IT Meltdown Lessons, Best Streaming Services, and iOS 18 Public Beta

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How a software update brought down thousands of computers, make
that millions of computers worldwide, The return of the iPod
kinda sorta A major retailer stops accepting checks? Are you
still writing them? Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?

(00:21):
I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is
the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about. It's also the place where
I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those
phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one

(00:44):
zero one. Give me a call if you have a
question or comment about technology. Got a hot take on something,
Give me a call. Email also open. Just go to
rich on tech dot tv hit contact. Great guests this
week John Hammond, principal security researcher at Huntress, is going

(01:05):
to join to talk about the major IT outage. We've
got Zach Hall, editor at large at nine to five MAC.
He's going to join to talk about iOS eighteen public beta.
And Jared Newman of Advisorator friend of the show, will
join to talk about his latest cord Cutting Guide. What

(01:27):
a week it was with the global it meltdown all
because of a company named CrowdStrike. Their update caused a
wide spread outage heard across the world. Now, CrowdStrike is
a cyber security company. They released this flawed software update
on July nineteenth. The impact was pretty immediate. The update

(01:51):
affected and estimated eight point five million Windows devices. Now,
that is less than one percent of all Windows machines.
But but the impact was so significant because CrowdStrike has
a lot of heavy hitters as their customers, critical enterprises,
companies big and small.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Who was affected?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Major airlines, hospitals, banks, retailers, emergency services all impacted. Even
Starbucks people had trouble ordering their Ventae triple lattes from
their phones. It was pure chaos. When the caffeine stops flowing,
that's when America has a problem. So my takeaway from

(02:36):
this incident it really highlights the interconnected nature of our
global tech ecosystem, our global tech economy. It used to
be things were not as interconnected, Companies were not as
wide ranging, They didn't span the globe.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
It might have been a local impact.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Now everything it seems has these It just seems like
every incident we have continues to get bigger and more global.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Microsoft talked about the importance of safe deployment of resources
like this and of course disaster recovery for us the
average person. I think the big takeaway here is back
up your system, Back up your system, back up your system.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
CrowdStrike did issue a pretty quick fix, but the problem
is the fix wasn't as simple to deploy as the
original software updates. The original software update went out quickly
and was installed on a lot of these systems. The
fix in many cases required manual repairs by IT staff. Yes,

(03:42):
they are still dealing with this. In many cases, some
of them had to manually bring the computer back to
life from a backup. Otherwise you had to safe boot
the computer, which, if you're doing a lot of remote
access into your systems, a lot of times you weren't
able to rete access in to do the fix that
was necessary. And of course, the incident raises a lot

(04:05):
of questions about software testing processes, like how did this
software update go out that was flawed without someone figuring
that out? Don't they test this stuff before it goes out?
And also, who's liable is it? CrowdStrike are they are
they gonna have to pay up for all these issues.

(04:25):
I mean all these airlines, just the airlines alone, so
many people had delayed flights or canceled flights. The airline's
got to pay out or get those people on a
new flight. Who's liable for all that? CrowdStrike stock fell
eleven percent following the incident. Now things are coming back
up online, but this was not an easy one to

(04:47):
recover from. I got lots of comments on my Facebook,
on my Twitter, on my Instagram, and of course this
is just the high level stuff. We're gonna have our
guest later in this hour, who is an expert over
a million followers.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
On social media on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
He is going to break it down and explain what
went wrong here, what we can learn from this, and
really just kind of break down how this even happened
and what his take is on it. So that will
be later this hour. I just wanted to give you
the high level stuff. But here's some of the responses
I got on my social media. Eric wrote, oh, he
posted a jiff. When you're an IT director and your

(05:27):
company doesn't use CrowdStrike, you're sitting easy because you're like, WHOA, Okay,
Michelle says, it was a fun day today and the
day's not over. Only one co worker is able to
log on. Our IT department is working diligently to fix
a lot of these computers. Crazy Bill says, this morning,
I tried to buy a product from my local farm

(05:48):
supply store. The clerk said their PC based register was
down and not usable at all. He said, without their
business system, he couldn't sell me anything, even with cash. Yeah,
a lot of people were saying, oh, got to carry cash.
Sometimes these systems can't even accept cash because they're so
dependent on these point of sale systems that they may

(06:08):
not know how to accept cash. I know when I
worked at office depot back in the day, we had
those old school you know, those like bills, they those
like little check systems they have at the this you know,
like if you went to like a local diner, says
like check it's like printed with red ink at the
top and it has all the you know, you tear
it off the book like we had that and pens

(06:28):
underneath the registers. So in case the POS system ever
went down, that's point of sale, by the way, we
would we would go to pen and paper. I don't
know if they still do that, but that's what we did.
Lisa says, my daughter works at Starbucks. This morning, she said,
this morning has been chaos. David said, what a day.
More reason why I'm glad my work Mac is my

(06:50):
primary machine. Blue screen free. Yeah, the main thing that
people woke up to is this blue screen of death.
You know that that screen you see on Windows that
and by the way, it was mostly it was all
Windows computers that were affected.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Max, no Linux. But it's a blue screen of.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Death that people saw, that screen that says there's been
a problem with your computer. Let's try to recover from it.
It's a screen nobody wants to see. Scott said, and that,
my friend, is part of the reason one digital currency
is a very bad idea. And to that, I say, wait,
was bitcoin really affected? I don't think so. I think
bitcoin it's like Titanic goes on. What's that song? My

(07:31):
heart will go on? It's like bitcoin. It just I
don't think bitcoin. Bitcoin's like the Internet, right, It's.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Got a lot of redundancy there.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Debbie says, I got stuck in an airplane on the
last leg of a thirty hour trip and the final
flight ended up getting canceled six hundred miles away from home,
ended up renting a car and driving home the next morning.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
That's a real life example of the impact of something
like this on actual people. Scott joked, just sky net's
first strike. Barbara said, we're feeling it in my law firm.
In the OC, John says Kaiser was hit for several hours.
Doug says, Now, just imagine a cash list society and

(08:15):
all it takes is a glitch and millions go without. Yeah,
I mean, I do understand that. And there are places
that don't accept cash, so I see how that could be. Yeah,
I see how that could be concerning if we did
go completely cashless. But a lot of places do and
a lot of people do already. And you know, like yesterday,

(08:36):
I was at Target and I was coming back from
the gym and I need to stop at Target for something.
I didn't have my wallet with me and I only
had my phone with tap to pay, and so I said,
I hope this works, and it did, thankfully. Frank said,
so is CrowdStrike a national slash international security risk? Seems
so h that's an interesting take. Brian says, this is

(09:00):
why backups are important. Imagine if your drive daily image
or drive daily if not weekly. Yeah, that's how a
lot of people did get through. This was an image
of their drives and they just kind of back to
or reloaded the computer from that. And then Kevin cautions,
please clarify why they might need physical access. I think

(09:21):
you should tell people not to trust or allow people
to access your computer. I understand understand scammers already phishing
with this outage.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, that is true.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
I did say in my posts that a lot of
times the IT folks might need physical access to the computers. Now,
I don't mean they need to pop open the hood
and open it up like a car and replace the
spark plugs. But yes, they did need to get hands
on with a lot of these machines because if they're
in that boot loop, which they were, it might have
been tough to actually get access to them from a

(09:50):
remote standpoint and do something. But yeah, that don't That's
the thing. Anytime something like this happens, the scammers are
immediately ready to make sure that they can capitalize on
this issue. And so what's the issue, Oh, did your
computer have the the great crowd strike outage of twenty

(10:12):
twenty four. We can help. Let's protect your computer. Let's
get your computer back up and running. So you do
need to be aware of the fact that these scam
artists do capitalize on anything. And yeah, I'm sure the
scams involving this are already out there.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Definitely an interesting day, that's for sure. Yeah, let's hope
that doesn't happen again. Coming up later in the hour,
we're gonna have John Hammond, an actual security researcher, talk
about the IT outage in detail, explain what his takeaway
is and what we should all take away from it.
Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight

(10:50):
seven four to two four one zero one. You are
listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Four one zero one. Let's go to.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Cameron in Huntington Beach. Cameron, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
Rich, I hope you're having a great Saturday. So I
had a question about.

Speaker 6 (11:21):
The YouTube app on both Android and iPhone, but particularly iPhone.
So I had an iPhone twelve since twenty twenty and
I had the app on there for many years in
paying premium and all of that, and then around twenty
twenty four because this was the year, I got recently
upgraded to an iPhone fifteen because I had credits and

(11:43):
all that.

Speaker 5 (11:43):
But besides that, what I've recently.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
Noticed is that after a couple of YouTube updates, I've
noticed that the app has started to really melt the
phone down. And what I mean by that is is
what happens is when I'm watching videos, maybe like for
two minutes, maybe maybe ten minutes, not even an hour,
the phone starts to really drain down the battery, even
when I'm on Wi Fi. I do have cellular, but

(12:08):
I mostly use it when I'm on Wi Fi sometimes,
and I just it's weird because it's never done that before.
Whenever it was on Wi Fi before, it would not
be at these high temperatures. I know it does this
when you're on sailor because it's using data, but I
was just wondering if it could be an Apple thing.

(12:28):
I don't think so, because I took it to Apple
and they said, you know, they noticed that eighty eight
percent of the battery is taken by YouTube, and they
said that's a little abnormal. And so when I got
the iPhone fifteen, I was thinking maybe it was the
twelve because I've had it for so long. But from
what I read online, it says some people were having

(12:49):
problems with YouTube updates. So I don't know if that's
an app issue or if that's a phone battery.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Well that okay, that's that was your first mistake, cameraon
looking at what people say online, because because I'm not kidding,
you can support whatever you want by looking at comments online.
So yes, if you google YouTube app heating up on iPhone,
of course you're gonna see reports about people saying that
this thing is heating up on the iPhone because guess

(13:16):
what's happening. Everyone else is googling that, and then they
are adding to the conversation. Now, YouTube has millions upon
millions upon millions of people that are using this app
on iPhone. I have not heard of a widespread issue.
I pay for premium on YouTube as well. I watch
videos on YouTube on my phone. I've yet to see
any significant issue whatsoever with YouTube on my phone. So

(13:41):
I'm not saying that you don't have a problem with
this or you're not noticing something now I think you
were right about something. The cellular streaming, of course, is
going to use more battery, it's going to heat up
your phone more. But in general, just the architecture of
apps on the iPhone and the fact that they're updated
so often, typically they do not have a lot of

(14:01):
issues for very long. Now, yes, are there issues, absolutely,
and they happen, and they come and they go. But
I find and this is my general advice to people,
when you're having an issue with an app, basically it's
because of an update. Something in that app is causing
an issue. Now with YouTube, I do not know of
a widespread issue with this app. So here's what I

(14:22):
would say to get what's happening fixed on your phone.
So number one, I would delete the YouTube app, because
on iPhone, when you delete the app, that'll really clear
things out. That'll get it back to the start. Once
you clear out that app, I would make sure you
have all of your software updates completed on the phone.
So do the main software updates, which is like the

(14:43):
iOS updates, and then of course do any of the
updates for the other apps. And then I would restart
your phone. So once you restart your phone, then I
would go in, I would reinstall YouTube, and then I
would see if it's still happening. The other thing I
can think of is that perhaps you have something like
smart downloads turned on on YouTube, or you're downloading stuff
in the background for offline. They've got a new feature

(15:06):
that downloads shorts automatically. That would use more battery, and
that would also be doing things in the background, which
could be kind of slowing things down and using up
more of the battery and causing the phone to heat up.
But once you reinstall everything and use it again, if
it's still happening, I don't really have a good solution.

