iPhone 17 review, iOS 26 best features & Anker power bank recall (140, September 20, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Amazon sets yet another Prime Day. I'll tell you why.
This one involves chicken nuggets. Meta has a new pair
of smart glasses with a display built in, and you
can get them sooner than you might think. The new
iPhones are available now, plus iOS twenty six. I'll share
my review and tips, plus your tech questions answered. What's

(00:23):
going on on rich Demiro And this is Rich on
Tech 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 open up those phone
lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight

(00:46):
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 the website rich
on Tech dot tv and hit contact. All right, we've
got a lot of great guests this week packed show.

(01:09):
Victoria's Song from the Verge is going to join us
to talk all about Meta's new smart glasses. They've got
a new pair of smart glasses with a tiny display
in the in the lenses, so that's gonna be interesting.
And Victoria war them, so we'll hear her take on
that and a friend of the show, Caleb Dennison, you

(01:30):
know him for his TV reviews. He has started his
own YouTube channel called Calebrated and he's gonna talk. Oh,
I just got that, get it calibrated, calbraided, Ah, I
just got it. He's gonna talk all about the best
TVs not only for watching football, but just in general.
And of course I'm gonna ask him some of the

(01:51):
best brands and some of the budget and splurge picks
as well. And later in the show, Evan Rapaport, former
Google Moonshot executive and founder of Amphibian, is gonna share
his new app called nature Me, which is helping people
reconnect with nature through eyes open mindfulness. All right, that

(02:14):
sounds pretty interesting. Welcome to the show, live from Las
Vegas today. Yes, I am in Las Vegas for the
iHeartRadio Festival. The music festival is a two day event
and it is a lot of fun. I've been to
these events before. It's a lot of artists, a lot

(02:34):
of just a lot of team you know. It's at
the T Mobile Arena. iHeartRadio just knows how to throw
a party and it's just great. So it's a lot
of fun. It's always a challenge to do a remote
show because you never know if everything's gonna work out properly.
But hopefully we are broadcasting to you right now. You're

(02:54):
hearing my voice and everything is working out. Because you
know me, I like to do the show live, no
matter what. I don't want to do a show that's
not live because I like to hear from you. I
like to challenge myself in doing this live, no matter
where I am. And it's been a while, by the way,
since we've done a remote show. So let's talk about
the iPhone. So last week I told you all about them,

(03:17):
but I had to kind of hold back just a
little bit because I was not able to share my
full review. But now the embargoes are up. Yes, I've
been using the iPhone since they announced it back on
September ninth, and it is incredible. Every single model this year,
iPhone seventeen, iPhone Air, the iPhone seventeen Pro, and Promax

(03:39):
Apple hit it out of the park. I am telling
you the bottom line, if you want to upgrade your phone,
if you're thinking about upgrading your phone, this is the
year to do it. iPhone seventeen, that base model at
eight hundred dollars. It is finally in a place where
it is a really great phone for the money, and

(04:00):
if you're trading in a phone, you're gonna get even
more value out of that brighter screen, tougher display, less
glare finally added, smoother scrolling, and video playback. It also
has a new ultra wide camera and that new selfie camera,
which lets you take horizontal or vertical snapshots without turning
the phone. You can also zoom out a little bit

(04:23):
to get a group shot, zoom in to get the
selfie shot all or the solo shot, all without moving
your phone horizontal or vertical. Now, I will tell you
I know Apple's selling that is a big feature. I
personally do not like that feature, but that does not
take away from it. I do not take selfies the
way most people do. Most people hold their iPhone vertically
when they take a selfie. I do not. I hold

(04:45):
it horizontally, and I'm always doing it that way. I've
done it that way forever. I'm not gonna change my
ways even with this new camera, because I think it
is much easier to press that snapshot button, that shutter
button when your phone is in a horizontal manner. I
don't understand how people press the shutter button when their
phone is upright like vertical, because it just it's off

(05:07):
balance to me. But maybe I'll be proven wrong. You're
also getting double the storage from last year two hundred
and fifty six gigabytes base for that eight hundred dollars,
and you get faster charging. So keep in mind on
any of these phones that you upgrade to, if you
want to take advantage of faster wired charging, you'll need
to get a new power adapter. It's a forty WAT adapter.

(05:28):
Apple sells one. Of course you can get at third party,
but you can use the same USBC cable. You'll just
need that new forty WAT adapter. Now, when it comes
to the iPhone Air, yes, it's super thin, it's super lightweight,
it's got the faster Pro chip inside is one thousand dollars.
But this phone is really only for folks that value
the form over functionality. You're getting a great phone, but

(05:51):
you're gonna be limited in your camera lens. You only
get one lens here, so limited zoom, no ultra wide.
And of course, if you're on your phone all the time,
the battery life on this device is just not going
to be as good as say the standard seventeen or
Pro Pro models. That's just the way it is. It's
a thin phone. They have a snap on battery pack
for ninety nine dollars. But if you want something that's cool, unique, different,

(06:13):
and you're a casual phone user, don't take a ton
of pictures, it's gonna be a really nice phone. Now
here's what I really love the iPhone seventeen Pro and Promax.
I think that these are the best that Apple has
ever made. I know they say that every year, but
this year I really truly feel like they just did
such a great job at polishing what was already a
great product. But now I'm noticing the battery life is

(06:34):
just really really good. Combined with that faster charging is
just I'm like going to sleep with like sixty percent
battery at this point. Redesigned backside so the back looks different.
People are noticing that, which is kind of cool. The
cameras are upgraded, so you're gonna get more zoom eight
time zoom with more detail in both your wide angle
shots and your zoom shots. And this comes in two sizes.

(06:56):
So if you notice they did away with a plus
size this year, so you get the iPhone seventeen and
one size, then you get the iPhone Air and the
larger screen, and the iPhone seventeen Pro and Promax that's
where you get your choice of screen size, but basically
the same specs minus of course the battery. The battery
is going to be bigger in the Promax. Three colors,
including that cosmic orange with not my favorite. It's actually

(07:20):
growing on me a little bit personally. I'm the blue.
I like the blue. But they've got the standard silver,
the Cosmic Orange, and then of course the blue, and
you can get up to two terabytes of storage. So
they did get a little bit of a price increase
this year. This phone does start at eleven hundred dollars
this year, but you're still getting that two hundred and
fifty six based storage. If you want that two terabytes

(07:43):
of storage, then you're talking two thousand dollars, which is
you know, that's a lot of money. It's like a
little laptop in your pocket. But you know, people love
their phones and they really just you know, they use
them for everything. At this point, people are using their
iPhone for you know, their computer, for writing, for their tablet.
It's just an all in one device, so people really
value these things. So overall, if you are thinking of upgrading,

(08:06):
this is the year to do that. All right, let's
talk about iOS twenty six. If you're not upgrading your phone,
you're still getting this brand new iOS twenty six. It's
called Liquid Glass. You don't have to update right away,
so if you are happy with iOS eighteen, you can
continue to run that on your phone. Apple will keep
pushing security updates to iOS eighteen for at least a while,

(08:28):
so no worries there. You can still say stay up
to date security wise, with iOS eighteen, you're not going
to get new features. You'll have to go to iOS
twenty six to get that. In messages, you can now
create poles by tapping the plus sign and looking at polls,
and you can add your options, like if you're saying, hey,
where should we go for vacation? You could add a
pole inside your conversation custom backgrounds. People are already changing

(08:50):
all the backgrounds on my conversations. I've noticed you can
just tap the name of the person or the group
and update the background. Of course, your friends have to
update their software to see that as well. Call screening.
I put this on my Instagram at rich On Tech.
This is probably the coolest new feature. Unknown callers have
to say who they are and why they're calling before
your phone even rings, and that information is displayed on

(09:12):
your lock screen. That is a killer feature if you're
trying to cut down on spam. Keep in mind it
will cut some of the regular phone calls that you
get if that person is not in your contacts or
you haven't interacted with them before. So, for instance, a
bunch of radio stations call me to do talkbacks, that
number is not always in my phone, so that person
when they call, they get, hey, rich is using call screening,

(09:35):
Say your name and why you're calling. And I asked
the person and he said, oh, you're the second person
that this has happened to me today. So people are
already understanding that this is a thing. But you know,
scammers are probably gonna do the same thing. They're probably
gonna say, you know something, some fake name and some
fake reason. They've got whold Assist, which will listen to
hold music for you and alert you when someone picks
up the clock. You can now customize your snooze time

(09:58):
one to fifteen minutes instead of nine photos, you can
tap the new spatial icon to turn them into three D.
You can also make them a wallpaper that pops out
of your screen. That's pretty cool. There is a duplicate
finder in a photos app, which is fine. You can
find it under utilities. It's very basic. I still like
my app Clever Cleaner, make sure you get the official

(10:18):
one that will help you free up storage. You can
now create a ring tone from any supported audio file.
Just open up an audio file in the files app
and share out and press create ringtne. So all these
songs that you have, if you have an MP three
of them, you can now make them a ringtone. This
is something that used to take specialized software and way
back in the day of the original iPhone. Remember you

(10:39):
had to pay like ninety nine cents and then a
dollar twenty nine for a ringtone. No, you can do
it with any song now as long as you have
that MP three or audio file of that song. You'll
also notice there are a few new apps. There's a
new preview app. This lets you open PDF, scan documents,
also fill out PDF. So if your kid has a
permission slip or something you can use use that Preview

(11:01):
app to scan it, scan the paper and then sign it,
fill it out, and then email it back to the teacher.
All right, from your phone. There's also a new games app,
and if you don't like the look and feel of
liquid glass, I also posted this to my Instagram at
rich on Tech. You can turn on the reduce transparency
option in your settings. So let me just find the

(11:24):
exact setting so I can tell you where it is.
So if you go to my Instagram at rich on
Tech you can see this. But basically go to settings
and then accessibility display in tech size and you turn
on the toggle for reduce transparency, and a lot of
your menus and things will sort of look like the
way they used to. So there you have it. iOS
twenty six a whole bunch of other features coming out

(11:46):
as well, but those are kind of the ones that
I've identified that are pretty pretty cool. All right. Eight
to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Give me a
call if you have a question about technology. My name
is rich Tamiro. You are listening to rich on Tech.

(12:06):
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 eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. The website for the show Rich
on tech dot tv. You can go to the website
get all the show notes and everything I mentioned. This

(12:26):
is episode one forty. Let's go to uh, let's just
go to line one. Dave in Long Beach. Dave, you there,
you're on with Rich. Hello Dave? Nope, we have Dave. Okay, Well,
you know I can't bring up the callers myself, so

(12:49):
I am at the mercy of Bobo. Okay, there he is,
Hello Dave, what's up? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Just got a new car? No CD player? Want to
take all of my music, my downloads on CD and
put them on a flash drive? Is there a way
I can do that? Everything I've tried so far just
really hasn't worked.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
So do you okay, you're you're trying to take your
CDs and rip them and then put them on a
flash drive.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah? And do you have a CD player on your computer?
CD like a CD drive?

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Oh okay, you have Windows or Mac Windows? Okay. Exact
Audio Copy. Exact Audio Copy is the app you need.
It's free. You pop in the CD you rip the music,
it'll it'll transform it into you know, the various formats
whatever one you want. You can do MP three, or
you can do other formats, and then you would just

(13:48):
take that and copy those files over to a flash drive,
and then you would put that flash drive in your car.
Does your car have the ability to play a flash drive?

