Should you take a walk on Amazon Sidewalk?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Amazon ready to activate Sidewalk should you opt out? Warner
Brothers going to release movies in a totally new way.
Wise makes a twenty dollars smart watch. Plus your tech
questions answered?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm Rich Dmurro and this is Rich on Tech, the
podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Think you should know about.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
It's also the place where I answer the questions that
you send me.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hope you're having a great day.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Rich DeMuro with you tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
in Los Angeles. If you're listening for the first time, welcome.
If you're listening for the one hundredth time, I'm sorry now,
I'm just kidding. I always say that why am I
so deprecating on this podcast is that the word I
should have a list of words that I don't really
know that I use in this podcast, because it happens
often where I have to like look them up and

(01:01):
be like, wait, did I mean that? So lots of
things happening in the DeMuro house. It is the slide
to the holidays. I've been very busy with all kinds
of reviews and testing and this and that, but I
did do something with my own home network. I did
upgrade to Eero Pro six, so this is Euro's new

(01:26):
It's basically their top of the line system that you know.
I purchased this myself. This is not a test for
you know TV. This is just something I wanted because
it works with gigabit Internet, which is what I have
at my house, and the Eero Pro six. I got
a great deal because what they were doing was they

(01:48):
were doing a trade in promotion where you got like
twenty percent off if you traded in one of your
old routers, and then they also had like a deal.
It was like a Cyber Monday, Black Friday kind of deal.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So I jumped on it. I got it. It's great
the Internet.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I guess access points whatever you call them, are enormous
compared to the old ones, so there must be something
better in there. But I will tell you with all that,
my speed is still just okay. I mean I'm literally
doing a speed test right now on my computer and
it's coming in at eighty eight ninety two, ninety six

(02:25):
ninety four out of a thousand, So I still have
some work to do, clearly, and getting this thing set
up and working. I think it has something to do
with two things going on every time when I switch
my routers out, I am. I have like a million
devices here that all latch on, so I use the
same Wi Fi network and password, and so I think

(02:46):
there might be some device that's keeping things like from
working properly.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
But I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I gotta figure this out, because when I connect directly
to my modem's it's totally getting me the gig. When
I'm in my main room, it's getting about six hundred
if I do a good speed test and then a
sort as soon as I get away from it, it's
getting less.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Maybe it's just the makeup of my home that just
doesn't lend itself to fast. But I want fast in
every room, like I want exactly what I'm paying for
in every room, and I'm just not getting it. So
I need to figure out what's going on there. But anyway,
the Eero Pro six is a good system overall. I mean,
I've noticed that it's definitely a little bit more reliable

(03:30):
than the old one I had, which was the old
Eero Pro, like less lag and stuff like that. So
I'm just trying to iron out the kinks here. But anyway,
I will continue to test that, and so far, so good.
I think overall, I love that on certain phones, like
especially the Android phones that I've been testing. There's like
a little Wi Fi six signal on the in the

(03:50):
Wi Fi bar, which I thought was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
In the icon, I'm like, yeah, I'm on that Wi
Fi six.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I don't know what it means or why it's better,
but it seems to be better, so that's kind of fun.
The other thing I've been testing is this ring mailbox sensor.
If you follow me on Twitter or I think that's
where I posted it. I was so excited the day
I set this thing up because it occurred to me
that you can link your ring video doorbell and also

(04:15):
this little ring mailbox sensor which is thirty dollars to
your Alexa. Oh there she goes, she's lighting up, listening
nothing for you today, right now, Alexa stand down please?

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Oh she did. When I said that, wow, the lights
on off.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
I didn't know if that's an actual command, but I
linked up the ring stuff and next thing, you know,
when my mail get you put this little sensor in
your mailbox and it you know, it just basically tells
you when you get your mail delivered. And so you
can get a notification on your phone or your Apple
Watch if you got one of those. And you can

(04:52):
also rig it so that your Alexa says whatever you want.
And for me, I said, you've got mail, and I
had to do you've and like I had to like
write it in a different way, because you can't use
any sort of punctuation, Like the apostrophe is not an
acceptable character. So I spelled it like youve or something
like that. And sure enough, when the mail gets delivered.

(05:13):
Now I hear at a little chime in my office
and it says you've got mail, and it's great. I mean,
why would you not want that? I have been obsessed
with mail my entire life. And there's people, Okay, there's
two types of people in this world. People that are
obsessed with the mail and people that don't care. So
there are there's a group of people in America that

(05:34):
when their mail is delivered, they look forward to it
and they do go check it immediately or they check
it pretty quickly. I've used to be like the immediate kind.
Now I'm somewhere in the middle. I try to go
like a week without checking if I can, But that's
really really tough, but because I'm not really getting anything.
I just like the idea of mail. I don't really
get anything of substance, but except bills of course, which

(05:57):
you know who.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wants to open those?

Speaker 1 (05:59):
But anyway, I've been loving that and i'll have that
next week in Tech Smart on KTLA.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
I'll talk about that.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
The other thing that I've been oh, by the way,
I love what Ring is doing. I mean, I'm going
to talk about Amazon Sidewalk in a second, and you know,
poo poo all over Ring, But but right now, I
really love I think that there's two companies that are
just doing such cool stuff, and one of them is Ring.
When you go on their website and just look at
how many products they have, it's like, whoa, you could

(06:27):
outfit your entire house with all their stuff, and I
kind of want to do that now. And then the
other one is Why Is and I'll talk about them
today in the show as well. Another app that I
discovered this week was eXplorist, which I had not ever
heard of, but it is an app that is on
iPhone and Android and it's really cool. It's an app

(06:50):
that sort of helps you discover cool places to take pictures.
And I'm sure if you're a photographer, you've known all
about this. But I'm not a big photographer, but now
I want to be because I'm looking at this and
it's just super super cool. So it's cool because it
gives you locations that are nearby. So if you're in
a city and you want to take all the coolest
pictures you can when you start traveling again, right, I

(07:11):
need a sound for this podcast, because that's why it feels.
I did travel last weekend safely. Of course, we went
to solving and it was a nightmare, honestly, Like I
I it was the straw that broke the camel's back
from me. Not that I'm traveling a lot, but I
always have this idea of yeah, I could still do

(07:31):
stuff like yeah, and no, I just it. There's a
lot of people there and it was just not fun.
It was like, you know, you had to eat outside
in the freezing cold and this and that, and it's
just it was not fun. It made me realize that
I like my safe space here at home throughout this pandemic.
This is where I've lived and I've nested, and I
just like it because it's my place it's safe. I

(07:53):
know what happens here, I know it comes, I know
it goes, and it just it's where I can be
who I want to be, which is a home by
right now. And I have dreams of going out of
the house, but then you get out and it's like,
you know, the mask thing and the you know, the
all the social distancing, and it's just not fun. It's
like not the way we want our world to be.

