Apple Vision Pro Thoughts & App To Clean Up iPhone

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Calls for a ban on TikTok surface once again, the
new iPhone app to help you clear out duplicate and
blurry photos. The new website that lets you search through
millions of old newspapers. Plus your tech questions answered. What's
going on on rich dmiro and this is rich on

(00:21):
Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. It's also the place
where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that
tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's go ahead
and open up the phone lines at triple eight Rich

(00:42):
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Give me a call. If
you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact.
We've got some great guests this week. Jose Brionez is
a digital minimalist. He literally gave up his smartphone. He

(01:07):
now runs a website called dumbphonefinder dot org. We will
talk about digital minimalism and what you can do to
spend less time on your phone. Yanco Rutgers, author of
the low Pass newsletter, is going to talk about the
Roku message that surprised many users, how Max is cracking
down on passwords, and why you should download a video

(01:29):
app called VLC. And I've got interviews from Rivian's R
to launch, including the CEO and head designer. They came
out with quite the nice car. This week, I finally
got my hands on a review unit of the Apple
Vision Pro, and boy do I have some thoughts. So

(01:49):
it is amazing. I will tell you that this is
the first product that I am at the same time
in love with, but I can't fully recommend purchasing it
unless you've got four grand burning a hole in your pocket,
then by all means go ahead. So if you're not
familiar with the Apple Vision Pro, it's a headset that
combines virtual reality and augmented reality, so you can either

(02:13):
see screens and apps and entertainment and content kind of
projected onto the world around you, or with one turn
of a wheel, you can be completely immersed in a
virtual digital world. So I've tried a whole bunch of
things for starters. The headset is definitely heavier than I
remembered it when I did my tests. It can be

(02:33):
kind of uncomfortable to find just the right fit and
the position to wear it and sit with it. But
this is mostly due to the first generation of this product.
This thing is going to get lighter, it's going to
get smaller. I did drop the battery pack one time
because I kind of forgot it was sitting next to me.
It is tethered to the pack or to the headset,
I should say, And yeah, it fell off the couch

(02:54):
and onto the floor. No big deal. The software is incredible.
This is where Apple excels. This is where they are
literally just showing off. They have thought of everything. You
are inside this helmet I call a helmet, and it's
kind of like Disneyland. It's so magical. But it's also
quite limited. So for instance, if you search the app store,

(03:14):
we're used to finding any app you can imagine on
your iPhone. Not many streaming apps inside. I couldn't find Netflix,
I couldn't find YouTube. Now there is Max, and there
is Disney Plus, and of course there's Apple TV Plus.
But when I tried to log into Max, because I
was like, let me try watching a movie on Max,
it was nearly impossible because it wanted me to type

(03:35):
this super long password that I have on my account
into this virtual keyboard, which required looking at my phone
to get the password, which I had to have off
to the side, and I couldn't see because my helmet
was on or headset, whatever you want to call it.
But once I ended up watching a show on Apple
TV Plus, which is what they wanted me to do, right.
I watched the show called Hijack. It was great. The

(03:57):
picture was bright, it was crystal clear, the audio was
just incredible. The screen rivaled in imax. It was huge,
at least to my brain. But I did struggle to
sort of get comfortable to watch this show. Towards the end,
I found myself like itching to be done. Now. I
did use the device as a spatial computer, which is
what Apple is saying. This thing is really good at

(04:17):
that's what they're calling it. It's really really cool, but
again it's exhausting. When you look at your Mac computer
screen on your desk, the vision pro uses AI and
it recognizes that, says, oh, this must be a computer,
and it says do you want to project this screen
onto my virtual screen? And you say yes, Then your
laptop screen becomes a giant screen in a virtual world,

(04:40):
and you can have a whole bunch of windows and
things happening and make it large. It's really cool, and
you use your physical laptop, keyboard and trackpad to control it,
and you're controlling it in any sort of environment you want.
So again, you turn that dial. And I was checking
my emails in the middle of the Joshua Tree desert.
I was surfing the web and planning this radio show

(05:00):
a top mount hood, and I could even hear birds
chirping in the distance. It was very relaxing, but the
image wasn't as razor sharp or the use as straightforward
as using my MacBook. So what I do? I switched
back to my MacBook.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
I did do a FaceTime call with some folks from
Apple who are showing me how to set things up.
That was pretty cool. But then my wife called on FaceTime,
which she never typically does, but I said, hey, call
me on FaceTime. I'll take it inside the headset. And
her reaction was pretty wild. She was like, why do
you look so weird? I said, that's my persona, a
digital representation of myself. So you take the helmet off.

(05:37):
I keep calling it a helmet, it's a headset, whatever
you want to call it, and you take pictures of
yourself with the three D cameras and it stitches them together.
It says, Okay, smile, don't show your teeth, blink, don't blink,
and then it stitches all this stuff together to make
this kind of floating head of yourself. If you've ever
been on that ride at Disney, the Haunted Castle, Haunted Mansion,

(06:00):
that's what it looks like. One of those little floating heads,
and that's you, except you're not dead. You're very much alive. Uh,
but this is what people chat with on FaceTime.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Apple pushed out a software update yesterday to make this better,
so I haven't tried that, but hopefully it's better. My
kid really wanted to try the headset. It's not meant
for kids under thirteen, although I'm sure many of them
will be using it. He loved it. His reaction was priceless.
Just he was like, wow, think about it. This is
a technology that ninety nine point nine percent of the
world has not tried yet, so it is really incredible

(06:35):
when you put this on, because it's unlike any entertainment
form you've ever seen. It's like imagine being inside of
a three D movie. That's what it feels like so
he was playing with dinosaurs and the coolest thing, and
this is a representation of how cool Apple is with
their software and how they nailed it. He was able
to figure out the hand gestures and the navigation within seconds,

(06:55):
no teaching necessary. Now the headset is paired to you.
It's got some sort of like optical sensor to like unlock,
just like your iPhone does. You can use a passcode
or optic sensors, but you can also put it into
guest mode so someone in your house or a friend
can try it out. Now, guest mode is kind of
tricky because you have to put the headset on, unlock it,

(07:16):
snap it into guest mode, and then take it off
within five minutes and hand it to someone else. They
put it on, they go through this whole setup routine
of you know, adjusting the inside lenses and looking at
things and selecting them so it knows how to track
your eyeballs. It's kind of an involved process, and once
they take the headset off, they've got to do it
all over again to try it again. So if you've

(07:38):
got multiple people in your house, I'm sure there's a
way to set up multiple accounts on this thing. But
for guests just giving them a look inside this, it's
kind of tricky, but again their reaction is priceless. So overall,
my journey with Apple Vision pro has just begun, and
I think so has Apples. This is a really emerging
technology and I think Tim Cook kind of nailed it

(08:00):
when he said this is tomorrow's technology today. I think
the price tag reflects that it is thirty five hundred dollars.
It is not something that most people can just go
out and buy on a whim. Even if you come
to my house and say, rich, this is the coolest
thing I've ever tried in my life. I want this.
With other forms of technology, you might be able to
get it. With this, you're gonna think twice, you're gonna

(08:22):
think three times, and you're gonna say, eh, probably not. Now.
I want this to work. I want this technology to succeed,
and I have no doubt it will. I have no
doubt that one day you're just gonna put on a
pair of glasses. You're gonna watch a movie, You're gonna
check email, you're gonna make FaceTime calls or some sort
of video chat with people. You're gonna use AI to
talk and interact with different things. But that moment is

(08:45):
not here just yet. It is, but it's not attainable
for most people. This is a rare anomaly. Anomally, did
I add an extra syllable to that word? See? Even
vision pro can't fix my speech? Maybe it can. This
is a rare anomaly where the virtual technology is here.
The technology is here, and it's really really good. But

(09:07):
it's going to be a matter of time before the
world catches up to this technology. My advice, do yourself
a favor. Go to the Apple Store, make an appointment
first and set yourself up for a demo. You have
to see this technology to believe it now. I'm not
expecting you to get this today, tomorrow, the next day,
even in a year. This price really has to come

(09:29):
down to a place where someone sees this and says
I want that now. I don't know what that price
point is. Maybe it's under one thousand dollars, but a
lot of people, you know, their main thing right now
is getting a phone every couple of years for one
thousand bucks. That's tough enough. And so imagine trying to
layer this on top. Imagine trying to layer a computer
on top, and so it does all these things in

(09:51):
a really interesting way. But does it take over something
that you already have and replace that. Not yet right now.
This is just to value add on. Is it really
cool to watch movies inside this thing? Absolutely? It was
it really cool to have my computer screen inside this thing? Absolutely?
Was it cool to have a web browser and some
music off to the side and have a bunch of

(10:13):
windows on top of a mountain in Hawaii? Absolutely? Was
it cool to sit on the moon and watch a
TV show? Yes, it's very cool. But again, this is
brand new. Apple has done an incredible job, and I
think the halo effect here is going to be real.
We're going to see more of an interest in virtual reality.
We're going to see more applications for this, and you

(10:35):
know what, I am here for the ride, But I
will say my initial thoughts on this remain the same.
It is incredibly cool, but it's incredibly expensive, which makes
it a really tough recommendation unless again, you've got that
money to burn, so applevision pro I will continue to
check it out. I'm going on a flight soon. I
will take it on the plane. I'll tell you what

(10:57):
that's all about, and continue to update you on the
progress with this amazing technology. All right, coming up, will
TikTok get banned in the US. The chatter is happening again,
But first it's your turn. Your calls coming up next
at Triple A rich one on one that's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. You

(11:19):
are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking
technology at Triple A Rich one O one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The website rich on Tech dot tv. Anything I mentioned

(11:41):
on the show, the links are there. Just look for
the big red banner at the top that says heard
it on the radio. Click here and you'll get the
links in real time. You can follow me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech. So once again, the
fate of TikTok is up for debate in the US.
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted fifty

(12:03):
to zero to advance this bipartisan bill that would require
byte Dance that's TikTok's Chinese parent company, to divest its
ownership of the app within one hundred and sixty five days.
If this bill passes still needs to be introduced into
the Senate before it reaches the President's desk. But this
is interesting. President Biden has kind of said, yeah, he

(12:24):
would support the bill that would result in this nationwide
ban if it's passed. But what's also interesting is that
the White House recently joined TikTok in an effort to
reach young voters.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
HM.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Meanwhile, former President Trump, who previously pushed for a TikTok
ban back in the day, now opposes that. He says
he thinks Facebook will gain from this ban and he
doesn't like that idea. Now, opponents of the bill, obviously,
there are many of them civil liberties groups. They argue
that it would infringe on the freedom of expression and
violate the Constitution. And of course TikTok does not like

(12:59):
the idea. You think. They actually sent out a push
notifications to push notification to users warning about this potential ban,
and they said, you know what, why don't you call
your representative and they gave them the info on how
to do that, and many users flooded the phone lines
in DC and they actually had to turn off the

(13:21):
phones for a bit in some of these offices there
because so many people called so obviously a lot of
people use TikTok not just for fun, but also for business, artists, creators.
There are so many things that ride on top of this.
It is an interesting debate to watch. I have my
thoughts on TikTok. I think, of course, it's incredible for

(13:43):
self expression and to be able to go viral and
to build a business, and I know so many people
that have done that. But at the same time, you know,
there's a lot of junkie junk on there, just like
there is any other social media platform. And does TikTok
get more information about the American people than any other
app out there? No, but you have to wonder where
this information is going and how it could be used.