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, I've got some of them. It's like, Okay, went
to the Windows media Player, you know, went to the
rip tab. Okay, open that up there, you know, rip
the cuts. Okay, yeah, this says okay. Now when I
want to put this, it says, go back from you know,
the the Windows media Player sub menu, go back to

(14:22):
the main menu and put rip rip doesn't show. Now,
I've got some of them here, put them in playlists.
When I move those over to a flash drive, it
either puts them all in ali you know, alphabetical order,
which I don't want, or if I've got two separate

(14:43):
discs in there, it takes the number one cut from
the first disc and then the number one cut from
the second disc. I just want to be able to
put these in a menu and just you know, burn
them all to a flash drive.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Well, I mean, what you're talking about with the alphabetical
that's just the way the files are being ordered on
the Flask drive. I mean, when you drag them over,
Windows is going to put them in alphabetical order. I
assume you're gonna be. I mean, it depends on your car.
Like if your car supports a folder on the Flask
drive that you can browse through to play these songs.
You know, that may or may not be the case.

(15:20):
Like it may just say, hey, we can shuffle these.
It may also not read the exact menu or I
guess the folder structure that you've put them on that
Flask drive with. So it sort of depends on your
car in that aspect. Now, when it comes to the
same song, I mean, this is a pretty straightforward process. So,
I mean when it comes to the songs, if you're
ripping them to the CD to the hard drive, you

(15:42):
can copy those over in a folder on the Flask
drive and you can try that. Like let's say you
have David Bowie album. You put David Bowie on the
Flask drive. You drag those songs over. Now you do
another album, you know whoever, Don Henley Eagles, you put
that you know Eagles on there and then you put
the songs, you drag them over so that your car
may or may not read that structure of the folder.

(16:06):
It may just shuffle. It really depends on the car.
So these are the things that you know, it sort
of depends on the car. At this point. This is
something that I feel like was done a lot more before.
It's probably not done as often anymore because now everyone's
just streaming and using apps and things like that. You
can also consider just using your phone. So a really

(16:27):
easy way to do this, Dave is just using YouTube music.
So if you go to music dot YouTube dot com,
and I know this is not going to be on
a flask drive, but you can actually upload your own songs.
If you just drag them onto that website, it'll just
put them into your library. And then if you can
connect your phone to your car with Bluetooth, you can

(16:47):
just play your own music right off of YouTube music
and you can you know, so it's a much simpler
way instead of doing this whole flask drive. As you
create those songs, those MP three's, you can just literally
drag them onto this website music dot YouTube dot com.
It will upload them into your library and then on
your phone. Like I said, if you have Bluetooth, you
can just bluetooth those right from your phone. So there's

(17:10):
a lot of ways to do this. I know, it's
it's funny that you said, I bought a new car
and I don't have a CD drive anymore. It's become
it's just not a thing anymore. I mean, these cars,
it's more about the streaming. It's more about the satellite.
It's more about all the different ways that people you know,
used to be auxiliary input. That was the thing that
you wanted on a car. It's like if your car
had auxiliary it's like, ah, this is great. I don't

(17:31):
have to use an FM tuner because you had an
FM tuner at one point, you know, where you had
to broadcast to your car. I mean, it's evolved a lot,
and I think that this is something that can still
be done. It's just probably not a huge priority for
the car makers anymore with these flash drives. So anyway,
try the methods I mentioned see if they work for you.
Eight eight eight rich one oh one. Thanks for the call.

(17:51):
Eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up, we're gonna talk to Victorious song from the
Verge right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Rich Tomuro 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,

(18:14):
coming to you live from Las Vegas today. Thanks for
being with me. If you want to look at show notes,
it's all on the website rich On Tech dot TV.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
We have a Victoria's song from the Verge here senior reviewer,
and she was actually at the big Meta event this
week and they had a couple of demos, They had
a couple of new products, and she is here to
talk all about them. Victoria, thanks so much for joining
me today.

Speaker 6 (18:40):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
All Right, So, I've not been to a meta event.
I've been to Google, I've been to Apple, I've been
to Amazon. They all have a little bit of a
different kind of flare to them. What is the sense
in the room at a meta event?

Speaker 7 (18:56):
This one was a bit weird because it was my
first Meta connect in person. I've covered them remotely before,
but it was a little bit chaotic, if I'm honest,
just because in that room there were a couple of
failed demos sparked a lot of talk about the virtues
of having kind of the pre recorded demos that we've

(19:17):
seen from Apple since you know, twenty twenty and the
pandemic era kind of changed the vibe of live events.

Speaker 6 (19:26):
But this one it was all.

Speaker 7 (19:28):
Live, and there there were some true failures.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Of wait, there was more than one failure because I
saw like one little video like you made, like Mark
Zuckerberg tried to make a video call. Well wait, hell,
I'm back up for one second. Explain what medic Connect
is like what they do an event once a year
called Meta Connect. What does that mean exactly?

Speaker 7 (19:48):
Medic Connect is kind of their version of the fall
product launch. It usually kind of is an update on
their metaverse, you know, undertakings. But in the last couple
of years they've also kind of pivoted to launching and
talking about their smart glasses hardware, which is what I cover.

(20:08):
So you know, last year they had the transparent ray
Band Meta Glasses, and this year they had three new
smart glasses to unveiled everyone. The first and I think
the one that everyone is talking about the most is
the Meta ray Band Display, which is their first glasses
with the heads up display in one of the lenses.

(20:28):
They had the Oakley Meta Vanguard, which is basically wrap
around smart glasses for athletes. And then they had the
ray Band Meta Gen two, which is a slightly updated
version of the regular ray band metas that they've had
for the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Wait, so the one pair is called the Meta ray
Band Display and then the other ones are the ray
Band Meta Gen two.

Speaker 6 (20:54):
Oh yes, yes, that was kind of Yeah.

Speaker 7 (20:59):
When they told me that, I was like, are you
guys serious? My editors have been like very much sticklers
for getting the name right, and now you're just gonna
flip it on them.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
For this one product. Yeah. It caused a little bit
of a hubbulb.

Speaker 7 (21:13):
I think among all the journalists they're going like, wait
a minute, you're changing the name on us.

Speaker 8 (21:17):
Why?

Speaker 6 (21:18):
But yeah, so that is the thing that they did.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
So you tried these glasses on the Meta ray Band
display and these are basically they look like ray bands,
a little bit thicker in the sides and you know,
around the lenses and there is a tiny display in there.
What was it like to put these on?

Speaker 7 (21:35):
I was quite shocked because the display is very visible.
It goes up to five thousand minus of brightness and
the all those glasses automatically come with transition lenses. So
one problem that we've had with smart glasses through the
years is ambient light. So if you're in a very
bright room or if you're outside on a very sunny day,

(21:56):
the display tends to get washed out. And that's something
that I've seen scene with a lot of different smart
glasses prototypes that I've tested over the years, different methods
of making the display visible to people. Ambient light is
a huge problem.

Speaker 6 (22:10):
And I wore these.

Speaker 7 (22:12):
I was able to go outside with them. Okay, did
I look at the sun and did it get washed out?

Speaker 6 (22:18):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (22:18):
Do I recommend that everyone looked directly at the sun?
Absolutely not.

Speaker 6 (22:22):
Don't do it. I did it for you.

Speaker 7 (22:24):
But if I'm looking anywhere besides directly at the sun,
you can see the display, which is it's a huge
step forward in terms of that technology. But the display
also enables a lot of different hands free computing that
you know, if you remember the original Google Glass Sizzle reel,
it feels very reminiscent of that. So you can get

(22:46):
your text messages on there. You can if a friend
sends you a link to an Instagram reels, you can
watch it directly from your glasses.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
You can watch an Instagram reels on your glasses.

Speaker 7 (22:58):
Now, yes, you can, got the picture is quite clear.
You can take video calls.

Speaker 6 (23:05):
I had the demo.

Speaker 7 (23:07):
I was able to VEHO call on like Zuckerberg on stage,
and it worked. And I felt a little bit like
a spy in that moment because I could see my
colleague in this video call, and because these are camera
camera glasses, they could see everything that I was seeing
as well.

Speaker 6 (23:24):
So I was like, oh my god, I feel like
a super spy.

Speaker 7 (23:27):
If I were to steal corporate see information in a
bank heist or something like that, this is maybe how
they would do it in a James Bond or sci
fi movie. So it felt sort of like that. I
could see live captions. So if I'm talking to a
bunch of people in a crowded room, the person I'm
looking at, if I turn the live captions on, I

(23:48):
could see subtitles for what they're saying. And the amazing
thing to me was because the microphones are multidirectional, cross
talk didn't matter, so there were multiple people talking at
me in the room, but the only person being captioned
was the one I was directly looking at and I
think that's going to be huge for people who are
hard of hearing or in deaf communities.

Speaker 6 (24:09):
That's pretty wild to see for me. And there were
a couple of other demos.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, back to the screen. Is it so bright that
it's like really bright in your eye? Because I feel
like you're saying this is like up to five thousand nits.
It sounds like there's a screen there or is it
sort of like projected out into the world more like that.

Speaker 7 (24:28):
No, it's like a little screen that's an extension of
what you could expect to see from a phone menu,
so similar to what you might see in a smart watch.
But the brightness is adjustable. It goes up to five
thousand mints in the event that you're outside in very
bright lighting, but if you're indoors, it's not going to
be five thousand that's burning into your eyeball. It adjusts
based on the environment that you're in. It can go

(24:49):
as low as thirty nits depending So it was quite
impressive to me because there's also only two percent light leakage.
And what that means is if you're looking directly at
me and I have these glasses on, you will not
be able to see any hint of a display. Doesn't
matter what angle I'm looking at, doesn't matter how the
light is catching the glass on my eye, you won't

(25:11):
be able to see a thing. You might be able
to tell that my eyes are not fully present, or
that I'm not quite looking at you, because the way
the display is, it's a monocular display, which means it's
only in the right lens, and it's not directly centered.

Speaker 6 (25:26):
It's a little bit off to the side. So you
do have kind of a situation.

Speaker 7 (25:30):
And I have a YouTube video online through the verge
that you can kind of look at, but you can
kind of see that my eye you can kind of
tell I'm not fully there. My colleagues that I kind
of had a dead eye look to me, a little distracted,
And we were both talking about like how crazy that
might be in terms of societal implications, because we're already

(25:52):
saying stuff like put your phone away when we're at dinner,
or like, you know, I think I make the effort
to put my phone down when I'm trying to be
present with my friends. But even with smart watches, you know,
people know that if you're glancing at your smart watch
you're probably just looking at a notification, but it's a
moment where you're distracted.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Uh, this is I was at breakfast yesterday and you know,
I'm getting all these notifications on my watch, and like
you want to look because you want to see what
they are. But like, if you're glancing at your watch
during a conversation, it's really distracting to the other person
and it's quite mean. Actually, what about this band that
you wear on your wristband? This neural band was that

(26:31):
easy to control?

Speaker 7 (26:33):
Yeah, So the neural band uses something called electromiography, which
means it reads the signals from your muscles, like you're
the electrical signals and your muscles, And based on that,
you have a set of gesture controls that you can
use to control the display. So like if you pinch
your index finger once, that'll select something in a menu.

(26:53):
If you pinch your middle finger ONTs that'll that's kind
of like a back button. If you pinch your middle
finger twice, that brings up and dismisses the display. So
there's a couple of different things you can do. You
can sort of make a fist and rotate it to
the side and start swiping with your thumb like it's
a dpad if you've used game controllers, and that'll help

(27:13):
you scroll up down through menus if you want to
up the volume, or zoom in when you're framing a picture,
because that's something you can do now, is that you
can zoom in three times and snap a photo.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
You just kind of you're selling me all these things.
You're Okay, we got about a minute left, so I
want to get to the pricing. It's eight hundred dollars.
And by the way, this is you mentioned accessibility before.
Even the band is good for people I'm reading with
limited mobility, tremors, or even if you don't have all
of your fingers too, So that's I mean, people are
going to find a lot of uses for this outside

(27:48):
of kind of like the standard what they've thought of,
which I always find really interesting. Eight hundred dollars available
September thirtieth at best Buy, Lens Crafters, Sunglass, hut Ray
Band Stores, Verizon store later. Do you think people should
pick up the first generation of these devices?