(08:14):
And yes, I do think you need to be safe,
so of course, if you're out and about, you need
to follow all those protocols. But it's exhausting, let's be honest.
And so I just realized this weekend that it was
just kind of exhausting and sad and I'd just rather
be at home. And so that's where I'm gonna be
staying from now on until these vaccines start to work
on folks and whatever happens and these numbers go down.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
So anyway, all right, I'm done with all that.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let's talk about Amazon sidewalk big story. Amazon sent out
this email to folks probably about two weeks ago, maybe
a week saying, Hey, we're gonna turn on sidewalk and
by the way, it's gonna be on by default.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Wait, what back up?

Speaker 1 (08:53):
What is sidewalk? What is what's going on here? And
what does it involve? And here's the basic of sidewalk
is that it's a new communications network that Amazon is
sort of launching using their Ring and Echo products as
the router. So if you imagine that this is a big,
big Wi Fi network across the US, the routers are

(09:15):
going to be these Echo and Ring products, and the
Internet they're getting to put into these things is coming
from your home internet. So what they're doing is they're
taking just a little tiny bit of your home Internet
and sort of rebroadcasting it to the whole crowd. And yes,
they're doing this in a way that they say is safe,
in private and encrypted, and they're only using a portion

(09:36):
of your band with less than five hundred megabytes a month.
And the benefit is that all of these Amazon devices
and Tile devices at the beginning, and theoretically other smart
home devices will always have a signal to latch onto
no matter what.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
So let's just give an example.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Let's say out on your front lawn, you have a
ring smart light like one of these you know, these
walkway lights that you know, you know, the typical way
of setting it up. Right, You have to plug it in,
turn it on, you have to open up the app
on your phone, you have to connect, disconnect from your
Wi Fi, connect directly to the Wi Fi on the device,

(10:16):
or use Bluetooth, share your Wi Fi credentials with the device. Okay, disconnect, reconnect, disconnect, reconnect. Okay,
finally it works. And now this little device is off
on its own and it's connected to your Wi Fi
and it works just fine until your Wi Fi goes out,
and now you have to troubleshoot, and now this thing
doesn't work anymore, it doesn't respond. So Amazon's idea is
that if they can create this kind of super network

(10:38):
called sidewalk that's just always pervasive in every network in
every neighborhood. When you open up that same Ring app
on your phone or Amazon app to set up a
new device, it says.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh, we see it. Is this your device right here?

Speaker 1 (10:51):
We can tell that it's proximity based with Bluetooth that
it seems to be on your lawn.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Is this yours? Okay?

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Or maybe a scanic QR code on it whatever to
link it.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Up, and they say okay, and magically it goes through
the sidewalk network to sort of connect and exchange the
information that it needs and all that stuff, and it says, okay,
all set up. What that was easy. So that's one aspect.
The other aspect is, you know, a couple months down
the line, your Wi Fi goes down and this little
ring light on your lawn, Sorry, can't work anymore because

(11:21):
I have no connection to anything, and I don't really
know how to reconnect because I can't get to your internet. Well,
if sidewalk was around, it would just go, oh, Rich's
Wi Fi is not working anymore. Let's latch onto this
sidewalk network that we find here, and okay, let me
go send it a notification to Rich, Hey this is
not working. We need to reconnect. And then you go,

(11:42):
oh interesting, okay cool, and or just self heals somehow,
you know.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
So that's a couple of the ways to use this.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
The other thing, and I think the one that Amazon
is promoting a lot, is your pet has one of
these tile trackers on it around their collar and next thing,
you know, this that used to only work when someone's
phone had Bluetooth nearby, can now latch onto this sidewalk
network that theoretically is like everywhere now and wow, now
you can find your devices or your pet anywhere. So

(12:13):
that's another aspect. So if you want my thoughts on this,
and I know that my thoughts are probably not the
general thoughts, but I think it's pretty awesome. And yeah,
you can sit there and say, Rich, I'm never listening
to you again, because how dare you say that this
is awesome? Because this sounds like an invasion of my privacy,
and I get it, it does sound that way. But

(12:35):
at the end of the day, what Amazon is trying
to build here is actually pretty cool. It's a crowdsourced
Wi Fi network that sort of goes anywhere and helps
a lot of people. Now, yes, it helps their products
the most, and theoretically or later on, they'll probably have
other products that latch on, and Amazon may or may
not charge these other products to latch onto this network
that's being crowdsourced by our free internet. But I like

(13:00):
the idea of my tile working everywhere. And I've had
tiles in the past and I dropped them because I mean,
I got rid of them because they're just not worth it.
If if there's no phone in the area where your
tile is It's just it's useless, and so what's the point.
And with all these smart home stuff, I am deathly
afraid of changing my Wi Fi password or network because

(13:23):
all of my smart home devices will not follow through.
Now if they were on this sidewalk thing. Guess what, Oh,
you change your WiFi. You tell one time inside your
app that you're changing your network credentials, and it says
to all these little devices, oh, bing binging Rich changed
all of his stuff here take it. And so, yes,
there are privacy concerns. I get it, but I also

(13:45):
see the benefit of this network. If it is robust
and it is working in a big way, I think
it's pretty darn cool. So with all that said, the
main thing that a lot of the tech folks are
having problems with is the fact that Amazon is turning
on this network by default. And I take issue with
that as well. But I see why they're doing it.