(15:26):
I would say, you know, just wait for an update
for the app, because you know, again there are many
people using YouTube. I've not heard of a widespread heat
issue with the YouTube app on the iPhone, but if
you are using it a lot, yes, especially in the summer,
it would cause your phone to heat up. The eighty
eight battery percentage is a little concerning. That is a lot,
but it depends on what you're doing on your phone.

(15:47):
If you're using YouTube a lot of the time. Thanks
for the call, camera and appreciate it. Eighty to eight
Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Uh Amazon Prime Day. It's
the hangover right Amazon Prime Day?

Speaker 2 (16:04):
This week?

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Amazon says record breaking sales. Yes, they say that every time.
Let me just give you some of the numbers. Number one,
more items sold than any previous Prime Day. Adobe Analytics
says fourteen point two billion dollars was spent across US
retailers during Prime Day. That includes other retailers as well.
That's up eleven percent year over year. So yes, people
are shopping. Average order size according to Numerator fifty seven

(16:29):
dollars ninety seven cents. Average households spent just about one
hundred and fifty dollars in place two orders. Top selling
items Amazon, fireTV sticks, Premiere Protein shakes, what Bobo?

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Were you ordering stuff? Liquid IV?

Speaker 1 (16:46):
People want to get fit, and they want to get hydrated,
and they want to watch stuff on TV. Back to
school shopping obviously a big growth, a big driver for
all the sales. People shopped at Target, they shopped at
Walmart as well. Discounts were deeper this year. I don't
know about you, but I definitely thought Prime Day was
a success. I found a lot of stuff I needed

(17:07):
was on sale, and to me, that means it was
a success. Eighty to eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up, we're going to talk to a security researcher
about this week's major IT meltdown. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging

(17:27):
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines
in just a moment. But joining me now is John Hammond,
principal security researcher at Huntress. He's going to talk about
this major IT outage we experienced this week.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
John, thanks for joining me.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Hey, they're rich Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
So, uh, let's see, John, you've got one point seven
million subscribers on YouTube as a offering free cybersecurity education
and ethical hacking. So what do you talk about that's
so interesting that people want to follow you because that's
an incredible number.

Speaker 7 (18:11):
Well, goodness, I'm flattered, Thank you so much. Well, it
really runs the gamut on hey, cybersecurity, whether it's looking
at nowwhere trying to see what hackers are up to
in their tradecraft or seeing all that shady stuff on
the dark web, but hey, trying to bring that education
and that awareness to the masses.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
What do you think the average person is up against
the most right now? When it comes to all the
stuff you talk about.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
Oh goodness, well, you know you see all the news
and headlines about this thing ransomware, but often that's hey,
maybe targeting a business or a company organization, but for
the end user, the individual and the person, oftentimes you
see infost dealer malware. Hey, some things that will try to, hey,
grab your passwords, see what sensitive information you might have
saved or cash in your computer, like credit cards or addresses.

(18:55):
All those things certainly make for juicy details they could
then sell or turn into some more lets later on.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
So a question I get, and we'll get to the
CrowdStrike stuff in a second, but the question I get
all the time is the Windows defender on your computer
good enough for it to protect you? Or do you
need something like additional I know it's.

Speaker 7 (19:13):
A hot topic, but I will say I am a big,
big fan of a Windows defender. I know thinks say, oh,
you get what you pay for, it's free, it's everywhere,
But genuinely you know. That means it's got a lot
of telemetry, a lot of hey, insight into what the
average users might be up to, and a better way
to defence with that data pool.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, all right, there you have it.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
So initial thoughts on this crowd strike meltdown what happened here?

Speaker 7 (19:38):
Well, well, I don't know if we need to dig
into a whole long story. I know folks are already
feeling the effects. But around I guess ten pm Pacific
what would have been Thursday nights, there was a post
online on reddits where folks are saying, hey, is anyone
else seeing this blue screen of death outage presumably from
the CrowdStrike agent their software, And then the floodgates kind

(19:58):
of open. See it spread like wow, to fire individuals
chiming in saying yeah, I've got an organization with However,
many thousands of computers, servers and workstations all down, stuck
in a boot loop, and that's gone on to effect
as you know, airlines, banks, schools, really I've seen hospitals
in the mix. It's been quite a mess.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
So what is CrowdStrike supposed to do?

Speaker 1 (20:19):
They do what's called like endpoint security software, right, Like,
can you explain what that means?

Speaker 4 (20:24):
Correct?

Speaker 7 (20:25):
Absolutely, so, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity provider. There, a vendor
that's really trying to work hard to protect you from
malware and hackers.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
And all those threats on the landscape.

Speaker 7 (20:36):
What that means is they have a certain amount of
sensitive access because you want to be able to protect
your computer at all the different levels and layers there.
So they've got what a lot of nerds and geeks
call sort of root access. Working in the kernel is
kind of the topic and word there, but that is
a little bit sensitive, a little bit fragile. You want
to make sure that that's all correct and buttoned up

(20:58):
to the best that it can be. Is if there's
any of these mistakes, any unfortunate misconfigurations, well the machine
can very well crash. As we've seen widespread.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
And what do you make of this? Have we seen
something like this happen before on this scale with an
update like this?

Speaker 7 (21:13):
Short answer is no, I don't think I'm going too
far out in a limb to say, yeah, this mass
outage and seeing this as widespread as it is, I
don't think we've ever seen anything of this scale and severity.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
You know, you've got your run of the mill Windows.

Speaker 7 (21:26):
Updates and maybe patches that put it in maybe an
unstable state, and some computers have their own trouble in
some cases, but nothing quite like this.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
So now, obviously the conspiracy theories have been flying around,
and you know, there's you think about what this could
impact in the future, Like, this was pretty bad. So
what if a company like someone got in at a
company that has all this access to the kernel and
did something maliciously Like this was a mistake. Clearly I

(21:57):
hope it was, But what if there was malicious intent?
Could that potentially happen?

Speaker 4 (22:03):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (22:05):
Well, if I may say, to dispel the myst by
no means this is not a vulnerability, This is not
an exploit, this was not a hack. It is really
just an unfortunate accident and a mistake, as you mentioned.
But I will say, yeah, when we've seen this effect,
it's not too far of a stretch to say, Wow,
is this what a digital war might.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Look like in the future. I don't know.

Speaker 7 (22:29):
I really can't say that with any certainty, but it
is that doomsday or nightmare scenario when yes, all the
technology that we lean on, we have such reliance on,
and we want to keep that secure.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
We are trying to lock all the doors and windows here.

Speaker 7 (22:43):
Well, when that's abused and taking advantage of it's quite
a scary situation.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
So the interesting part to me is how this got out.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
So I assume that they tested this on computers before
it went out, So what do you think went wrong
in that process? I know they're still in investigating with
their internals and all that stuff, and they may know
more than they've let on, but like, how do you
think this got out there when it was messing with computers?

Speaker 7 (23:08):
This is, truthfully, I think the harshest critique, and rightfully
so is well, we have to wonder about that QA
process or the workflow of hey rolling things out?

Speaker 4 (23:18):
Really did it start as a small sample pool? Hey?

Speaker 7 (23:21):
Was it one hundred hosts that went to first and
then grew to a thousand and expanded and more of
that testing QA process? But unfortunately it sounded like everything
really just had this incident occur at the same time.
So I think there are some lessons learned, room for improvement,
and all of.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
Us could take that lesson just as well.

Speaker 7 (23:40):
But as to how it happened, unfortunately, again I mentioned
that sensitive kind of fragile portion layer of the computer. Well,
there might have just been a mistake and a flop
and some of those configuration files what they call channel files.
Not to get too far in the weeds, but it
has made quite a booboo.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
So how are people recovering?

Speaker 5 (23:59):
Like?

Speaker 2 (23:59):
How are it? Folks?

Speaker 5 (24:01):
Like?

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Just I mean, I know that a lot of these
computers have are back up and running, but I am
sure it's still a long process for some organizations. So
is the process to get to recover from this pretty rough?

Speaker 7 (24:14):
Absolutely, And this is the crux of the issue. On Friday,
you can imagine, Hey, a lot of technicians and engineers
running around to each computer individually and really having to
roll out a workaround or some mitigation manually because this
problem left all the computers in kind of an unstable state.
You've seen the blue screen of death, that blue picture

(24:36):
with the sad frownie face. Well, that means the computer
hasn't fully started up, and you won't be able to
roll out any automatic changes or a push a solution
at scale. So unfortunately, and I don't know how long
this might take. Whether it's the weekend, whether it's a
week time will tell but it's one by one manual
efforts and that's why, Hey, all the nerds and geeks

(24:58):
are having a rough week.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Something like this happened with our iPhones or androids or
Mac or Linux computers.

Speaker 7 (25:05):
I I hm, yes, is again the short answer, but
let me add the little disclaimer and an asterisk because
it does depend. It varies us using the technology that's
provided by a vendor or company and the folks maybe
making that hardware and software. There is trust, there is
a certain layer of hey, understanding and hope that that

(25:27):
will be done the right way, but accidents like this
can happen, and it's funny. You normally have the conversations
of our the business owners or system administrators actually using
automatic updates and applying patches as they're released, and normally
you have the conversation is the onus of the responsibility
on them the end user, But in this case it
was truly the provider and that is what made this

(25:50):
quite a disaster.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Okay, so for the average person, we've got to wrap
this up. I know, people get scared to do updates
in general because it changes the way their computer works
or it changes the way their phone works, and you know,
but they do contain software or security updates.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
So what's your advice to people?

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Should they be hesitant to do these updates like the
day they come out?

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Or are we still okay? And this was kind of
a fluke.

Speaker 7 (26:12):
Oh, let me be bold and confident here without a doubt,
you still absolutely should be applying those automatic updates and
getting the hey, new patches as they're released. I think
the best that we can because look, that is going
to improve your security posture and have a better defense.
But we CRIB should do some strategic planning, some thinking

(26:32):
and oh can we get ahead of this if we
were ever prepared for a situation like this, do we
know who to call? Do we have our checklists and
documentation outlined? What's a operating procedure that we can roll with.
That's the best we can do to try to prepare
for what we might not realize we have to prepare for, all.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Right, John, I see why you've got nearly two million
folks following you on YouTube. You explain stuff in a
very clear and easy to understand method. How can folks
follow you online?

Speaker 4 (27:00):
Thank you so much? Hey, you can track me down.
I am on YouTube?

Speaker 7 (27:02):
Just my name John Hammond and you'll track me on
LinkedIn Twitter on Hey I'm out there, don't hesitate, Happy
to be a friend.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
All right, There you have it, Thanks for joining me.
John Hammond, h A M M O N D. Principal
Security researcher at Huntress. Coming up, more of your calls
at Triple A Rich one O one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Plus
it's the end of an era for a technology I'll
tell you which one coming up. Welcome back to rich

(27:31):
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking
technology at Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight
I hope you're having a fantastic day. I know I am.
The website for the show is rich on Tech dot tv.

(27:52):
While you're there, you can sign up for my newsletter.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
It is free.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
You can get it to your inbox basically every Friday
or Saturday. Paid subscribers actually get it a little bit earlier.
Paying is just supporting it. But it is completely free.
So I do that to keep you posted. It's fun.
Today's is all about the global software update or the

(28:17):
glitch and all. But I just it's basically like this show,
but in a newsletter form, so it's kind of fun.
Rich on tech dot TV. Let's go to Dawn in Tucson, Arizona.
Down you're on with Rich oh Rich.