Speaker 6 (28:05):
A It really depends.

Speaker 7 (28:07):
If you're a first adopter, I think you might go
a little crazy because it seems like a lot of
fun but you know, it really depends on whether you
find the glasses form factor interesting because I know people
who are like I have twenty twenty vision.

Speaker 6 (28:22):
Why would I do this?

Speaker 7 (28:23):
And you know what fair I think if you're a
tech nerd and you're interested in hands free computing, especially,
this might be something up your alley.

Speaker 6 (28:32):
If you're just trying to log off, maybe don't spend
eight hundred dollars on something like this.

Speaker 7 (28:38):
But it is a very exciting movement in this particular
form factor. I'm eager to get my hands on a
pair to see how it actually works in real life because,
as I mentioned, there were some real filled demos on stage,
so we got to see how it performs in real
life settings before I feel confidence saying go out, spend
eight hundred dollars on this.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, all right, there you have it, Victoria Song from
the Verge. What's the best place to follow you? VICM
Song on Instagram?

Speaker 7 (29:08):
Yeah, I'm on every single social media platform you can
think of with the same handle at Victimsong, So that's
where you can find me.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thanks for joining me today. Eighty to eight Rich one
O one more of your calls coming up next. Welcome
back to Rich on tech 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.
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Email is also an option. Just go to Rich on

(29:38):
tech dot TV hit contact. While you're there, be sure
to check out this weekend's newsletter. Just scroll down to
the section where it says newsletter. The title today is
why the new iPhones are worth a look this year.
I do a newsletter once a week, and I've talked
about all the notable new features in iOS twenty SI

(30:01):
why this is the year to upgrade your iPhone. I
also feature my TV segments there, so CDA twenty twenty
five in Denver. I've got my video up for that.
This new test that can rule out autism early and
kids as young as one month old, talk about Amazon
Prime Day and all kinds stuff. It's basically like this show,

(30:22):
except in a newsletter format. So if you like to
wake up on your weekends, have a cup of coffee,
read the newsletter just like you might have read the
newspaper back in the day. But it's all technology based,
so it's all right there. Rich on tech dot TV.
Just hit sign up. It is free and once a week.
I don't spam you, so don't worry about that. All right,

(30:42):
let's take a call. Let's go to Connie in Idaho.
Connie online too, you're on with.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
Rich Oh hi, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely and
having a weird thing going on with my emails in
my trash, I go through and I delete my emails
and I clear my trash every couple of days. I've

(31:08):
got one hundred and thirty two emails from April, the
end of April to like mid May of twenty twenty
two that I cannot get rid of. I clear them
and they appear to be gone. You know where it
says select all all your trash goes away. They appear

(31:32):
to be gone, and then like later in the afternoon,
they'll show up again.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Oh my god, these are like ghost emails.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
I know, it's just it's a crash. I mean, I've
tried going through and like eliminating one at a time
to swipe them off.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
And you're sure you don't need these emails. There's there's
not a force in the world that's like, hey, you
need these emails, Connie read them.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
No, No, they're just they're they just don't their advertisements
or in a Little League schedule or a Bible update
or Ranger Rick advertisement. It's nothing, nothing important at all.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
How are you checking these emails? What's the platform and
what's the service?

Speaker 9 (32:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Are you checking these on your phone and are using Gmail? Yahoo?

Speaker 4 (32:18):
Well, that's a weird thing, Okay, it is. They are
present on my iPad and it's a Gmail account, but
when I check the trash on my phone day Gmail account,
they're not there.

Speaker 9 (32:38):
Okay, we're only on my chapolt.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Okay. So here's what's happening you you and you are
you checking these through the Gmail app? Or are you checking
them through the mail app on the on the iPad?

Speaker 4 (32:51):
Uh? Through the Mail app?

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Okay, all right. It sounds like it sounds like when
you first set up this account, it's just not in
sync with your with your system anymore, like your actual
base like Gmail. So a couple things to look at.
Number one, I would go to your well. Number one,
I would delete this account off of your iPad and
reinstall it. And I think that's going to solve your problem.

(33:13):
Number one, So go into settings on the iPad and
go into let's see they've changed everything. So you got
to go into apps, I believe, and let's see where
it says. Is it mail? Okay, I'm looking right now
on my phone to see if they have it this way.

Speaker 7 (33:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
So you go into mail and then you'll see Mail
accounts and just go ahead and delete the Gmail account.
It's not going to get rid of anything. It's not
going to delete your Gmail forever. It's not going to
delete your Google account. It's just going to delete that
connection off of your iPad and then restart your iPad
and then go back to Mail and add that account fresh.
And I think that's going to solve your problem, because

(33:50):
it sounds like this app just got kind of stuck
and the sink got all messed up and it's just
not sinking properly. That's what I think happened. The way
to check this is also to go to Gmail dot
com on the web and if the emails are not there,
like if those emails are actually trashed and gone, then
it was just an issue on this iPad. And I

(34:11):
think that's going to solve like ninety nine point nine
percent of this problem. In fact, I think it's that's
going to be the solution Now, if you go to
your Gmail on the computer and those those emails are
still there, They're still in your inbox, they're still in
your trash whatever it is, then I would go and
manually delete them from your Gmail on the web. So
you have to understand when when you're checking your email,

(34:34):
there's a lot of ways that apps interact with that
email program. So a lot of times when you set
up that email connection to an app, an app might say, okay,
every time I delete this email, you go ahead and
delete it on your end. Sometimes that connection just gets
a little messed up and it sounds like that sink
got off, and so the email program on the computer

(34:55):
is saying, Hm, we're looking for these emails and you're
deleting them, but we're not finding them on the serve,
and we're just gonna leave them here again, or we're
gonna put them back here, or we're just confused, so
we're gonna leave them there. That is what I think
is happening with you, Connie, And I think that if
you delete that connection to the email, it's gonna be fine.
The alternative here if it continues to happen even after
you do what I just mentioned, which is disconnecting and reconnecting.

(35:18):
You can just go ahead and download the Gmail app
on your iPad and you can manage your emails from there.
I personally like to do it that way because then
I get all the full features of Gmail on my
iPad or my iPhone versus the features that Apple gives
me in their mail app, because Apple's Mail app is
just a way of viewing your Gmail account and it's

(35:40):
gonna have slight variations from the features that Google gives
you themselves. And so personally, when I'm on the computer online,
I like to go directly to Gmail dot com. I
don't like to use a third party app because many
of them sink these days pretty well. But I like
having the full what I call native functionality of Gmail

(36:00):
as they envisioned it for me, And these third party
apps are just kind of viewing your Gmail account through
their own lens, and sometimes whatever's happening on that particular
program is not necessarily sinking or matching up with what
Gmail has. What Gmail has at their base at mail

(36:20):
dot Google dot com, orgmail dot com is what's actually
happening in your account. So if those emails are gone
from the Gmail website from the Gmail app. That's what
you want to make sure is happening and you can
identify the problem is happening on your iPad. Thanks for
the call. Eight eight eight rich one on one. Coming
up after the break, Amazon Prime Big Deal Days returns.

(36:41):
I'll tell you when and what's going to be on sale.
Coming up next, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. We got lots
more of the show for you, including some great guests

(37:03):
coming up this hour. We've got Caleb Dennison. He is
going to talk about his new YouTube channel, Caleb Raided,
and he's gonna give us some of his top picks
for TVs. He is always a great guest. He's been
on his show several times and just always brings a
wealth of knowledge about TVs. In fact, the TV that
I bought was one that he recommended on this very show.

(37:26):
Was it last year, and I've absolutely loved it. It
was a great high sense TV and people come over
and they just always comment on how bright and beautiful
the screen is. So we'll get some great tips from Caleb,
and of course all of your tech news and information here,
plus your questions at triple eight rich one oh one.
We're gonna go to calls in just a second, but

(37:46):
I did want to tell you about man yet another
Anchor power bank recall. I cannot believe this. I've recommended
Anchor so many times over the years, and they're starting
to disappoint me because this is at least the third
recall that I can remember in the past year or so.
But they're recalling another four hundred and eighty one thousand
power banks with model numbers A sixteen forty seven, sixteen

(38:11):
fifty two, twelve fifty seven, sixteen eighty one, and sixteen
eighty nine. These were sold at best Buy, Target, Amazon,
Walmart and more places between August twenty twenty three and
June twenty twenty five. The batteries can overheat. So far,
there's been thirty three reports of fires and explosions for
burn injuries one property damage. If you have one, do

(38:32):
not use it. Verify the serial number on Anchor's website.
You can register for a refund or an Anchor gift card,
and you can't just throw these in the regular recycling.
You got to contact the hazardous waste center in your
area for safe disposal. What a pain that is, huh?
I mean, what the heck? I love my anchor charger.

(38:53):
I use it. I use it everywhere every day. And
to think that, you know, this company has had kind
of a lot of issues with these things recently, does
not give me a lot of faith. So check the
US Consumer Product Safety Commission website, the anchor website for
the latest recall. They've got a bunch of them on
there now. There's like three active recalls. So check your

(39:14):
anchor power bank to make sure it's not recalled. You
do not want to have any sort of issue with those.
All right, Let's go to line number one erin in Missouri. Aaron,
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 10 (39:28):
Hey, Rich, how you doing today?

Speaker 1 (39:30):
I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. How can I help?

Speaker 10 (39:33):
All Right? So I've lost access to my phone. Okay,
I broke the phone and that phone number has my
email account, which is a Gmail account attached to it. Well,
I have all my Crypto dot Com all of my
stock prograge stuff on there, and so I have the
two factor authentication. She's popping up on me and I
don't think I set that up on my Gmail account.

(39:54):
So when I try to log into my Gmail account,
I got my password, I've got my email address. That's
all fine, But then it pops the two factor authentication,
which I don't remember ever setting up.

Speaker 9 (40:04):
Actually, well, yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
They're yeah, they're they're doing that by themselves now because
people are too lazy. So they've just Google has taken
it upon themselves to just say, hey, we're going to
try to authorize you as as many times as we
can because we want to keep your account, your account secure.
What kind of pop up is it? Is it like
a pop up that says, hey, can you check your
other account or your other device that you're logged.

Speaker 10 (40:27):
In on, or check the phone number that I no
longer have access to? And uh, it's so that that
kind of stops.

