OnePlus Open foldable phone & cybersecurity tips

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, podcast friends, rich tamiro here rich on Tech,
thanks for tuning in for a.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
New episode of the show.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I want to quickly explain what happened last week. So
the radio show is a best of episode. That means
it wasn't completely new. So I figured podcast subscribers like
yourself wouldn't want to hear the same stuff again, so
I skipped posting it in the feed. Now, I probably
should have alerted you to that I was answering a
lot of emails this week about why there wasn't a
new show. Anyway, I'm still new with this radio slash

(00:28):
podcast thing, and in the future I'll either just post
this show with an explainer that it's a best of
or let you know that there's no new episode this
week instead of saying nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
This won't happen a lot. It only happens a few
times a year.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Enjoy this brand new episode of Rich on Tech, and
thank you for listening, and please tell a friend about
the show. Enjoy Netflix raising prices. A new foldable phone
takes on Samsung and Google. But is it any good?
An app to help you delete your personal data? Plus

(01:00):
your tech questions answered?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting
live coast to coast from Passo Rollbules today. If you
haven't heard of Passo Roebulls, it is a city in California.
In fact, it's a wine region known, according to Bard,
for its rolling hills, diverse wines, and avery laxed atmosphere.
Sometimes you have to get out of the city and

(01:24):
get to a place like this, and that's what's happening
this weekend, celebrating a friend's birthday, and so here I
am in Passo Robules.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Found a cool place.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
To do the show, and I am all yours for
the next three hours. So kind of nice to get
away from it all for just a little bit. This
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. It's the place where
I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful and fun. And of course phone
lines are open triple a Rich one oh one. That's

(01:57):
eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one.
Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Now,
one of the things that you really like to do
is email me, so email is also open.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Just go to rich on tech dot TV and.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Hit the link that says contact put your email in
right there. It goes directly to my inbox. And believe me,
I know that to be a fact because I get
a lot of these emails every week.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
And some of you know that.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I do try to respond to you, but I can't
get to all of them, of course you know that,
but I do read a fair amount on the show.
I love to welcome your comments, your questions, whatever you want.
Either give me a call Triple eight rich one oh one,
or email Rich on tech dot TV hit the contact link.
Guests on the show this week include Marcel Campos. He's

(02:49):
going to talk about the one plus Open. This is
a new foldable phone that is challenging the likes of
the Samsung Fold and the Pixel Fold.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
It does things a little bit differently.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
So we'll talk about and Michael Sino very important conversation.
October is cyber security month and he is a Google
cyber security expert. He's got tips on how to protect
yourself online. It's some basic stuff. It's stuff that's sort
of reminders. It's stuff you may say, oh yeah, that's
good to know, and of course it's shareable tips with

(03:21):
friends and family.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
You've got me here in Paso.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
You've got Kim on the phones, You've got Adam on
the board, We've got the whole crew here ready to
talk technology with you. So lots of things happening in
the tech world this week. Got a new video game,
couple of new video games, new Mario video game, new
Spider Man video games. Those are exciting. Can't wait to
get home and play those. I've been driving a Rivian

(03:45):
around this week. I actually took it up here on
a road trip and so I will report back on
what it's like to drive that car, which is quite incredible.
Let's see, I've been testing the Pixel eight Pro camera
on that phone. It's probably one of my favorite phones,
well is it. Yeah, it's my favorite phone of the year.
So I think the iPhone fifteen Promax is amazing and

(04:06):
so is the Pixel eight Pro. Those are two of
my favorite devices, and I don't think that's going to
change by the end of the year. So if you
are looking for a new phone, I think those are
the two to beat this year, and of course that
will go into next year as well.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
We're only in October.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Let's see what else I tested out some new Samsung products,
the Galaxy Buds, fe the Galaxy Tab nine.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I'll talk about that.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
And I was in New Jersey over the weekend last
weekend and I rented a Tesla. Now, I probably it's
tough for me to recommend that you do the same,
because I was very hesitant to do this, but I
wanted to test it for you and see what the
process is like, because Hertz has gone through this big
thing where they're promoting EV's and they're promoting Tesla's and

