly
Speaker 1: what that is and why those are so popular.
Speaker 8: Now, yeah, it's exactly what we're just talking about.
Speaker 12: If your Wi Fi comes in, say in your basement
Speaker 12: or in the bottom floor of your home, but you
Speaker 12: use it a lot on the second or the third
Speaker 12: third floor of your home, or it comes on one
Speaker 12: side of the home, but you know you want to
Speaker 12: do a lot of streaming on the other side of
Speaker 12: the home. What happens is that wireless signal it erodes,
Speaker 12: it degrades for every wall it goes through. Sometimes by
Speaker 12: the time you get to your bedroom, by the time
Speaker 12: you get to your living room or your family room.
Speaker 8: You just don't even have a connection.
Speaker 12: And so what wireless mesh networking is technology was invented
Speaker 12: in twenty sixteen. You know, next year we have our
Speaker 12: Orbi product line, which is the best in class mesh network.
Speaker 8: What mesh networks.
Speaker 12: Are is instead of having one wireless router or one
Speaker 12: wireless box, say you know in your home office, you
Speaker 12: have multiple of them. Maybe if the three of them
Speaker 12: are scattered around your home so that you can no
Speaker 12: matter where you are, you're always near a strong network connection.
Speaker 8: So that's called mesh networking.
Speaker 1: Okay, now you just mentioned the Orby, So that's what
Speaker 1: netgear does. And I'm just curious like if okay, so
Speaker 1: if I'm going with like a high end neckgear, would
Speaker 1: that be Orby? And then if I was getting like
Speaker 1: a standard neckgear, what would you recommend?
Speaker 12: Yeah, So, if you have a large home, if you
Speaker 12: have two stories, if you have three stories, if you
Speaker 12: have a situation where maybe your network router is in
Speaker 12: your basement and can't penetrate maybe the floors. If you
Speaker 12: have an outside building like a garage or a pool
Speaker 12: house or or something where you just really can't penetrate
Speaker 12: with the box you have, Uh, the Orby network is
Speaker 12: excellent for that is the best in class in terms
Speaker 12: of getting your maximum speed all the way around your
Speaker 12: home and even we say all all around your property,
Speaker 12: you know, near the pool, right you have outdoors? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 12: So so if you got that that that coverage issue,
Speaker 12: net Yar's Orby is the best for it. Now, if
Speaker 12: you have a smaller home, maybe it's it's it's on
Speaker 12: a single story, or maybe it is uh you know,
Speaker 12: two stories, but it has very thin walls and coverage
Speaker 12: is not the problem. But you just want max speed, well,
Speaker 12: then I would I would Gear a guide customers towards
Speaker 12: our Nighthawk line.
Speaker 8: Nighthawk is our line of wireless writers.
Speaker 12: We've been in you know again, the market leader in
Speaker 12: wireless routers as long as I can remember. And Nighthawk
Speaker 12: is our brand for wireless routers that really gives you
Speaker 12: maximum speed, the latest technology, lots of devices connected at
Speaker 12: the same time.
Speaker 8: So those are our two solutions.
Speaker 12: Nighthawk is our best in class for maybe for smaller
Speaker 12: homes and people who want to even sometimes they want
Speaker 12: to tinker or configure their networks. They like to play
Speaker 12: with it, maybe a little bit more technical of an audience.
Speaker 12: And our ORBI is for the large homes, people who
Speaker 12: just want to set it, forget it.
Speaker 8: And have the best performance everywhere in the home.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've got about thirty seconds. Can you give me
Speaker 1: the quickest explanation of two point four gigaherts versus five.
Speaker 12: Yes, two point four gigaherts is the original Wi Fi frequency.
Speaker 12: It had good range but very low speed, and there
Speaker 12: were a lot of other devices on it baby monitors,
Speaker 12: microwave oves and the like. Five gigaherts does much faster
Speaker 12: speed and much cleaner, meaning there's not a lot of
Speaker 12: other devices on it, but it may not have as
Speaker 12: good of range as two point four, and I'll just
Speaker 12: go go straight forward.
Speaker 8: Six Giar Hurts is the latest.
Speaker 12: It's in the Wi Fi seven technology and it's even
Speaker 12: faster than five gigears or two two point four.
Speaker 8: The iPhone fifteen uses it. The new Samsung phone use it.
Speaker 8: The Macnipro use it.
Speaker 12: I would really recommend if you have a new device,
Speaker 12: like a new iPhone, you gotta get Wi Fi seven
Speaker 12: because of the supports that sif, giga hitts frequency.
Speaker 2: Wow. Good to know. I did not know that.
Speaker 1: David Henry, President and general manager of Connected Home Products
Speaker 1: and Services at Netgear, thanks so much for.