(14:05):
They're doing it because they want to make sure as
many products as possible are on board. Now, I mentioned
it was Ring and Echo products. When it comes to
the Ring side of things, it's this is the reason
I did not show a video doorbell in my story
on KTLA at all, it's because it doesn't affect the
video doorbell for the broadcasting side of things, right, so

(14:27):
the video doorbells are not going to be bridges, at
least not now.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
And so the bridges.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
The things that are going to be broadcasting this network
are the ring floodlights, so the things that are sort
of like that you install on the side of your house.
Those are the ones which not as many people have those,
and also the spotlight cams. Then with the echo products,
it is a lot. It's almost every echo that I
know of. It's a lot of echo products which are everywhere.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
I mean, they have lots of echo.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Even the little dot that I'm looking at right now
would become a bridge, and this would broadcast this little
low power network across my neighborhood. And you know what,
I am going to stay on and I'm going to
help this thing go because I kind of see the
benefit of it and I kind of want to make
it work. And so you know, you can disagree with
me and say, Rich I'm opting out. I'm not going
to do this, And I do agree that Amazon. I mean,

(15:18):
they made the opt out instructions easy and clear, and
they sent them to everyone, But give me a break.
Ninety nine point nine percent of people that bought an
Echo Dot for thirty bucks are not going to take
the time to go into their Alexa app and switch
this thing off. And Amazon knows that, and that's why
they made this opt out and they said, oh, it's
going to be on by default, by the way, And

(15:38):
so I do take I do take issue with that.
But at the same time, as a tech reporter, this
is why I kind of, you know, made this a
big deal on my social media and on KTLA and
my other stations, because people need to know about this
and they need to opt out if they're not comfortable.
I'm not saying I'm not telling you whether you should
be comfortable or not. I'm just telling you how I feel.

(15:59):
And if you feel that same way, opt out. It's
pretty easy. Just go into the app, open up your
Alexa app, tap more, tap settings, tap account settings, tap
Amazon Sidewalk, and switch it off and you're out if
you don't want to be a part of it. But
you know, if you do want to be a part
of it. And this is you know, Amazon and all
these tech companies, they try a lot of stuff, not

(16:20):
all of it works. This may not take off. Who knows.
As more of the mainstream media get gets word of this,
you know, it'll probably blow up a little bit and
people know about it and it'll be aware, and then
maybe enough people will turn it off where it just
doesn't work for Amazon and they'll have to figure out
plan B. But we'll say they have enough products out

(16:42):
there and enough people out there that won't really understand
this that it may work and it will have some
benefits and it will be free to people to use.
I hope, I mean it can't. Could you imagine if
they use our internet to power this thing and then
end up charging for it. I mean, that would be
a problem. But anyway, there you have that sidewalk now,
you know. Let's get to our first question on the show.

(17:07):
It is from Deborah. Deborah says, do you like Edge Browser?
Is it compatible with Max? Chrome has been having issues,
Safari has beach balls. I heard you were using it
testing it out. Thanks Debra, Debra, you are correct. I
have been using the Edge browser from Microsoft. In fact,
it's what I'm looking at right now. And I never

(17:28):
thought I would do this, but I did because Chrome
was grinding to a halt on my MacBook, and it
would do this weird thing where when I would first
start up my MacBook and first start using Chrome, or
actually just any time while I'm using it, it would just
sort of freeze up and stop working, like literally just
freeze and I couldn't do anything for about, you know,

(17:50):
anywhere from ten seconds to thirty seconds. And it got
pretty frustrating. And so I dealt with that for many,
many months, and then I was like, okay, let me
you know, and it's just slow. I can't do my
WordPress posts in it. It's just really really slow. Checking
email became so slow. Gmail inside Chrome became slow. I mean,

(18:12):
how does that happen? Not very good? So I said,
all right, you know what, and I tried Safari. And
I like Safari because it's very fast, but I feel
like it's limited with my extensions that I need. I
need specific extensions that I use for my job, and
I don't think I had all those. I'm not really
sure because didn't really check it out. And so I said,
you know what, let me check out Edge. Edge is
kind of built on the same exact platform as Chrome.

(18:36):
It's Microsoft, which is kind of weird. But honestly, I've
been very impressed with other Microsoft products, like I've been
using Outlook, I used OneDrive, I used I used Microsoft
to Do and I'm kind of like, gosh, I feel
like Microsoft's doing kind of a nice job of things,
and so let me test this out. I downloaded it
and it's been fast. It's been speedy. Yes, it is
slowed down in certain aspects, like especially yesterday I was

(18:58):
writing a blog post on word Press and it was
it was pretty slow, but I'm beginning to think that's
more of a word Press thing, and I, you know, anyway,
I don't know if I'm gonna stick with it forever,
but so far, I'm loving it and I think it's
pretty great and I haven't missed anything from Chrome. The
only thing is you do have to change your default
browser to Google if you want that. The other feature
I really like, that's kind of cool. When I open

(19:20):
up a new tab, it gives me this cool new
tab page, which is kind of fun. They try to
like push MSN on me, which I'm like, ugh, these
stories are so gross. They're like I call them lowest
common LCD Lowest Common Denominator stories. They're like these headlines
that are just so click Baity and whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Anyway, those are on there at the bottom. You can
turn that off.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
But the other feature I really like is called Collections.
And this is like this little thing on the side
of your like a side tab window kind of thing
where you can just drag like links in there and
stuff like that, and it's really just cool. It's like
a little like place to collect kind of like as
you're web browsing things you want to remember, you can
type in notes. That's been really fun and so anyway,

(20:02):
I'll probably ditch it eventually, but for now, I'm loving
Microsoft Edge. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's simpler. I wouldn't
say it's cleaner, actually, but it is. It's just kind
of working. So I never thought i'd see the day
where I go back, go back in time to a
Microsoft Internet browser. Okay, speaking of the future, Warner Brothers

(20:24):
is just kind of blowing up Hollywood. It is totally
changing the way that we see movies and it's gonna
be pretty awesome next year. So Warner Brothers is going
to release all of their new movies next year on
HBO Max for a month and this is.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Let's see before No, it's going to be just a month.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
So same day that you get the movie in the theater,
it's going to come to HBO Max, which.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Is really really cool.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
And I was trying to figure out if there's some
sort of catch, like they were going to charge for
the movie like Mulan, but no, it seems like they're
literally just gonna put these movies on HBO Max, which
makes the fifteen dollars a month that it that it
costs like really worth it. And so here's the movies,
the little things. Let's see I don't even know some
of these movies, Tom and Jerry, Godzilla Versus Kong, Mortal Kombat,

(21:15):
The Conjuring, Let's see Dune, that's gonna be a good one,
Matrix four. So not every movie on here. I didn't
mention everyone because I don't really know all of them.
I don't really follow too many movies. But it just
sounds awesome. I know they're doing wonder Woman. I talked
about it that that's gonna be on Christmas Day, so
I think it's really cool. So what they're doing is

(21:37):
again they released the movie in the theater, it's gonna
be on HBO Max for one month, and then it's
gonna come off HBO Max and sort of go through
what they call the the platform Windows or whatever. So
it's gonna go to like, you know, Video on Demand
and then Blu Ray and then finally make its way
back to HBO Max eventually, or maybe be sold to

(21:57):
like different products like you know who Hulu or are
what's the other one?