(04:50):
they did like a big deal to buy it or
I don't know if they're buy them or however they
figure out however they get them in their fleet, but
that's what they did, and so they're really pushing evs
a lot. Now I own an EV so for me,
it's quite easy to kind of slip into a rental
car and figure it all out. But I will say
I think there's a pretty big learning curve if you
have never driven a Tesla and you're getting one on

(05:12):
your vacation. Now, of course, when you go on vacation,
people like to rent exotic cars, they like to rent
fun cars. But at the end of the day, most
people are just renting the cheapest car. They get fined
because they don't want to spend a lot on the rental.
It's just getting them around from point A to point B,
unless you're in place like you know, Hawaii or something
where people go with that convertible, which, by the way,
pro tip convertible in Hawaii is fun like once because

(05:34):
you know there's not much space back there. La same
thing people think they need to rent a convertible. It's
not very It's fun for like a minute, and then
it's not very fun, So do it the first time,
but then of course later on you'll probably just get
a regular car. So the Tesla as a rental car,
I think that you need to be aware that there
is a learning curve if you haven't driven one of
these cars. It just does things very differently from the

(05:57):
way it physically drives to the way you open the car.
So I mean, there's no key, there's like a key card,
and there's two places you got to tap that key card,
once on the door to get in the door jam,
and then once inside the car kind of like in
the center panel. Just those two things alone might take
you twenty minutes to figure out. If you've never driven
a Tesla before, and then when you're driving the Tesla,

(06:18):
which it drives amazing. It's a great car, and there's
chargers everywhere. So I have no problem with the charging situation.
I think people will figure out the charging. But again,
that's another one of those things where if you've never
charged a car before, now you got to take into
consideration on your drive if you're going to charge this thing,
and so that's another consideration, and you got to pull

(06:38):
up to the charger.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
You may not know how to use it.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
You may not realize you don't need to put a
credit card in or anything like that. It just figures
out the car and it charges you appropriately and it
routes that through the car itself. So my takeaways from
this couple of things, I thought this was really fun.
I really enjoyed having the electric car and the rental car.
I think that if you never drove one, it would

(07:00):
be tricky. And then the main thing that I had
a problem with was returning the car. So when I
return the car, you have to return it at eighty
five percent charge or more or else they charge you
kind of like a regular rental car. But here's the difference.
Gas stations are everywhere. They're very simple too. While you're
pulling into the airport, fill up the gas, and you're done.

(07:22):
With a Tesla, you've got to plan ahead. So is
there a charging station near the airport? How long is
that charge going to take? Thankfully, Tesla's charged pretty quick,
so it's not that big of a deal. But I'll
be honest, even me, a person who is very experienced
in the electric car, said, you know, I can't deal
with this. I don't have enough time to figure this out,
and so we return the car with like a thirty

(07:43):
percent charge because it was just easier. I didn't want
to wait at the charger. I didn't want to figure
out where the charger was. It was just too much
work to make sure that the car would be charged up.
So what do they do. They will happily charge you
either twenty five dollars or thirty five dollars. Now, I
did the math to charge up the car probably about
maybe twelve to fifteen bucks, so realistically you're paying like

(08:04):
a twenty dollars searcharge. Now, I think if Hurts really
wanted to get these things going for the first two
or three years, they should really waive that charge let
people get comfortable with the idea of renting an electric car,
and then start tacking on the fees, because, as we know,
everything starts out very nice, and then as these companies
get us accustomed to the niceties of these things, they

(08:27):
start piling on the charges. Like have you been to
a hotel lately? The room rate charge is just one
of the things on your bill, and then there's seventeen
other charges, everything ranging from you're somehow financing their downtown
conference center, to a resort fee to a printing fee.
I mean, there's just so many fees that it's like, wait, what,

(08:47):
why don't you just put this all into my room?
So I like the Tesla, but it was a little complicated.
I think you should try it. I think if you
have a lot of time on your trip, like if
you have extra time, that's what you really need. If
you're just trying to get in, pop into the car
and go, not going to be so great. But if
you do have some extra time you want to try
things out, go ahead. So with me, with my family,

(09:07):
they know I am always testing something. When my wife
and I go for a walk, we've got to stop
seventeen times to take pictures with two different smartphones, and
then I post them to my Instagram, which of course
you can see them on there at Richon Tech. One
thing I will say about the Tesla. We had a
close call, Like this is serious. We had a really
close call on the road on a highway in New