Speaker 8 (28:32):
I have a conundrum. I have an older computer. It's
an Apple computer. It is a Nassbook Pro fifteen inch
of belief from twenty sixteen. I recently received a thumb
drive and there are some data on there that I'd
like to get onto my computer. And I don't know,

(28:55):
I must need some sort of an adapter or dongle
or something because the ports on my computer are of
a mini type size. I don't know if they're USB
three or or what not all that familiar with the
USB stuff.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
So you have your your your flash drive is I'm
guessing your flash drive has like the older style bigger
connector Yeah, okay, so that is that is likely USB A,
and so A is like the big it's kind of
like the USB we all know. It's like that big
kind of USB connector. There's actually a whole bunch. There's

(29:36):
USB A, there's B there's three point zero, there's Mini,
there's micro, there's C, there's b U. Don there will
be a quiz when we're done. Okay, So what you
need is an adapter, and you need a USB. Let's see,
you need a type C to type A adapter. So

(29:56):
if you go on Amazon and let me confirm. Now,
I've I've got a bunch of these at home, because
I am you know, I've got like a whole bunch
of these little phones that they send me to test,
and a lot of them contain this little adapter.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
So let me just make sure that's the right one.

Speaker 8 (30:13):
Could I just send me one and I can be
done with it?

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Absolutely, But I think you'll get it faster on Amazon. Honestly,
it's so easy. So what you want, yep, it's right here. Okay,
So Anchors got one. It is USB C high Speed Data,
USB C two USB three point zero female adapter for
MacBook Pro twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
That'll work. That is ten bucks.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
They also have other ones on there that are there's
one for five ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
But what you need?

Speaker 8 (30:43):
What did you what did you put in the search bar?
Because that was a whole lot of numbers and letters.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
But I didn't get very very easy USB C two
to the word to t o a adapter, and that
will bring it up, okay, and you'll see it's a
little tiny adapter. You should be able to identify the
fact that it looks like it would plug in the

(31:09):
flash drive on one side and USB C on the
other side. Anywhere from six to ten dollars solves all
of your problems. I think you said you had a conundrum.
Your conundrum is solved quite easily. Actually, so thanks for
the call. There in Tucson, Arizona. I've never been, but
one of these days I will, hopefully. I love Soedona.

(31:30):
Which is road drip, Yeah, road drip, I yeah, I'd
saw my list. College town. I think TUCSONA is sor right.
I think they've got a college there. Let's see here.
Do we have time for another call?

Speaker 2 (31:42):
I think so? Why not?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Let's go to Let's go to Chris in Rancho, Cucamonga.
Chris dround with Rich.

Speaker 5 (31:49):
Hey, Rich. I have a Galaxy S twenty one that
I use Wi Fi calling everywhere except at work. When
I get to work, it will not accept a call,
make a call, or accept a text, or make a text.
And everybody else seems to be okay. I asked our
IT department about it, and they said, we don't use

(32:13):
Wi Fi calling, so I don't know what you're talking about,
and they use iPhones as well. I'm wondering, what do
you think I can do to make it work.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Hmm, that's a good question.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well, I don't connect to the Wi Fi at my
work for this reason because A I don't like to
be tracked, and B I don't want to deal with
It's funny that they said we use iPhones. They just
shrugged their shoulders when it's an Android, because it's funny.
At my work, it's the same thing. The androids are
like impossible to connect to the corporate WiFi, and the

(32:44):
iPhones connect really easily. So the only thing I can
think of is they may have this type of communication
blocked at a network level and they may not know it,
like they're whoever their provider is may just block that
sort of track thick because I don't know, maybe it's insecure,
maybe it's just not what they want on their traffic.

(33:05):
Why do you need the Wi Fi calling? Is your
Does your phone not work well in the in the area.

Speaker 5 (33:10):
Yeah, there's a few dead spots in the building. You know,
we're in a four five story building. And then we're
on the fourth floor. A few dead spots, and uh,
I can use it. But the the thing is is
I have to remember every time we come to work
to you know, switch it off of Wi Fi and
you know, because I use Wi Fi at home because

(33:32):
we have terrible sale service at home, you know, so
I use Wi Fi calling there, but occasionally it does
get spotty in.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
The building with the cellular connection.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
You're saying, with the cellular connection, yeah, because I was
gonna say, but on the Samsung there is a routine yeah. Sorry,
there is a routines functionality on the Samsung where you
can actually have your device disconnect from the Wi Fi
at work and you can manually connect and.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
You want it when you want to use that. So
that's one option.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
I don't know what your data plan is like, but
the fact so the only thing I would do is
maybe troubleshoot the connection. Can you make any voiceover IP calls?
Like can you try like a like a Google Voice
call or something like that. You have Google Voice?

Speaker 5 (34:18):
I don't, but I don't have. Like I said, I
don't have a problem with Wi Fi anywhere else except
in the building. They had a problem with the Wi
Fi they upgraded it and then this happened.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Oh okay, well that see. I think that gives me
a little hint here. I think I think it's something
that whoever their service provider is, it may be blocking
this sort of traffic. And that's that's my hunch. And
that's the only thing I could really think of. The
Other thing I would do is maybe talk to some
of your colleagues if they have, you know, an iPhone,

(34:51):
and say, hey, do you use Wi Fi calling? As
it turned on, a lot of people don't even know,
you know, you ask them this stuff and they're like,
I don't know. It's just however it's set up, but
it's it sounds like it's something that's being blocked at
the network level, because there really shouldn't be a reason
why it wouldn't work on that Wi Fi network. The
other thing you can try is I'm trying to think

(35:11):
if you can use like a hotspot or something. Yeah,
I mean, if it's that Wi Fi. The only other
thing I can think of is sometimes in the Wi
Fi settings there are a couple of things where it
uses like a private IP address or something. You may
try to turn off some of that cloaking in the
Wi Fi settings and see if that helps.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
But that's that's an interesting one.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
But I know that these corporate networks, you know, they
block what they want, and it's it's sometimes a mystery
what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed
to do. Eight eight eight rich one o one eight

Speaker 2 (35:43):
More rich on Tech coming up right after this.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
out with you talking technology at triple A rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Well, it's the end of an
era for a couple of different technologies. First off, red box,

(36:06):
red box is shutting down. You know what red boxes
DVD rentals, that little kiosk outside the grocery store or
the Walgreens or the cvs.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
You would rent a DVD.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
And then later Blu Ray it started, I think it
was ninety nine cents and then it got to like
a dollar fifty or something, and it was great because
you could rent like a new movie for pretty cheap,
cheaper than like Blockbuster back in the day.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Wait was Blockbuster around? Let me see these?

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I guess red Box was like no Blockbuster was gone.
So red Box has been around for twenty years. I
guess they were bought by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
So those are those books. Remember everyone was reading them
back in the day. The Chicken Soup for the Soul.
They have one for like everything. It was like Chicken
Soup for the Soul. For cats, You're like, what, I
don't even know cat's red, but I think kats would

(37:01):
probably enjoy Chicken soup. So that company, I guess bought it.
But then they went from chapter eleven to chapter seven bankruptcy,
which is bad. They had a thousand employees. Let's see
they Oh they operated twenty four thousand DVD KIOSK rentals.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Wow, that's wild. Twenty four thousand of those. What are
they going to do with them?

Speaker 5 (37:22):
Now?

Speaker 1 (37:24):
The business has been in decline since twenty twenty, and yeah,
this is just end of an era. So DVDs were
already kind of you know, nobody really used them anymore,
but now that you can't rent them through red Box,
it's even less now. The thing I liked about red
Box is that I know we're all about streaming and
all this stuff, but you know, if you if you

(37:45):
rent a movie online like a you know, a new release,
it's like at least six bucks, And theoretically the red
box would be like a dollar fifty if you could
return it like the next day, so it was still
cheaper than like paying for a movie online. But now
I again I've said this before on the show, I
refuse to pay for a movie online, so I will

(38:07):
only watch what's on my streaming services. So last night
again took us like an hour to find something to watch.
Because I'm not kidding Netflix, I love you, but like
where are the good movies? Where is the stuff you
actually want to watch? I don't know, maybe you know
where it is. I can't find it. And it's all
the problem with Netflix is that everything is like it's

(38:31):
all like no name, Like okay, the actors might have
a name, but they're just making money.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
That's why they're in these things.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
But like the.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Actual movies, you're just like, oh, I didn't know that
this person had a new movie because nobody did, because
it's terrible. They just did it for the paycheck. And
so next thing you know, you're watching this movie that
you would never ever watch in your life unless it
was free because you're subscribed to the service and you
feel bad. No, I want to watch all Every single
movie I want to watch is one that you have
to pay for. Like I'm like, Oh, I want to

(38:59):
watch Civil War, Nope, we got to pay five to
ninety nine four. Oh I want to watch this, Nope,
we got to pay six bucks for that. So there's
a million movies I want to watch. They're just never
on my streaming services. Anyway, I digress another another technology
I guess was I guess technology is displacing this other thing.
But this week Target said no more checks, no more

(39:20):
payper checks. Target stopped accepting paper checks on July fifteenth. Oh,
come on, boom, what was the last time you wrote
a check? Citing extremely low volumes. Forty percent of Americans
have used to check in the past thirty days in
twenty twenty three. I think that's high, down from fifty
percent in twenty twenty. Checks are used mostly for specific

(39:43):
scenarios like rent payments, tax payments, and payments to contractors
or professional services. Older consumers sixty nine plus prefer checks
more than younger generations for bill payments. I get that
my parents still like to write checks. Bobo, you want to.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Chime in January. The last time I wrote a check
was January, So there you go.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
See it's been six months now that you mentioned it. Yeah,
I actively try not to write a check. I will
literally go out of my way to not write a check.
If I have to go to the ATM and grab money,
I will do it to not write a check.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
I'm zelling more.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yes, Zelle is kind of like the new check. But see,
Zell is like the most dangerous to me because the money,
it's like it's gone and in their account instantly and
there's no getting it back.

Speaker 9 (40:27):
But I like that at the same time because I
don't have to budget because the moment is gone.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, and it's already there. I agree with that. I
like that. I use Venmo a lot.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
I was actually against if I was doing this show
three years ago. If you would have heard me on
my podcast before the show, I was a Venmo hater.
I told people actively do not use Venmo because I'll
tell you what I think is shady about Venmo. Okay,
when you have a balance on Venmo, of like, let's
say you have a balance of eighty dollars and you
pay a bill for ninety.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
I know where you're going.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Don't you think that the charge on your car would
be ten dollars because they're like, oh, well, let's use
the eighty dollars you have, plus we'll take the ten
dollars from your card. No, no, they take the full
ninety and leave that eighty in your account. Why do
they do that? Why do you think profit for them?
They're making interest on the money that's floating in these
accounts month after months. So yes, if you let's say

(41:21):
you get a haircut and it's forty bucks and you
pay Venmo, they'll take it out of that eighty because
the balance covers it. But my point is, I think
that's a it's kind of like a it's a decision
that benefits them, not me.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
For me Venmo. The issue was.