Speaker 9 (40:34):
Me right there.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Suck. Yeah, okay, that is a problem. Uh, and it's
something that I mean, look, I get it. It's and
this is a this is a big fear of mine
getting locked out of a major account like this because,
as you said, this has got all of your data
in there. So the the thing to know. Okay, so
a couple of things. I'm I'm just trying to go

(40:57):
through the process of of how to get back into
this Google account without having that backup phone number. So
number one, if you ever saved backup codes for your account,
you can use those to log in. It doesn't sound
like you have those, but yeah, this is really tricky.
So number one, there's a couple ways that Google tries

(41:18):
to authenticate you. When you get to that screen and
it says we're going to text you a phone number.
Obviously you can't get access to that number. So there
might be after you wait a little bit, a thing
where it says try other options, so look for that.
It might be small, it might be in smaller writing.
You might also have to try to do this twice
before that comes up, so that's one option. Number two,

(41:39):
you can try signing in from another device that you've
already signed in from, so if you've been on your
computer and do this at a location that you're typically at.
So don't try to sign in to your Google account
from a friend's phone in a different city because Google
is going to flag that. And so I would try
logging in, you know, on your home computer to Google

(42:01):
dot com and seeing if that helps, and doing this
on a computer, see you know, see what options they
give you for logging in. That's another way to do it.
If none of those things work, you can go to
your Google recovery and so Google has a special page
for recovery, which is g dot co slash recover g

(42:21):
dot co slash recover. And you're going to put in
your email and you're going to try to answer as
many questions as you can, so don't skip them. It's
going to ask you a bunch of stuff, and again,
use that same computer and browser and location that you
normally sign in from, whether that's home or work. If
if you if it asks you if your last password,

(42:42):
you can enter your most recent one that you remember.
Even if you know an older password, It will still
remember those and try to help you get into your account.
And it also might ask if you have another email
address on the account or another phone number on account,
so Google can reach you if they want to do this.
So if you try to do that and you get
into your account, that's great. If they can't verify you

(43:03):
right away, Google might say, hey, we're going to take
three to five business days to confirm you. I know
this sounds wild, but this is the way they do
it because you know, Google has a lot writing on
your account. You've got all your emails, you've got all
your photos, you've got everything locked in there. They want
to make sure they're not just giving a random person
access to your account. So that's what I recommend to do,
arin to try that recovery, because that's really your only

(43:26):
choice at this point, because you just don't have another
way to get that two factor authentication code from your
phone that you no longer have access to. This is
probably the number one tip for the rest of you.
If you have access to your accounts right now, for
big accounts that you set up two factor authentication codes for,

(43:46):
there are several ways of doing this. Number one, I
never recommend using a phone number for your two factor authentication.
Why Aaron just gave us the reason. You can lose
access to that phone number. You change phone numbers, your
phone number gets simswapped, it gets hacked, whatever happens, someone
can get access to that phone number. Now they have

(44:07):
access to your two factor authentication code. Or if you
lose access to that phone number, now you factor authentication code.
So I always recommend a two factor authentication app, and
the one I like right now is called Proton Authenticator
because it is free. It is cross platform, which means
it works the same on iPhone on Android. It is

(44:30):
amazing that dimension. It's free. And also you can sign
in to Proton or not, So if you want to
just use it locally, you can, and you can just
use it on your Android. You could just use it
on your iPhone. If you want to sign in with
your Proton account, you can do that. And now your
codes are synced across your devices, which I really like.

(44:51):
Or you can export your codes and use a different
program later on, or you can just download your codes
and back them up yourself to iCloud or drive. So
it really gives you a lot of options into how
you control your backup codes, which I really really like.
So that's the way I like to do that. And
then basically, when you go to log into something like
a Google, it says, hey, give us your two factor

(45:12):
authentication code. You open up that app on your phone.
Every thirty seconds, it's generating a new code, just like
those texts you get, except it's on your phone, You
look at it and you type in that code, and
that's much more secure than getting those SMS messages. Okay,
So that's the number one tip. Number two, go into
your main accounts and get backup codes. These are backup

(45:35):
codes that you typically get when you set up two
factor authentication. But you can go into your account like
a Facebook, like an Instagram, like a Google, like an Apple,
and you can just search let's just search Google backup codes,
and you search that and you'll see the first Google
help support document says sign in with backup codes, and

(45:56):
it tells you how to get them. You go to
your Google account on the left. You click security, you collect,
you click two step verification and backup codes. And what
they're gonna do is they're gonna give you a set
of numbers. You take those numbers and you save them,
print them out, put them in your password manager, whatever
you want. It's a whole bunch of codes. And those

(46:19):
codes will function as a two factor authentication code when
you need to get back into your account, so they're
called recovery codes. You can print them out, put them
in your safe at home. Do this for your big accounts. Please.
That way you do not have to get locked out
of your account, and you have lots of different ways
of doing that. All right, great call, Great question, Aaron

(46:40):
I'm sorry you're locked out. I hope that some of
those recovery methods will work for you. Really appreciate the
call today eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
Coming up, we'll talk Amazon Prime Day, Amazon Prime Big
Deal Days is return. I'll tell you when that's happening,

(47:01):
and how you can get free chicken nuggets for like
ten days, yeah, twenty one days of free chicken nuggets.
I'll tell you that coming up. Please welcome back to
rich on tech rich DeMuro here, Sorry about that hanging
out with you talking technology notes Vegas. I'm like filled
with cigarette smoke in this casino, my gosh eighty eight

(47:23):
rich one o one eighty eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Remind me to stay at a
smoke free casino next time. That's my advice. I usually
stay in the same place every time, changed it up,
and I forgot that not all casinos are smoked free
except for the one I stay at typically, So note
to sell for next time. I did not realize that

(47:46):
the world has not changed in Las Vegas. We got
an email. By the way, I noticed a lot of
you going to the website for the anchor recall information,
and I did not put that up on the show notes.
It's there now episode one. Rich on tech dot tv.
I've got the anchor recall linked up so you can
check to see if yours is affected. So Rich on
tech dot tv Show Notes, episode one forty. Then we

(48:10):
got an email from Dave. He says, hey, Rich will
exact audio copy. This is back to the ripping CDs
for the car. On the show earlier, he said exact
audio copy is a great way way to rip CDs.
It does not add MP three tags. My car plays
songs from a flash drive. It's a twenty twenty four
Grand Cherokee with cover art, album name, and artist names.

(48:31):
It will sort by album or artist name, but the
songs need to be tagged first, so I use EAC
to rip the songs and then use MP three tag
to tag them. The program will actually find what the
album is just by looking at the rip songs. There
you go, MP three tag. We talked about this on
I Feel Like a recent show. MP three tag dot

(48:52):
de E, MP three tag dot d E Amazon Prime,
Amazon Prime T Big Deal Days returns October seventh and eighth.
I don't really know what to talk about when it
comes to Prime Days anymore, except it seems to happen
every other week at this point. But my advice continues

(49:13):
to be the same. If you're looking for something that
you want to purchase on Amazon that's kind of a
big purchase or something you don't need right away, just
put it in your shopping car save it for later.
That way, when October seventh and eighth rolls around, you
can just look and see if the price is dropped
on the things you actually want versus just trying to

(49:33):
find stuff to buy. So again, Amazon Prime Day, October seventh,
October eighth, you do need to be a Prime member.
They've got three levels of Prime membership now Prime for
fifteen bucks a month or one thirty nine a year
Prime for young adults. This is for the eighteen to
twenty four year olds. You know, they're trying to grow
that market there because they just cut off the prime
household sharing. The households used to be able to share with,

(49:56):
you know, like another person's that lives somewhere else, no
matter who they were, but they Amazon cut that off
as of October first, I think, so now young adults
can pay seven dollars and forty nine cents a month
or sixty nine dollars a year. Right now, they're giving
a zero dollar six month trial and then Prime Access.
If you're on any sort of government benefit program, you

(50:17):
can get Prime Access for seven dollars a month. And
then I talked about this chicken nugget deal. So through
grub Hub Plus you can get twenty one days of
free McDonald's chicken nuggets September fifteenth through October fifth. So
you're already you're already a couple days behind. You've already
missed out on a couple of days of nuggets. Man,

(50:38):
I'm really uh, let's just go to let's let Andy
talk here. Let's go to line one Andy in Los Angeles,
and you're on.

Speaker 11 (50:45):
With rich Ty Ridge. Thanks for being here. I think
it should be a pretty simple question, but I have
I want to take photos from my iPad and put
them onto my Microsoft Studio prode To computer, and the
computer will not recognize my iPad. I've tried every kind

(51:06):
of cable that I can and it just won't seem
to recognize it. And Microsoft has not been able to
help me with this. I wonder if you had any
ideas well.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
I mean, look, I think I think the easiest way,
the easiest way to do this is I mean, you
you can troubleshoot all you want to try to figure
out how to see the photos from there. But there's
a great app called local Send l O C A
L S E n D dot org. You install that
on your iPad, you install that on your computer, and
you can send the photos that way really easily and quickly,

(51:39):
just over your wireless network. So it's cross platform, it's free,
it's open source, and it's just a really simple easy
way to send things from one device to another, especially
when you've got people like Apple that don't necessarily play
nice with other devices. Now, there are some other ways
you can do this. There is an iCloud app for

(52:00):
Windows which may help you get these photos from your
iPad onto your Windows PC. I don't use that personally,
so I can't tell you how easy it is. But
that's another option. It's you know, access your photos, your videos,
your mail, your calendar, your files, another important information on
your Windows PC. Now that's uh, those are two options

(52:23):
for you. But I think the local Send is probably
going to be the easiest to do this. Uh, you know,
I gotta. I feel like when you plug your phone
into the Windows computer, it should just like automatically see
it and recognize it and say do you want to
import these things? But maybe that's not the case. So
that's something I'm gonna have to investigate a little bit
more and I'll check it out. I'll plug in my

(52:44):
iPad and see what it says. But it could be
the only thing I can think of is that when
you first plugged in your iPad that you did you
you might have checked don't trust this device. So typically
when you plug in an iPhone or an I pad
into a computer, it asks you to trust this computer,

(53:05):
all right, sorry, trust this DEVI Uh yeah, trust this computer.
So if you don't have that, I'm trying to figure out.
Let's see here. Uh. When you connect your iPhone, your
ipadd or iPod touch to a computer or other device
for the first time, an alert message asks you whether
you trust the computer. Trusted computers can sync with your
device and access your device's photos, videos, contacts, and other content.

(53:26):
These computers remain trusted unless you change the computers which
you trust. So okay, so here's how you change your
trusted computer. So if you if you said no, don't
trust this computer one time, it's always going to remember that.
So you can go to settings, tap general, tap transfer
or reset device tap reset, and then tap reset Location

(53:49):
and Privacy. And now when you connect that computer again,
it's going to you know, it's going to give you
that pop up again. So it's gonna, you know, resetting
your location and privacy is going to switch some other things.
It's gonna kind of clear some other settings. But if
you really want this to work, Andy, I think that's
the way the best chance of getting that to work again.
It sounds to me like this computer just is not trusted,

(54:12):
is not a trusted device for this iPad eighty eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero And coming up, we're gonna talk TVs.
Which ones are best with Caleb Denisin. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight

(54:34):

Speaker 8 (54:39):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
The phone lines are open. We'll get to more news
on your questions in a little bit. But we've got
a great guest joining us. We've got Caleb Denison of
his new YouTube channel, Caleb Rated, which I just got
when I was saying Caleb's name in the intro earlier.
Caleb is a longtime TV reviewer. He just branched out
on his own. So welcome to the show. Oh what

(55:06):
happened to Caleb?

Speaker 8 (55:07):
You guys are muted? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Oh, there you go, Now, there we go.

Speaker 12 (55:12):
Okay, I'm sure you said amazing things just now, rich
I did.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
I just We're actually done with the interview, so thank
you for joining me. Really appreciate it. Now I'm just kidding.
So Caleb, it's Caleb. Tell me about the you went
off on your own recently. Yeah, it was kind of
a mess, but you figured it out and you have
your own YouTube channel.

Speaker 8 (55:32):
Huh yeah.

Speaker 12 (55:34):
Yeah, you know, I wanted to honestly, I wanted to
own my own content and just kind of paved my
own way.

Speaker 8 (55:41):
You know.

Speaker 12 (55:42):
I worked with some amazing folks for a long time,
built something really awesome, a little over one point three
million subscribers on that channel. Not gonna lie, it was
hard to leave that, but I felt like I wanted
to move in some different directions that were kind of
uniquely me and not necessarily well suited to a larger organization.
And so, yeah, I struck out on my own. That

(56:04):
did not go as smoothly as I know.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
But no, it did that.