(09:28):
Jersey and it was raining and a car lost control
next to me.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
And I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
This car came at me sideways on the highway and
I just missed it. I mean I was thankfully, thankfully.
And by the way, please do not text and drive.
Please do not fumble with your phone while you're driving.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Please do not.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Get distracted, because if I was distracted for even a
second during what happened to us, I would not be
here today.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Guaranteed. It was that close.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Now, the interesting thing about it is that it's a Tesla,
and I said, oh my gosh. And I was in shock,
by the way, when this happened. Thankfully, we're okay. The driver,
I'm not sure what happened to them. They actually, you know,
a bunch of people stop behind me. I was in shock.
But anyway, the cameras on the car actually captured this incident,
and so it was a one car incident, by the way,

(10:19):
so nobody else was impacted by this, but it did.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
I remember it.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
I was like, oh my gosh, this car has a
DVR on it. Let me press and there's a little
symbol you can press on the Tesla and it will record.
It's constantly recording what's happening in front of it. But
then there's a way you can press to save that
recording so it doesn't record over it after you know,
ten fifteen hours whatever it does. Anyway, So we have
the video of this little incident, which is just wild
to rewatch because it makes you realize that when you're

(10:45):
in a car, it is a very serious thing when
you are not looking directly at the road ahead without
being distracted. Because again, if I was distracted in any way,
shape or form, it would not have been good because
I would have slammed right into this car.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
This car would have either t boned me or I
would have t boned them being in front of me,
one or the other, depending on the timing.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
But it was it was pretty scary.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
So please put those phones down, put them in the
glove compartment, whatever you have to do. Just listen to
the radio and just ignore everything else because my kids
were yelling in the backseat, saying, Dad, can you call
this person? And I was like a minute away from
like dialing the number of someone in like you know,
trying to chat. So anyway, Uh, okay, We've got lots
coming up on the show today. We've got I'm gonna

(11:27):
tell you about the Samsung Galaxy Fe tablet, the headphones
that I tried out on the airplane. We're gonna talk
about Netflix raising prices. But of course it is your turn.
We've got some of your calls right here at Triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two, four to one zero one. Give me
a call if you have a question about technology. Once again,
my name is Rich d'miro and you are doing something

(11:49):
smart today. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you. You talking technology live from Passo Roebules today,
broadcasting coast to coast and talk in Tech. By the way,
if you've ever been to Passo Roebules, there is a

(12:12):
little bit of a debate on how to pronounce the
name of this city. You will hear it pronounced many
different ways. But I had someone that grew up in
the area tell me that it is robulls rhymes with mobiles,
which I like because I'm a tech guy, so I
thought that was pretty good. But I've called it all
kinds of things over the years. And if you're not,
you know, from California originally, like I am not, there's

(12:33):
a lot of names in this in this state that
are tricky for me. Even in Los Angeles, there's a
place called Losienaga Boulevard. I think I called it Los
Sienga for like many many years, and sub pulvida sepulvita,
I mean, there are you you will hear.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
All kinds of stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
But I guess that's kind of the way it is
around the world, right You go to one of these
countries that you don't really know the language, and you're
gonna be mispronouncing stuff all day long. This is the
show where I talk about that's tech stuff I think
you should know about. It's a place where I answer
your questions about technology. Phone lines are open at triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one website rich on

(13:13):
tech dot TV. So Netflix is raising prices as promised. Uh,
they said they wouldn't actually, but then they did. So
Netflix has a lot of subscribers two hundred and forty
seven million at this point. They actually added eight point
eight million subscribers in the last quarter, which is all
because you know why, they cracked down on that password sharing.

(13:38):
So it used to be you could share your password,
your Netflix account with pretty much anyone you wanted, and
they really really stopped that from happening in a big way.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
So eight point.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Eight million new subscribers in a time when a lot
of these streaming services are contracting or stagnant. So that's
pretty good. I'm sure they wanted more. No, it says
exceeded expectations.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
It was even better than they expected. Now here's the
bad part. Price increases for US plans. So if you
are still on the basic plan, which by the way,
you cannot get anymore. That is a grandfathered plan, that
is a nine to ninety nine plan, Okay, nine dollars
ninety nine cents a month, that is going up to
eleven ninety nine a month, so two dollars increase there. Now,