Speaker 9 (41:36):
When you had the money in your account and you
wanted to take it to your main account, they charged
you for it, and if they if you didn't want
it to be charged, it took them longer, Yes, and
it was harder to do but to just transfer an
instantly as long as the card is on there, Oh,
we do it right away.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Oh yeah, but if not, like, it's okay, we'll give
it to you.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
In my four or five days.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yeah, and we won't charge you, but you have.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
To wait that time. And people, of course aren't you know,
we're in America. We're impatient, you know, drive through restaurant.
I mean, come on, you get your food in like
ten seconds. So I understand. But they do have to
make money, so I understand that. But you know, and
also some people don't like cause if you like, I
know some people that just pay on their credit card
with Venmo, which they charge you like three percent.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
So don't do that. That's very expensive.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Several major retailers, including Walmart, CVS, Cohle's Home Depot, and
TJ Max apparently still accept personal checks. I like, I said,
I have one, like a couple of checks.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Now.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
This this was a little got a lot of response
on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on tech.
I asked people, do you still write a check? And
of course I didn't know. You know, you know, you
post something on Facebook, you never know if people care.
Not this, oh, people cared hundreds of comments and like
a second and so I'll read a couple. Carolyn says,

(42:53):
I think that this electronic age has overlooked a huge population,
our seniors, they have troubles with site and memory issues,
slight or advanced.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Leave them out.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I think she's referring to the fact that we assume
that everyone cannot write a check, but a lot of
people still do that. Dana asks, your young adult children
have checks. My sons are twenty four and twenty five,
and I know neither has a checkbook, nor would they
know how to write one if required. Yeah, in fact,
they actually came out with a card because the main

(43:24):
thing when I was, you know, a renter, is that
you had to pay your rent by check. There was
no real way to pay rent any other way, and
so I think that's still a very popular way that
people use a check is to pay like rent. But
pretty much everything else you can do now ach like
through your bank account, which, by the way, be very
very selective on who you give access to your bank

(43:46):
account too.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
With all these bills.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
You know, the reason why these companies want you to
switch to your bank account is because they get their
money very easily, right, there's no like buffer between you
and them. It's like they just say, oh, your bill
is eighty dollars and by the way, we just took
it out of your checking account.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh, I even do anything because I give you access
to my account. Greg says, I still use them to
pay people who do work on the house. If you
use a card, they often add a percentage to the bill,
which you can get pricey on home improvements. Oh, Greg, okay,
you set me off. This is my biggest pet peeve
in the world. When I say, oh, I'd like to

(44:24):
use my card and they say, oh, look's an extra
three percent or four percent or whatever. And this happened
to me the other day, and I said, why, why
are you charging me four percent? Three percent? Oh, that's
that's how much they charge us. We're only charging well,
excuse me, you're running the business. That's part of your
costs of running a business. When I wrote my book

(44:47):
one hundred and one hand Tech Tips for the iPhone,
you know how much Amazon took from every single book
I sold about forty percent.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Books sold for every book from almost.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Every well, I mean it was about when you add
everything up, it was the processing fees that all the
stuff you basically get about. You know, you basically just
write forty percent off of the price of that book.
So you sell a book for ten bucks, you're only
making six dollars on it.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, at the most, I mean.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
And by the way, that's just like you know, so
I also sold some of them, like like a signed
copy through like another service and like they would take
a percentage. But my point is to me, I was
happy because I was making money. And the same thing
with your business. If you're like, I'm sorry. If you
run a small business and you and you are accepting
credit cards, you got to pay those fees, Like that's

(45:35):
part of doing business.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Nobody wants to pay fees, but then don't accept credit cards.
You go to these places and you're like, oh, here's
my card, and they look at you like you got
anything else. You're like, why do you accept it? Why
do you accept a card if you don't want to
accept the fees. That is my biggest pet peeve because
I and I, you know, sometimes people want to pay
with their credit card because it gives a little buffer

(45:58):
between you and them, right, you know, maybe they're doing
it for their budget reasons, maybe they're doing it for
they want you know, they don't trust you and they
just want to make sure if they want to return
something or whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
You know, they can do it easily.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
But my my reality is, just please, if you're going
to accept the form of payment, why are you actively
trying to make people not use that form of payment
and the Venmo stuff and all like.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
So I went.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Actually where I get my haircut, and I love them,
so no, no, you know, I'm not being mean to them.
But they switched from like used to be able to
pay them with ZEL to now they put an ATM
in there and they said, no more Zel, So you
have to go to this ATM and it now costs
you three point fifty to use the ATM if you
don't have cash. And so my point is it's like

(46:43):
we're driving into the future in so many ways, but
yet so many small businesses are keeping themselves in the past.
And I say, just I hate to say this, but
just raise your prices by a couple bucks if you
need to, if it's if that's what it costs. And
I know, okay, you know what, I'm not going to
win in this argument no matter what. Anyway, if you
want to chime in on the paper checks thing, Facebook

(47:04):
dot com, slash rich on tech, can we go to break?

Speaker 2 (47:07):
I said enough.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. You know, there's
not a lot that sets me off, but when it does, Yeah,
I go there. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one

(47:29):
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. The website for the show rich on
tech dot tv. If you want to link to anything
I mentioned, just go to rich on tech dot tv
and hit the light bulb at the top of the page.
You can get show notes in real time. This is

(47:51):
show number eighty one. If you can believe it, you're
and a half of this by the way. Uh and
if you want to contact the show, just hey, contact
up at the top and you can send a message
right to me. Let's go to Leslie in La Laguna Beach. Leslie,
you're on with Rich Hello, Leslie?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Are you there?

Speaker 1 (48:15):
I tapped the right one? No, maybe I didn't.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Uh yeah, I think I did, Leslie. Are you there? Nope? Okay,
oh oh there you are.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Hi.

Speaker 10 (48:24):
Hi, Hi, Rich Hello, Hi. I'm having t of logging
onto my banking Bank of America on my phone. I
can do it on my iPad, I can do it
on my computer. I can. I have installed an uninstalled
the app on my phone. I've gone into the website.
I checked my password managers to see if I have

(48:48):
anything old in there. But and I know for sure
what my you know, use their name, the password is.
But it's just not working. It's showing they can't find
my account.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Okay, so every time, okay, that's interesting. So you're you're
on an iPhone or Android.

Speaker 4 (49:07):
iPhone.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Okay, so iPhone you've got you've got your user name,
you've got your password, and every time you try to
log in, Now, is it auto filling from the password
manager when this happens.

Speaker 10 (49:18):
No, I don't save my banking passwords on even a
password manager. So I'm very careful that I know exactly
what it is. I get this. The information you entered
doesn't match our records. You have a few more times
charge remaining.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
And this is just a Bank of America app.

Speaker 10 (49:37):
Just the Bank America app. And in the past I
had no problem with it. In fact, I would use
the phone most of the time, you know, gone, just fine.
I would use the face thing too. That would look
and then one day I decided to use my computer
because I was going to do more stuff and I
couldn't log on there. So I went ahead and changed

(49:57):
my password, thinking, okay, I'll just go along with the thing.
Dre's the password. And now I've been on my computer,
but I can't get it on my phone.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Okay, So what I think, okay, what I think is happening.
I think there is like an extra character something that
that's somehow being entered on the phone that's not being
entered on the desktops. You're able to log into your account,
just not on your phone, just.

Speaker 10 (50:21):
Not on my phone.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah, So if you go to Bankfoamerica dot com, you
type in your user name and password, you get in
no problem.

Speaker 10 (50:31):
If I do that on my computer I do put
on my phone, I can't get in through my app
or my or the website.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Are you running any sort of AD blocker on your
phone or a VPN?

Speaker 10 (50:45):
Only thing I can think of? I mean, I I'm
not playing no of I mean, what can how can
I check that?

Speaker 11 (50:51):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Well, I mean, so what type of network do you
have at home? Like for your WiFi, but your computer's
on the same network at home? Yeah, okay, have you tried, okay,
So I would also try maybe toggling your Wi Fi
off and then logging in on cellular and seeing if
that if it gets the same error. But what I
would do is, you know, it sounds like there's like

(51:14):
I would say, if you're copying and pasting this password.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Is that what you're doing? I know you're typing it? Okay? Yeah,
I mean this.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
It's it's interesting because these kind of these kind of
things happen, and I've seen them happen even with myself
on my phone. But typically there's something running on my
phone that is interfering.

Speaker 10 (51:32):
But I'm thinking and I can't figure out what it
is that's reading. It's got to be some blocker.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Saying are you okay? So can you go into on
Safari on your phone? Can you log into Bank of
America through there? Like if you just go to the website.

Speaker 10 (51:48):
I've tried that.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I tried it, okay, and it won't let you do
it anywhere on your phone.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
No, okay, sounds like you've got some sort of ad
blocker or VPN running on your phone. So v wise,
have you installed a VPN there?

Speaker 10 (52:02):
No, I'm I'm not that savvy okay.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
And no ad blocker either, not that.

Speaker 10 (52:11):
I know of, no, but you know, strangers interesting, I
don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
And then the other question is this just does this
happen everywhere or just on Wi Fi or just on cellular,
because that could be it is.

Speaker 10 (52:23):
Everywhere, because when you said that, that's kind of interesting
because I do use Wi Fi calling it home just
because of where we are, but everywhere it's the same.
So even when I'm just on cellular too.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
And have you asked Bank of America? Have you asked
like their tech support department and what have they said?

Speaker 10 (52:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:40):
And what do they say?

Speaker 10 (52:41):
Yeah, I've asked them and they don't know. I've even
gone to the right store to see if they can
troubleshoot something they can't.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Well, I think you stumped me.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
I think we're gonna we're gonna leave this one to
the wisdom of the crowds and maybe I'll get some
info on this from an email or something like that.
four to two four one zero one. Coming up, We're
gonna talk iOS eighteen public Beta. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. Rich Demiro here, hanging out talking technology. We'll

(53:15):
get back to those phone lines in just a bit.
Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Still got a
lot of news to get through as well. Want to
Welcome to the show. Zach Hall, editor at large at
nine to five MAC. He is here to join us
to talk about iOS eighteen Public Beta. This was released

(53:35):
this week by Apple. You can install it on your iPhone,
but before you do, we should talk about it.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Zach. Welcome to the show. Hey Rich, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
So iOS eighteen public Beta, what does that mean exactly?

Speaker 5 (53:49):
So?

Speaker 12 (53:49):
iOS eighteen is the next big software update for the
iPhone without buying a new iPhone. It's it's when you know,
usually it comes up in the fall, in September, and
you download the new update and maybe things look a
little bit different, but your phone can do some new things.
And this is iOS eighteen public Beta. So the beta
version was announced a few weeks ago, back in the

(54:10):
beginning of June for developers only, and as of the
beginning of this past week, you can download the public
beta without being a developer. And this is more for
early adopters, people who want to test out some of
the new features before they get pushed to out all
the new phones in September. So this is really just
a preview of some of the new things coming to

(54:31):
the iPhone later this fall.

Speaker 4 (54:33):
But for free.

Speaker 12 (54:34):
You can install on your iPhone now if you're willing
to maybe deal with some bugs and try things out
early before they're really polished and ready for everybody to use.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
So Apple has made it much easier in recent years
for the average person to install this the beta. It's
very very simple. So what is the caution here? Like
that you can't just go back if there's a problem, right.

Speaker 12 (54:58):
Right, there's ways like you can back up your old
data and you can kind of you know, use a
computer and do a bunch of heavy lifting. Maybe you
maybe you support to get back to the old version
of things go pretty bad for you, But there is
a risk of data loss. The big thing is is,
you know, you don't want to put this on your
main device if you're worried about losing information or you're

(55:19):
worried about maybe some of your app's not working.

Speaker 4 (55:21):
The right way.