Speaker 8 (56:07):
No it did not.

Speaker 12 (56:08):
That is putting it lightly. But you know, the past
is the past. We're moving forward. And yes, I have
a new YouTube channel. Got my first TV review coming
out on it Tuesday morning, as a.

Speaker 8 (56:19):
Matter of fact, So you can keep an eye out
for that.

Speaker 12 (56:22):
And if you want to find me on YouTube, you
can just look up a librated, which is a little
bit of a play on my name Caleb and rated.
You can also think of it as a play I'm
calibrated or celebrated if you prefer.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yeah, love it. So you've been reviewing TVs for a
long time. I mentioned earlier that the TV that I
have you mentioned on this show one of the earlier
times you've been on. So what is the latest trend
in TVs right now? What are we seeing that's new?

Speaker 12 (56:51):
Well, okay, so the newest technology is actually a new
backlight technology for the LCD green that we've had for
decades in our home, and that is where we've finally
gotten individual red, green, and blue back lights behind the TV,
and long story short, it makes for a brighter, far

(57:14):
more colorful TV. I mean, colors you've never seen on
a TV before you can now see and it's it's
absolutely amazing to behold. It's very tricky technology to pull off.
It's very much in its infancy, and it's only in
the most expensive TVs. But as with all new tech,
it eventually filters down over the years into less and

(57:36):
less expensive TVs. And I'm really excited with where things
are going. But yeah, you'll hear a lot about you know,
micro RGB or mini RGB, led that kind of thing.
And you know, there's so many acronyms in the TV
world you can easily get get very very confusing. Just
know that on a broader trend, the one that's more

(57:58):
meaningful to most people is that TV's are getting better
and better while also getting less and less expensive.

Speaker 10 (58:06):
You know.

Speaker 12 (58:07):
Parents notwithstanding still unflear you know how that kind of
thing might impact the pricing of the television. But what
I'm looking at right now are price is very similar.

Speaker 8 (58:16):
To last year.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Okay, that's good to hear. What do you think the
best technology is for someone to get? I mean, because
I know oled so it's always like old versus everything
else is OLED's still the best.

Speaker 12 (58:29):
So the OLED technology is the best at a lot
of things, right, it's the best at the black levels.
It just has the most impressive contrast. They've gotten much
much brighter over the past few years. They're just spectacular
to behold. I think anybody who walks into an electronics
store and season OLED TV is immediately drawn to this TV.

Speaker 8 (58:51):
It just stands out.

Speaker 12 (58:53):
The problem is OLED technology is expensive to make. It's
really expensive to make, and so the pricing on those
TVs has not come down a lot.

Speaker 8 (59:04):
Also, there's a limit to the size.

Speaker 12 (59:06):
We're seeing a lot of people warming up to eighty
five inch TVs, sometimes even ninety eight inch TVs. If
you can even believe that you're not going to touch
an o Lead TV over seventy seven inches for less
than five figures, I mean, it's just not doable. So
very Old is very exciting and we love it. It's just

(59:26):
not the most practical choice for folks, either in terms
of cost or rightness. If you watch TV a lot
during the day with sun just flowing through the windows, oh,
LED TVs can start to look a little washed out
and so yes, o led TVs capture your eye and
your imagination at the store, but they're not always the
most practical solution for folks. I think right now, Mini

(59:51):
led TVs, that's tiny penny, little Mini LED backlightes on
an LCDTV are doing just a wonderful amazing things and
again contributing toward the driving down of prices even at
really really large screen sizes, which I think.

Speaker 8 (01:00:05):
Is a win for everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Yeah, so Mini led look for that. So what is
kind of your favorite? Do you have a favorite? Like
Splurge TV right now? Like I mean, is Sony still
the tops? Like, what's the deal with the top of
the line TVs?

Speaker 12 (01:00:19):
Oh my gosh, Well, Sony charges you know in the
in in my little niche, we like to refer to
the Sony tax. Sony does charge a premium for its stuff,
but man, it's just got that polish on it.

Speaker 8 (01:00:32):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 12 (01:00:33):
And So for the eagle eyed among us, Yeah, I
really really like the Sony Brabia nine. I think it's
an outstanding television and I think Sony will have some
surprises for us in the years to come. But that
TV is gonna it's gonna stand the test of time.
I think the Sony Brabia nine is just a really
incredible TV.

Speaker 8 (01:00:52):
I also have to.

Speaker 12 (01:00:53):
Mention that Samsung has this absolute beast of a thing.
It is a one hundred and fifteen inch micro RGB
beacklet TV. It is not affordable, like most people couldn't
even fit it in their homes. But man, I mean,
if you had plenty of money to send in a
gigantic space, that Samsung one hundred and fifteen inch TV

(01:01:17):
will knock your socks off.

Speaker 9 (01:01:20):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Well, okay, let's bring this down to the average person,
you know, the people that can actually afford these things.
So let's talk about like a more like thousand dollars
range and then maybe like a five hundred dollars range.
Because you know, I was talking to my dad. He
went into Costco the other day to buy a TV,
and it's like he's like, I got this TV for
five hundred and fifty dollars. Is it fine? I was like, well,
you know, the refresh rate is a little bit low

(01:01:42):
depending on what they watch, you know, but A right,
you tell me, what do.

Speaker 8 (01:01:45):
You think I mean?

Speaker 12 (01:01:47):
In the thousand dollars neighborhood, you can get an exceptional TV.
At around sixty five inches, you can get an absolutely
exceptional TV. The two brands that are bringing the highest
performance for the dollar right now are TCL and High Sense.

Speaker 8 (01:02:05):
I think those brands.

Speaker 12 (01:02:06):
Are a little bit more familiar to folks now than
they were, say, two years ago, but the quality and
the reliability just keeps getting better and better. And yeah,
I mean there's a TCL you I'm sorry. Yeah, TCL
QM seven K and a High Sense U eight both

(01:02:27):
are living between nine hundred and eleven hundred dollars for
the sixty five inch model. Right you can step down
in a model and get a little bit larger of
a size, or you can step down in a size
and save yourself some money. But right around that sixty
five I like to use the sixty five inch because
it tends to be the most approachable and popular screen

(01:02:50):
size in homes today. So yeah, the TCL and High
Sense models that I just mentioned, the QM seven K
and the U eight both just outstanding TVs.

Speaker 8 (01:03:01):
At the thousand dollars level.

Speaker 12 (01:03:02):
You can also get a really great TV for about
five hundred bucks. When I talk about how excellent those
two TVs are at the thousand dollars level. I'm talking
about folks who are extremely picky who want to just
get their socks knocked off by their TV.

Speaker 8 (01:03:20):
It's that level.

Speaker 12 (01:03:21):
You can get an amazing TV for about five hundred bucks.
But again, I'm going to point to the TCL and
the High Sense brands as offering the best picture quality
for the price.

Speaker 8 (01:03:34):
When you start looking.

Speaker 12 (01:03:35):
At your Samsung and to some degree LG Sony's not
even in the conversation.

Speaker 8 (01:03:40):
Around five hundred.

Speaker 12 (01:03:41):
Dollars, right, You're getting a good quality TV, but the
picture quality won't leap out at you quite as much
as it will with a TCL or a High Sense.
And I really am serious about steering your attention toward
those brands. There are a lot of brands that we
may remember from our past, like Tosh for instance, or Sharp.

(01:04:02):
Those are not the same brands that they used to be,
and the quality of their products isn't quite what it
used to be. They can be fine, but if you
really want to get the most for your money, take
a look at the TCL and High Sense brands. I
think that's the best advice I can give your listeners
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yeah, And like I said, I went with the high Sense.
I think it was the U eight and I love
my TV. It's so great and it's I mean, the
picture is just fantastic. People come over for like sports
games like this looks so great, Like what are you
doing differently? I'm like, I don't know. I just had
this guy on my radio show that recommended it and
I got it, so, I mean, and it works. So
I think I've sold a lot of high sense TVs

(01:04:38):
and it's great. Okay, less than thirty seconds. Who's doing
the best smart TV interface right now?

Speaker 12 (01:04:44):
Well, if you don't count Apple TV, I mean, Apple
TV is my favorite because no ads, right, but it's
an add on, right, you've got to get a box
to do it, the built in stuff. Google TV it's
my favorite right now. I think that it offers the most,
uh with the least intrusions, and it's just a smooth
interface that I think people get comfortable with real quick.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
And they're gonna add Gemini AI too. I saw the
preview of the TCL that's gonna have the Gemini AI.
That's probably gonna come to a lot of TVs. So
AI on your TV. That's probably something to look out for,
all right, Uh, Caleb Dennison, thanks so much for joining
me today. Really appreciate it. Give me your YouTube channel
one more time.

Speaker 8 (01:05:23):
That's calibrated c A L E B R A E
E ED calibrated.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
All right, first review coming out on Monday, but there
are other things to watch right now. You're already killing
it there. Thanks for joining me today. Eight eight eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. More rich on Tech come
your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple

(01:05:49):
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. So much great information
about TVs. It's all on the website rich on dot tv.
This is episode one. You can find show notes with
everything we mentioned here. People always say, Rich I heard
you mentioned this on the show. How do I find it?
It's all on the website. When you go to the website,

(01:06:12):
the section that you want to tap is let's see,
it's called episodes. So there's a couple of things. There's
TV that'll show you my TV segments, newsletter, my newsletter episodes.
You can hit contact. There's a little magnifying icon if
you type in a word there you can find something
that I've mentioned. It's all there, and don't forget. You
can listen to this if you miss it live on
the radio, you can listen to the podcast. So just

(01:06:34):
search Rich on Tech in your favorite audio app and
you'll get all the episodes of the radio show, no
matter when you want to listen. Of course, listening live
on the radio, to me is always the best because
you can see how the show on folds. Let's go
to line one Dale in Ocean Side Dale. You are
on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Hey, Rich, and I hope you're doing well, doing well?

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Thank you?

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Yeah. I have a Galaxy twenty four Ultra, which I
absolutely adore, and for some reason, it won't let me
update from one UI seven to one UI eight. I've
gone in the system settings and down the software update
and clicked it and it's it planks out for a while,
and then it says you your software is up to date,

(01:07:19):
but I don't know how to force it?

Speaker 8 (01:07:21):
Is there?

Speaker 9 (01:07:22):
Do you?

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Are you aware of any methods?

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
There is a method, but one UI eight is not
available yet for that. Oh really, yeah, that's the thing.
So here, okay, this is this is I was actually
going to talk about one UIA on the show today
because I downloaded one UI e almost I believe it
was like months ago, I mean many many months ago
as the beta. So the day they said, oh you

(01:07:44):
can get a beta of this, I downloaded to the
S twenty five Ultra, which is you know, the one
after yours, right, And then of course this week they
came out and they said we're rolling out one uia
to phones. I said, wait, what, I've had this on
my phone for like months, and I forgot that it
was a beta because I've had it on there so long.
So the official rollout for one UI eight started on

(01:08:05):
September fifteenth, beginning with the S twenty five series, and
then it's going to come to the S twenty four,
the Fold six, and the Flip six later this year.
So I'm not sure, Adale, did you get word that
this was supposed to be available for your S twenty
four yet or are you just thinking it would be No.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
I just keep reading every article that I get online
is about one UI eight and AI and Homeline RG
or whatever. It just feels like everybody has it but me.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Oh, I know, I hate that feeling.

Speaker 9 (01:08:34):
Well popping at the bit.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Yes, and I hear you because you don't have the
you don't have all the AI stuff on your phone
right now because of that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
No, But I'm not really a big AI person. I
kind of think AI misses things up a little bit
for like Google Home and things like that, So I
don't really use AI too much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Okay, Well, I mean it does add a lot of
nice features, but a lot of it is AI on
the new one Uia. It also has like kind of
a different, you know, little bit of a polished look
and feel. Do you have circle for circle to search on?