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I subscribed to?

Speaker 1 (22:04):
All these things? There's so many now, Oh Netflix, Oh yeah,
remember Netflix? Remember that one. But I think it's pretty cool.
They're gonna do this for twenty twenty one. It's a
one year plan. It's not you know, they're not doing
it forever, so to say, but they're just gonna see
how it works.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
And this will be a cool.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Thing for consumers. And I am sad because I love
the movie theater. I love movie theater popcorn, I love
sitting there. But it's something we can't do, nor do
I do as much as I'd like to do it.
And so if I can watch these new movies at home,
it's kind of fun. It's different, it's not the same,
but there are some benefits to watching at home. And
we will all see how much we like this in

(22:44):
twenty twenty one. All right, Next question comes from Chris.
Why does Apple Music? Apple keep putting music in my
music from a certain artist? You too, I delete it
every time, but their music keeps coming into my music
when I play my music shuffled. I've never downloaded any

(23:06):
of their music. I don't really care for them. As
far as I can see, I'm not being charged for
the download. I'm just curious why music was added to
my music. Great podcast, Keep up the good work.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
PS.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I get your newsletter, but sporadically, Chris, Well, Chris, to
answer your newsletter question, I do that usually every other week,
and so it may seem sporadic. And sometimes if I'm
off on that Friday when i'm doing it, I'm you know,
I don't do it, or I'm away for the weekend.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
But thank you for the newsletter.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
You can subscribe at richon tech dot substack dot com.
It's free and it's it's pretty much this podcast. It's like,
you know what I talk about, what I think you
should know about, just kind of in text. Okay, to
answer your question about you two, this was a couple
of years ago. I mean, Chris, you're kind of a
little bit behind on this one. But you two performed

(23:55):
at an Apple event many years ago which I happen
to be at. They were at Oh my gosh, this
was in twenty fourteen, and I was there and I
remember they said, and now you two is up on
stage and wow, okay, boom YouTube performs, which is kind
of cool. And then they said, and by the way,
we are gifting everyone their latest album in their Apple

(24:16):
Music You open your iPhone and boom, it's magically there.
And I'll admit I never really listened to it, and
I didn't really care for it, but whatever, I mean,
it was fine.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
A lot of people like you too. I mean, I
like a lot of their music. I just don't seek
it out per se.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
But the album it irked a lot of people saying, hey,
how dare you put this in my music collection. Well,
they had a way to get rid of it. They
had like this little tool that you can use to
get rid of it, and they they got rid of
the tool like a couple of years ago, and so
you can no longer use this tool to get it

(24:53):
out of your collection. So what you have to do
if you really want to get rid of this, Chris,
is contact Apple Music Support or Apple Support and they
will help you get it out of your collection. No,
you can't get rid of it by deleting it. It's
just there forever.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
And let me see. I'm gonna open up my.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
iTunes or what's it called Apple Music now, the music app,
and let's see.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Do I still have my library albums?

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (25:17):
There it is the first thing in my.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
First thing in my album in my library is YouTube
songs of Innocence.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
And I don't know how to get rid of it.
Delete from library. Let's see what happens.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Are you sure you'd like to hide this item? This
item will be hidden from your iTunes purchases.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Hide Boom.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Okay, it's gone, all right, so just do that. You
don't have to contact Apple if it comes back. It
comes back, But it seems like it's gone. Seems like
all you have to do is hide it. Yeah, it's
not there anymore. So just go into your iTunes press
hide album, and boom, it's hidden forever.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
All right. Now.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
I mentioned earlier that I love Whyse. I really really
like what Wyse is doing. I think that they're just
it's really really doing a great job with their products.
I think they work really nicely, and I love the
integration with Google. So they are coming out with a
twenty dollars smart watch, twenty dollars smart watch with a
nine day battery life. It's called the Wise Watch. It

(26:17):
comes in two sizes. It does most of the things
that you need a smart watch to do, including blood
oxygen monitoring, heart rate tracking. It's got water and dust resistance.
It's got your activity tracking, it's got sleep tracking. It
works with Google Fit and Apple Health, and it will
also let you control the Wise products from your wrist,

(26:39):
so that's cool. It works with notifications. It's got all
the apps that it works with, so you can get
the notifications you need on your wrist. And this is
coming in February. I emailed Wise immediately. I said, you
got to get me on this list. You got to
extend me one of these things as soon as it's available,
because I'm going to get a bazillion questions about it.
They said, sure, So I should be get this thing,

(27:00):
hopefully early next year. It's shipping in February. Pre Orders
are open now. You know, I find pre orders to
be a tricky thing for the average consumer. I am
I am privileged in the fact that I can get
things before a lot of people and test them out
and form opinions on them before a lot of people
have to pony up their actual hard earned cash. Now

(27:22):
that's part of my job, so I mean, that's what
I do. And it's a good thing at the end
of the day for consumers because you know, I can
tell you what you think in that timeframe of the
pre order. Now, with a lot of pre orders, it's
tricky because you're buying stuff sight onseen and with something
like the Wise Watch, now it's twenty bucks, so it's
not that much money. And if you bought it and

(27:43):
you hated it, yeah, you just return the thing, or
even at the very worst, you know, give it to
a friend, or you lost twenty dollars if you just
stomp on it and say, this is the worst thing
I've ever spent my money on.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I don't think it's gonna happen, but you know it could.
And so.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Twenty dollars pretty amazing. We need a good, cheap smart watch.
I reviewed one earlier this year called the Let's Fit,
which was decent. I like their headphones a lot better.
The watch was just okay. But so far I've not
come across a good, good, good alternative to the Apple Watch,
and this might be it. I don't think it's gonna
be the end all, but as an alternative, it's a

(28:19):
pretty good thing for twenty dollars that you know, a
lot of people just want to track their steps.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
They want to you know. I mean, it does blood.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Oxygen, does heart rate. I mean, they've got some good
stuff on here. So the main thing it does not have,
and why it would probably be a deal breaker for me,
is that it does not have GPS tracking. They were
not clear if it's going to have excuse me, if
it's gonna have GPS tracking with your watch nearby or
your phone nearby, which is how fippits the cheap ones.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Do it there.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
I would assume that'd be the case, but it may
not be. So I'm trying to remember with the the
Wyse band, which is twenty five dollars, how they did it.
I think I gotta see if I gotta try that
again and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
But I don't know. We'll see.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
It looks nice and hopefully I think the thing that
will set this apart is the software. So a lot
of these cheap smart watches you get the software is
just terrible. Makes for a bad experience. Whys you know
it's crafted up in Seattle. So if it's a good
experience and good software, maybe it will kind of put