Speaker 12 (55:22):
Because it is a beta, you're not going to be
able to say, you know, to your favorite app that
you rely on to the developer, Hey, this isn't working.

Speaker 4 (55:29):
What's wrong.

Speaker 12 (55:29):
They're going to say, it's a beta version of the
software of the of the iPhone software, so we can't
do anything about it yet. So it really is just
to try out some new features on the phone from Apple,
and you know, at the risk of maybe not getting
to have the same level of stability and everything that.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
You get from just using your phone.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Order narrowly, right, like, basically, if you put this on
your device and you have a problem with your work email,
your IT departments can be like, ah, you're running a beta.
We can't help with that, or pretty much anything that
goes wrong, it's like, well, you're running a beta. That's
kind of like the part that's part of it is
that there's no guarantees with this software because Apple's still
working on it to finalize it.

Speaker 12 (56:07):
That's the big disclaimer, right, even if it you know
it is an issue with your IT work email, the
you know, the disclaimer there is it is a beta,
so they're not even gonna try to resolve it. And
part of that is because it's a beta, it's it's
not finished yet, and Apple pushes out new versions about
every other week. The developer version of IOSA Team Beta

(56:27):
usually has been out for they pushed it out to
developers first developers to try it out, and then the
public beta tends to be what's been out in the
wild for developers for about a week, and then the
public beta that's kind of a less risky version of
you know, the previous software, but it's still unfinished and
you're going to see updates to it every other week

(56:49):
or so when you get closer to September, maybe every
week we'll see a new update to it. So things change,
and even if you have a good version this week
where you're running IOSA Team Beata and you say everything's fine,
things could break in the next couple of weeks. You know,
if they've changed something they try to, you know, optimize
one feature here or there.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
It can affect how your apps work.

Speaker 12 (57:07):
So it really is sort of you know, if you're
an early adopter and you're trying to just you want
to test this stuff out before it's available.

Speaker 4 (57:14):
The developer beta.

Speaker 12 (57:15):
Is for app makers to make sure that their apps
are compatible. But what's happened over the past several years
is because Apple is starting off new features, people want
to people like me, you know, people like you. I'm
sure I want to try these out early and get
their hands on them. So it's also a way for
the public, you know, without being an app maker, to
try it out early at the risk of you're not

(57:36):
going to have the same level of support you know,
from your IT or even from.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Apple for that matter.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
So before we get into some of these features, because
I've been playing with this this this week, and I'm
sure you've been probably since the developer beta, you know,
just to be clear, let's say you install this on
your phone, you need a backup of your iPhone and
if you want to go back, like let's say you
try this out for a day or two and it's like,
oh my gosh, my battery is bad, my apps don't work,
I can't log in on my banking app. The only

(58:02):
way to go back is to erase your phone as
far as I know, and then reinstall the backup from
that erase on that erase iPhone.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Does that sound about right?

Speaker 12 (58:11):
That's that's about right, and a lot of I'd say
that the biggest risk there is that if you do
a backup on a Monday and you decide on Friday,
that the battery life is too big of a hit
for you, or some apps aren't working the way that
you want them to. Information from Monday to Friday. You know,
between you doing that backup and you decide you want
to go back, you might not have that last week
of information. So it just depends on you know, what

(58:33):
information is and how it's stored and everything. But that's
the big thing though. You know, you can do it backup.
You can, there's ways to get back to it. But
it really is just say, I want to try this out,
and I'm willing to have you know, worse battery life
and slower performance at the cost of maybe trying out
some cool new features you know, you know, a month earlier.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
So and with that said, the features are great, they
are cool, they're a lot of fun. I put this
on a secondary device that did not put it on
my primary. But the number one thing is really customization.
There's a lot more options for customization both on the
home screen. You can place your icons anywhere you want.
The control center is totally revamped, which I love because

(59:11):
it's a lot more useful, so you can, you know,
put a lot of different control center I guess shortcuts
there more so than before because you can use third
parties apps as well, and the lock screen you can
customize those two little shortcuts as well. So what has
been kind of like the notable features to U Zach.

Speaker 12 (59:32):
I mean, the home screens something you see every day,
you know, you unlock your iPhone and you go to
your apps. And a few years ago there was this
big trend of kind of like insecure but really hard
to do workarounds of making your home screen look the
way you want it, to change all of your app
icons to be one color, and that's baked into the
phone now that I was eighteen in beta now and

(59:52):
you know about this fall where you can just you know,
long person your home screen, tap and edit and customize
button and then take what color you want your icons
to be and like what shade and you can change
it on the fly. So Apple's taking a lot of
what people have been doing with their devices anyway, and
like finding really incredible workarounds that they've been doing and
just making it part of the system itself, which is wonderful.

(01:00:16):
And even things like if you're used to running your
phone in dark mode or you like to go between
light and dark mode, Apple's doing official icons for their
apps for dark mode for the first time, and you
can make those switch from light to dark like you
do with the rest of the phone. Some really great
stuff there. And you mentioned those lockscreen shortcuts. So from
the iPhone ten and twenty seventeen, apples put the flashlight

(01:00:37):
and the camera on the lock screen on the bottom
right and left corners, and that's been what it is,
those buttons for those two functions. And this past year
with the iPhone fifteen Pro, they added a button, the
Action button, that can be a launcher for the camera
and you could even swipe in from the right side
of the lock screen open the camera. So there's lots

(01:00:58):
of ways to open your camera. Finally said, hey, if
you want to make that button open your favorite app,
you know, whatever you want it to be, you can
do that instead or a third party camera app. So
lots of ways to customize kind of what's already there.
Just make it work the way you wanted to make
it look the way you wanted to and just in
using it from the beginning of June, like you kind
of mentioned, I'm finding that I'm changing it, you know,

(01:01:19):
every couple of weeks, learning especially with Control Center, which
is super customizable. Now, like, what are the ways it's
going to be different? How how does this work now
that I've got control over it? You know, what are
some ways that work better for my use cases? And
that's kind of what I've been finding.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
The interesting note to me is that you know, a
lot of the people that like Android, they like it
because it's customizable. But Apple is slowly but surely made
their system very customizable as well. So I think that's
a big side of this is that, you know, if
people had a problem with like, oh, I can't really
customize this, it's like, no, it's actually pretty good at
this point. One of the things I noticed too is

(01:01:57):
the the locked full You can lock apps down.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
You can also put them in a hidden folder.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
There's a new passwords app, which I think is probably
going to be the most popular passwords app in the
world after like the day one launch.

Speaker 5 (01:02:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
The messaging between iPhone and Android, that's a that's a
big one. Can you talk about that for a moment?
We only have like a less than a minute here,
sure so quickly.

Speaker 12 (01:02:20):
Our CS is this way to communicate between Android phones
that iPhone hasn't supported and on the iPhone, you've got
your blue messages I message where you've got like typing
indicators and read receipts for whenever you send something and
somebody reads it. You's a popular on all chat platforms now.
RCS is kind of an upgrade to the old text
message system where now you get typing indicators and read

(01:02:40):
RECEI things like that just between green messages would agree
on your iPhone and so now for the first time,
you'll be able to text people on Android and they'll
see when you're typing or when you've read it if
their phone and their carrier supports RCS. So that's something
that people are already seeing in the wild, like, oh,
you switched to Android. No not, my iPhone has rcs NOW,
So that's kind of a insider you know, uh set

(01:03:01):
of letters.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
But once you see it in the wild, you kind
of get used to it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
And importantly you'll be able to send videos and photos
full or maybe not full. They haven't said full, but
like high resolution, let's put it that way, so it
won't look like a postage stamp, you know, on either side.

Speaker 12 (01:03:15):
Yeah, which has gone from like two thousand and five
technology to twenty twenty and beyond technology.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
With that, it's good, way better, way better. All right,
There's a lot more in iOS eighteen the public beta.
You can check out nine to five Mac to learn
about it all. Zach Call, thanks so much for joining me.
Thanks having rich all right, eighty eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you why Samsung is
suspending shipments of their new Galaxy Buds Pro. And Apple

(01:03:43):
has a new home pod. I'll tell you what that's
all about. Coming up right here. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here chatting about technology at eighty
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. The website for the
show rich on Tech dot tv. There you can watch
my TV segments to see what I cover.

Speaker 13 (01:04:04):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
You can also sign up for my free newsletter, and
you can follow me on social media as well at
rich on Tech. Apple has introduced a new HomePod Mini.
How exciting. Oh, it's just in a new color Midnight.
The last one I think was I don't know what
what was the last color. I think they was like
going around online like I think it was just black.

(01:04:25):
And now it's called Midnight, but anyway, HomePod Mini and
a new color. HomePod Mini, if you're not familiar, is
a small speaker. This thing is great. It's a powerhouse.
It's only a couple inches tall, but sounds great. Comes
in a bunch of different colors yellow, orange, blue, and white.
It's available now. It's ninety nine bucks. I was giving
these out like candy for holidays a couple of years

(01:04:47):
ago when they came out, because they're just such an
easy gift. If someone has an iPhone, this is like
a no brainer. HomePod Mini now in Midnight. Meanwhile, Samsung
is suspending shipments of its Galaxy Buds three Pro. I've
been using these, got a pair in Paris and they
sound great. They're amazing. I have had zero issues with them.

(01:05:08):
They don't even launch. They don't even launch until July
twenty fourth, but now that's being pushed until August twenty eighth.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Early users reported quality issues, including easily torn eartips.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
I've had no problems with that. I wore them for
a long time, like a week, no problems whatsoever. Amazon
removed the listing from its site. Samsung's conducting an evaluation
to see what's happening here. They apologize to customers. I
don't know who would have these yet because obviously most
people didn't get them yet. But yeah, if you were

(01:05:41):
hoping to get your Galaxy Buds three pro, can't get
them just yet. And my favorite AI assistant is now
available for Android. Yes, Claude. Claude is my preferred AI assistant.
It is now available as an Android app. It was
available as an iOS app a couple of weeks ago,

(01:06:01):
and now they've caught up and Claude is just fantastic
if you're working with anything text based documents, summarizing notes,
all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
It is really good at that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Chat GBT is sort of a jack of all trades,
like a Swiss army knife. Claude is much more focused,
i would say, on language, and it's really good at
thinking and processing and all that stuff. So if you
have an Android, definitely download the Claude Android app. You
can use it for free. Obviously there's paid plans as well,
but bulk of it's free. You can also get it
for iOS.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
Two.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Let's go to Tim and Moore Park. Tim, you're on
with Rich, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 14 (01:06:37):
I'm Tim Callum Carrion, how do I for free print
labels for honey for different ounced jars? And what name
was the program that you use on an old Windows
computer to replace the Windows? And number three? The reason
why I can only call you on a station, the
radio station on a corded phone is because somebody is

(01:06:59):
black my portable house phone because they don't want me
to talk on the radio, probably because I'm running for president.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
Oh my gosh. Well that's interesting. Well, good luck with that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
I think we've got two pretty good candidates.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Well, okay, I take that back.

Speaker 4 (01:07:17):
Don't.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
I am not endorsing any candidate here. I'm saying we
have two We we have two candidates for president. That's
I'll leave it at that. Wow, I don't know how
to break down your questions. Yes, something about different sized
jars of honey, And you need labels. I think I

(01:07:40):
think that you're gonna use something like Canva for that.
Are you printing like nutrition facts labels? I'm guessing Let's
see there is a website. Let's see if they can
do custom labels. Hmm, you might be able to do
something like I mean, look, there's so many websites available nowadays.