Speaker 10 (01:09:05):
There?

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Is that on your phone yet?

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
I'm sorry the phone link out?

Speaker 9 (01:09:09):
Do I have circle to what circle to search?

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Can you press and hold kind of the bottom of
your phone, like the at the way bottom and like
it'll square yeah, and it'll let you circle like things
on the screen. Okay, So I mean, look, I mean
you're apparently you don't have this available just yet. It
looks like it's just rolling out to the S twenty
five series and then typically they'll roll it out to
the other ones a little bit after that. So I
don't think you're being left out just yet. Dale the

(01:09:35):
way you know in the future, and I guess for
for folks that are listening that may want to get
a Samsung update, Samsung is a little different than the
way Apple updates. So Apple pushes out the update from
Cooper Tino and it goes to all iPhones pretty much
at the same time. The way Samsung devices work is
you may get the update on a rolling method, or

(01:09:56):
you may get it from your carrier, and every carrier
is different when they push that software out, so it's
a little bit of a more staggered rollout than it
is with the iPhone. Now, if you want to force
an update, like if you know there's an update for
your phone and you're just not getting it, you're smashing
that update button, it's just not doing anything. That's me.
You can download the what is it called the smart

(01:10:18):
Switch app, and so Samsung makes this smart switch software
for Windows and Mac and if you plug your phone
into your computer, it pretty much gives you the soft
the latest software update for that phone. Like before, you
can get it over the air like nine times out
of ten. So I haven't done it in a while,
but that's the way I used to force the update
when I knew there was one, before I got it

(01:10:40):
on my phone. The other thing is, and I talked
about this before, on the Samsung devices, you can go
in and get the latest Google updates by going into
your settings, and it's under I believe it's under Security
and Updates. There's a Google Play update, and so you
can go in there and get the Google Play update
and and that usually adds new Google features to your phone.

(01:11:02):
And sometimes these will be done automatically on your phone
and sometimes not. But I'm going to try to attempt
to reach over and get this phone, so bear with
me here. Okay, I'm getting my Samsung phone so I
can check to see exactly where this is because I
hate to tell you stuff on the radio and just
say oh yeah, just go over there and look for that.
And you're like, wait, rich, what So go to settings.
That's a little gear icon. Then scroll down to where

(01:11:26):
it says Security and Privacy, and then you'll see where
it says updates. You tap updates and there should be
a couple of sections here where it will show you
the different updates that you can get, and one of
them is a security update, the other is a software update,
and the other one is a Google Play update. So
do all of those updates on your phone if you
have an Android and you'll get all of the latest features.

(01:11:48):
But again one UI eight is being rolled out. It
was start it started this week. S twenty five series
is going to get it. So if you have a
Samsung S twenty five series, that's the S twenty five,
S twenty plus, S twenty five plus and S twenty
five Ultra, check your software update for this major new
update called one UI eight. It's gonna add a lot

(01:12:11):
of new AI stuff to your phone, and then the
S twenty four gets it after that, and some of
the folderwolves get it after that. Oh some other things
to check once you have this audio eraser that's a
really cool one. Removes wind or traffic noise from your videos,
portrait studio for your pet portraits, and call captions for
real time text during phone calls. Eighty eight rich one

(01:12:33):
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero and we'll talk Windows ten end of life
coming up next. 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. A lot of you
downloading the new iOS twenty six. Yes, Apple skip from

(01:12:57):
eighteen to twenty six. Couple of things to know there.
You don't have to update to iOS twenty six if
you don't want to. I think you should because you know, uh,
I'm I just like the punishment of trying new things
every single day of my life. But that's what I
signed up for. But for you, yeah, it's gonna look
and feel a lot different. The good news is the

(01:13:19):
functionality is pretty much the same, but the visual nature
of iOS twenty six is vastly different. And I posted
this on my Instagram at richon Tech. If you want
to get rid of some of these see through elements
of it, you can go into your settings and let's
see where you go here settings accessibility, display and text size,

(01:13:40):
and you could turn on reduce transparency and that will
make a lot of the stuff less glassy like and
more just the way it used to look. So that's
number one. Then I got an email from Midge just
now saying, since the update on my phone, I don't
like the movement in messages, how can I fix that?
Which is funny because I was just marveling at how
beautiful messages looks when you type now it's it's got

(01:14:00):
all these little movement and motions, but I get it.
Not everyone likes that motion. So you can go into
settings and then you can go into accessibility and then motion,
and there is an option to reduce motion and that
will reduce a lot of the animations and things that
you see when it comes to sending messages and stuff.

(01:14:21):
And by the way, right under that setting under motion
is something called vehicle motion cues. If you get carsick
when you're looking at your screen in your car when
you're moving, turn on vehicle motion cues. I was using
this the other day. I discovered it. It is really good.
It puts all these little dots on your screen that

(01:14:41):
move with the motion of your car, and somehow it
just helps your brain get less I don't know, all
over the place when you're looking at your screen and
so you don't feel as carsick. And believe me, I
was on a really windy road looking at my phone
and it was doing wonders for me. So you want
to if you get car sick looking at your your smartphone,

(01:15:03):
check out the option in iOS under settings accessibility Motion
vehicle motion cues and you can have them turned on automatically,
so whenever you're in your car and you're looking at
your phone. And by the way, this is not when
you're driving. This is when you are a passenger in
your car. Please don't text and drive. Please don't just
drive distracted. It can wait. You can turn on this

(01:15:25):
vehicle motion cues automatically, and just every time you're you know,
in your car, it will just turn on. You'll see
these little dots on your screen that help you, I guess,
stay centered and grounded somehow. It's a really cool feature.
All right, let's go to line three. Julie is in
San Diego. Julie, you're on with Rich, which.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
I need your help. I was just reading your newsletter
about the end of Windows pen or the support. But
I really I'm old Rich, and I'm afraid to click
the button to switch to upgrade to Windows eleven. I'm
afraid for three things. If it'll mess up my mail

(01:16:09):
I use Outlook from Cox via Yahoo, and will it
mess up my bookmark? And will it mess up my
desktop icons?

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Good question? And uh, you know it's going to change
some things. You know, what you're talking about should be fine.
Can I guarantee that everything's gonna be perfect once you
have migrated to Windows eleven. No, I can't guarantee that.
Because things change. There's gonna be little changes, there's gonna
be big changes. There's gonna be visual changes, under the

(01:16:42):
hood changes, so there's gonna be a lot that's different.
But I think at the end of the day, I
don't think it is going to affect what you do
there on a daily basis in a meaningful way. So
you'll still be able to check your mail, You'll still
be able to get your bookmarks because those are what
program are using for your bookmarks. Is it is it
Chrome or is it Edge?

Speaker 8 (01:17:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:17:04):
I use Google Chrome.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Okay, you'll be fine there Google Chrome. Nothing's changing there,
So you'll still be fine there. Your desktop, your icons,
those should not change, you know, are they You know
you have all your programs that you use on there basically.

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
You know, pictures and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
The mail, and you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Know it should all be there. It should It should
all stay there unless something is not supported or anything
like that, like it could you know, could it change
could it change the way they look? Could it change
their locations? Sure it could do that, but it's not
supposed to do that. The main thing that you're going
to notice when you update to Windows eleven is the
start menu and the taskbar are going to be a

(01:17:48):
little bit different. So the start menu and the icons
are now centered. This is how you know computer's running
Windows eleven. If you see the start button and the
icons in the middle of the taskbar, that means that
computer has been upgraded to Windows eleven. If it's on
Windows ten, it's still give me on the left side.
So I'm looking at my computer right now. I've got
the little Windows icon, I've got the search I think
there's probably a lot more AI in the Windows eleven.

(01:18:11):
They just kind of added a lot more of that stuff.
But you know, you can ignore a lot of that stuff,
but the design and look is going to be different.
There's also one thing that I really like is the
window management. So you can snap your windows. If you
kind of drag a window up to the upper middle
section of your screen, you'll see all these little areas
that you can so you can, you know, tile your

(01:18:31):
windows side by side. You can make one on the left,
one on the right. It's a little bit bigger, smaller.
You can do four windows, one in each corner. So
there are some benefits to this. I would say, Julie,
if you don't want to update and you were reading
the newsletter, maybe just follow the directions to extend the
security updates for one more year, and that way you

(01:18:53):
can call me next September and say, Rich now I'm
at the end of the line. I have to upgrade
because Microsoft which is no longer providing security updates for
Windows ten even after the one year extension. So right now,
and thanks for the culture, because I know a lot
of people are wondering about this. But you know Windows
ten support ends on October fourteenth, twenty twenty five. That

(01:19:15):
means you've got less than a month to figure out
what you're going to do with your Windows ten. Now,
it doesn't mean Windows ten is going to stop working.
It means that Windows Microsoft will stop providing security updates
for Windows ten. What does that mean. It means that
your system will be susceptible to hackers, to exploits, to
any sort of security issue that may happen. And you

(01:19:37):
do not want that to happen to you. So you
need to do one of two things. You have to
update your computer to Windows eleven. If it says you
can do that, go ahead, do that, and if you're
fine with change, you're fine with slightly different methods of
doing things and a slightly different look to Windows, go
ahead and do it. It should be fine. If you
don't want to do that, and you want to take

(01:19:58):
one more year to your feet and just think about things,
and you like the way things are and you want
to keep things status quo for the next year. Microsoft
is ending is offering what's called Extended Security Updates ESU
through October of next year, so you can get one
year of security patches, no new features, no bug fixes,

(01:20:19):
just security patches four Windows ten until October of next year.
There's three ways you can do that. You can do
it for free if you back up to one drive.
So if you back up some files and folders and
things to one drive, it'll say, okay, fine, you can
have this for one year. You can redeem a thousand
Microsoft Rewards points. You can check your Rewards points if

(01:20:41):
you just search Microsoft Rewards and click that used to
be called bing Rewards, and you sign in. You'll see
how many rewards points you have. I have liked a
couple thousand just by not doing anything, so you can
definitely hopefully have a thousand of them. You can search
on bing and things like that to earn them for free,
or you can pay thirty dollars one time and you

(01:21:03):
can extend your security updates. So three options, okay, and
you can do up to ten PCs per Microsoft account. Now,
I found this great article from Windows Central. I will
link it up on the show notes, but Windows Central
basically did the step by step enrollment for how to
get these extended updates. Open Settings on your PC, go

(01:21:26):
to Update and Security, and then tap Windows Update. Okay,
I'm gonna do this right now because I like to
do this as I'm talking to you. So I'm going
to Settings on my computer here, okay, and then I'm
gonna tap Update and Security. Okay. Well, my computers does
not want to do this right now for some reason.
All right, yeah, folks, it's that easy. My computer won't

(01:21:48):
even do it. I don't know why it's frozen on
that for some reason. You know, it might be this
hotel WiFi. Who knows. Anyway, So Settings on your PC
update insecurity, Windows Update. You've probably gone to Windows Update
before to check for updates on your system, so check
for updates. You have to be on Windows ten twenty
two h two. That's the big update that they pushed

(01:22:09):
through a couple of months ago. So Windows ten twenty
two h two, that's a big, big update. And then
you should see an end of support notification. So once
you see that, it's a little banner underneath your updates,
you can do the updates or you can do the
end of support notification. Click that. It says in roll now.