(29:22):
this thing above some of these cheap things and they
can have a really good watch at a very inexpensive price.
So wise watch. Continue to kind of keep track of
that one and just see how it progresses, because I
have high hopes for it.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
We'll see how it does, all right.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
David says, do you have any hacks for stopping spam texts?
I used to get a lot of spam calls. For
some reason, they've dropped off, but now I'm getting a
lot of spam texts all hours of the night.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Is there an answer? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Spam text, spam calls, it's a problem. My wife gets
so many of these spam calls. I get a couple,
not as many as you think for someone that I
feel like I've had my phone number for a long time,
and I you know, I don't know, I don't get
that many. Even spam texts, I don't get that many.
So if you're getting a lot of these things, I
would recommend two things. Number one, if you have an iPhone,

(30:17):
you can turn on a filter that's called filter messages
from unknown senders, and that I believe is let's see,
is that inside the phone app could be inside the
phone Let's see. Okay, So go into messages and it
says filter onknown senders.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Just flip that on.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
And the only thing I don't like about this is
that there's they put these into a new tab in
your messages, your I Messages app, and it's kind of
like you forget about these things because sometimes some of
these things do go into the unknown folder and it's
from people that you actually do want to talk to.
So I think, you know, they're using their serious smarts

(30:58):
to kind of identify numbers that you've never done any
business with or that have never appeared in your email.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
So it should work a.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Majority of the time, but it's not always going to
be perfect. Just know that going into this. The other thing,
if you're an Android, I would recommend using the Google
Messages app. They've got spam filtering built into their messages
app and it's Google, so they're smart and googly and
so that should work pretty well on the Android side
of things. And that is the Google Messages app just

(31:26):
because you have a messages app on your phone, it
doesn't mean it's the Google one. It might be Samsung's,
it might be a third party. But if you want,
you can switch to the Google one and get their
spam protection and it is built right in and it's free.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
So that's what I'd recommend. David, good luck with the spam.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
This is a really cool feature that is coming to
the Amazon Fire TV Cube. It's it's limited, but I
still want to talk about it because I still think
it's like, we need this, especially with this pandemic going on.
Everyone's doing video calls. Well, Fire TV cube second generation
Fire TV cubes can now accommodate a webcam, and so

(32:08):
what does that mean you can use I'm just gonna
look up how much a fire TV cube is. You
can use a webcam on your TV, which means you
can make video calls on your TV, which I've been
waiting for forever. No one seems to have figured this
out in a big way. Oh wow, Fire TV Cube
is eighty bucks. I thought this was more like one twenty,
but eighty dollars. Oh used to be one twenty right

(32:29):
now it's eighty I might actually buy one of these
things from my mom right now, because I want to
do this. I want her to have a webcam on
her TV. If she's okay with it. I'm not sure
I get it. It's a little privacy insensitive because you've
got a you know, a camera staring at you on
your TV all day. But you can get one with
a little slider thing that you know, covers up the lens.

(32:50):
You don't feel like big brother's watching you all day.
But you plug the webcam into the back of the
into the back of the fire TV cube. It says, oh,
you plugged in a webcam. Here, let's set up video
came and you can video call in a couple different ways.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
The main way that it seems.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
You can do it is through the Alexa, their own
sort of homegrown video calling. And this means that anyone
on the other end that has the Alexa Alexa stop.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
I gotta do that.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Oh she really likes to listen, so anyway, Alexa stand down.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Oh wow, she really okay.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Remind me to she goes, I'm not guarding your home.
Remind me to turn off. I gotta press the microphone
mute on there next time. Anyway, I'll try not to
say her name anymore. Anyway, you plug in the webcam
and you can call someone with this app, so all
they need is the app on their phone and you'd
be able to call them, which is pretty cool, so
you don't have to like you know, most people have
like an Amazon account, so they can just sign in

(33:57):
through that use it on their phone, or if you
have an Echo device like one of their Echo display devices,
it'll work through that. And hopefully as this thing gets
more robust, you'll be able to do more things like
maybe use Skype or maybe use Zoom and call anyone
that way. But anyway, it's very early stage. It's not
very simple. I don't think this is going to be

(34:18):
the end all with this, but I think it's cool
to have this as an option because it's pretty much,
I think, at this point, the most inexpensive option for
adding video calling to your TV eighty dollars plus a webcam,
which is probably they gave a list of them that works,
but could probably maybe get one for you anywhere from
fifty to one hundred bucks. And yes it's expensive, but

(34:38):
it's still a nice solution. And I think the problem
with all of these solutions are that is it something
that someone that is not very tech savvy can sign
up for and set up.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Probably not, but it's a step in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
And this is what makes it so complicated, because I
want to set this up for my mom today because
it's so much easier to just video call on the couch,
But you know that would require me flying home to
New Jersey, breaking all the rules, meeting with my mom,
who I don't want to put at risk, and setting
this thing up, and I just can't do that. So
it's like this catch twenty two situation we're in right now,

(35:12):
where we're getting these things that can help us communicate
during this pandemic, but it's really tough to set up
for the people that need them the most, which is
people like my mom that I live far away from
that I want to stay in touch with, but I
can't go there to set this up for her, and
she's not doing herself. You need a compatible webcam, a
micro USB to USB adapter, and your fire TV cube.