(01:08:03):
To print things like a Vista print. There's a website
called online Labels dot com. If you're just trying to
print labels for stuff, you can do that now. If
you're trying to convert, I'm reading the notes here from Kim.
If you're trying to convert stuff, I would say AI
might be your best bet. So if you're trying to
convert things, you know, just like different sized jars, maybe

(01:08:25):
that's the way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
I don't know what to say. Oh, what is happening here?

Speaker 11 (01:08:32):
Bobo?

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
What is that is the moon? What is the phase
of the moon today? This is the most fun I've
had in a long time. I just want to say
thank you. Yeah, me too? What is the moon phase?
And it's got okay? See I knew it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
I knew the moon was weird today because and I'm
not one of these like astrology guys.

Speaker 9 (01:08:50):
You just looked it up, so that makes you an
astrology guy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
No, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
I think the moon can be separated from astrology. I'm
just saying people get weird when the moon is doing
weird things. And right now it's a ninety nine percent
waxing gibbus illumination ninety nine percent. That means it's it's
almost a full moon. Tomorrow's a full moon. See where's
my bell?

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
I knew it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
I knew there was a weird moon because we're getting
some weird stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
I am not I.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
When my mom starts talking astrology, you could see the
eyes rolling into the back of my head.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
People are describing me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
They're like, oh, you're this, You're you're the strong, sensitive type.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
I'm like, what what you're talking about? Here?

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Let's go to James and Los Angeles. James, can you
bring some sanity to the show today? James?

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Are you there?

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
See?

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
This is what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
What? Okay, that's it. We're done. I just turned off
the phone lines.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
We're done. Clear off the lines.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
No more.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Don't even call eighty eight rich one on one eight
eight eight seven four to two four.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
One zero one. But he's running for president, funny. I
haven't heard uh, I haven't heard that candidate. I mean,
you know what, I don't know. I just so, what's
the problem with the airport? I'm sorry at the Samsung.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Ear Apparently the tips the tips had a problem, the
torn ear tips.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
But they're not There's.

Speaker 9 (01:10:17):
Nothing I'm excited for them, like when you showed me
the other day.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
I want to get a pair.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Yeah, I mean obviously now you can't until you until
they ship them again. But no problems, I you know,
maybe this is what Samsung is. What I like about
Samsung is that they try a lot of stuff, you know,
and sometimes they have you know, there's an issue, and
they and they admit when there's a problem. So you
know that was a problem. All right, let me tell

(01:10:42):
you about something real quick before we go to break here.
Tiny pod. This is a device that got some buzz
this week. This is a case that you put your
Apple Watch into and it turns your Apple Watch into
kind of like a tiny iPod. So it's it makes
your Apple Watch kind of a companion for your phone,
but that you can hold in your hand. And the

(01:11:02):
idea is, you know this whole We've talked about this before,
this minimalist movement. People want less distractions. So the idea
is that you can leave your phone at home, but
you've got your Apple Watch inside this little tiny iPod
like device. Remember, you'll need you know, cellular if you
want to get your calls and messaging. But if you
think about it, the apple Watch has pretty much everything
you need.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Eighty bucks shipping this summer. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Apple Watch has an iPod. Everything old is new again.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple A Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Kim has cleared the phone lines. We have what's that

(01:11:47):
that incense that you you spray around the place. Yeah,
we saved the whole studio. So we are ready for
a fresh hour here where we're gonna get real and
we're gonna we're gonna actually have some Oh man, we're
gonna have some fun. Eighty eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(01:12:10):
Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. You
can find me on social media at rich on Tech.
I'll tell you about the new app from Microsoft that's
kind of like their answer to Canva. Google is already
putting details out about the Pixel nine and we've got calls.
Let's go to uh, let's go to where is James

(01:12:34):
in Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
James? You're on with Rich. Oh I'm doing great? How
are you for.

Speaker 11 (01:12:41):
Your information regarding the moon. It's not a full moon.
I'm a nostrophysicist. There's an alignment between Jupiter and seven.
You'll be going on for maybe three days, and it's
very unusual.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Okay, see there you go. I knew, I knew there
was something unusual though. That's okay, so you can confirm that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
What did you say? You are an electra?

Speaker 11 (01:13:03):
What physis public?

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Okay? Very cool sound.

Speaker 11 (01:13:07):
That you can look. You can look at it to
night in the sky right a man, about nine o'clock
you can see the moon lining up with two pilots.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Okay. I love when that happens.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
I actually saw there was one a couple of I
don't know, months ago where it was like I think
it was like three or four planets in a row.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, anyway, how can I help?

Speaker 11 (01:13:29):
I'm doing your website with my photography. I've been doing
photography for twelve years. I have slide shows and I
have date eggs. I mean, besides the copyright protection in Washington, DC,
with all that stuff complicated, it takes a while. What
do you suggest before I post anything on the website
that I want to, you know, tell the public about

(01:13:52):
my photography.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Are you taking pictures of like, is this planetary stuff
or is this just general?

Speaker 11 (01:13:59):
Well it's mixed. I have, That's that's a good question.
I have some planetary stuff which requires like a very
precise equipment to get like, you know, some pictures. So
I'm reluctant to, uh to put them on the you know,
on the web, because they can crop them into a
kind of now you know, you know how it goes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Yeah, I totally understand.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
So, James, my advice is number one, if you're going
to start putting this stuff out there, you know, yes,
there will be people taking it, reusing it, resharing, no
matter what you do. So you have to be prepared
for that reality. And you just have to understand that
that is kind of what happens these days.

Speaker 14 (01:14:36):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
I'm not saying people should not be paid for their work.
Of course you should. And if you're selling these things,
that's kind of a whole nother thing. But if you're
just putting your stuff out there, you want people to
enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
You want them to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
Ninety nine point nine percent of people will come to
your website, they'll see it, They'll see it on social media.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Whatever you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
But there will be some people that will download it,
they'll share it, they'll redo it. AI systems will take
it and regurg it to their own. This is just
the reality we live in. But with that said, I
think that number one you should follow my friend Jefferson Graham.
He does photo walks TV. He is all things photography.

(01:15:13):
So go to photowalks. Let's see what is the website
photowalks dot tv and follow him. He's got a great newsletter.
He does everything with photography, So photo walks dot TV.
Photo walks dot TV. His name's Jefferson Graham. Columns for
the USA Today for a long time now. He travels

(01:15:34):
around just showing people how to take great pictures with
their phones and also some professional equipment. But it's actually
I think all phones nowadays.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
What I would do your your basic thing to do
is just watermark your photos. So you can go to
something like Canva dot com. They give you free watermarking
on your photos, so you can upload a picture and
you can put your watermark on there. You can make
it your logo whatever you want. That's probably the simplest,
easy way that's going to be the best thing you
can do now. I know YouTubers and people that you know,

(01:16:05):
they have hands on with products before everyone else, and
they they put watermarks on their pictures. People still use it,
they still share it. It's gonna happen. But for you,
I think the main thing is just you know, water market.
You can also do it on a website like smug mug.
This is the one that Jefferson recommends. That's where he
puts all of his photos. Now, this is a more

(01:16:27):
professional website, so they have things like watermarking built in.
So if you upload your pictures to that website, it
will water mark them automatically for you. And so you
may want to look for a website that lets you
do that. Otherwise, if you're just looking for like an
iPhone app or an Android app, there are thousands of
them out there. I would just search watermark photos and

(01:16:49):
you can watermark your photos one by one. That's going
to be a little bit more of a manual process,
but it's going to be something that's it's your first
line of defense.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
So thanks for the call, thanks for the clarification. And
I knew something was up today.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
I knew it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
four to two four one zero one. Actually, while I'm
talking about Canva, let me just tell you about Microsoft Designer.
This is Microsoft's answer to Canva. It's an AI powered
creativity tool, so you can use it to generate all

(01:17:28):
kinds of great stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
I've got it on my phone.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
It just came out this week as an iPhone and
Android app, so it's called Microsoft Designer. You can download
it for free. You can use AI to make images, stickers,
social media posts, wallpapers for your phone, avatars that's kind
of a fun one, and coloring book pages. You can
also do a couple of simple things like remove the

(01:17:50):
background from a picture. You can blur the background on
a picture. You can start with a blank design. You
can describe what you want and it will help you
make what you want using AI. So again it is
called Microsoft Designer, and it's pretty much Microsoft's answer to Canva.
I love Canva, but this is just another alternative. It's

(01:18:11):
not as full featured as Canva. I pay the fifteen
bucks a month for Canva.

Speaker 5 (01:18:15):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Even if I use it once a month to create something,
I feel like it's worth it because just having that
tool at my disposal is incredible. By the way, the
Microsoft Designer gives you fifteen free uses per day. You
can pay for more, so download it iOS Android Microsoft Designer. Okay,
now let's go to Debra. Are you still there in Carson?

(01:18:36):
I am all right here, welcome to the show. What
can I help you with?

Speaker 5 (01:18:40):
Okay?

Speaker 15 (01:18:40):
I currently have a bundle package for my home phone
that's part of my you know, goes with my internet
and cable.

Speaker 5 (01:18:52):
And I want to.

Speaker 15 (01:18:55):
Disconnect using the bundle package for my home phone and
go with another device. And I saw something the company Oma. Yes,
oh om A, And I'm I'm trying to understand how

(01:19:16):
that works and how reliable you might think it might be.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
Yeah, and why do why do you want to separate
from your cable company because you're going to get the
best deal going through them.

Speaker 15 (01:19:26):
Actually, for my for my through my cable company, they're
charging me forty dollars a month for my home phone.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
Oh dump them? Yeah, this is this is much fun.

Speaker 15 (01:19:37):
I kind of dumped the whole lot. Okay, I'm kind
of taking it in bits and pieces.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Yeah, okay, for sure. So if it's forty bucks a
month and you could still keep your high speed Internet.
And that's really all you need to get something like UMA.
UMA's been around forever. It's it's reliable, it works. You
pay one time for the device, and the device will
connect to your internet, your high speed internet. They have

(01:20:04):
two versions. One is wired, so you plug it in
with an Ethernet cable to your modem. The other one
is Wi Fi, which you would just connect like any
other Wi Fi device, and then you would plug a
phone into the UMA, like an old school phone, and
now you can use that phone just like you would
dial a phone number, call someone, they can call you.
The only thing is the service is free monthly, like

(01:20:27):
you pay one time for the actual phone device. Yeah,
so the device is anywhere between sixty and ninety, you know,
sixty one hundred dollars. But then after that the service
every month is free. So you do have to pay
taxes though, that's the main thing to know. So, but otherwise, yeah,

(01:20:49):
and then now do I have to.

Speaker 15 (01:20:53):
I don't have to use a special phone with their device.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
You can just buy a phone at Walmart anywhere, best
buy it just you know, this standard phone will plug
into this that has like a standard phone jack on it.

Speaker 15 (01:21:06):
Uh, huh. And what about a wireless phone hands.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Yeah, absolutely, yea anything anything, any phone that you could
plug into like an old school I feel like you
remember the days when we used to have like a
phone jack in the house, right, Like any phone, any
phone that you can plug into there, you'll be able
to plug into the back of the UMA uses that
same technology. So the only difference is back in the
day there would be a copper cable that went from
your house to the phone company. Nowadays it's all being

(01:21:34):
converted into ones and zeros. It's all digital, and it's
it's arriving over the internet. It's it's traveling over the internet.
That's basically the only issue. So yeah, UMA's been around forever.
I had it in my house for a long time
and it works as advertised, and it's a good thing
to a good.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
Thing to have.