(01:22:29):
You click that and you choose your option the one
drive backup I mentioned, the Microsoft Rewards points I mentioned,
or the one time thirty dollars purchase. You follow all
those prompts and you tap done, and you can think
about your computer next year. But in that time you
will have to think about getting a new PC or
upgrading to Windows eleven if your computer supports it. Now,

(01:22:53):
there are some ways to force Windows eleven on your computer,
and uh, pocket lint this this is warning, this is
for advanced users. But pocket Lint featured an app called
fly ub fl yo b E. This can bypass all
the checks that Microsoft does on your computer to run

(01:23:16):
Windows eleven on an unsupported PC, and it's very very
easy to do apparently. But you want to back up
your files and folders before you use this. And this
is a third party installer, so there could be some
risks to doing this, so advanced users only. But the
program is fly oo b E. You can bypass the

(01:23:36):
Windows ten security checks and install Windows eleven on unsupported PCs.
I'll link it up rich on Tech dot tv more
rich on Tech come your way right after this. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology. Did you know you can watch
some of this show on your TV. Yes. We record

(01:23:59):
the first ten minute of this show and put it
in my weekly show. It's called rich on Tech Weekly.
You can watch it through the free KTLA plus app
on your Fire TV, Roku or Apple TV. Just look
for rich on Tech Weekly. It's got the first ten
minutes of this show, plus more in depth versions of
my TV segments. So it's a pretty cool show. We

(01:24:21):
put it together every week and it's just a fun
way to see all the stuff that I do in
one place. All right, let's go to line too. Rita
is in Sunland. Rita, what's going on?

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
Hi? Rich?

Speaker 13 (01:24:35):
Well, first of all, thank you for making the Labyrinth
of Technology a little less scary. You're a tremendous help.
You sure, but I'll tell you what's going on. I
see these ads for less expensive cell phone carriers. I'm
with the Big V and I'm not impressed with their

(01:25:01):
less and stellular service. And they're expensive, needlessly expensive, I think.
But I'm afraid if I switch. You see my cell
phones linked up to my TV, linked up to the Internet,
linked up to.

Speaker 4 (01:25:17):
The Wi Fi.

Speaker 13 (01:25:18):
You know, I'm with all these different companies, you know,
Google TV and then spectrum jets for Internet. And if
I which cell phone carriers? Is that going to scramble everything?

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Uh? It shouldn't. What do you mean when you say
it's connected to all these things? What do you mean
by that? Because the phone is its own thing. You've
got a phone number, that phone number will remain the same.
What do you mean it's connected to all these things
like the Wi Fi like you're using your hot spot.

Speaker 13 (01:25:49):
I guess I don't know. I used to have spectrums
for table but that was so expensive and a friend
of mine said, oh, well, you know you don't need it,
just get spectrum for the Internet, and uh uh, So
that's that's what I have for my Internet, and that's
linked up to the TV. And yet it's all also

(01:26:13):
hooked up to my phone. It seems like it's all connected.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
Well it is, but I think look here at the
bottom line is Rita, how much you paying for the
big V? How much you paying for that.

Speaker 8 (01:26:24):
One?

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Yeah? You? And how many phones do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
One?

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
Okay? And how are you like a content creator power user?
Are you using a lot of hot Spot?

Speaker 8 (01:26:35):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
What do you use your phone for on a daily basis?

Speaker 13 (01:26:40):
To check and see if my friends are still alive?

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
Oh? Wow?

Speaker 13 (01:26:45):
You know, I mean, I'm not a real It's like
I don't even have a website anymore. You know, I'm
not real tech savvy.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
You know, I'm on Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
So you're using your phone? Yes, you're using your phone
to stay connected with friends, make phone calls, check your
social media. You're not sitting there uploading large files, downloading
large files that kind of stuff on a daily basis?
Is that correct?

Speaker 9 (01:27:15):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Are you traveling a lot? Are you going to different
cities all the time?

Speaker 13 (01:27:21):
I go from the kitchen to the living room, to
the backyard and maybe to rout.

Speaker 1 (01:27:28):
Okay, and your signal works well in all those places.

Speaker 13 (01:27:32):
Yes, yes, it does.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
So a couple things. So there. There really is not
a downside of switching to another carrier. Now there is one,
and I will tell you what the downside is, but
there's So you're on Verizon. Verizon owns a carrier called Visible. Okay,
you can sign up for You can sign up for
Visible today, get access to that same exact signal that

(01:27:55):
is coming into your home right now from Verizon, and
you will pay nineteen dollar a month for one year.
You will not notice the difference in your phone. It
will work the same, Your Internet will work the same,
your phone calls will work the same, your text messages
will work the same. The big downside is there are
no stores for Visible. There's no customer service that you

(01:28:17):
can call easily for Visible, so if you needed help,
that would be an issue. And that is I think
the big difference between these Envy and o's and something
like a Verizon. You have a problem, read it with
your Verizon, your phone, your plan, whatever. You can walk
into a store.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
I walked into a store the other day. The line
was like two hours long. I said, never mind, I
walked right out. So I'm not saying it's a perfect situation,
but you know, it's still an option. But with that said,
if you want to try one of these Envy and O's,
and I'd probably recommend Visible for you because you already
have Verizon and you know it works and it's there.
You would have to activate this plan through an app,

(01:28:57):
and it's a little bit tricky. I did it my wife,
it's not you know, it can be tricky, but if
it works, it's great. And by the way, you know,
my wife's line went from paying one hundred dollars for
her line to paying less than you know, forty dollars
for her line, So it can save you a lot
of money. It depends how many headaches you want to
have when you switch, because if you know what you're doing,

(01:29:19):
like me, it's fine. I can sign up for this
one called US Mobile. I can activate a line on
them in about less than ten minutes and have it
up and running. But I do this all the time.
But if you're concerned about this, if you're concerned about
what you're doing, that's why people stay with the traditional
carriers because it's simple, it's easy. You're paying a lot more,

(01:29:40):
you're paying a premium for it, for sure, but you
do get that customer service and you do get that
help when you need it. But if there's one that
I would look into for you, rita check out Visible
by Verizon, see if they might work for you. All right,
coming up, we're going to talk about an app that
helps you disconnect a little bit and get one with
nature right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

(01:30:02):
talking technology. The website rich on Tech dot tv. That's
where you can get more information about anything I mentioned
on the show mentioned earlier. Broadcasting live from Las Vegas.
Looking out my window, it is beautiful. Oh my gosh,
beautiful weather in Las Vegas, like probably the best I've

(01:30:23):
ever experienced. But on the way here, I don't know
what happened, like flash flooding, like the worst rainstorm I've
ever had to drive through in my life. Thankfully my
wife was driving. I actually did it uber style were
we were stuck in so much traffic that I ended
up checking my email in the backseat and she like
didn't mind driving. I was like, oh, this is great.
I feel like I'm in an uber It was awesome. Anyway,

(01:30:44):
we're here, we're having a great time, and we're here
for the iHeart festival, which is always a good time.
So got to meet a lot of great people from
the company and hopefully it translates into better stuff for
this show. All right, let's Evan Rappaport. He's got an
app called nature Me. Evan is formerly with Google's Moonshot. Yeah.

(01:31:10):
I mean, there's just so much to talk about here, Evan,
let's just bring you on and explain it all. Welcome
to the show.

Speaker 9 (01:31:18):
Yeah, really excited to be here today.

Speaker 1 (01:31:20):
So what does it mean Google Moonshot? I know, that's
like all their things that they do where they just
like reach for the stars, right, Like these are like
these big ideas. Can you explain what you did there?

Speaker 9 (01:31:30):
Yeah? I worked at a division called Google X and
then another one called Google Brain, and we work on moonshots,
which are big, crazy ideas that don't seem possible. They
almost seem like science fiction. And so we come up
with these ideas and we try to figure out how
do we make the world a better place using technology?

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Oh wow, was there anything that came to fruition in
your time there?

Speaker 9 (01:31:51):
Yeah, Actually, everything you see in the generative AI space
right now, text image, text to video, all medical assistance.
That was some of the projects that I helped get
started when I was at Google Research and Google Brain,
and things that helped the ocean, things that help detect
endangered species and protect them with bioacoustic models, lots of
fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Oh my gosh, that's so wild. And I'm sure you're
following the nano banana, Like everyone's going wild over this
update that I was showing some family members today because
my sister I was like, we took a bunch of
pictures and I said, here, watch you can erase people
from these pictures. And she had no idea how to
do that. And I was like, watch, you could do
it right in Google Photos. And sure enough, she's like,
oh my gosh, I can't believe it. Like it's like

(01:32:30):
stuff for you know, we take for granted maybe you're
in the tech space, you kind of on the cutting edge,
but you know when you just show regular people this stuff,
it's like I just didn't even know I can do that,
like right for my phone. So let's talk about in Amphibian.
This is your new startup, and you've got a new
app called nature Me, which is helping people reconnect with
nature through eyes, open mindfulness. Explain what you mean by that.

Speaker 9 (01:32:55):
Yeah, you know, I grew up as a kid playing
out in the streams and in the forests and all that.
But I also got a computer when I was five,
and I loved your show because I used to answer
all these kinds of questions for my family as well
when they would call. And so my whole life, I've
been trying to balance being a tech geek but also
being a nature lover. And so when I left Google
last year, I started Amphibian as a company to build

(01:33:18):
products and experiences that bring people back to nature. And
so nature Me is our first app.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Yeah, sorry, keep going. So I okay, so nature Me
and then so explain what the app will help you do.
So I'm looking at the website here Enjoy Nature, Reduce stress.
So how does it help you? I mean, there's obviously
a little bit of irony that you're using an app
to connect with nature, but I'm sure you've thought through
that as well.

Speaker 9 (01:33:42):
We sure have. Yeah. So nature Me is an app
very similar to a lot of mindfulness or meditation apps,
if people are familiar with those, where you turn on
an audio session and you listen to it for ten
or fifteen minutes and it sort of helps you find
peace and calm or whatever you're sort of seeking. The
key difference is with nature me it's about having all
of your senses tune into nature in the world around you,

(01:34:04):
rather than focusing on your breath or your internal scene.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
So this is audio guided like, so do I go
out on a hike and listen to this? Like, tell
me what I would do? I download this app? And
then what do I do?

Speaker 9 (01:34:16):
Right? So you download the app and then the first
thing you would do is you could start with either
or depending on which one you want to do. So
you go into your.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Okay, hold on, we're we're having a little bit of breakup.
I think we've got a couple of people on the
line with you. Maybe one of them could disconnect. I
think it's it's taking up some of the bandwidth here. Okay,
but see maybe that's a little bit better. So we
download the app, and uh, what do you do after that?

Speaker 9 (01:34:44):
You download the app and then you start with you're
sitting or walking whoever you prefer, whatever you got and uh,
and it'll basically help guide you to pay attention to
the nature around you. So it's either a sit spot
or a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
What we call it ah, okay, Now I saw I
see here that you grew up upstate New York. You
caught frogs, crayfish, salamanders, fish. I mean, this is the difference.
My wife and I were talking about this the other day. So,
you know, kids today, they're on there, they're they're basically
the default is on their screen. They are literally when
they're not doing something, they default to their screen. Now,

(01:35:17):
when I was a kid, let's just give Sunday Morning,
Saturday Morning as an example, right, you would watch You'd
get up, you'd beline it to the couch in the
living room, and you would watch the cartoons that are
on Saturday mornings. After about two or three hours whatever
it was, next thing, you know, there was a there
was a time where it would switch from amazing cartoons

(01:35:38):
for kids to the boringest programming you could ever imagine,
geared towards adults, right, like some sort of Sunday Morning
or whatever, you know, news program and you would know
that's your signal to go outside and to stop watching
the screen. Nowadays, I feel like there's less of those
signals for kids because it's just all become unlimited. Is
that what kind of drove you to create.