(35:32):
Oh yeah, okay, hey, Mom, just pull that micro USB
to USB adapter you got laying in the drawer there. No,
of course she doesn't have that, nobody has that. I do,
actually do I have micro USB to USB. Probably not,
that's yeah, I probably don't have that if I can
order it from Amazon. Kind of cool though. I love

(35:53):
the idea of video chatting on the TV. Also, the
other aspect I like of this is that you don't
have to switch inputs. Uses a fire TV stick, I
would just switch her to the cube and now when
I video call, it's just like while she's watching TV boom,
video call incoming. How neat is that you don't have
to switch inputs, whereas with something like a standalone device,

(36:14):
like if you somehow created a webcam that sat on
your TV that was able to plug into the HDMI,
you'd still have the issue of changing HDMI inputs. It
wasn't it wouldn't always be on and ready to go
to receive calls, because you know, even if the thing
physically or visual visually, even if the thing made an
audible ring. I mean, how many people are techy enough

(36:36):
to like run over to their TV, pick up the remote,
change to a different input.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
No, it's just not gonna work. It's not. It's not
slick enough to do that.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
And so for this reason, these devices like the Apple TV,
the Fire TV Roku, where are you Roku, Are you listening.
You need to let people connect a webcam to your
device because they need to be able to see the
fact that video calls are incoming on their TV screen
so they can answer them on their TV screen. Nobody

(37:06):
is switching an input to take a video call. It's
just not happening. It's never going to happen. So again,
I get it. There are ways of doing this, but
you need to make it easy for the average person
so that they can answer a call. The things we
take for granted that just are very complicated for people
that are not Techi. All right, let's see, Elaine says.

(37:32):
I'm a senior that listens to your broadcasts on TV.
I use a Dell computer and an iPhone seven. I'd
like to buy a tablet, not an Apple, and would
like your device on what to buy many thanks Elaine.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Elaine.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
If you don't want to buy a tablet that's Apple,
which I'm not sure why, I don't know, I would
recommend the Amazon Fire HD ten. Well, I'll recommend two.
I'll actually recommend three. Amazon Fire HG ten. I think
overall is going to be your best bang for your buck.
It is a nice, big tablet and it's uh, you know,
a nice big screen. It's relatively inexpensive. It's one hundred

(38:07):
and eighty nine dollars, which is kind of expensive for
how much it was during Black Friday sales. It's gone
down to ninety dollars. So I would say it sells
a lot at one nineteen, so i'd look for that price.
And it has gone down to ninety over and over
and over.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Oh, that's use pricing. I don't want use pricing. That's terrible.
I just want new okay, just new pricing.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
M Yeah, new pricing. It's gone down to one nineteen,
so just look for one nineteen. That's that's the target
price you want. I'm using an app called kipa k
e e p A on It's an extension that plugs
in and it gives you the pricing history on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
I would I would do.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
That if you can. Honey does price history as well.
Let's see what they say. They say, Yeah, one nineteen
has been about the price. So that's the price you
want to look for. That's the target one hundred and
nineteen bucks. No problem recommending that. It sounds pretty good.
It does what you need. The only thing is You're
not gonna have access to all the Google apps easily,

(39:16):
and so if you're looking for something like Gmail or
Chrome or Apple or Google Maps, you're just not gonna
be able to install those easily. Yes, they can be installed,
not easily. And if you're telling me you're not very techy, oh,
you didn't say you're not very techy. You just said
you're a senior that listens.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
So I don't know. Maybe you are techie, but you
don't want Apple.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
So the next one i'd recommend is probably the maybe
a Samsung.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
I think it's the A seven tablet.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
I would recommend that one, which is going to give
you easy access to the Google apps because it does
have Google Play. And at the end of the day,
I'd say you're best served by going with the gold
standard of tablets, which is an iPad three hundred and
twenty nine dollars for the iPad ten point two latest generation,
which is I believe the eighth generation three hundred and

(40:06):
twenty nine dollars and many, many times you can find
it cheaper if you just go on Google and just
type you know, iPad and deals and yeah, ten point
two inch iPad goes down to two ninety nine very often,
especially on on Amazon. And why I say that is
because look, Apple invented the tablet.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
It is the best. You can't get better than an
Apple tablet.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
If you want something that's going to last the longest,
it's gonna be the most compatible with every app out there,
It's gonna have the best selection of apps, the best accessories.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Go with the iPad.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
It's a little bit more expensive, but you will get
your money's worth over the long term because you already
use an iPhone, so it's gonna it's gonna have some
synergies with that. But I would say go with that.
If you know, if you're very basic and all you
want is something that's simple and you know whatever, no frills,
go with the Amazon Fire HD. But if you want
something that's going to give you the least headaches, I

(41:02):
think the iPad is going to do that. And I
had a person email or tweet me and said they're
still using their original original iPad from I mean, how
many years ago did the iPad come out. It's got
to be you know, ten years. Maybe I don't know,
something something wild like that. Yeah, I was working at
tech Meme, so I think it was ten years, at

(41:24):
least ten years. I've been at KTLA for ten years
and tech Meme was before that, so ten years. I
remember sitting there watching the unveiling of the tablet. I
was not at the event, and Steve Jobs on stage
and just you know, this tablet came out and I
just thought to myself, Oh my gosh, they've done it again.

(41:45):
They have changed the world one more time. They did
it with the iPhone, now they're doing it with the tablet.
And I remember going out and buying that immediately. It
was this big honkin' thick tablet that just was like
a slab of like thick bezel glass and thick aluminum
on the back that was like kind of brushed. I
feel like I can't I'm trying to remember if it

(42:05):
was like a brush like almost like a little grittier
than the slick.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Stuff they used today.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
But it was just so big and thick, and like
this thing was like massive, and it was expensive and
it just you know, now it was like super slow.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
I wonder if I kept that tablet. I probably have
it somewhere here.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
But anyway, Uh, it's just it's come a long way
and it's just still the best. They've just continued to
perfect it. And if you want a tablet, the iPad
is still the best tablet out there. Oh, speaking of nostalgia,
Google play Music is dead. It's officially dead. I'm not

(42:42):
gonna harp on this too much, but I have a
fond spot in my heart for Google play Music because
it was the music app of my choice for many,
many years. And I switched to YouTube Music when the
writing was on the wall that this was going away.
But I'll tell you the one reason, the one reason
why I used Google play Music over anything else was

(43:06):
a single playlist from Songza and the playlist was called
drum roll Please blogged fifty the most buzzed about tracks
from the worlds of pop, R and B, hip hop,
electronic and indie. And the reason I loved blog fifty
is because I felt like I was so cool knowing

(43:27):
about every major popular song before anyone else in the world,
and this was my secret way of figuring them out.
I knew every song from every artist before anyone else
knew about it. And why because I just listened to
this blog fifty and it was what it is and
it still is. It's still around, it still lives on

(43:48):
in YouTube music, but Blogged fifty looks at what all
the bloggers are writing about on all these things, like
remember I ever hear of like Pitchfork. I don't even
understand what Pitchfork is saying when they write posts about things.
It's like it just does. It's not even written in
English to me. But yet somehow they know about the
hot new artists that are coming out, and it's like