(14:04):
So there are some real interesting debatable areas of this
whole thing. But we've heard it once before, no doubt
we're going to hear this once again. Something to be
aware of. Let's go to Janice in Redondo Beach. Janis
you're on with Rich, Well, Hi, how's it going? It
is going?

Speaker 5 (14:22):
Well?

Speaker 1 (14:23):
What can I help you with?

Speaker 6 (14:24):
I got the new update on my Apple Watch and
nothing works the same way as it used to. Is
there any way to go back to the version before
or somehow learn all the little intricacies of this new update.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
There is no way to go back on the Apple
Watch to previous software. Apple does not let you do
that easily. Now, yes, is there a way, of course,
there's always a way. But is it easy for you,
Janie to do this? Probably not unless you have a
lot of knowledge about techie stuff and you know, it's
just one of those things that Apple is kind of

(15:01):
like a one way street. Once you upgrade, you are upgraded. So, yes,
everything has changed on the Apple Watch, and I am
still annoyed by it myself. When I tech. There's only
two buttons on my Apple Watch, and every time I
press the wrong button because it's not what I want
to do. So here's the best thing to do. Now,
do you have an iPhone?

Speaker 7 (15:20):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, okay, you've got an iPhone? Obviously you probably do
if you've got that. Okay, So the best thing to
do is open up There is a books app on
the iPhone, and you open up the books app and
type in and I hope I'm doing this in real time?
I hope, yes, Okay, it is there. So you open
up the books app and then you search Apple Watch
and this is probably the best kept secret of Apple

(15:43):
in the world. But Apple actually posts and creates a
really good user guide for every operating system that they
come out with, whether it's the one for the Watch,
whether it's for the iPhone. And so you search Apple
Watch and look for the user guide that has the
latest Watch OS, and so I've got to figure out

(16:05):
which one that is. But right now I see nine
point four. I think the latest Watch OS is ten.
Let's see if they've got that, So search that up
and of course I'm not seeing Let's see. I got
to make sure which Apple Watch, which one it is?
The late Yeah, Apple Watch OS ten. So if you
go into books and you look for Apple Watch OS,

(16:25):
Apple usually publishes a user guide, and so that's what
you want to look for, and that's what you want
to have as your guide for this. Now I'm looking
right now it says Watch OS nine point four, eight
point six, five point two. Definitely don't want that one
four point three and six point two. So I don't
know if they gave up and they just stopped putting

(16:46):
these things out, but I'm not seeing the ten just yet,
which is kind of odd. Obviously, there are many third
party books on the Apple Watch. But what I would
do is first search for that Apple Watch user guide
no matter what version of Apple Watch you're using. They
don't have it just yet, they will soon, but I
can tell you the side button and the top button

(17:06):
look on the Apple They've run a great Apple Support
website where they have a lot of interesting tutorials and things.
That's going to be the best way to learn it. Also,
YouTube is your friend. Go on YouTube and just search
Apple Watch new os or OS ten, and you will
see all of the interesting tutorials that people spend a
lot of time making that will give you the basics.

(17:28):
The basics have changed what the actual buttons do on
the watch, but the watch functions in mostly the same way.
But I get it. It is frustrating. This is why
people don't do software updates, because they are so worried
about what it's going to change, and they're worried about
being able to operate these things just when they figure
it out. Thanks for the call, Jannis. Coming up, digital
minimalist Jose Brionez is going to talk about why you

(17:51):
might want to ditch your smartphone. You are listening to
Rich on Tech. What's going on rich Tomuro here Rich
on Tech, welcome back to the show. Joining me now
is Jose Brionez. He runs a website called Dumb phone Finder.

(18:16):
He is a digital minimalist. Jose, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
Rich, you embraced.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Digital minimalism a couple of years ago. Tell me why
and what that journey's been like.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
So for me, I think the idea is that I
was spending too much time online, and that's because I
went from one environment to another. So I got out
of college, I went to university, and I had a
very structure life, going to school, going to work hours,
and then going home. But then I went out of

(18:51):
that structure life to the life that I had to
build myself, and I found myself spending too much of
that lifetime online.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
So when I got my first.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Job, I was spending roughly about twelve to thirteen hours
online work and leisure all together. And I did not
want to do that. So I started to find alternatives
in my life that will allow me to live what
I call a better life, a more balanced life, and
interact with technology but not be overcome by it.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Okay, so the first thing you did in this journey
I assume was get rid of the smartphone. What tell
me about that aspect you switched. What did you try
to do, like, what was your goal in Did you
try to reduce your time on the smartphone or just
get rid of it all together?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
So I think at first I was trying to keep
my smartphone and use the tools that are with it,
so screen time or other you know, kind of like
little hacks. But at some point in time I realized
that I am not a smartphone person. If I have
something available and I have the technology available to me,
I want to use it. If I have a smartphone
in my hands, I want to use it.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
I want to.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Get the most out of it.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
So taking that and going to a simpler phone at
the time, I tried a light phone too, which has
been my device for the past four years, and it
had enough. It had enough things that I liked, I
liked the company, and it wasn't perfect, but it had
the things that I wanted and appreciate it, and I
started to look for alternative ways to do all of

(20:22):
the other smart things that I had become accustomed to.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
And real quick I have tested the light phone. It's
basically a Kindle like a Kindle screen on a phone.
It's really small, it's very minimalistic. It's not a color
screen as far as I know, the one I tested
wasn't and it's very basic. I mean I had a
couple of functions on it. I can't remember everything it did,
but you know, you could text on it, you can

(20:44):
make phone calls, and I believe Verizon for a while
was allowing you to add it as a secondary line,
so theoretically you could have your smartphone during the week
and then your light phone on the weekends or nights
when you go out to dinner. What has been the
biggest challenge in trend positioning away from a smartphone?

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I think the biggest challenge for me is that you
have to relearn how to operate in the twenty first
century but with twentieth century principles.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
So when you go to a restaurant and they have a.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
QR code, you need to ask, hey, can I get
a paper menu? Or when you go to the airport,
instead of having the QR code ready for you to
use and board your plane, you have to be mindful
of printing it at home or going to the kiosk
and talking to somebody so that you can get those things.
And of course navigating that's a new thing, right, Like

(21:33):
you know GPS, so we don't have the bulky ones anymore,
so you kind of have to go back a couple
of years and say, Okay, I'm going to bring this
bulky GPS on my car instead of having my phone
with Android auto and everything really nicely laid out. It's
difficult in the beginning because we're used to all of
this convenience, but over time you start finding and you

(21:53):
start asking more questions, and you find the alternatives that
you need to find for the things that you need
to do, and you live normal life as normal as
it is. It's definitely simpler and less convenient. But for
me at least, it has been quite an improvement in
my personal life, my relationships, and my.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
Work as well.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
What have the improvements been.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
I think the main improvement is that I can have
a conversation with my wife and not be distracted by
the notifications on my phone because I'm not deeply attracted
to it anymore.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Even when we go on a trip.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I do have a smartphone that I keep for international
trips because when.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
I'm international, I don't know the language.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
You know, I may not be able to figure it
out all the things that I have figured out here
in my local context, but even when we go international,
I'm definitely more present, more available, you know, in my
personal relationships. I can go to a place and not
take my phone and I don't feel wow, oh my gosh,
like what's going on in the world out there, because
I get to cherish the experiences. When it comes to work,

(22:59):
I finish quite faster, you know, just because I don't
have a lot of distractions pinging me or grabbing my attention.
You kind of remain more focused in your work, and
you do it faster, and then you get more time
for relaxation and other activities that I want.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Do you ever feel like you're missing out?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I do miss out, But I think that's a mindset
that you had to accept. I did not start this
in order to have the niceties of the twenty first
century and the principles of the twentieth century and then
you know, kind of like interact back and forth between them.
I started this as a lifestyle change. I wanted my
lifestyle to change. I wanted to start interacting more with

(23:35):
print media. I wanted to kind of have a little
bit more of a slower life. So, yes, I am
missing out, but I'm okay with that. I have accepted that,
and that's one of the hardest parts.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
I've missed out on a couple parties that my friends
organized because I'm not in the group message or I
don't have that app that everybody has. I missed out
on quote unquote posts that are important, and one time
I did miss out on some email communication that was
pretty prompt.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
It wasn't a super emergency.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Because this is something that I tell everybody, if it's
a true emergency, somebody will find you somehow someway. They
will call you, they will get your coworker, they will
try to find your family member. Because when it's a
real emergency, they will do that.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
You run a website called dumbphones dot org. Tell me
about the website and what that helps people do.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
So about three years ago I started this website and
the animus or the idea was to help people find
their perfect phone. When people hear dumb phones, they usually think, oh,
it's an old flip phone, it doesn't have any capabilities,
but actually they do. It's just that you know, it's
not in the media as much. You don't get the

(24:49):
shiny new announcement from Samsung or Apple out there. So
if you go to the Dumbphone Finder, you can find
the perfect phone for you. So the website just runs
different filters and you can explo and it has a
lot of other useful resources for people to start the journey.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
What's a dumb phone run these days? And do you
have a top pick?

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yes, I do have three top picks, and they all
range from different price points. I think most people associate
the sub one hundred dollars, but they can go all
the way to three hundred dollars, like the light phone.
You know, the light phone is more of a minimal device,
you know, something that you really want for a lifestyle change.
The Cats twenty two flip is more of the smarter device.

(25:34):
You can still have apps and you know, all of
the nice city and convenience of the world. That one
runs you about seventy nine to one hundred dollars, depending
on the condition. You can get them on Amazon. And
then something more like in the middle will be a Nokia.
You know, there's still Nokia devices out there. The twenty
seven to eighty can run you eighty bucks or so,

(25:56):
and there is everything in between. You know, different companies
are coming out with different concept and I'm really excited
about the space growing in the next few years.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
If I'm not ready to give up my smartphone and
I'm not ready to get a dumb phone, give me
a tip to sort of be more intentional and have
less screen time. I'll give you two quick tips.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
The first one is give your screen time password to
someone else. So that's one of the biggest things that
has helped me. Whenever I go, you know, and I
have to use my smartphone for whatever reason, my wife
has set up the screen time passcode. So if I
try to bypass it, I can't because I don't know
the passcode. And if I really want to do it,
I'll have to factor reset, and I really doubt you're

(26:39):
going to do that.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
The second one is find an app that works for you.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
There's one that is called unpluck with a queue or Brick,
which is the Brick app. They both lock you down
with physical devices. You tap the physical device and it
blocks everything from your smartphone, and if you tap it again,
you have access to it again, so you can leave
it at home. You can have a relaxed day. You

(27:05):
come back, you may not need to have to check email.
You tap and then you have access to all of
the things again.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
All right, Jose, this has been great. Tell folks how
to how to find you online.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
So the best way is to go to the don't
phone finder.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Dombphones dot org is my main website where I run
all the things for digital minimalism. I also have a
personal website at Jose brionez dot org and you can
find email and different ways in there to contact me.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Jose Brione is a founder of dumbphones dot org. Thanks
so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me.
All right, I will link up all of Jose's websites
on mine. Just go to rich on tech dot tv.
Lots to unpack, their lots to think about.