Speaker 15 (01:21:53):
Okay, okay, all right, that steals the deal for me.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
All right, Thank you, rich Debor.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
You get the gold star today for for actually having
a question that we can answer and your succinct and
you are fantastic.

Speaker 15 (01:22:06):
So I'm okay, I'm bless you with pride.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Thank you all right, take care bye eighty to eight.
Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight
rich one O one. Email also an option. Just go

(01:22:30):
to rich on Tech dot tv. Get a lot of
emails there, hit contact you can send them in. Randolph
from Florida writes in love your show and how responsive
you are?

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Articles for help.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
I'm going on my first cruise and reading article articles
has confused me about how to handle Internet. They say
to turn on airplane mode whenever on the ship. But
if I buy the AT and T Cruise Internet Package
add on, do I still need to do that? Or
does phone Internet add on make airplane mode unnecessary? So
if you're buying from AT and T, which is like

(01:23:06):
available through your cruise ship, you would use your phone
as you typically would, but there's going to be data limits.
So if you look up what the plans are, they've
got a cup love them. You've got AT and T
Cruise Plus that gives you one gigabyte of data which
you're going to burn through in about two seconds, or
AT and T Cruise Basic even worse. You get a

(01:23:27):
one hundred megabytes. After that you're going to be charged
overage fees of ten dollars per one hundred megabytes, which
adds up quickly. So personally, Randolph, I would just turn
your phone off just enjoy the cruise Internet on cruise ships.
I have never been on a cruise, so I need to.
I probably need to go on a cruise to see

(01:23:47):
what the deal is with this, because I get so
many questions about it, and I really just I've never
been on a cruise. I was actually invited on one
this week and I said no. I should have said yes,
because I would I would understand this more. And it
turns out, what Bobo, you like the cruises? Yeah, I
just went on a cruise in May.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
And did you connect to the internet. No, yes, the
ship's internet and just to pay for that, yeah, you do.

Speaker 9 (01:24:14):
You do pay for the ship's internet, and everything on
your phone is Wi Fi, so you're just connected to it, okay.
And then if you get an international plan, when you
dock and where you go, you're on your international plan,
so it doesn't affect anything, right, Okay, But the cruise
ship had its own The cruise ship does have its
own Wi Fi you just have to pay for it's
a little maybe about things like twenty bucks a day

(01:24:35):
or yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
But if you're on a cruise for like a week
or something like that, you know it's part of you know,
it's part of traveling. It's like when you're on the plane.
But to be honest, even when I'm on the airplane, like,
unless I have a reason to connect to the Internet,
I usually don't. Like my last flight from Paris to
lax I did not connect. I specifically said I'm not
connecting to the internet. It was expensive and I just
didn't want to pay for it, and why not. Let's

(01:25:00):
see here. Joanne, a travel writer and photographer, writes, and
I've been a follower of years, for years, I appreciate
all you do for your listeners. As a travel writer
and photographer, having an Instagram account is key to my outreach.
You can imagine how devastated I was after waking up
yesterday's see I had been locked out of my site.
To make matters worse, the hacker cloned my site and
my original site is nowhere to be found. It contained

(01:25:22):
nearly a thousand original photos, which I stupidly thought were
safe and will be a nightmare to restore. I immediately
contacted what I thought was Instagram help, and I got
a message back asking for a fee to attach more
securities to my account. How is it possible that Instagram
can send me such an obvious new hack even though
I went through their reporting process. I'm devastated, beyond belief.
My original Instagram is gone without a trace. Uh yeah, Joanne,

(01:25:47):
I hear this all the time. And the problem is
there's two ways that people hacked. Number One, they're not
really hacking in they are, but they aren't. So when
people say their Facebook was hacked or their Instagram was hacked, tip,
people are being tricked into sharing their password and they
don't have two factor authentication enabled. So if you have

(01:26:08):
two factor authentication enabled, which I'm guessing you didn't on
this account, that is what's going to protect you from
even if you gave up your password by accident. Like
what happens is you get a notification that says, hey,
there's something wrong with your Facebook account, there's something wrong
with your Instagram account, and you go what, no, no, no,
what do you mean? And you click that URL you

(01:26:29):
log in without thinking and that URL is actually phony,
and so immediately what they do is they take your
information that you just gave them and they run with
it and they take over your account and you're never
going to get it back. So if you have two
factor authentication enabled, the trick would be that as soon
as you log into that account number one, you know,

(01:26:50):
you'd realize that. But then when they try to log
into your account, they're gonna get that message that says
to get that two factor code texted to them. Now
you're probably going to get that texted you and you'd say,
wait a second, I didn't what And so that would
keep them from getting in, but also it would be
a clue to you that something went wrong. So please
have two factor authentication enabled on any account that is

(01:27:14):
vital to you. And Facebook dot com slash hacked or
Instagram dot com slash hacked is the only way to
try to get your account back. And I've done many
stories with folks. It takes a very long time. It
is a long process.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
It's not easy.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
It takes a lot of going through hoops, but you
stay on it and you might get your account back.
It just could take a long time. Sorry that happened
to you. Let's say so many questions that we get.
Marcia writes in I have a Samsung Galaxy S twenty
one ultra cell phone. What would be the best luggage
tracking tags? My husband and I do a lot of
international traveling for pleasure. I was looking at the Samsung

(01:27:53):
tags and the tile. I'm confused by all of them.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
What is the range?

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
How many months do they last? Also, what's a good
tag for my dog? If you have a Samsung phone,
it depends with Android. You can go two ways. Google
has their own called find my Device. You can go
with a tag that works with that and that will
work with any Android phone. Or if you want to
go just Samsung specific, they have their own tags called
the smart tag too. That might be a better bet

(01:28:20):
because you have a Samsung phone, but it only uses
other Samsung phones to find them. I'd say the Android
ones are probably better, but those tags are more limited
and they work anywhere there's phones. All right, Coming up,
We're going to talk to Jared Newman about streaming services.
out with you talking technology. The website for the show

(01:28:43):
rich on Tech dot TV. What a show it's been today.
Jared Newman writes a great newsletter called Advisorator, and recently
he came out with an entire guide on cord cutting.
Jared friend of the show, So welcome back.

Speaker 3 (01:29:01):
Hey Rich, thanks for having me on again.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, always enjoy getting your newsletter. I think you're one
of the first guests on this show. This is your
cord cutterweekly dot com newsletter. So one of the cool
things you do is you have an entire list of,
like all the streaming deals that you keep track of.
So that's one cool aspect. But tell me about this
complete guide to chord cutting. What was the reason why

(01:29:27):
you wrote this.

Speaker 13 (01:29:28):
It's just something I've wanted to do for a really
long time, basically assembling all this knowledge that I've put together.
I mean, I've been writing a weekly column for tech
Hive about We're Cutting for almost a decade now, so
I helped a lot of people get rid of cable,
get read of satellite TV, save money on streaming, and

(01:29:50):
I just kind of wanted to put together like a
big collection of things on like where to start answering
all the common questions that I've gotten over the years.
Just walking through every step of the process of like
you're starting at square one. You know you need to
get rid of Spectrum TV or Comcast or whatever it is.
And you know where do you go from just that

(01:30:12):
wanting to do it to actually doing it?

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
So I put together a.

Speaker 13 (01:30:16):
Set of online guides and then I made a PDF
version because there was a lot of people that wanted
that document and that I launched that maybe a month
or a month and a half ago, and it's been
a great, great response.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
Really glad that I finally put that all together.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
So I guess to start, the number one question is
should you cut the cord? I mean, it used to
be it was a lot cheaper to cut the cord.
Now that has changed depending on what you subscribe to.
Do you still think it's a better way to go?

Speaker 3 (01:30:43):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 13 (01:30:44):
I mean I think one thing that often gets lost
sight of is cable got more expensive too, right, and
satellite got more expensive.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
Every time there's a price site for Netflix or what
have you.

Speaker 13 (01:30:54):
There's a lot of grousing about that, obviously, but you
look at your cable bill and those are going up
by the same or more on a yearly basis. And
that's why a lot of people are still looking at
this and figuring that they have to do it. And yeah,
there's a lot of different ways to.

Speaker 3 (01:31:08):
Cut the cord. In some ways, it's easier now because you.

Speaker 13 (01:31:11):
Can get a lot of the stuff that you couldn't
get at all when I dropped cable in two thousand
and eight, and you know, it was kind of like
if you wanted to watch something on HBO, you were
just out of luck. And so now you can just
subscribe to Max by itself and get that content.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
So, yeah, there's talk to them. I talk a lot
in the guide about is just sort of this path.

Speaker 13 (01:31:33):
You go down of do you subscribe to one of
these big TV packages that's kind of like cable or
do you kind of go your own way with things
like Netflix and Max and Hulu.

Speaker 11 (01:31:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
I remember when I finally convinced my wife to cut
the cord. This was a couple of years ago. It
was kind of like a big deal in our house,
Like she was very concerned and with some reasoning. You know,
it was kind of validated over the years because, yeah,
sometimes it's tricky to figure out like where's this streaming?
How do we watch this game? Like I remember watching
like specifically like award shows. You know, she wanted to

(01:32:05):
watch like a certain award show. I'm like, I don't
really have a good way of doing that, because you know,
we have all the Netflix and stuff, but we didn't
have at that time, like a good you know, you
just need like over the air or like maybe something
was on like E back in the day, you know,
like I remember that Channel E. You know. It's like
I was like, I don't really have a way of
accessing that because there was no service to get it on.

(01:32:28):
But now that's all changed because so many people are
getting cable streaming packages, like on their streaming service, which
is kind of like the same price.

Speaker 13 (01:32:37):
So my parents cut the cord. I think it was
maybe like a year ago. I'd been trying to get
them to do it for forever. You know, they had
Verizon FiOS on Maryland, and you know I got them
on YouTube TV, which is seventy three dollars a month.
It's not super cheap, but compared to what they were
getting with Verizon, you know, I think it would end

(01:32:59):
up saying like hundred dollars a months when you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
Take out all the boxes and DVR and all that stuff.

Speaker 13 (01:33:05):
And of course once they did it, they were like, man,
we really should have done this years ago, and they're
very happy.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
So I think, and I think what I always tell
people is that it's really about the flexibility that the
cord cutting gives you. You know, if you want to pause,
if you know, budgets tight whatever, or maybe you just
want to watch free stuff on like what's the one
to be I think it's called it's like the you know,
they have like a lot of Pluto. You know, there's
like so many like free ad supported services. But the

(01:33:33):
number one thing I always tell people is you have
to figure out what do you want to watch? Like
is there a particular sports team? Is there a particular channel?
Like for some people it's like I just want to
watch Bravo. It's like, okay, well let's find the streaming
service that's the cheapest that offers that channel. Is there
is there ways of doing that?

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
It depends on the content.

Speaker 13 (01:33:51):
So, like like I was kind of saying before, I
always start from the perspective of like, are you just
wanting to drop in these very specific cable channels, in
which case you're going to need something like YouTube TV
or Sling TV. You know, live TV streaming services what
I kind of kind of call them, but you can.
It's like, all right, well am I willing to be?