(44:08):
Pitchfork and stuff like that. They look at all their
posts and then they come up with this playlist and
you know, it's just the playlist that for me define
music for so many years. I've gotten a little way
from it because now I listen to mostly country music
and thanks to my wife, and now I know every
country artist, and I just have gotten away from like
the Jenny Lewises of the world, and I'm looking through

(44:30):
their playlist. BTS is on there, Megan the Stallion, Like
no idea, who that is? Miley Cyrus, I know who
that is, The Weekend, I know who that is. Rico,
Nasty Goodie Mob, Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're
still around because Goodie Mob.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Funny story.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Many many years ago, I was at USC covering stuff
for the newspaper, and Goodie Mob invited me to their
show at the House of Blues, and this was pretty
much the first like thing I was ever invited to
as a journalist, and I thought I was so cool.
I'm at the Goodie Mob show at the House of Blues.
Goodie Mob not necessarily my type of music personally, but

(45:10):
it was still really awesome to be a part of this.
And after the show, the guys come up to me
and they're like, hey, you want to go come party
with us? And I was like no, and I like
ran away because I was like so scared because here
I am, this little college kid who had no idea
what Hollywood was all about. Was like literally just off
the plane from New Jersey, and I'm so scared of

(45:31):
everything in Los Angeles and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Uh, no ah, sorry, i can't party with old people.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
These people in Goodie Mob at the time were probably
like twenty five, They're probably three years older than me.
And I was so like intimidated. I was such a
little loser. Oh gosh. And now, of course I'd be like, yes,
oh heck yeah, let me. Where are you going? What
kind of cool Hollywood Hills party? Are we going to
let me absorb it all and see what it's all like?

(46:00):
And I was so, oh my gosh, so timid, and
so what what a difference a couple of years and
some experience makes. Right Now, I just say yes to everything,
and it somehow sometimes backfires. Anyway, That's why I that's
why I used Google play Music for so many years,
and now I've tried Spotify. I also have a subscription

(46:22):
to Apple Music, and you know, I use them for
different things. Apple Music mainly for my watch, and I
talked about how I got away from it, but I
ended up breaking down and getting it again because of
various things.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
And also my wife. I hate to you know.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Anyway, it's a whole big thing. But anyway, so I'm
paying for Apple Music again.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
And that's it.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
So you Google music, Google play Music is dead. It's
now YouTube music.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
And there you have.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
It, all right, let's see, Oh, speaking of playing paying
for music, Hi, Rich, I'm a regular listener of the
podcast from Faraway New Jersey, represent Jersey, you know, I'm
from there. I enjoy listening to reviews and tech answers.
I was listening to the November thirteenth podcast and appreciated

(47:12):
how you started out expressing that you understand we are
in difficult financial times for many Americans. However, I feel
it was a bit insensitive when you called out the
uber driver that doesn't pay five dollars a month for Pandora. Yes,
five dollars is not much, but you don't know the
financial situation of this person or what this person may
be doing with that five dollars, maybe paying down credit
card debt, maybe giving it to charity. I think young

(47:33):
people are being targeted by companies with messages of just
a few dollars a month, and as you know, it
adds up quickly. I think a better message would be
to give the uber driver props for saying no at
some point to monthly fees. Just thought i'd share my
thoughts and perspectives. Thanks for doing what you do and
making it easy to connect, Chris. Chris, I one hundred percent,
one hundred percent understand where you're coming from. And yes,

(47:56):
maybe my privilege was just showing through my words, and
I totally understand what you're saying. And it's interesting because
I was there when I was you know, coming up
through the business. I was broke for many, many, many years,

(48:17):
and I can still tell you exactly what that feels like.
I still am scared every day of you know, where
I'm going to get my next meal, where I'm going
to you know, how I'm gonna pay for this, How
I'm gonna pay for that. It's also one of the
reasons why I found Dave Ramsey in my life and
made it my lifelong goal to not be beholden to

(48:38):
debt and credit cards and companies that just love to
get you on this monthly payment. And I guess that's
why I don't see the five dollars a month these
days as so much of a big deal, because I
know I can stop it at any time. And I
always say, if I was, you know, unemployed tomorrow, I
would Spotify's going, YouTube Music is going, every tiny little subscription,

(49:05):
HBO Max. It's been nice knowing you, and it's happened
before to me. You know, I have been I have
been laid off twice in my life and I have
left a job once. And so I've been working for
you know, twenty years, and in those twenty years, yeah,
there's been some ups and downs, and I totally totally
get it, and it's not something I talk about all

(49:27):
the time. But believe me, I am very cognizant of
you know, financial situations of people. And it's a reason
why I don't like to judge folks for what they do.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
And how they choose to do things.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
And maybe I was going off a little bit on
a tangent with that five dollars a month for Pandora,
And I'm thinking back to what I said, and I
was kind of being a little flippant, I think, And
so you're right, you know what, I will happily, happily
listen to the ads the next time I'm in someone's
car or in a hair studio where they're cutting my hair,
and you know, I hear ads come up on Pandora.

(50:01):
You know what, Chris, you are right, And who is
it for me? You know, who's it for me to
judge someone who may not be doing as well as
I am. And so you know what, and no matter
where you are on any level, that should be the case.
And so believe me, I ate rice and beans and
beans and rice for many years of my life, and

(50:23):
the ninety nine cent pizzas and the free food. You know,
I used to go to these events and if there
was free food. It was like the most amazing thing
of my life, you know, as a journalist, and it's like, oh,
what kind of cheap free eats can I have? And
you know, it's just it's part of you know, journalism
is not the most lucrative job in the world, and

(50:47):
there are many other jobs that are not as not
as great, and so no, I mean, my job is great.
I love my job, and you know, it's been very
good to me, and so I'm not complaining.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
But I just will say that Chris, you checked.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Me, and I totally understand, and you know, that's about
all I can say on that. And I just want
to make it clear that I am very much understanding
of different backgrounds, and believe me, I worked through my
student loans. I worked through my credit card debt, and
it was not easy and it's something that I wish

(51:22):
many many people can do because it is gosh. I
remember when I was working in Louisiana, I used to
get my paycheck and I was so so messed up
with my debt and stuff that I used to have
to literally pay the credit card companies by a cashier
check because they wouldn't take anything else or a money order,
and so I used to have to get my paycheck

(51:43):
and secretly i'd run to the post office get my
little money order and pay my credit cards because I
was paying them off. They were all frozen and done,
and nobody would give me a credit card at that time,
and I just it was so like, I was so embarrassed.
I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want anyone to
know that I had this. Like now, of course, you know,
many more people talk about debt and there's a million