Speaker 5 (27:46):
Could you give up your smartphone?

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Give me a fall Triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at triple

(28:09):
A rich one oh one. Phone number for the show
is eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. You can also go to the website richon
tech dot TV. Hit contact and that will send me
a message. Let's go to Rod in Los Angeles. Rod,
you're on with Rich. Hey, Rich, you're doing I'm doing great.

Speaker 8 (28:31):
So I use one of the well known anti virus programs,
and they're often trying to get me to buy additional
services from them, right, And I was kind of wondering
if you have any opinion on the value of these things,
Like they've got dark wed monitoring, they've got one that's
the driver updated, and I think they've got one that

(28:52):
does registry updates.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
I think the the dark web stuff might be useful,
the registry updates, and what was the other one you mentioned,
the driver updates in you're on Windows. Yeah, I mean
a lot a lot of that stuff is like built
into the operating system, so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry
about that too much. Are you having a lot of
issues with your computer.

Speaker 8 (29:15):
Other than just slow but it's necessarily small processor and
that's really the main thing.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, I mean, so that's the thing. Yeah, So these
things sort of prey upon you know, every computer user
has issues with you know, whether it's slow startup, whether
it's things not working perfectly. So of course, you pay,
and you pay, and you pay, and doesn't get any better.
So I think that you could probably ignore most of
those things. I do think that the when it comes

(29:45):
to the actual dark web stuff and all that personal
information stuff, that might be worth it because there is
surprisingly a lot of information about us on the dark web,
and just in general. Have you done the Google results
about you yet? Okay? So if you look up Google
results about you. This is a free service that Google

(30:08):
offers where it will search on the web for public
displays of your name, your phone number, your email address,
anything like that that's been involved in some sort of
data leak or on one of those like data websites
like a you know, name shopping website kind of thing,
and it will offer to take those down for you. Now,
it only takes those down from Google search results. It

(30:31):
does not actually take it down from the website. So
if you want to take that down from the website,
there are tools, probably this Dark Webfinder tool that you're
talking about will assist you with that. Mozilla also has
one which is called Mozilla Monitor that's brand new. You
can check that out and they will help you get
things down as well. You can also go through and

(30:53):
kind of diyatt too, so you can go through, there's
a website just delete Let's see, it's just delete me.
And I got to always find this such a bookmark this,
but they have if you look up, let's see it's
I think it's just delete me DIY. But there's a
way if you look up, like you know, any of

(31:14):
these websites that offer to sell your information. Towards the
bottom of the website, there are instructions for how to
opt out of that, so you can do that as well.
But those are the things that I would recommend. I
also did an article for KTLA about starting the year
off with a clean computer, and basically my general steps
are to uninstall any programs that you no longer use,

(31:38):
look at your web browser any extensions that you no
longer use. Obviously, check all of the software updates, whether
it's for the system or for the apps, clear your
browsing data, and get rid of anything in the trash
and that should go a long way to make your
computer running better. If The other thing I would check
for you is to see sort of what programs are

(31:58):
starting up when you start up your computer. So if
it's a program that just keeps opening every time you
open up your computer. That's using resources. So I would
get rid of those as well if you don't need
them to open up as soon as you do that.
But yeah, these programs, they will sell you on anything,
believe me. You know, they make a lot of money.
You see them on the news all the time or
you know on TV where it's like, hey, you know,

(32:20):
speed up your PC? Do they really work? So sometimes
they do more damage than they actually help. Let's go
to uh Mark, Mark and Lake Elson or Mark you're
on with Rich?

Speaker 9 (32:33):
Yeah, Hi, Rich, Hi, I get the cell phone issue.
When it's a little coiler there we go like normal.
I'm on about the two years of the life of
my cell phone. I'm having issues with the screen. I
want to upgrade it. I really don't want to spend

(32:55):
another thousand bucks for a song for two years. Been
shopping for other stuff, and you know, I'm looking at
phones for anywhere from one hundred and fifty barks up.
If I go with something like a Motorola I think
it was a five G five What am I going
to lose in quality and stuff versus going with the

(33:19):
newer Samsung you know the S series.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Well, you're going to lose a lot. So Number one,
I don't think that everyone needs the Samsung S series
of phones, which are you know, Samsung has the premium s,
they've got the budget A and then they've got the
foldables which are their Z line. So I don't think
that anyone needs or that everyone needs the S lineup,

(33:42):
you know, the Samsung Galaxy US twenty four, Ultra S
twenty four, S twenty four Plus. So I think really
what it comes down to when you get these budget phones,
it comes down to the processor. It comes down to
the quality of the materials. A lot of times they're
plastic versus you know, glass and metal. The camera is
really where you take a big step back with a

(34:03):
lot of these cheap phones. Software not only the blow
on there, but also the updates that you get like
how long is this phone supported? And also you know
the memory, the RAM, so whether it's two gigs or
maybe four gigs, you're you're probably gonna get less of that.
So my advice when it comes to these budget phones,

(34:23):
I would actually go with a brand like OnePlus. So
they've got a great series called the Nord series. Have
you heard of that?

Speaker 9 (34:33):
No, not at all.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, So this is a this is a company that's
a little bit off the radar. A lot of people
in the tech world know about it, but the one
plus Nord is just a great value. It's like probably
the favorite budget phone out of most reviewers out there.
So what I like about it is that not only
is it less expensive than the big phones, but it's
the software is really good, and so I think that's

(34:57):
a big advantage here is that your phone is not
going to low down. Now, I will say Motorola, I
will give it credit. They actually do a pretty good
job with the software on their phones because they keep
it kind of clean, but I think it ends there,
like the cameras on the Motorola phones have really just
not been that great, even for their higher end phones. Now,

(35:17):
the phone that I would recommend without any hesitation immediately
is the Pixel seven A or the Pixel eight And
those two phones they're gonna be a little bit more expensive,
but I think the reality of those phones, like especially
if you got the Pixel eight mark, they are supporting
that phone for seven years, so you're talking you would

(35:40):
not have to worry. I mean, yeah, is it going
to slow down in the next seven years, Probably, But
you've got software support for seven years, So do the
math if that phone costs you. Now that phone, the
Pixel seven A is about five hundred dollars it goes
on sale. I would definitely recommend waiting for it to
go on sale. The Google phones always do. The Pixel

(36:00):
eight is a little bit more expensive. I think it
starts at six ninety nine. Let's see how much that is,
and I know we're getting up there in the price. Yeah,
that's six ninety nine. But again, you know, if you
do that math over seven years, that is a pretty
good deal. And again that will go on sale. So
my advice, look at the OnePlus Nord, look at the
Pixel seven A. I think that's overall your best bet

(36:22):
for a budget phone that is not going to give
you any grief, and it has an incredible camera up
and amazing software. Those are my recommendations. But I think
that a lot of these budget phones give people more headaches.
They save the money in the short term, but they
give them more headaches in the long term, So just
be aware of those limitations. Great question, Thanks for calling

(36:43):
in today from Lake Elson or all right, rich on
Tech website, richontech dot TV phone number for the show
Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll
tell you about the big Meta outage this week and
what in Instagram is doing to upgrade messaging. Welcome back

(37:13):
to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Did you survive the big Facebook outage of twenty twenty four?
It happened. Uh believe it was this week now now

(37:36):
I'm trying to remember. Was it this week?

Speaker 5 (37:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (37:39):
It was this week? Yes, sorry, it was Super Tuesday.
That's right, Okay, thank you, Bobo. Uh get my weeks
mixed up here. So this was a global outage that
lasted over two hours. Everyone was freaking out. It actually
started with my mom. She texted me and said I
can't log into my Facebook and I said that's odd,
and then the flood of message I mean, I'm talking

(38:01):
everyone emailed me and was like, Rich, what's going on.
I can't get onto Facebook marketplace, I can't get onto Instagram.
I can't do this. And I said, well, why are
you emailing me? What can I do about this? But
that was enough to set the wheels in motion for
me to figure out what was going on, which you know,
looking at the Facebook status pages, the meta status pages,

(38:23):
and yeah, it was. It was a big outage. Everyone
of course wondered was it due to hacking, was it
due to cybersecurity. There was lots of reports of various things.
You know, they've got three billion users for Facebook, Instagram,
Meta Quest, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger. There are so many people

(38:43):
that use this stuff, and everyone went to Twitter. That's
where people went. Everyone went to Twitter to complain and
to talk about it. Of course, Twitter owner Elon Musk
took a job at Meta saying, if you're if you're
reading this, our plur if you're if you're seeing this,
our servers are working. And you know, the funny thing

(39:04):
is that Twitter probably had the most issues back in
the day when they were just starting that they had
this thing called the fail whale, and whenever Twitter wasn't working,
you would just see this picture of a whale that
was failed. And that happened probably the most out of
any platform I can remember. But the difference now is
that these platforms are bigger and bigger and bigger, Like
we saw with the AT and T outage huge affects

(39:27):
large swaths of people because these companies keep getting bigger,
so when they go down, more people are affected. So
what was this all about? A technical issue? They said,
some sort of software technical issue caused it, and that's it.
There's nothing you can do. You can't file your grievances
because it's all free now. Instagram did roll out some
major updates to their messaging this week, so a couple

(39:50):
things to know. Number One, if you send a direct
message to someone, you now have fifteen minutes to edit
that message, which is kind of cool. So just press
and hold on the message. You'll get a little edit icon.
You can tap that just like I message. You can
edit that message for fifteen minutes. And you can now
pin up to three chats for quick access up at
the top of your messaging you know the messaging screen

(40:13):
on Instagram, So if you always message no your partner
or your group or whatever, you can pin those to
the top, press and hold press the pin. I don't
know if that is available just yet, but it is
coming soon, so go into your messaging and just let's
see if I can do that. Nope, not there just yet.
I think you have to swipe on them to do it.

(40:34):
It's not available on my app just yet. And then
the other thing is read receipts. So you know how
when you look at someone's you send someone a message
in that you see that little scene at the bottom
where it says they saw the message. You can turn
off that ability for someone to see if you've read
their message. You can go into your read you can
go into your messaging settings, and so how do you

(40:55):
do that? Go to your profile, Tap the three lines
in the upper right hand corner, Tap settings in privacy,
tap messages and story replies, tap show read receipts, and
you can toggle that off. I know that's a lot,
but if you want to see those instructions, just go
to my Instagram and look for the one that says
new Instagram feature. You can now turn off read Receipts.