Speaker 9 (01:35:59):
This it is. You know, I've been in the tech industry,
working in Silicon Valley for a long time, and I
saw the opportunity to use technology to bring more wonder
and more joy into people's lives and for people to
be excited about the world through technology rather than just
excited about the technology. And so we created Nature of

(01:36:19):
Me as a way to help you connect and find
wonder in the world, even if you're not using the app.
And so it just helps you pay attention to the birds,
or if you're sitting on the beach, to really notice
the sounds around you, and you know, whether you're in
your backyard or on vacation. And that's what technology can do, right.
It could inspire us and make our world better rather
than having us become addicted to it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Isn't that so interesting that you know we think about like,
anytime I go outside and just be, you feel better.
I mean you really do, like no matter what you do,
if you're just But as humans, we become so accustomed
to always being on right, like always having to check
our messages, always having to be you know, responding to

(01:37:01):
an email or responding to something that's incoming. Are there
studies that show that just being ousid I always tell
my kids to go touch grass, right, like, just go
get outside and just literally look for worms under rocks.
Are there studies that show that that actually is good
for you still in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 9 (01:37:19):
Yeah, there's tons of scientific research on this, and especially
with children. If you look at the Wilderness Awareness School,
this is our partner for Nature Me. They've been doing
this since nineteen eighty three and they've taught over fifty
thousand people, lots of kids and adults, how to get
out into nature. And the mental health benefits, the wellness benefits,

(01:37:39):
just the joy in your life. They're tremendous and people
could just look up however much science you want, but
you could just feel it for yourself when you walk
outside and take a deep breath or hear a bird
or look at a sunrise. And so you know it's
been proven. And my backgrounds of cognitive science and neuroscience
and yeah, it's very proven.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
You got these two core practices sit spot and wander.
Can you explain?

Speaker 9 (01:38:02):
Yeah, So, sind spot, just like it sounds, you find
a beautiful place. It could be in your backyard, it
could be if you're in an apartment on the porch,
just something where you could see nature, and for ten minutes,
fifteen minutes, you try to go back to that pot
that spot about as often as you wish. And the
practices that nature me will offer are tuning into different senses,
so you know, first maybe you'll have your eyes and

(01:38:22):
then maybe you'll have your ears in a different practice.
Sometimes it'll be about listening to the birds, or paying
attention to the sky or different things. And so what
you start to find is that there's actually wonder and
inspiration and awe in all of these just everyday things
that we might have taken for granted. And so I
really hope that people start to recognize that there's such
amazing things around them all the time, and that if

(01:38:44):
you just put your screens down for a little bit
and pay attention to the world, it's just as exciting.
Do you have kids, By the way, I don't have kids.
I have a lot of friends, so I do.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
Stand as well. So I you know, so I see
what my kids do, and I see it. Here's the
thing that's also a challenge with the kids. Okay, it's
if you have kids and you do things a certain
way with them, you know, you want to do things,
there's all these other people that are doing things completely different.
Like my wife. We always say like, well, his friends
are on the iPad, they're online, and they're all there
like playing this game. It's like there's always going to

(01:39:18):
be someone online playing that game. That's why they designed
the game to be like that, right, Is that kind
of like my understanding?

Speaker 9 (01:39:24):
Yeah, you know, technology is very often designed right now
to keep you addicted to it, and that's how people
make money using technology. And there are also technologies though,
that are about getting you out into the world where
you don't need to be addicted to it in order
to get the benefits. And so that's what we're really
focused on in nature me is how do we create
experiences for you that will enhance your life and bring

(01:39:47):
you closer to people. Because one of the best things
you could do when you've had an experience in nature
is to tell a story about it to someone else.
So at the end of the day, at the dinner
table with your family, you can say, hey, guess what
I did. I set outside for ten minutes and there
was this little bug crawling on the ground and like,
but because I was actually really present with it.

Speaker 14 (01:40:05):
It was so cool, like, think about this little bug
moving along and like I found joy and wondering that,
and you could just see your family's face lighting up
from that. You wouldn't get that with a video game story.

Speaker 1 (01:40:17):
No, I was. I was in the wilderness a couple
of weeks ago with no cell signal for about eight
hours with a group of people. We were doing a
tour and we had to have lunch out there. And
I'm not kidding. It was so weird because typically at
a lunch like that with a bunch of journalists, you know,
all at a table, you know, half of them would
be on their phone, half of them be doing stuff.
We all had to like interact and talk, and we

(01:40:38):
were in the middle of like you know, all these
nature like trees and stuff, and it was just such
a different experience. I sent my first satellite SMS message,
by the way, because there was no there was no
traditional cell phone signal, but it was. It just made
me think the whole time that like, this is an
entire world out there that a lot of people are
just ignoring. Do you think we're gonna have like some
sort of renaissance with humans where we're going to realize

(01:41:01):
that like all this stuff outside that is just right
there and just accessible freely is something that we need
to tap into more.

Speaker 9 (01:41:09):
I think you're exactly right. We're on the cusp of
these changes. You know, Pendulums kind of swing back and forth,
and for the last few hundred years of recent studies
showed we've become sixty percent more disconnected from nature as
a society, which is really scary for many, many reasons.
But I'm sensing and I'm getting a lot of hope
from younger people right now, and also from people like

(01:41:30):
me who are in their forties who are starting to
maybe burn out on their first round of career that
you know, geez, when I go outside, I just feel
more at peace. And I see, like younger people starting
to get these old school devices like Walkman's and you know,
I'm sure you've talked about that on your show, like
teenagers who are wanting to do it, and they're getting
around their school cell phone policy, but they're also starting

(01:41:51):
to find the joy of having a device that doesn't
have a screen and to get outside together. And I
would just really bet on community. I would really bet
on the fact that maybe coming out of COVID people
were more disconnected than they wanted, and now people are
starting to realize that when we come together, especially if
it's outdoors in nature, we're just happier. So let's do
more of that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:10):
All right, well, you can do it. The app is
nature me Dot app. The website rather is nature me
Dot app. The app is called nature me. It's available
for iPhone and Android. Evan Rappaport, thanks so much for
talking about it today. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 9 (01:42:26):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:42:27):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
All right, coming up, we are going to open up
the feedback. These are the emails, the comments, the questions
you sent me all week long. We'll get to that
right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here. Let's get to the feedback in just a moment.
But first, little Samsung news, a little will I should say,
a little CS news. CS quickly approaching in January, always

(01:42:52):
the first couple weeks of January, but Samsung making a
big CEES change for twenty twenty six. Samsung will have
it's they're saying they're gonna have their biggest CEES exhibit
ever in twenty twenty six. But they're moving from the
Las Vegas Convention Center to the Win and Encore hotels.

(01:43:13):
So they're still gonna be an official CS exhibitor, but
in a new location. So they're gonna put their TVs,
their home appliances, and their other products all under one roof.
This larger setting is gonna be designed for demos and experiences.
So this is a big change because typically Samsung has
a hole, they have a big presence on the floor,

(01:43:33):
and then they have a whole bunch of satellite presences
in other places, right like their appliances might be in
one place, their TVs might be another place. So now
they're putting it all in one massive location. So that's
gonna be really interesting, big change for Samsung. I thought
at first they were ditching CS and they were kind
of gonna go unofficial, but no, they're still gonna be
an official exhibitor, just gonna have I guess, a really

(01:43:55):
big exhibit at the hotels. So I got to book
my hot tels for CS, or my hotel, I should say,
because I usually do that in the summer. And we're
past that all right. Now it's time for the feedbag.
Gary writes in regarding the woman who wants to switch
to a cheaper cell phone planned. Verizon Prepaid is an
option I've had pre paid for years. I've always found

(01:44:17):
their customer service, vehicle or chat to be good. I
paid twenty five dollars a month for five gigs of data.
That includes a five dollars auto paid discount as well
as a ten dollars loyalty discount, which kicks in after
nine months. They also offer unlimited plans for more money. Gary,
that is a good option. I guess I'm not sure
if you can go into the store for that for help,
but Visible is definitely cheaper because it's all unlimited for like,

(01:44:38):
I think twenty five dollars is their main They're you know,
they're one plan. Hold on, they have two plans. I
think they have a twenty five and they changed them all. Okay,
twenty nine dollars, nineteen and thirty nine Okay, anyway, still
a pretty good deal, all right. Feedbag Joel writes in
I enjoy listening to your podcast as I deliver my
mail route. Your podcast is enjoyable and your approach is

(01:45:01):
humble and well explained. With the release of iOS twenty
six and Apple Watch OS twenty six, I found a
better and free way to get voice memos transcribed from
my watch. Just use Apple Notes. The note is transcribed,
sync to your phone, and it can even share to
reminders from there. I had handwritten notes with my Apple
pencil on iPad. For me, it works better than the
app you currently recommend. That app is Whisper Memos, Joel.

(01:45:25):
I like your system. I think it works great, and
I love that it's free. I slightly like Whisper Memos
just a little bit more for my purposes, just because
it not only transcribes, but it also emails me that transcription,
so I can deal with it in any way I
want to. I personally don't use Apple Notes because it's
not third party. It's not yet independent third party platform,

(01:45:46):
which I like cross platform products. But that's a great
solution as well. Zal from Brooklyn writes in you were
speaking last week about travel insurance, which got me thinking
what website would you recommend to track or predict international airfares.
The only site I really use for airfare tracking is
Google Flights. No matter what, that's what I'm tracking everything

(01:46:08):
on that, so I'm searching on Hopper is great for
price predictions, and then if you want great deals, going
dot Com is really great. They will. I mean, you
sign up for that, you will find some amazing deals
you got to take advantage of. Claudia writes in rich
we happened to me in Las Vegas when I read
your newsletter about the Zookes car. We're riding in it
right now. It's amazing and they included some pictures. I

(01:46:30):
was going to try to get in that Zeukes before
I leave Las Vegas. That'd be kind of fun. Daniel,
glad you made it through the accident without serious injury.
Thanks for the tip on updating Google play services. I
would have never thought to check that. I've been on
Android for decades. Yes, that tip on updating Google Play
services is really great. A lot of people overlook it,
and as you might expect, I did mention my accident

(01:46:52):
last week on the show. I got lots of lots
of emails. I'll try to get through some of them
right now. Ralph writes in just wishing you a note
for a quickly recovery from your accident. Life is fragile.
I'm appreciating every and appreciating every day is so important.
I enjoy your segments on TV and your newsletters. I've
adopted so many of your suggestions and gain knowledge of

(01:47:13):
the tech world with each show and article. Keep up
the great work and heal quickly. Thank you, Diane. I'm
sorry to hear about your accident and lifting you up
here in my prayers, and I hope you feel better.
I'm grateful you're still with us. Take good care of yourself.
Alan Perry from a tech talk up in Victoria. He
does a similar tech show. Hey, Rich, I'm very sorry
to hear about your crash. Relieved you survived and recovering.

(01:47:34):
We'll send best wishes on our show and added your
picks to our show notes. Eric writes in Rich, your
post on Instagram was really inspiring. You put into words
something that most people never stopped to appreciate. Thanks for
the reminder about resilience and gratitude. We're glad you're still around, Ronald.
I just saw the photo of your car. It's a
blessing you're still here. Please don't think that because you're

(01:47:55):
fine now, there won't be issues later. I've been in
seven rear end accidents. Oh my gosh, over the years,
I am sore for a few days and never had
any medical checkups. I am regretting it now. Oh my gosh,
get those checkups. I know I am, Patty. Thanks so
much you do for us non techies to feel more
comfortable in this filled world. I sing your praises to
anyone who brings up questions about what's out there in

(01:48:16):
the tech world. Thank you, Patty, Thank you for listening.
My name is rich Jamiro. Thanks to everyone who makes
this show possible. I will talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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