(52:04):
podcasts about it, and it's my biggest goal to stay
out of it at this point.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
And anyway, so thank you, Chris. I appreciate it, and I.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Don't want you to think that I ever felt like
I was judging people. I was just kind of saying,
you know, if you spend five bucks on a Coca Cola,
you know you can maybe afford the five dollars for
the Pandora, but I get it anyway, all right, moving
on now, Verizon, this is interesting. I just want to
mention it quickly because it's a new option. I don't

(52:35):
know if everyone's going to take advantage of it or
a lot of you are, but it's just kind of
nice to know, especially since Google Photos is now going
to charge. And I said on last week's podcast that
now that they're going to charge, it kind of opens
the door for everyone. And so there's lots of options.
Now anyone who has cloud storage is on kind of
an even playing field. And Verizon is now doing unlimited

(52:59):
clouds storage for twenty dollars a month, which is pretty
interesting to me, someone who pays ten dollars a month
for two terabytes.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Now am I.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Ready to switch over all my Google Photos to Verizon Cloud?

Speaker 2 (53:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
And I think that you probably have to have a
Verizon Mobile account to keep this active, which means it
locks you into them, which I'm not really a big
fan of because I like kind of independent things. But
twenty dollars a month for unlimited cloud storage not a
bad deal. And so if you have a Verizon unlimited plan.

(53:32):
By the way, they do include a couple one hundred
gigabytes of storage, so my old plan. I had to
look this up because I went and I downloaded the
whole Verizon desktop. They have a desktop app. I went
and I downloaded it, and sure enough, it said, oh,
which one do you want to sign up for? And
I was like, wait, I thought I got some free
Verizon cloud storage. I apparently don't anymore because on a

(53:53):
couple a couple months ago, I downgraded my Verizon plan
to save me twenty dollars a month, and I guess
one of the things that was a casualty and that
was my free cloud storage. So I no longer get it.
I couldn't even try this out without paying. Well, you
can try thirty days for free, which I may do that,
but I.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Don't think I'm gonna switch.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
But it's just nice to know that there are options,
and if you are a Verizon customer that's not leaving
anytime soon. I mean, twenty dollars a month for family
shared unlimited storage is pretty darn good and I don't
know so anyway, there's your options. It's two terabytes for
fifteen a month and six hundred gigs for five ninety nine.
Or just look into your Verizon plan and see if

(54:34):
your plan offers cloud storage. It may the one that
I used to be on offered the cloud.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Storage for free.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
It was let's see, it was the if you are
on the Do More Unlimited, you get six hundred gigs.
If you're on the get more unlimited, you get six
hundred gigs. I mean, six hundred gigs is not bad,
especially with all these people starting to charge, you know,
move some of your bigger, lesser used files to that.
If you have it available, they have a desktop app,

(55:04):
might as well use it, all right, one more question here,
let's see here, Adam says. I hope you had a
happy Thanksgiving and some quality time with your family. My wife, Sally,
and I are looking for an audio system for our home.
We are torn behind the Sonos and the new Apple
Pods HomePods. We saw your report and now we're intrigued

(55:25):
in your opinion, which would give us more bang for
our buck. At this point, we're kind of leaning towards
the Apple. Thank you for your insight, Adam. I did
have the HomePods set up in my house and I
was so ready to switch over. But I'll be honest,
it just became too much work and it was too complicated,
and as good as Apple has made it for me personally,
I already have my sons it performs better. And I

(55:46):
sat there and I said, why am I trying to
go crazy implementing this Apple system that is a little
bit more complicated when I already have Sonos and it
works with all my music services, and that's what I'm
sticking with. So my Sonos system is old at this point.
All my speakers are out of date. I need to
buy new ones. And I almost pulled the trigger on

(56:07):
a Black Friday with their Cyber Monday deal and I didn't,
but I will. I mean, because speakers are speakers. They
still work. It's just I don't know what I'm missing,
but it just feels like I need something new. And
the HomePods are great, and I still think if you
have let's say, you know, if you're setting this up
for the first time and you are super Apple centric,
the HomePods are amazing and they're pretty darn good for

(56:30):
ninety nine dollars for all the rooms of your house.
It's just it's going to be a little bit trickier
to set them up, like for the home whole home audio,
and it's not really that tricky. It's just once you're
used to the way Sonos works, it's just kind of
like it's just there. Sonos entire business is whole home audio,
and so Apple has a lot of different things. They

(56:52):
do them pretty well. But you know this the HomePods
are great, and I can't recommend them enough. I think
they're awesome. But you're saying, what's the most for your buck?
I mean, I guess bang for your buck would probably
be the Apple stuff. But I think the best whole
home audio solution is still the sons. So I hope
that answers your question. I know I'm kind of like

(57:14):
waffling here and you're probably sitting here going, oh my gosh, Rich,
a couple of weeks ago, you're talking about how great
they are. But you know, these things take a little
bit of time to kind of figure out. And what
got me with the Apple stuff is it just became
a matter of like I didn't know which speakers were
in the group where the volume was at, and it
became a little bit tricky. And so when things get

(57:34):
tricky and complicated and I press play in the bedroom
and all of a sudden, I hear the music blasting
in the dining room, like, oh, what's going on here?
And that's what caused me to just go and get
all the Sono speakers back out of the garage, set
them all up, and.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Boom, I'm back on Sonos and.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
It's been pretty good. I'll be honest, it's been pretty nice.
I love my sonos now. It's just expensive to set
up and it took me a while to do it,
so kind of like investing in the system. All right,
that's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer,
just go to Richontech dot tv hit the email button
at the bottom of the page. Also, I would love

(58:12):
it if you would rate and review this podcast to
help other people discover it. Just go to rate this
podcast dot com, slash rich on tech, or just submit
your rating, you know, on iTunes or whatever you use,
Apple Podcasts or whatever app. You can find me online
at rich on tech. I'm on all social media networks there.

(58:32):
My name is Rich Jamiro. Thanks so much for listening.
Thanks for being a part of this show. I do
appreciate it. Stay safe, keep that feedback coming, keep the
emails coming, keep the likes and the posts and the favorites,
and whatever you do on my social media.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
I do appreciate it. I do read a lot of it.
Thank you so much. Again.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
My name is Rich Dmiro. I will talk to you
real soon. Turn then thunder the

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