(41:17):
The downside to this, if you toggle this off, it's
a two way street. If you toggle off read Receipts,
you will no longer be able to see when people
read your messages. So they kind of made that as
an incentive for you to leave it on, because you
can't sneak around Instagram thinking, oh, nobody could see when
I read my messages, but I'll see when other people
read them. Uh huh, doesn't work that way. Let's go

(41:38):
to Let's go to Jenny, Jenny and San Diego. You're
on with Rich Hi there.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
I'm going to France and Netherlands next month, and I
just got new phones from Spectrum which they do not
have an international plan, and I'm on TEAE with them,
so I don't believe that I can use an ETHM.
So I've been looking online for different like pocket Wi Fi,

(42:08):
like hip pocket and some other things on Amazon, and
I was just wondering if you had any you're familiar
with hip pocket, or if you have maybe there's something
else I'm not thinking of.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
So hip Pocket is a is a Wi Fi rental.
I'm actually not familiar, but I've heard of the the
you know the way this works. These used to be
very very popular. So you rent the Wi Fi over
in Europe and then they ship it to you here
in the US, so you have it before you get there.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yes, you can either do that or you can like
reserve it and when you get to the airport, or
they'll send it to your hotel. But I have enough
time where they could ship it to my house and
then when I get there, me and my husband, you know,
to connect on it because it said it could connect
it to like kid devices.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, it's a hot spot, so it'll you know, it'll
connect any of the devices that you know, just like
any other hot spot. So I'm looking at their plans,
so you can get a fourteen day rental plan which
includes delivery to the US. So it seems like the
more you pay, the more they'll deliver it to the US. Right,
So if you're getting like the cheaper plan, you have
to get it delivered to your European hotel, which I

(43:22):
personally think that would be a pain to do because
you're going to want your connectivity from the airport the
second lang yep, yep.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
Because you're going to have to, like if you're going
to do uber or exactly figure out where you're going
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
So I'd rather have it at your house, you know.
So it looks like for fourteen days rental in Europe,
they're looking at ninety six euros, which is probably what
a little bit about one hundred dollars in US dollars.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
That would actually cheaper than when we had Verizon. They
would charge you ten dollars a day, you know, So
it's expensive.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, yeah, it is. So there's a couple of other ways. Well,
so what I used when I went to Europe, I
tested a product called Solace Wi Fi s O l
I s H. But this is something that you purchase,
and so that's the so that these Wi Fi rental
hotspots used to be super popular, Like any country you
went to, there used to be one hundred different companies

(44:25):
that would rent these things out. That has gotten way
less over the years because people have hot spots on
their phone, they have the e sims, they have the
international calling plans, so those are all things that have
have lessened this product. So while I can't vouch for
the hip pocket Wi Fi, it's definitely an idea that
has been around for a long time and it's been
very successful. I have done it in the past. The

(44:47):
company that I used in the past is no longer
around due to these you know, it's just the demand
for this is not as great as it used to be.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
Okay, And then what if I have a phone that
that when I replaced it, I have like an old
note Sansung Note twenty that's unlocked. It's and I don't
know if if I don't know, should I or I
could take that.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
There, Yeah, use that as a hotspot and use.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
That and then use that phone as a hotspot for
our phone.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
That that's just I thought of that and I wasn't
sure if if that would work.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah, that'll work. I would do that. So if you
have that old phone, I mean that's a you have
a note, that's a pretty big battery on there, So
that's gonna work pretty well. Uh yeah, I don't I
don't see any problem with doing that. So you set
up the phone. What I would do is I would
format that phone, like I would clear it out, like
I would do a factory reset so that there's nothing
on it. Set it up fresh, you know, get the

(45:48):
E sim on it. I like RL A I R
A l O. There are others. But you can get that.
You can get a you probably want a pretty big
allotment on there, and then you can flip that into
a hot spot. The only thing is that's going to
be just a little bit trickier, and that's going to
be a little bit more unknown and a little bit
uncharted than the hippo. So the Hippo is giving you

(46:11):
one hundred megabits. Let's see if high speed four g
l t E unlimited internet and unlimited data in Europe,
so you're getting unlimited for about one hundred dollars. You know,
travel is expensive to begin with. I think one hundred
dollars is pretty reasonable. Are you going for more than
fourteen days?

Speaker 4 (46:28):
No, they're going out just under okay, twelve days.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
I mean I think that this little hippo thing is
probably a pretty nice.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
Yeah, I just put I'm kind of leaning towards but
I just I'm so glad I got to talk to
you because IVE been thinking about.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, I just I would. My only thing is I
would I would try to find some real reviews. I'm
just looking at the website, which looks legitimate and it
looks fine. I would just try to find some real
reviews from people on you know, maybe search, you know,
just search the web for some good reviews from like
actual travelers that you trust, people that run a decent blog,
and just make sure that this is legitimate. But it

(47:08):
seems like it is, and I love the fact that
they will deliver it here to the US. You have it,
you get off the plane, you turn it on, your
phone's are already linked up to it and it works.
I've had a couple of trips in the past, Jenny,
where I've landed and my phone does not work, and
it is the most frustrating thing you could ever imagine.
That trip from the airport to the hotel is probably

(47:29):
the longest trip of your life when that's happening. So
make sure this works. But I think that's a good
way to do it. And the other phone would work
as a hot spot, but it's a little bit more involved,
and I would say it's probably not worth the headache,
to be honest, because.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
It's it's kind of an older phone. Yeah, all right, well,
thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
All right, Jenny, thanks for the call, and have fun.
I'm jealous. We've been trying to plan a trip to
the dream trip to Paris and London with the kids,
and it's a lot. You know, travel it's expensive. I
used to travel when I was coming out to California,
when I was just myself, it was one ticket. It
turns out when you have a family of four and

(48:07):
you're traveling, you're buying four tickets and that's just the
entry price. Travel gets very very expensive when you have
a family, and believe me it is. Travel is not cheap,
so enjoy it, have a great time, and stay connected.
All right. Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give

(48:27):
me a call if you have a question about technology.
Coming up, I'm going to tell you about the new
website that lets you search old newspapers. Very cool. You
are listening to rich on tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight

(48:48):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's go to uh Craig in Des Moines, Iowa. Craig,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 10 (49:00):
Yea, that's how you're doing Rick.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
I'm doing great.

Speaker 10 (49:03):
I have a Dawnton S twenty four, one of the
new phone, and I want to know, Yeah, I can
get the website like poor emudgency, like the enderware or
whatever the phone got.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Oh good question.

Speaker 10 (49:25):
I don't have the one with the dialist Okay, so't
have that one. I have the little one.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
You've just got a standard Samsung S twenty four, which
is a great phone, brand new. It's it's uh you know,
it's the smaller of the Samsung's. So the Samsung devices,
they're actually lagging a little bit in this emergency area,
which is not very good. So if you look at
the iPhone, they've got not only the newest models, have

(49:54):
emergency satellite service, so if you are in the middle
of nowhere and you need help and there's no cellular,
they will use satellite to get you help. That's incredible.
But they also have fall detection and they've got car
crash detection. So those are some really useful things that
will help you get help in an emergency. Now, the

(50:16):
Pixel does not have this. That's Google's phone. They do
not have the satellite service, although it's rumored that it
is coming soon to the Pixel, perhaps with the next model.
But they do have car crash detection, and so if
you're in a car in a crash, it will attempt
to dial nine one one. And the Watch also has

(50:36):
fall detection. So when it comes to Samsung, they have
something called Emergency SOS and that is it basically. But
as far as I know, none of this is automatic,
and so that is the thing that you need to
know is that you can set up the emergency SOS
feature on the Samsung, but it's not gonna be automatic

(50:58):
and it doesn't have satellite, so you are going to
be at the mercy of the cellular networks. So to
set this up, go into settings Safety and Emergency and
look for something. There's a couple of things that you
want to fill out. Number one your medical info. Number
two your emergency contacts. Number three emergency SOS. Get familiar

(51:18):
with that, and that involves turning on the feature and
when you press the side button five times in emergency,
it will call the emergency number and it will send
an SOS to your emergency contacts. And then the other
thing they have is called emergency Sharing, and so emergency

(51:40):
Sharing is another feature on the Samsung that will share
your location another info with your emergency contacts if you
need help. So you can share with your emergency contacts
that you set up earlier, and it will actually share
a picture of your front and rear cameras and include
them the message and also a five second of audio

(52:02):
if you ever need to activate that feature. So it's
not as automatic as some of the other phones, but
that's the feature that you get. I think that because
Apple has had this SOS feature now for two years
on the last two phones they've put out, the iPhone
fourteen and the iPhone fifteen. That is a huge feature.
And there are some third party products that would give

(52:24):
you that feature, notably the Motorola Defy satellite link. But
the problem with that is the company that makes it
is I believe they filed bankruptcy. They licensed the Motorola
name from them, and I think the company that puts
this out is trying to reorganize or something. So the
fate of that product is up in the air right now.

(52:46):
So where does that leave you, Craig. That leaves you
with setting up the emergency SOS feature once again. Go
into settings, look for safety and emergency and just go
through all of those settings and get that set up
because that is very important to have that on. Great question.
Thanks for the call today from des Moines, Iowa. I
always feel like I'm gonna say des Moin wrong because

(53:09):
it's looks like des Moines. All right. My Heritage has
launched a new website. This is pretty cool. It's called
oldnews dot com. This helps you explore historical newspapers. They
have scanned millions of newspapers from various countries, including the US,

(53:29):
and you can search for them. You can search a name,
you can search an event, you can search all kinds
of stuff. I've had a lot of fun with this website.
This week, I searched my own name. I found an
article about myself from two thousand and seven in some
newspaper from Maine. I was on the Today Show showing
off an antenna actually our guests last week, and you know,

(53:51):
we were talking about anyway, there's an article about how
that went viral back in the day and they were
selling out. But it's cool because it shows you the
actual newspaper article and it highlights your search term in yellow,
so you can see what it looked like on the page.
You can download that newspaper page. And what's this good for?
This is good for obviously ancestry reasons. You want to

(54:11):
look up obituaries, you want to look up birth announcements,
you want to look up events. You want to look
up your hometown. You want to look up your high school,
anything that happened in your hometown when you were young.
It's really cool, it's really good. I don't know how
thorough it is with the newspapers, but it looks like
it has a lot. It is not free, but they
do offer a free seven day trial, so if you

(54:32):
want to try it out, I recommend signing up for
that and canceling immediately so that you don't get charged,
no surprises, and then if you want to later on
you can sign up. If it's really amazing, you can
sign up for an annual plan. The problem is they
don't offer a monthly plan. They only offer an annual plan.
It is ninety nine dollars for the year, twenty five
percent off for the first year. Again, the website is

(54:54):
oldnews dot com. You can find a link on my
website go to richontech dot tv. All right, coming up,
we're going to talk the future of streaming TV and
why you should download an app called VLC. You are
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(55:15):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. We've got some lines open,
so if you have a question about technology, give me
a call. If you want to link to something I mentioned,
just go to richon Tech dot TV. Yanco Rutgers is
author of the low Pass newsletter. He has written about

(55:39):
TV and our changing world and streaming for many many
years now. Uh Janko, welcome to the show. So tell
me about the newsletter real quick. What do you write about.

Speaker 11 (55:49):
I write about a VA streaming, all the fun stuff
that's basically on the intersection of technology and entertainment.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
It's so wild because you know, I just find got
my hands on the Vision Pro in my home and
I watched an episode of Hijack, like an Apple TV show,
and it was quite incredible. Like I was like looking
at people's faces and stuff. I'm like, this is like
extremely clear and vivid and pretty amazing. It's just so
darn expensive that it's like, are people going to experience

(56:20):
this anytime soon?