Speaker 2: Joining me today. All right, thanks rich all right Netgear
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 1: I'll put the website online rich on Tech, and I'll
Speaker 1: link up the products that he mentioned there.
Speaker 2: It is a good little information about Wi Fi. I
Speaker 2: love learning that.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to rich on Tech, coming up feedback,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech. New report on teams
Speaker 1: and their relationship with their smartphone. Ooh, it's not good.
Speaker 1: Four and a half hours on their phones daily on average,
Speaker 1: they're always nearby two hundred and thirty seven notifications a day. Ooh,
Speaker 1: that's how many they get. They view about forty six
Speaker 1: per day. This is all from common sense media. Bobo
Speaker 1: says more than that, Yeah, I believe it. It's annoying
Speaker 1: when you get notifications from apps that shouldn't be sending
Speaker 1: you them, right, like the stuff that's not very important,
Speaker 1: like Target, Come on in, we've got a sale.
Speaker 2: Your favorite T shirts are on sale.
Speaker 1: Teens feel notifications are distracting, but they prioritize those from people.
Speaker 1: See what I was I saying, See all the ones
Speaker 1: that are like nonsense. Social media dominates Forty two percent
Speaker 1: of their time is spent on social media. TikTok is
Speaker 1: used by half of teens for nearly two hours daily.
Speaker 1: That makes up thirty eight percent of their time on
Speaker 1: their phone. Next is YouTube. Nineteen percent. Teens use phones
Speaker 1: forty three minutes on average during their school hours. Obviously,
Speaker 1: schools have different enforcement policies. Let's see what else. Oh,
Speaker 1: the overnight thing. This is the other thing. A lot
Speaker 1: of teens try to leave their phones on at night
Speaker 1: while they're trying to sleep, and that interrupts their sleep
Speaker 1: because they don't want to miss a thing. And teens
Speaker 1: kind of understand that this is a problem, but they
Speaker 1: don't really know what to do about it because they're teens.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't as adults. We don't even know
Speaker 1: what to do. And this is the other side of this.
Speaker 1: A lot of these apps aren't even meant for people
Speaker 1: under thirteen. A lot of these social media apps, and
Speaker 1: these teens still use them because they just use a
Speaker 1: different ad a different age and they get around that.
Speaker 1: But common Sense Media with a new relationship. But it's
Speaker 1: an interesting report, so check it out. Relationship teens have
Speaker 1: with their smartphones. Mister Beast is the top digital creator
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, according to Forbes eighty two million dollars. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's how much he earned. Yeah, a lot of people
Speaker 1: watch mister Beast. My kids asked me if he'd be
Speaker 1: friends with me. He's like, do you think you'd be
Speaker 1: friends with mister Beasts?
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what mister Beast is like his real name,
Speaker 1: by the way, Jimmy Donaldson.
Speaker 2: Eighty two million.
Speaker 1: In the next to two people are tie Ret and
Speaker 1: Link thirty five million, and Preston Plays he makes thirty
Speaker 1: five million as well. Jake Paul thirty four million at
Speaker 1: number five. Let's see anyone else. The Dmilio Kid, Charlie,
Speaker 1: she makes twenty three million. Emma Chamberlain, I think she's
Speaker 1: like a famous podcaster twenty million. Alex Cooper another famous podcaster,
Speaker 1: twenty million. Okay, there's some money in digital creators. I
Speaker 1: don't think most of it's like celebrities. You know, most
Speaker 1: of them are not making that. But there are some
Speaker 1: of them making a lot of money. But if you
Speaker 1: ask any teenager what do they want to do?
Speaker 2: They want to be a YouTuber.
Speaker 1: Now it's probably a TikToker, but they want to be
Speaker 1: they want to be a content creator. They don't you know,
Speaker 1: they don't want a regular job. They don't want to
Speaker 1: do what I'm doing. They don't want to come in
Speaker 1: every day and do hard work. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: hard work to be a creator, like really hard. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of these people, I hang out with them.
Speaker 1: It is it is wild how much work it is.
Speaker 1: Nathan writes in Hey Rich, I have a Samsung's Galaxy
Speaker 1: Z Fold four that hasn't gotten a security update since April.
Speaker 2: First, I factory reset it and still no update.
Speaker 1: I did some googling and found that I could download
Speaker 1: Samsung's smart Switch to my desktop and I was able
Speaker 1: to get an update via USB to my phone. Now
Speaker 1: I've got the September first Android security patch. Feel free
Speaker 1: to use this on your show to help others. Thanks Rich. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a good little tip there. If you're not getting
Speaker 1: your security update, you can download the smart Switch app
Speaker 1: on Samsung on your desktop computer, plug in your phone
Speaker 1: and it will probably force that update. Donna says, Hey,
Speaker 1: we enjoy your talks on KTLA. Just wonder if you
Speaker 1: ever heard about or can warn people about a computer problem.