(01:34:11):
Think of it on the spectrum of like how flexible
am I willing to be? Because I want to save money?
Because if you are more flexible, then you go down
that path like you said of oh, well, you know,
if I look at Peacock, it turns out they have
a lot of Bravo content. I don't think they offer
like a direct one to one equivalent of like the
Bravo live stream, but they have the same shows. So

(01:34:31):
are you willing to have that versus like I want
a DVR and I want this like very specific DVR
concept of recording shows. You know, the more rigid you are,
maybe maybe the more you end up having to pay
or maybe it just doesn't end up working out for you.
But if you're very flexible, you can save a ton
of money.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
So what is your guidance? What did you learn in
the in the creating of this guide?

Speaker 13 (01:34:56):
Well, you know, one thing I've learned, maybe not in
the creation this guide, but just like over the years,
Like the number one question that I get is like
I want DVR, So it really like that is like
a big thing I put in the guy's like, yes,
you can have DVR if you sign up for one

(01:35:17):
of these live TV streaming services. They all include DVR.
I do like to there's kind of these other workarounds
you can go down where you can record from services
like Netflix or skip commercials and services like Netflix if
you use the right tools. They're kind of hacky, nerdy workarounds,
but I like to highlight those two for people who
have a little bit more technical wherewithal and maybe want

(01:35:39):
to have a little bit more control over that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
So that's the number one question, the DVR. What's number two?
Is sports always kind of like the big driver of
all of this, Not.

Speaker 3 (01:35:51):
Necessarily, I mean, I guess I would say like the
number two.

Speaker 13 (01:35:55):
It's just kind of that, like you said, the catch
all of like I want X, Y or Z specific program,
specific show. Sometimes it is like I want to watch
this specific team, And of course the answer is always
going to vary depending on where you are and what
show or channel it is, but usually there's a way.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
This is like the most thorough guide I've ever seen
in my life on streaming, Like I'm reading through some
of these things like you know, you you go into
like how to watch CBS, how to watch ABC, how
to watch NBC, how to watch Fox, how to watch PBS,
how to watch your local news, how to watch national
and international news. Also you've got a great uh you

(01:36:36):
linked up to the streamable which has like a matchmaker.
That's a that's a pretty useful tool as well. Can
you tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (01:36:43):
Yeah, there's a few tools like that.

Speaker 13 (01:36:46):
I think I'll linked to at least two or three
of them, where you basically you plug in the channels
that you want and they will tell you the live
TV streaming services that match.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
So if you are like, you know, I want to
watch ABC, CNN.

Speaker 13 (01:37:00):
And PBS, okay, you put those in and it will
tell you which services have those those particular channels. I
think I may have linked to a service called my
Bundle dot tv, which is a little a little more
interesting because they do have that kind of thing. But
then they also will recommend some of those standalone services

(01:37:20):
that may be cheaper. So if you say, you know,
I want to watch NBC, they might say, well, have
you considered just subscribing to peacock where some of these
other services don't They don't recommend those smaller, uh cheaper
streaming services like that. So yeah, I mean it's just
a it's just a matter of kind of helping people
figure out exactly what they need. Like you said, there's

(01:37:42):
so many different paths you can go down, and it's
just a matter of choosing the right one.

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
Yeah, it's almost like I choose your own adventure book.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
But in a uh in a guide, what do you
what do you like for uh, you know, streaming versus
you know, people get these smart TVs.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
What's your guidance on that?

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
Do you think people should get like separate device to
stream or just use what's included on their TV?

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
And what device do you like?

Speaker 13 (01:38:05):
People have strong opinions on that. I tend to say, like,
if you have a smart TV and it's fairly recent,
there's really no harm in like using it, And if
it has the apps that you want and you're fine
with the interface and it's fast enough, then that's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:38:23):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:38:24):
You can always add a streaming device later. You already
bought this TV. You may not need to like throw
more money at more hardware if it's not necessary, So
at least give it a try, you know, in my case,
I have a.

Speaker 13 (01:38:40):
High Sense TV that runs Android Google TV, I should say,
and it's okay, but I prefer Apple TV.

Speaker 3 (01:38:48):
I just like the interface. It's faster and cleaner.

Speaker 13 (01:38:51):
There's no annoying like banner ads or things that kind
of glutter up the UI, and I like what they
generally do around surfacing shows that you're already watching and
making it easier to pick up where you left off.
So that's our default in the living room is Apple
TV four K connected to that TV, and I just
had it set up to like bypass the default smart

(01:39:12):
TV interface and it just skips directly to the Apple
TV input when I turn it on.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
I also have a High Sense TV, and I just
realized that I can press the Google Assistant button and
it overlays on my Apple TV.

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):
That I'm using.

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
So I was like, wait a second, what I thought
I had to be on their home screen? But Apple
TV is the last holdout that does not have ads
on the home screen. Fire TV is littered with them,
and so is Roku, and they're now they're like auto playing,
and so it's really gotten like where the Apple TV
is pretty calm compared to everything else that's going on

(01:39:45):
these other ones, Jared, how can folks find this cord
cutting guide?

Speaker 13 (01:39:50):
So if you want to just type in chordcutterweekly dot
com slash guide that will take you to it. Yeah,
I appreciate if you sign up for my news life
Atcordcutter Weekly dot com as well. I usually link to
the guide somewhere in the newsletter so you can find
it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
And the definitely check out the big list of streaming
deals that's regularly updated by you on cord Cutter Weekly
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
Jared Newman, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 3 (01:40:18):
Thanks Rich as always.

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
All right, coming up, we'll do the feedback. Plus, I've
got a handy website for you that helps you use
Siri to do all kinds of stuff with your voice.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot tv. If you want to link to anything that

(01:40:42):
I mentioned here, just go there and look for the
light bulb at the top of the page. You tap
the light bulb, it will bring you to the show notes.
We keep great notes for every single show, so if
I mentioned something a link website. Whatever it is all there.
Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb. A
couple of more items of note. This week, Google unveiled

(01:41:04):
the Pixel nine Pro and Pixel nine Pro Fold ahead
of their official event. This is a weird thing that
Google does. Not only are they holding their event earlier
than ever this year for these new phones, now they're
showing them off online, so you can just go online
and like see what they look like. Now, it's not everything,
not all the details, but still AI is a huge
part of these phones. You can see what the design

(01:41:26):
of the Pixel nine Pro fold. It's flatter, kind of
a rounder footprint Pixel nine Apparently they're going to come
out with the Pixel nine Pro in two sizes, which
is kind of nice. You can you can choose, do
you on a smaller phone, bigger phone, but it's still
gonna have the same features. The official event is scheduled
for August thirteenth. I'm looking forward to it. I will
be there and if you want to check these out,

(01:41:47):
you can go to the Google Store and see what
that's all about. Came across a handy website this week.
If you like to use Siri siriuserguide dot com. This
is a website that it helps you understand what Siri
is capable of. Now, there's lots of user guides on
Apple's website, but this one kind of shows you a
lot of cool different things you can do with Siri.

(01:42:08):
So if you're just looking to expand your knowledge of Siri,
it'll tell you you know how to use Siri to
listen to music, how to use it to send audio messages,
how to all kinds of stuff, read text to you, WhatsApp,
whatever you want, siriuserguide dot com. And it keeps activating
my phone, so I apologize if it's activating yours. And

(01:42:31):
if you're a college student or if you have a
college student there max is offering fifty percent off the
streaming service. Now, when I was in college, I couldn't
afford any streaming service, so I don't know. You may
have to put the bill on this one for your kids.
But it's five dollars per month instead of the usual ten,
So you can look for this promotion. HBO Max is

(01:42:51):
fifty percent off for US college students. I'll put the
link on the website time for feedback. These are the emails,
the comments, and the questions I get from you. Guermo
from Los Angeles writes in regarding the caller about Spectrum
Wi Fi, I had a similar problem.

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
I was getting slow internet speed. I called Spectrum.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
They ran the test from their end, saying I was
getting the proper speed, but I set up an appointment
for a tech to come out. Anyway, the tech came
out and found one of my cables to the modem
was loose. Why didn't I think of that? No problems now,
and I was not charged for the visit. Also, Spectrum
will supply you with Wi Fi extenders for three dollars
a month.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:43:30):
I got some feedback on the crazy callers earlier. Catherine
from Upland rights in rich being a labor and delivery nurse,
we are all aware of what the quote full moon
can mean craziness. Also, on this day in nineteen sixty nine,
we walked on the moon. I'm assuming she means like
people walked on the moon, not her.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
As care about it. I'm not an astrologist. That's not
even a word, is it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
Marie from Los Angeles writes in maybe the person with
the Bank of America issue should reset their password again yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:44:00):
That's a good idea. Always try the password reset.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
Mark writes in, you suggested that the best one can
hope for for speed over Wi Fi is about half
compared to connecting via Ethernet. Actually, I have a supplied
cable modem SLASH router on a three hundred megabits per
second plan. I get about three hundred and thirty megabits
per second. I'm in the office where the router is located.
I get the full speed over the five gigahertz Wi Fi.

(01:44:23):
The two point four gigaherts is slower, but doesn't everyone
have a router with five gigaherts these days?

Speaker 2 (01:44:29):
Even down the hall, I still.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
Get about two fifty All right, Well, Mark, Yes, I
was just giving people kind of an idea that you
may not get the full speed over Wi Fi that
you would get via wired.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
But I'm glad it's working out for you.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
Peter from San Pedro writes in, my wife ran across
a TikTok video recently warning to check your Amazon Prime
Day Deals receipt as some deals were less expensive. The
next day, after Prime Day Deals ended, she tallied up
her receipts and did find a seven dollars difference. Might
seem like not like a lot, but I'm sure it
makes you question Prime Day. Is that really their best

(01:45:03):
deals of the year.

Speaker 5 (01:45:04):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:45:04):
My wife feels kind of cheated and questions Amazon's motives.
She did contact customer service and they offered a refund
of ten dollars. Here's the deal with Prime Day.

Speaker 5 (01:45:14):
You got it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:14):
If it's a deal to you, it's a deal. So
the stuff I bought, it was definitely cheaper on Prime
Day than it was on other days. All the random
stuff they're selling, I can't vouch for it, but yes
it is. Some of it's better, some of it's not.
That's why you got to check those prices. Let's get
some other stuff here. We got more about Prime Day.
Gheramo writes in is this Garmo? Do we have two

(01:45:36):
Gharamos this time? He said, you can get Vic's Premium
with ads if you're a Spectrum customer. It's a Spanish
language streaming service similar to Peacock. Good service. I'm not
able to listen to your show live. I listened via
podcast in parts. I'm glad you make it available this way.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):
Joanne and Tony from San Diego write in, my husband
and I listen to your podcast religiously and are so
grateful for the knowledge you impart to your listeners. Many
of us, many of them like us, really need to
know what's going on in the tech world out there.
Warmest regards and thanks, thank you, Joanne and Patricia. Finally,
with so many apps and items to subscribe to, I'm
deeming this the year two power back for our family.

(01:46:16):
I could never delete your newsletter. Your information is way
too valuable in our techy world and most of us
I trust your and most of all, I trust your
reporting wholeheartedly.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Smile.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
You're the best out there, Patricia. Thank you, Patricia. That's
going to do it for this episode of the show.
You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Just go to rich on tech dot tv. You can
find me on social media. I am at rich on tech.
Coming up next week, I've got some tips and tricks
for traveling internationally with your smartphone.

Speaker 2 (01:46:47):
I learned a lot when I was over in Paris.

Speaker 1 (01:46:49):
I've got a whole list of the things you can
do to make sure your prep to avoid those roaming charges,
get around like a local, stay connected, watch your stuff
on the go. I'll have that all next week. Thanks
so much, for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this
show possible. I'm rich Tomiro.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Talk to you real soon.

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