Speaker 5 (56:22):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 11 (56:23):
It's a I think it's gonna stay a small, small
footprint device for some time to come until they come
out with somebody said the vision on Pro.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, we were debating names today. Maybe it's gonna be
like Vision Vision plus Vision Pro. So we'll see. But
they need they need different pricing tiers for sure. Let's
talk about the story this week. I always know something's
the story when people email me A bunch and a
lot of people are very upset about this Roku situation.
I guess they saw a message on their screen that said,

(56:54):
we have some new terms of service and people just figure,
you know, you can cancel out of it. You couldn't,
You couldn't proceed unless you accepted this.

Speaker 11 (57:03):
Yeah, and all companies do this all the time. But
they sort of revised the terms of service, or in
this case, it was sort of the dispute resolution terms,
basically saying you can't sue Roku, but they decide to
put it front and center and you had to agree
to it right then and there on the TV screen,
and that ended up being a major hazard for many
people because you know, if you build up your TV system,

(57:25):
maybe you have a sound Ball, maybe every Universe or remote,
maybe even use the other device to reallydo all your
streaming and connected Xbox, and you don't even touch the
Roker remote anymore. So some people didn't have the remote anymore,
and then they couldn't agree to this, and they couldn't
access any of their other stuff anymore either. They've basically
been stuck for like days in this weird limbo of
having to agree to these terms that they can't agree to.

(57:48):
So they really messed up how their world is out.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Oh my gosh, I didn't realize that aspect of it
that people were you know, yeah, that's so true. Like
if you didn't if you don't have your remote handy,
if you're using like a third party device and all
of a sudden, this pops up on your screen and
you just want to be like, please dismiss, you know,
like you want to use your voice or something. But
that's wild. Now people were saying, you know, I saw
an article that says the only way to opt out

(58:11):
is to write Roku's lawyers a letter. Do you think
that's worth it?

Speaker 9 (58:15):
Here?

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I mean, is there any reason why someone's going to
sue Roku? Like they don't like to show they're watching
and they want their money back.

Speaker 5 (58:23):
I mean, so here's the thing about this.

Speaker 11 (58:26):
Roku is a streaming device maker and now they make
TVs as well, but they make all the money with
the advertising and with the advertising that comes from downsides
when it comes to like profiling collecting data on people.
So sometimes people do get upset about it. And there's
try lawyers obliviously who want to make money with that,
collect make class action lawsuits. And this was all about
Rocu saying no, you can't do a class action lawsuit

(58:47):
against us for any of those things because you have
to go into arbitration. And again, a lot of companies
do that. You know, maybe it's not the greatest thing
for consumers, but it's just the wealthy we live in today.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
But in this case, they just messed up the role up.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Ah, that makes sense, okay, because they do collect a
lot of data. Speaking of data, So Walmart bought Visio
and Visio actually I feel like they had a big
class action lawsuit over their data collection practices a while back,
So this is a big data play, right, Like Walmart,
why are they buying Visio.

Speaker 11 (59:17):
It's basically the same story for Visio and Roku, all
these companies that make relatively affordable TV. So you can
go into a store right now and you can buy
like a fifty five inch TV for three hundred bucks,
which is insane, right because ten years ago you had
to spend ten x as much. So TV prices have
gone down completely. They're not making money on hardware anymore.

(59:39):
Everybody's making money on advertising. As soon as you turn
these things on as ads on the home screen, you
get a lot of free channels on there. All of
them have advertising, any third party ads or do any
of those TVs has to share ad revenue or slots
with them. So that's where the money is. And that's
why Walmart also wants again and they want to grow
more revenue. They don't just want to sell your stuff,

(01:00:01):
but they want to then have a way to make
money with that stuff that they already sold you every
month for years to come, and TVs are a good,
good avenue for that, so that's why they wanted to
get into this space.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah, it's pretty wild. I don't think people realize just
how much these TVs collect. I mean, everything's a smart
TV now and they're all collecting so much data that
is monetized and you know Roku and all these things,
like they make a cut on even the streaming services
that they have on there, like you think I downloaded
you know, HBO Max or whatever, like they have these
deals that they somehow get a little piece of the

(01:00:36):
action for ads that are even served up on these
third party services.

Speaker 11 (01:00:40):
Yeah, that's right, and I mean, to be fair, it's
the only way that can make money. And we all
like GPS, right, so that's the downs that we have
to accept with that. And to be fair, if you
buy a really expensive TV, if you go out and
buy Samson TV for two thousand dollars, it's still gonna
have the same ads on there, it's still gonna have
the same services, and it's still going to collect this
type of data. Now, some of these team makeers, you

(01:01:02):
can actually opt out of some personalization.

Speaker 5 (01:01:05):
If you google that.

Speaker 11 (01:01:06):
There's articles that tell you how to opt out of
a lot of the data collection. You're still going to
you know, there's still some service level profile. You never
can completely opt out of it unless you like go
back to DVD's correct you over the antenna basically.

Speaker 5 (01:01:20):
But that's just the world we live in these days.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
And I guess you could disconnect it from Wi Fi
if you're not using it as your you know, primary
uh streaming service like my tea. I just got a
TV and I opted out of all of the uh,
you know, the data collection stuff. But they make it
sound really scary. They make it sound like your TV
is not going to work, you know, like we make
your experience better and we make sure you know. They
they at one point tried to sell me on they

(01:01:43):
scan what you're watching to adjust the TV picture to
look its best or something, and I'm like, oh, come on,
like give me a break. Okay. So Max is the
latest to say they are going to crack down on
password sharing. This has gotten really bad, I mean really
sad for us, well people who people have been sharing
their passwords for a long time, and I know a

(01:02:03):
lot of families and households and things. You know, no
one ever enforced it, and now they're enforcing it in
a pretty big way. And Max is the latest to
do this. When's that starting.

Speaker 11 (01:02:13):
They haven't put a firm data on it, but they
have said later this year and possibly up into twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
And it's all because Netflix.

Speaker 11 (01:02:20):
Was the first company to come up with this, and
obviously they have the biggest streaming company, they have the
biggest footprint, so they also were at some point seeing, oh,
accounts aren't beingly growing anymore in the US, but people
are still obviously streaming a lot of a lot of
different households, so they start to experiment with it, and
actually it turned out to be really successful for it.
Netflix added like thirty million around thirty million subscribers last year,

(01:02:42):
which was like almost ten million more than the year before,
primarily because of this aicond sharing stuff. So now everybody
else is trying to do it as well. Disney is
trying to do it, Hulu is trying to do it.
I think YouTube with their premium so has started. Now
Max is going to be the next one. It's somewhat
under standable. I think for these companies they do have
to make money somehow, but I think it really comes

(01:03:05):
down to how they implement it. With Netflix, you can
decide to either like spin someone out, so if somebody
is used your account and they have profile data and
then they're like, oh, okay, I guess I have to
pay now. They can actually take so all the stuff
that you're collected in the past, like they're watch listens
of what to that new account, which is quite quite nice.
And you can also decided, you know, if it's your

(01:03:25):
parents and they're maybe not technical savvy and they don't
want to set up there on Netflix account, you can
pay to keep them on your account.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
That's a pretty way to do it.

Speaker 11 (01:03:36):
I don't know the details and how Max is going
to do that, and I think the devil is always
in the detail on how they rule it out, how
they frame it and really how consumer affact did they
make it?

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
So in your newsletter this week We've just got about
a minute to go, you mentioned you kind of had
a deep dive on this app that is kind of
the Swiss Army Knife of video apps called VLC. So
why do you think someone should learn about VLC and
download that app?

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
App?

Speaker 11 (01:04:01):
It helps with playing anything that you might have on
your heart drive, any old family videos, any videos you
may have downloaded somewhere years ago and you can't really
quite figure it out. It can play any video file,
basically any music file. It's just a really good thing
to have, and it has been downloaded five billion times.
It's available fourmacs, four PCs, so people have a Linux system.

(01:04:24):
It's mobile apps spread so basically anywhere. It can play everything.
It's always a good thing to have in your back pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yeah, it's always been something that I've had downloaded, and
it's surprising sometimes. I mean I think it's even available
for like iOS and Android right right, right right, so
you can it's just yeah, like all those weird formats
that like maybe you have like in your Google drive
somewhere that you're like, how do I open this? Like
nine times out of ten. It just figures it out exactly.
And is it open source?

Speaker 11 (01:04:52):
That program it's free, it's open source, and it's basically
one of the most popular open source projects ever. Point
it's around, been around for twenty years. They just had
a big open source community around that supported it. Yeah,
and that's been going strong.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
And the it's like video land player, I think, like
the website is a little bit it's like video land
dot org. So don't get thrown off by the website.
But it's VLC is the media player. All right? Tell
folks how they can find the newsletter.

Speaker 11 (01:05:23):
It is lowpass dot CC, so that's l Owpass dot
CC and otherwise you can also just google it, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Yanco Rutgers, author of the low Pass newsletter, thanks so
much for joining me today anytime, all right, more of
your calls coming up next at triple eight rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. I'll tell you what's new with
Rivian and what's new with iOS seventeen point four. You

(01:05:52):
are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's

(01:06:13):
go to h. Richard in Lancaster. Richard, you're on with rich.

Speaker 12 (01:06:20):
Hello rich Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Yeah, what can I help you with?

Speaker 12 (01:06:25):
Okay, I have a Window seven computer and I need
to get security software. Do you have one that you recommend?

Speaker 5 (01:06:33):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
What do you what do you mean by security software?

Speaker 12 (01:06:38):
Well, like I've been using McCafe okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
So like antivirus kind of software. Yeah, oh okay, so
Windows seven. You've had this computer for a while huh yes,
and you're not you're not ready to give this up?

Speaker 5 (01:06:51):
Huh correct?

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Why is that just curious?

Speaker 12 (01:06:55):
Well, because it satisfies my needs for what I do
on the computer. First of all, I won't tell you.
I don't do any banking or online purchases on it.
Just search the internet.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Okay. Now I'm curious because I don't have a Windows
seven system anymore. But does like Chrome and all these
are I mean, what do you use like your web browser?
And is it still supported with updates?