Speaker 1: Our senior citizen friend nearly got scammed and our computer
Speaker 1: got ruined by folks supposedly working for Microsoft. First they
Speaker 1: disabled her home computer, then talked to her while fixing it,
Speaker 1: and wanted payment through bankwire. She finally realized the con
Speaker 1: and ended the contact. Today today she called geek Squad
Speaker 1: for a real fix, and they say they see this
Speaker 1: scam every day. Can you put out a warning? Yes,
Speaker 1: tech support scams very very prevalent. Do not fall for them.
Speaker 1: You get a pop up window on your computer that
Speaker 1: says you know your computer's infected. Call this number. It's Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Do not fall for it. Turn off your computer. Close
Speaker 1: your web browser if you can. If you can't, turn
Speaker 1: off your computer, restart it, unplug it. If you have
Speaker 1: to plug it back in, your computer will start up.
Speaker 2: It'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Scott says, Hey, Rich, I've been following you since the
Speaker 1: day you started on KTLA. I want to know that
Speaker 1: I've had a problem with an item you endorse Rolo
Speaker 1: last year in Germany. Last year my Samsung Flip three.
Speaker 1: It quit working for a day, and now have a
Speaker 1: Flip five and in Spain it only works half the time.
Speaker 1: Their support is great, but they want me to sit
Speaker 1: and send them screenshots of at least five different configuration steps.
Speaker 1: I have books, tours booked, and I cannot sit at
Speaker 1: a computer. They have no phone support. I have been
Speaker 1: very I'll say the word mad, especially when I'm stranded
Speaker 1: ten miles out of Barcelona. This e SIM should be
Speaker 1: configured from the get go.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: I have a month in southern Europe. I'm gonna buy
Speaker 1: a simcard, a physical SIM when I have the chance.
Speaker 1: Wanting you to give the heads up on the downfalls
Speaker 1: of Arlo. Cheers Scott. Yes, Scott, so I don't endorse them.
Speaker 1: I don't endorse anything, but I do talk about them
Speaker 1: because I use them a lot, and I agree they
Speaker 1: are great, but you your mileage may vary. There are
Speaker 1: so many different cell phones, so many different networks, so
Speaker 1: many different configurations.
Speaker 2: It's not always going to work out perfectly.
Speaker 1: So know that going in and have a backup plan
Speaker 1: if you're gonna get an e sim for your international travel.
Speaker 1: Like me, when I got to Japan, it did not
Speaker 1: work as expected on one of my phones. Turns out
Speaker 1: that phone was not supported with Aerolow in Japan specifically,
Speaker 1: and so I had to make do with my other phone,
Speaker 1: which I know not everyone's gonna have two phones, so
Speaker 1: you may need to get a physical sim. You may
Speaker 1: need to take a different direction, But I would say
Speaker 1: a majority of the time, Scott, I've used aerolow at
Speaker 1: least a half a dozen times, and my mom and
Speaker 1: many many others that I've recommended this to, and they've
Speaker 1: all said it works. So yes, you need to be
Speaker 1: prepared for any sort of hitch in anything. And Peter says,
Speaker 1: my eighteen year old boy worked. He quite quit within
Speaker 1: a month, miss days every day because of the online gaming.
Speaker 1: I'm about to shut it all down for him. Any
Speaker 1: advice before I do. He graduated or he's been a
Speaker 1: good kid, but he's addicted to these giant online worlds. Peter,
Speaker 1: I am so sorry to hear this, and I think
Speaker 1: what you're experiencing is very, very common. You got to
Speaker 1: put some limits in place. If he can't deal with
Speaker 1: those limits, I think you know therapy is in order
Speaker 1: here because he may not be able to cope with this.
Speaker 2: He's a kid.
Speaker 1: These developers develop games that are meant to lure you in.
Speaker 1: They're meant to keep you connected. They're meant to keep
Speaker 1: you on as much as possible. He may not be
Speaker 1: equipped to handle that. You may need to seek outside help.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Go to richontech dot tv. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media. I am at rich on Tech. Next week,
Speaker 1: it is back to New York City. Pixel phone Pixel
Speaker 1: is launching. Google has a big event. We are gonna
Speaker 1: go hands on with a Pixel eight. I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to see what Google is doing with a new pixel.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
Speaker 1: ways you can spend your time.
Speaker 2: I do appreciate you. Spending it right here with me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Kim Bobo,
Speaker 1: bill engineers.
Speaker 2: My name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon.
Speaker 6: M