Speaker 12 (01:07:19):
It notifies me that it will not accept Windows.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Seven also, Okay, I was curious because I'm looking at this,
so there's a good website endof life dot date and
I'm looking up Windows seven, Windows seven Service Pack one,
so let's see it was released, Oh my gosh, this
was released thirteen years ago. The software support active support ended,

(01:07:45):
let's see here ended nine years ago, and then security
support ended four years ago, so not too bad with that.
But that means that this computer has not gotten any
active software updates with relation to you know, software, but
also more importantly security for four years. So what does
that mean. I'm sure you're aware, but that means that

(01:08:06):
any exploit that has been found with this software could
be used and there's no patch available for that as
of this point because the security updates ended on January fourteenth,
twenty twenty. So it's a good it's a good idea
to eventually upgrade this and to start planning for that upgrade,

(01:08:29):
mostly because you know, you don't want to be put
in a position where someone is able to access everything
on this computer or can exploit some sort of security
issue with this system that is that is in the
ut wild. So what happens is anytime you have software
that's been around for a long time, it's no longer
actively supported. You know, there's there's forums and things that

(01:08:51):
percolate with this information and people know like, hey, this
is a known exploit of this software, let's find machines
that are running it, and let's actively, you know, explore it.
So with that said, I did a quick search of antivirus.
So the way I usually look up antivirus software as
I go to avdash test dot org. I like their

(01:09:13):
ratings of antivirus software and a vast is typically highly rated,
and I searched a VAST for Windows seven, and it
turns out they say this is They actually have a
whole landing page set up for this. It says, protect
your Windows seven PC with a VAST free antivirus. Microsoft
no longer supports Windows seven, but a VAST does. Our

(01:09:35):
top rated antivirus protection will stay fully updated on Windows seven,
and that is a free download. A Vast obviously has
paid services, but you can get the free service as well.
So I would probably say go for that and download it.
And in fact, they have a whole fact on this

(01:09:55):
page faq is Windows seven still safe to use? And
it says Microsoft doesn't provide updates anymore? How do I
protect Windows seven from viruses? But I would go with this,
So a VAST Windows seven antivirus looks like it's still supported,
but I would again think about getting this system updated

(01:10:16):
in the near future. So good question, Richard. I understand
there's a lot of hesitation to upgrade things, but because
they people want things to work the way they've always worked,
and if it's working for you, why not. But you
have to remember that there are people that are looking
for these exploits, so keep yourself protected there. Thanks for
the question. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Rob says,

(01:10:42):
I'm an Android user from day one. My oldest daughter
now works for Apple and her position involves travel to China,
so she purchased an iPhone fifteen Promax for me for
Christmas and she would like me to switch over, as
any good daughter that works for Apple would. Is there
any app that will transfer my text messages and associated
foot potos from my Samsung to the iPhone without losing

(01:11:02):
the texts and the photos. Apple actually makes their own
app called move Let's see. It's called Move to iOS
and you can download it on the Android device. So
if you go on the Google Play Store, you can
download move to iOS on that device. It will create
an ad hoc Wi Fi network that the iPhone will

(01:11:25):
then latch onto and transfer all of your stuff. So
what will it transfer? Let's see it will transfer. I
got to find the information here, message history, contacts, camera photos, videos,
photo albums, files and folders, accessibility settings, display settings, bookmarks,
mail accounts, WhatsApp calendars if they're available on both Google

(01:11:47):
Play and the App Store. Some of your free apps
will also transfer, so this is probably your best bet.
That is the official way move to iOS app. If
you want some unofficial ways, there are some apps Doctor Phone,
dr Phone, Foe from wonder Share. We'll also do something
similar in an app called any trans a n Y

(01:12:09):
t r A n S. These are probably just a
little bit more full featured, a little bit more robust
when it comes to what you can transfer and the
control that you get. The Apple one is going to
be very basic. It's just going to move things over
and it's going to be a very basic way to
do that. But there you have it. Three good options.
But hey, kudos to you for having such an awesome

(01:12:32):
daughter to work for Apple and get to travel to China.
That is super cool, very very cool. All right, speaking
of iOS iOS, seventeen. Update this week new Emoji podcast transcripts,
So if you have iOS seventeen, you can download it
for the iPhone ten s and later. Those are the

(01:12:53):
phones that are supported. There's new emoji. I don't get
excited about these, but you can do a mushroom, a
lime shaking head. Apple podcast now has transcripts, So if
you want to follow along with a show like mine,
search rich on Tech and you can see the full
transcript of the show. And if you're interested in your
battery health in the settings, you can now see more
information about your battery cycle count, manufactured date, and first use.

(01:13:17):
That's only for the iPhone fifteen and fifteen pro eighty
to eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. More rich
on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome to
another hour of rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one

(01:13:41):
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna
talk about the Rivian. This is a hot car, the
Rivian R two. I was at the launch event this
week in Laguna Beach, which by the way.

Speaker 5 (01:13:59):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
There was a TV show, what was it, Laguna Hills
or Laguna Beach Laguna Hills that I actually watched at
one point, and I still didn't realize how beautiful that
area was. It's really really nice down there. It took
me a couple hours to get home from there, so
that was, yeah, not easily. I guess you can't get
there very easily if you're driving in the afternoon rush

(01:14:21):
hour after a long day. But with that said, it
was amazing. Let's see talk about tech. I'm gonna tell
you how you can get ESPN Plus included if you
have Spectrum TV. At this point, the FCC is warning
that the Affordable Connectivity program is coming to a close,
and oh my gosh, I have a list of stuff.

(01:14:41):
I've got literally one hundred things still to tell you,
so we'll try to get through as much of that
as possible. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot tv. If you need a link to something I mentioned,
and while you're at it, go ahead and follow me
on Instagram at rich on tech is where you can
find me. I often post a lot of stuff in
my stories throughout the week that will end up making

(01:15:02):
its way to this show and the newsletter. The newsletter
is available. It's free. I sent out my third issue today,
So if you listen to the earlier part of the show,
at the beginning, I talked about vision Pro. That was
a lot of that was in my newsletter. So just
go to richon tech dot TV and look for the

(01:15:22):
newsletter pop in your email address. It is free and
I will send you a little updates throughout the week.
Let's go to Kathy in Denver, Colorado. Kathy, you're on
with Rich Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:15:33):
Thank you so much for taking my call. And I
want to thank one of your prior callers, also named Rich,
because he asked you a question about Windows seven and
some antivirus software. I too have a Windows seventh laptop
and I wanted to find out if I can upgrade
it or if I just need.

Speaker 7 (01:15:53):
To go out and buy a whole new laptop. So
that's my question.

Speaker 8 (01:15:56):
I wasn't I'm just not sure what to do next
to get it upgraded.

Speaker 7 (01:16:01):
Can I upgrade it?

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
It probably is upgradeable, but it's probably not easy at
this point. So it was free to upgrade these computers.
Let's see, I'm trying to see let's see a Microsoft's
free upgrade offer ended on July twenty ninth, twenty sixteen,
so it's been a while. Let's see the installation path
to obtain the Windows seven eight free upgrade is now

(01:16:25):
removed as well. Upgrades to Windows eleven from Windows ten
are still free, so it doesn't look like it's free anymore.
It also, when you go into your settings, does it
allow you to update or no, to say, doesn't say
Windows ten or eleven anymore?

Speaker 13 (01:16:42):
Huh no it doesn't.

Speaker 7 (01:16:44):
Yeah, so don't paying for it. I just didn't know
if I could update, you know, update my current Lenovo,
or whether I have to spend the bigger bucks and
go buy a new laptop, or whether the constant of
being about the same.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Okay, so I let's see here. So Windows seven to
Windows ten upgrade take place in your existing device, although
Microsoft recommends using Windows ten on a new PC to
take advantage of the latest features and security improvements. So
that is the main thing. I think with Windows ten,
they introduce some new security like some there's like two

(01:17:21):
types of computers, some that take advantage of these new
security systems and some that do not. So the older
computers are not and so that's probably where yours is
going to fall into that category. So my advice, if
you can, I would say it's probably a good idea
to get a new computer. Does that mean you can't

(01:17:41):
upgrade from Windows seven to Windows ten or eleven? No,
But is it going to run very well on your computer?
Probably not. You're looking at a computer that is pretty
old at this point, and so these modern operating systems,
you know, they take a lot of resources, and so
I just don't know if it would be the best
experience to do that. With that said, if you want

(01:18:03):
to go ahead and try it, you can, and you
probably will have to pay, So I will post the
instructions on you know where to look to do that
on the website in the show notes rich on tech
dot TV. That's probably where i'd go. But I think
at this point it's, you know, again, you're talking something
that's very, very many years out of date. And I

(01:18:26):
know that a lot of people did not want to
go to Windows ten at the time because they were
happy with Windows seven, and there were some holdouts. But
at this point, Windows ten, Windows eleven is the way
of the world for Windows and it's probably a good
idea to either get the modern machine that can handle that,
or see if your machine can upgrade through the Windows website.
So I will post the link on that when I

(01:18:47):
have a little bit more time to get that for
you not live on air here. Thanks so much for
the call. Kathy in Denver, Colorado. Do appreciate that if
you have ESPN or if sorry, if you have a
Spectrum TV, if you're paying for Spectrum TV, you can
now get ESPN Plus included at no extra cost. So,
I don't know if you remember, a couple months ago,

(01:19:08):
I announced that Disney Plus was free for Spectrum TV customers.
So now they're doing the same thing with ESPN Plus.
They said they were going to do this, and now
they're actually doing it. So if you have a Spectrum
TV Select, then you can get this ESPN Plus. So
ESPN Plus what does it have? It's usually ten dollars

(01:19:29):
a month, ten ninety nine a month, as over thirty
thousand live events, UFC, NHL games, college sports, just a
whole bunch of stuff to watch if you like sports.
So how do you get this? You have to go
to the website Spectrum dot com slash ESPN Plus and
just like the Disney Plus and the Disney Plus is

(01:19:50):
still that offer still stands as well. So if you
go to Spectrum dot com slash Disney Plus you can
get that. But ESPN and it looks like it's the
plus sign. It's just kind of weird. Let me just
make sure. I just want to be sure that I'm
sending you to the right website. Let's see here, ESPN YEP,
ESPN and then the plus sign after it. So ESPN

(01:20:12):
Plus it says now available with your Spectrum Plan start.
If you're on the Spectrum TV Select Plus plan, you
can sign in with your ESPN Plus account. And I
would read all of the questions and answers before you
do this, because there is some confusion if you're already
paying for it. If you already have a sign in,
you're gonna need both sign ins. You're gonna need your

(01:20:33):
Spectrum sign in and you're also gonna need your ESPN
Plus account. So just read through everything before you embark
on this. But if you're paying ten nine a month
and you're also paying for Spectrum, you might as well
get it. So it's a nice thing they've been doing there.
Speaking of internet, FCC is saying the Affordable Connectivity Program

(01:20:53):
funding is out and that program is going to end.
So I don't know if you remember this, but this
was during the pandemic. They rolled out this thing called
the Affordable Connectivity Program and they put a bunch of
money into it, and they were giving out discounts on
your monthly internet to eligible households. It was thirty dollars
a month discount and it was if you were on

(01:21:16):
different government programs, you would qualify for this program. So
a lot of people took advantage of it, and now
that funding has dried up, and so according to their surveys,
they said more than two thirds of ACP households had
inconsistent or no connectivity prior to enrolling in the program,
and more than three quarters will have a service disruption

(01:21:39):
if the program ends. So what's going to happen is
all the people that were on this program, they are
going to pay either thirty dollars more a month, which
is going to bring their bill up, or they're not
going to be able to continue because they're not going
to be able to pay this. So what's happening, Well,
there are some senators and representatives that have introduced the

(01:21:59):
Affordable Activity Program Extension Act, which would give an additional
seven billion dollars in funding for this program, but they
have stopped accepting new applications and the last fully funded
program month is April. So at the end of April,
there will be some surprises for people in May, either

(01:22:19):
their bill will pop up or they will have to
cancel this. But I have a feeling that there will
be a continuation to this program, just because it is
such a big program. The phone Affordability program has been
going on for a while and now they've got this Internet.
It's one of those things where you know, you've got

(01:22:40):
to get people on both sides to agree to say yes,
and it does help a lot of people. And I
believe the funding is through other people's bills. Don't quote
me on that one, but I think that the funding
for these programs comes from the people that pay their bills,
and there's like an extra couple of dollars a month.
I don't know. I don't you know what strike from

(01:23:00):
the record on Usher if that's true, but I think
that's how they do it. All right. Let me tell
you about this cool app called clean my Phone. So
if you have an iPhone and you've got all these
pictures on it that are always cluttering up your storage.
Everyone's always asking me for a way to declutter and

(01:23:20):
optimize the storage on iOS. So this is a new
app called clean my Phone. It evolved from Gemini Photos,
another popular app I recommend it for many years, that
was launched in twenty eighteen, but this one is kind
of a new version of that. So what it'll do
is scan your camera role for duplicates, blurry images, screen recordings,
and anything else that might be unnecessary. Uses AI, oh

(01:23:43):
there's that keyword AI to analyze and organize photos into
folders based on themes or subjects. Whether you need it
or not, I don't know. And then it has a
it's kind of weird. It's got a network module which
lets you test your Internet connection speed inside the app.
So the app, again is called clean my Phone. I
expect it to be very, very popular. It is twenty

(01:24:04):
five dollars for the year, but they did a three
day free trial and I did download it. I did
sign up for the twenty five dollars for the year,
but again you just cancel as soon as you sign
up and you can still use it for those three days.
You could do a lot of cleaning in three days
if you want to organize your camera role. So again,
it comes from a trusted publisher called MacPaw, who I

(01:24:28):
like very much. They're actually based in Ukraine. They develop
a lot of software. Another program I like called Clean
my Mac. Now they are making clean my Phone. So
if you want to download that, I'll put it in
the show notes. Rich on Tech dot tv is the
place to look for the show notes. All right, let's
give you the phone number one more time, eight eight

(01:24:49):
eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one, the website rich on
tech dot tv. Coming up, we are going to talk
about the Rivian R two launch. Seventy thousand reservations for
this new electric car overnight. I'll tell you why so
many people are liking it. That's coming up right here
on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:25:16):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
to two, four one zero one. The website rich on
tech dot tv. You can hit contact and send in
your messages. I'll get to the feedback segment at the
end of the show. So if you have a comment
about something that was mentioned here. Submit it now, go

(01:25:36):
to the website richontech dot TV, hit contact and I
will read it at the end of the show. You
can also submit your questions, which a lot of you do.
Let's see Shamika says, I need to know the best
audio transcribing device for a conference room to record then
type texts, to word documents to take notes. Well you're in. Look,

(01:26:00):
there's lots of ways to do this these days, especially
thanks to AI transcription tools. I will tell you my favorites.
So number one, I mean, the easiest thing you can
do nowadays. I mean, there used to be apps like
Otter otter ai, o t t er Ai and that
app would transcribe things for you, and you know, but

(01:26:23):
it was only give you like a certain amount of
free every month. But now the new phones have a
lot of transcription built in. So if you have a Samsung,
the latest SAMSUNGS, the S twenty three, the S twenty
four will give you transcription built into the recorder app.
The latest Pixels also give you transcription built into the
recorder app on those phones. iPhone does not have built

(01:26:44):
in transcription, but you can use the audio app on
the iPhone to record the meeting and then you can
transcribe it using one of these tools. So on Mac,
my favorite tool is called mac whisper. And on Windows,
oh my gosh, I'm trying to remember I the name

(01:27:05):
of the app is evading me right now, But there
is an app on Windows that will give you the
transcription as well. I'll think of that in a second.
But those there's also another app called descript D E
S c R I P T, and descript will give
you transcription as well. If you have a membership to
Office three sixty five, there's actually a tool inside Office,

(01:27:29):
inside word that will let you upload an audio file
and it will transcribe it there for you. So there
are many, many ways to transcribe things, and so many
of them are free, and so many of them are
really good because of because of the AI systems that
they use on the back end. Oh, here it is.

(01:27:50):
It's called buzz Buzz. So buzz is in an It's
powered by open AI's Whisper, which is a same one
that mac whisper does. But I'm not kidding. Transcription used
to be such a chore and it used to be
so expensive. I now transcribe every single thing that I do,

(01:28:11):
every interview that I do, all my radio shows, all
the podcasts, anything, if I'm in a meeting, I will
just record it and transcribe it because it's so easy
and it's so simple now, and then you can just
throw that transcription into AI and it will summarize it
for you. And some of the phones, like I mentioned
the Pixel and the Samsung, they will summarize that for
you as well. So so many ways to do that

(01:28:35):
and it's just gotten so much, so much easier. Story
this week about thieves using Wi Fi jammers to break
into homes to disable the wireless smart home security systems.
So there's multiple reports. There's one out of Los Angeles,
there's one out of Minneapolis, there's one out of Arizona

(01:28:57):
about these Wi Fi jammers to block signs. And I'm
not telling you this to scare you, but it's just
kind of to know what's out there. It's not really
a whole lot you can do about this. I mean,
the recommendation is that you can go with a wired
security camera system, but that's not very realistic. But some
of these, you know, many of these security devices, these

(01:29:17):
cameras use radio frequencies like two point four gigahertz, which
can be overpowered by these jammers that send a signal
on the same frequency. Now, these jammers are banned in
the US by the FCC, but that doesn't mean people
don't get them from other sources, especially online. So apparently
these burglars research houses online before they burglarize them, and

(01:29:40):
they target the primary bedrooms and steal high value items
from there. So just be aware. A lot of people
are blurring out their homes on Google Maps and things
like that. I mean, you can do that, but just
be aware of this stuff. And I think having lights
in a system and you know, signs will really go
a long way. Rivian this week unveiled a new suv

(01:30:03):
that's smaller. It's called the R two forty five thousand bucks.
It's set to launch in twenty twenty six. This was great.
They did this in Laguna Beach. I was there. The
pricing is right, forty five grand for a small electric suv.
But here's the thing. It doesn't come out for another
year and a half two years. A lot can change

(01:30:23):
in that time. But that did not keep them from
getting a lot of reservations. Sixty eight thousand reservations overnight
for the new R two. Reservation is one hundred dollars.
It's a deposit that is refundable. They expect to ramp
up these cars when they start making them a normal
Illinois that's where the plant is. They're expecting to make

(01:30:46):
two hundred and fifteen thousand vehicles per year there. That
may sound like a lot, but when you look at
what Tesla's selling, they're selling a whole lot more. All right,
coming up, I've got interviews from my event at the
Rivian launch event in Laguna. We're going to talk to
the CEO. We're going to talk to the head of
design and some other folks all about the Rivian R two.

(01:31:08):
Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with
you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one.
So this week I went to the unveiling of the
new Rivian electric vehicles. The company was expected to announce

(01:31:31):
one smaller suv. They surprised the world by announcing three
new cars. The R two, which is a smaller version
of their suv. It's expected to go over three hundred
miles on a charge, and it's going to cost forty
five thousand dollars. It is a five seater small suv.
So first up, I talked to Rivian's head of design,

(01:31:53):
Jeff Hamoud. They kept saying throughout their entire presentation that
Rivian is all about adventure, So I asked him how
do they design for that.

Speaker 14 (01:32:01):
When you think about adventure, we really have to think
about broad strokes.

Speaker 5 (01:32:05):
What adventure could be.

Speaker 14 (01:32:06):
I mean with obviously answer are things that we've shown
on our one is whether that's camping, kayaking, surfing, things
like that. But adventure could be many things. Adventure could
be moving to another city. Adventure could be taking your
kids off to college, or as I just said, adventure
could be going to Ikea. So we really want to
look at what are the things that people do and
try to make their lives easier.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
Two models of the Rivan, both the pickup truck and
the suv, have been out in the wild for a while.
I next asked Jeff how they learned from that experience
and what they improved on these new cars.

Speaker 14 (01:32:39):
Well, with R two being able to scale and get
a lot more people in our brand obviously is trying
to get something that is more affordable. The size of
the vehicle as well, while having the vehicle be smaller,
more more notevable, and more athletic. But there's things that
we also carried over from our one that we really
appreciated in our too. We got a lot of positive
feedback and have some of the details. As I've mentioned,

(01:33:00):
is the map pockets in the door. You know, how
do we use our UI screens? We still have two screens.
We still think that's really important. Proved on things like
our steering wheel controls because I think there's was room
for improvement on that for our one, and carried over
some of the core features of accessibility, but with it
with R two we went even further with It's like,
well the car is smaller, but we know that we

(01:33:20):
had a lot of feedbackward customers. We're using the vehicles
to sleep in it, but with this smaller.

Speaker 5 (01:33:25):
Wheelace, what do you do?

Speaker 14 (01:33:26):
So that's why the seats are able to fold flat completely,
including the front front road.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
Next to those curious who the R two is for,
I think that RB two could be for everyone.

Speaker 14 (01:33:35):
Honestly, That's that's really what we're doing, and it's people
that resonate well hopefully with our brand. You look at
the EV space, there's a lot of vehicles that have
a lot of similar feeling, and I think for EV
adoption to take off is the ability to have choice,
and for Rivian having that very two box suv, higher
ground clearance, more capability off road or an inclement weather.

(01:33:58):
Being able to have that confidence really expands sort of
the market offering out there and helps differentiate us from others,
but still gives the customers the ability of choice.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
Rivian recently had layoffs, the stock price was at an
all time low recently, so many are saying that this
is sort of a make or break moment for the company.

Speaker 14 (01:34:16):
I think this product is very important for us to scale. Absolutely.
I wouldn't call it our make or break moment, but
it's the ability to make Rivian become a global brand,
to really expand our volumes and get the brand to
more people. The price point of our one, it's an
excellent vehicle, but it's going to limit the amount of
people that can afford it, or even limit the amount
of see it people that see it, so it has

(01:34:37):
a lot of reminiscence obviously of Our one, but that's
something we really wanted to build off of because this
could be the very first experience that a lot of
people have with the Rivian product. So we wanted to
build off of what was great about our one, but
offer it at something at a much more affordable price
point so we can get more people into the brand.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
This is one of the first electric vehicles I've seen
that actually has Tesla's charger built in Natively, that means
you won't need an adapter to use a Testless supercharger.
So I asked Jeff if he thinks that's going to
make a big difference here.

Speaker 5 (01:35:08):
I think it will.

Speaker 14 (01:35:09):
Test has obviously got a very amazing charging network and
being able to utilize that is going to help not
only Rivian, but all the other brands that have signed
up to do that. And that's something that I think
is really helpful for everyone to get ev adoption. We
really need a lot of charges everywhere. With that, we're
continuing to build out our adventure network, which is something
we continue to add sites every day, which will also

(01:35:31):
help with.

Speaker 12 (01:35:31):
A lot of that.

Speaker 14 (01:35:32):
So being able to have options I think is what's
most important to people. Being able to charge at home
is a huge one. I think if you've got the
vehicle at home, being able to plug it in and
just drive off.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
My wife first time, first time EV.

Speaker 14 (01:35:43):
Owner was with a Rivin R one S and her
being able to charge charge at home and never having
to go into gas station again is a really great experience.
And I think the more people will get to live
with these vehicles and vehicles, whether it's an EV or
whether it's a Rivian or any other AEV, the really
starts to find the benefits of actually dry and owning
an evy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
Next up, I spoke with John Reddinger. He is a
popular YouTuber and he happens to own two Rivians.

Speaker 5 (01:36:09):
I mean, I love it.

Speaker 15 (01:36:09):
I've got thirty thousand miles on my R one T
the truck. My wife has the R one S about
twenty thousand. I've had mine for two years, year and
a half. It's been perfect. I just put my first
set of tires on the truck after thirty thousand miles,
which is incredible. And I think the R two looks
like a baby version of the R one S like
everybody's expecting, like Rivian's model why but I think what

(01:36:31):
they delivered is more of a Wrangular Bronco competitor kind
of off road but with some luxury inside the price
of forty five thousand dollars if it actually you know,
prices are subject to change, right, if it comes out
at that price, I think we've got a home run
on their hands. I think there are two people buying.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
Tessels, right.

Speaker 15 (01:36:46):
They're those that are very into Elon, and they're those
that just want a cool electric car. I think for
the folks that want a cool electric car, they're options
from and I think this is going to be one
of those many, many options.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
I'd get some time to chat with Rivian's forty one
year old billionaire founder and CEO RJ Scringe. I was
impressed not only with his presentation he did the entire
thing without a teleprompter, but his enthusiasm too.

Speaker 5 (01:37:12):
Beyond excited.

Speaker 16 (01:37:13):
I mean, we've been working on these for years, and
I think people expected to see R two, but it's
sibling platform variant. The R three was like to show that.
We were so nervous it was going to leak over
the last few months. But I mean, it's such a
cool product, so we're really excited.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
Yeah, So I asked r J, how did you keep
this so quiet?

Speaker 16 (01:37:32):
Really carefully, really carefully. We don't put him out on
public roads. We keep them even in the studio. There's
lots of security around not showing them. We had the
same thing with R one where we didn't want it
to leak. There was a few leaks around R two,
but nothing with R three, which is great.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
I asked RJ, what do people need to know about
this brand?

Speaker 16 (01:37:51):
You know, when we think about Riven as a company,
so much around the product is built around creating these experiences.
So every decision, the interior, the package, the powertrain, the
efficiency is designed to create amazing experiences to really drive
massive adoption electric vehicles. And the market needs choice. The
market needs lots of interesting choices, so we need lots
of successful car companies making lots of really interesting products.

(01:38:13):
So we hope these help give customers a choice to
move from the combustion world into the eving world.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
Finally, I was curious what keeps RJ going?

Speaker 16 (01:38:23):
I mean, the team, the products, and then the importance.
I mean, we're at such a critical juncture where we
do have to electrify the world, and you know, how
lucky are we to be in the middle of that
where we can help drive that change.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Now, for a little perspective, I talked to Abigail Bassett.
She is a freelance journalist who is covering the Rivian
event for The Verge.

Speaker 17 (01:38:43):
It's a little bit, it's a little bit of a
difficult time right now. They're sort of in the ev
Valley of death, if you will, where their production costs
and their demand are geting each other. They can't make
those things meet at this point. They've got some production
issues with their factory. They're building a new in Georgia.
We're really hoping that we'll be able to see these

(01:39:03):
vehicles because there's a lot riding on them.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
I was curious what she thought of these cars and
how they compare to the Teslas of the world. I
think the R two is really competitive.

Speaker 17 (01:39:11):
If you look at the market right now, you've got
things like the Mustang Mode, You've got the Tesla Model Wide,
which all come in around that level at forty five
thousand dollars. Now, of course, you're talking about a base level,
so in order to get like all wheel drive and
a bigger battery pack, you're probably going.

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
To have to step up a little bit more. So,
I would expect, like if.

Speaker 17 (01:39:28):
You want the top of the line features for the
R two, you're probably going to spend around around fifty
thousand dollars to get there, and then of course with Rivian,
it's inevitable that they'll probably offer a whole lot of
other features, things like bike add ons. You know, they
had the camp stove and the R one T which
they've since sort of discontinued to reconfigure, but you can

(01:39:48):
expect a whole lot more features that are available or
coming for the R two. I would say this is
for a different demographic. Ultimately, if you're a Tesla bar buyer,
you're buying into sort of the Elon Musk infrastructure. You're
buying in to his persona, You're buying into a lot
of that environment.

Speaker 13 (01:40:04):
RJ.

Speaker 17 (01:40:04):
Rivian, the whole environment that they're building.

Speaker 15 (01:40:07):
Is very different.

Speaker 17 (01:40:08):
They take a different sort of software approach to their consumers,
so it's a very different buyer I think. And I
think given sort of the politicized environment we live in
and the way that we express to our politics is
through what we buy or what we don't buy, I
think this will just be another option for folks out
there who want something that's adventurous, off rody.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
And a lot of fun. You can put a reservation
down for the R two right now. It is one
hundred dollars and it is refundable. The company says they
got over sixty eight thousand reservations in less than twenty
four hours. The R two is expected to ship in
the first half of twenty twenty six. The R three
and the R three X expected to follow after that.

(01:40:48):
Coming up next, it's the feedback segment or rich on
Tech coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. Man, I'm still recovering from that tap dancing.
You know what, Once in a while you're really thrown
for a loop, and why not? I welcome it all

(01:41:09):
right Before we get to the feedback segment, just two
more items of no. Apple this week launched new fifteen
inch MacBook Airs and thirteen inch models with a new
M three chip. So I'm actually gonna buy one of these.
I was at the Apple store yesterday making my decision.

(01:41:29):
I bought the I think I got like a fourteen
inch MacBook Pro or something like that, and I just
I've hated it since day one because the screen is
just too small. So I got to get this fifteen
inch so I can have more on my screen. Here anyway,
these things are the new kind of go to MacBook.
Airs got support for up to twenty four gigs of

(01:41:50):
memory on board. They support two external displays when the
laptop lid is closed, and they've got Wi Fi six E,
so that's a little bit faster download speeds than the
previous generation. The thirteen inch model starts at one thousand
ninety nine. The fifteen inch model starts at twelve ninety nine.
They do have education pricing available. Don't forget about that.

(01:42:15):
My color is the Midnight looks pretty nice. The only
problem is, even though they said they put this coding
on it to make the fingerprints less of an issue,
there's still a fingerprint issue. Out of all the colors
I looked at yesterday in the store, the Midnight one
still has the most fingerprints on it. The guy at
the store said, Oh, it's just because a lot of
people touch it. I don't know about that. Dreamscape is

(01:42:37):
closing down their immersive VR experience. This is kind of
a local story in LA but they did have locations
planned or in other places, but that's it. They are
closing down the Century City Mall location. If you follow
me at all, you know I love this experience. Dreamscape
in Immersive was there for six years, and this was

(01:42:58):
kind of like a movie brought to life. So I
did like the Dinosaur one, I did the Aliens one.
I did the How To Train a Dragon one. You
put on all this VR equipment and then you go
into this little room and you kind of walk around
the room for the adventure, and it was very realistic.
It was very cool, but it was very expensive and
it was very tough to kind of scale because you

(01:43:20):
had to have a backpack on with all this VR stuff.
It took a long time to set it up and
it was very ambitious, and I just don't think they
could ever scale it to the way they wanted to.
AMC Movie theaters had like an interest in it. It
just never really worked out. So now they're going to
focus on education. They are partnering with the Arizona State

(01:43:41):
University to launch Dreamscape Learn, So a lot of the
company and a lot of what they did will be existing,
but in a different way. So it's closing on March tenth,
so not much time to see it, but if you
saw it, it was really cool. I always recommended people
do that. All right, Now, time for the feedback. Segment
feedback plus the mailbag equals feedback. Let's see what you

(01:44:03):
had to say. Ken says, switching from Android to iPhone,
even with Apple's transfer program, is never perfect. Be prepared
for days of frustration and save your Android phone for
data that didn't transfer. Just because the app was created
does not mean the data will. Learning the iOS system
is another issue, absolutely, Ken. That's why I always recommend
that you really just don't do the switch programs. Just

(01:44:25):
try to move things over on your own accord. Gail says, Yo, Rich,
another great show. You just did it again. Transcription. Let
me get on this. I'm going to your web page
right now. I take a lot of notes as a
producer reporter on hundreds of stories. This sounds like something
I need immediately. Keep teaching me, and oh, keep teaching
all of us listeners. Gail, That, by the way, is

(01:44:47):
Gail Anderson. I work with Gail and I love Gail
at KTLA, and I'm not kidding. Every week Monday morning
I walk in and she's like, Rich, we got to
talk about your show for like an hour. Neil on
Broadcast HD. I was there when it first started, and
he got pretty decent signal on the main channel, although
early football was a bit blocky until they figured it out. However,

(01:45:09):
if you go there today, you'll find they've split their
channel into multiple sub channels where only a tiny bit
of the quality goes to the main and they have
a ton of really low quality subchannels for various reruns.
Why did they do this? Probably advertising anyway, Sorry for
the grump, Thanks for your service, Neil in Ohio. Yeah,

(01:45:29):
that happens, Tom. When you discussed HP ink cartridges subscriptions today,
I don't think you mentioned the big downside. If you
sign up for automatic ink shipments for your new printer,
they remotely disabled that printer's ability to ever use aftermarket cartridges.
You're forced to only use HP OEM cartridges for the
life of the printer. They don't make this very obvious.

(01:45:50):
I suspect a lot of users are caught unaware. It's
buried in the fine print and seem somewhat deceptive. This
was the case when I bought my last printer a
couple of years ago, and the reason I may ever
buy another HP printer. Huh Okay, that's interesting. I did
not know that, Pete says Rich. I understand that TikTok
is directly associated with the CCP, China's Communist Party, Why
then do you even mention its use. I personally wish

(01:46:13):
it were banned completely from its access on US soil.
I don't think it's owned directly by the Chinese Communist Party,
but yes, it does have connections to China. It's very
complicated and I don't think anyone knows the specific answer,
but byte Edance owns TikTok. They both have offices in China.

(01:46:35):
They also have something in the Cayman Islands. They also
have an office in Los Angeles. This is why there's
a lot of debate around TikTok. There is a lot
of unknowns and I don't have a good answer for
you on that, but thanks for the feedback there, And okay,
I think that's it. Oh, let's just end with Bruce

(01:46:57):
love your show, Bruce and Claremont. We'll leave it there,
all right, if you can believe it, that's going to
do it for this episode of the show. If you
want to find links to everything I mentioned, you can
go to the website. Just go to richon tech dot tv.
I keep really good notes something new I'm doing. If
you want to check out the show on YouTube. I'm

(01:47:17):
actually putting in some time codes on YouTube, so if
you want to skip to a particular topic or a guest,
you can go into the show notes on YouTube. You
click the time and it will bring you directly to
that area of the show. It's audio only, but some
people like to listen on YouTube. Even though it's YouTube's
primarily video, the show is just on audio. Of course,

(01:47:39):
you can find me on social media. I am at
Rich on Tech. Thank you so much for listening. There
are so many ways you can spend your time. I
do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks
to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is
Rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon.

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