(14:21):
if you're on the premium plan, like I am. This
is the one that has four K ultra HD video,
which I can't even tell the difference, but I do
it because you get more devices. You can download Netflix too,
and I've got a family of Force. We're all downloading
stuff for the plane. That plan is going up from
nineteen ninety nine a month to twenty two ninety nine
a month, So nineteen ninety nine a month to twenty

(14:43):
two ninety.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Nine a month. Now.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
The plans that are not changing are the two plans
that are the AD Supported Plan that will remain the same,
and also the Standard plan that is I think it's
like fifteen forty nine. Those two plans are staying the same.
So if you you have one of those two, you're fine.
But it's all the people in the middle like myself

(15:05):
that are on these either the Premium Plan or the
Grandfather Plan. So the AD Plan is still going to
stay at six ninety nine a month, the Standard Plan
is going to be fifteen to forty nine a month,
the Premium Plan, like I said, is twenty two ninety nine,
and the Basic Plan, which is no longer available. So
if you're on that plan at this point, even though
it's raising two dollars. I would probably stick with it

(15:26):
because it's still three dollars or four dollars cheaper than
the next cheapest plan.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
So let's see any other interesting things about this. No,
not really. Oh, there is one thing.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
So the ad supported plan is going to get an improvement,
which is kind of cool. So for that six ninety nine,
they're going to add downloads to that plan. You couldn't
download stuff before on that plan, and they're going to
let you stream in two places instead of just one.
So some improvements as well as some things that are
not so good on there. So there you go, Netflix
raising prices. Let's go to line one. Carmen is in Hollywood, California. Carmen,

(16:03):
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Yeah, good morning, Good morning. My messages of one contact
in What'sapp? I have no idea how did I get
rid of them? I didn't erasein. I didn't mean to
throw them, but I don't know where they went and disappear.
How can I get them backly? If they're not in Trussian?

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Okay, well, if you deleted them, it's going to be
tough to get them back, but you may have a backup.
So if you look on your WhatsApp. Typically, when you
first set up WhatsApp, it asks you if you'd like
to back up your messages, whether that's to Google Drive
or whether it is somewhere else, to an online cloud storage.
If you're using the iPhone, you can back it up
to iCloud. So what you can do is you can

(16:48):
go into the message into the app, and you can
see if you can restore those messages. So I'm looking
at my app and I don't have anything saved on here,
but every time I redownload this app, it asks you,
do you want.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
To restore messages?

Speaker 1 (17:05):
So what you need to do is figure out if
you have a backup, and if you do have a backup,
you need to restore those messages from that backup. So
again you want to go to your settings, and then
your chats and then your history. I personally don't have that,
but you can see if you have that backed up.
I hope you set it up when you first set
up WhatsApp, because it does ask you to do it,

(17:26):
and most people, I think set up either a backup
to Google Drive or iCloud, depending on the phone you're on.
But again, just go into those settings, go into chats,
and it should say chat backup and you can see
if you can restore the backup from there.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
So once you.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Once you find that backup, you can Actually it might
be tricky, but you may have to delete WhatsApp kind
of start fresh, and then when you get that message
that says restore, that's where you can restore them too.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
So hopefully that helps. Carmen.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Please back up everything you've got rich on Tech right
here at triple eight rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. If
you have a question about technology, give me a call.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one

(18:17):
o one eight eight eight seven.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Four to two four one zero one. Email is also
an option.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
You can go to the website rich on Tech dot
TV hit contact. That's exactly what Gary did. Gary said,
paso robles is Spanish, give it a little justice. Yes, uh,
that is the other pronunciation that people often debate is
passo roblaze or I guess I must say now I
feel like I'm really messing it up. But yes, it's

(18:46):
just you know, it's one of these things where it's
just it's y as ten people, You're gonna get different,
ten different opinions on this place.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
So that's just the way it is.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
And then Mary wrote in she said, uh, hey, Rich,
how are you able to broadcast from your her place
in Passo to the broadcast studio in Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (19:03):
What's the path? And it's pretty simple.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Actually, we just have some equipment that helps me connect
like you like, I never left the studio, so I'm
very impressed with it. And We've used this in various places,
including overseas.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
I'm trying to think. I know we did it in Berlin.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
I'm not sure if I did it when I was
in Asia, but yeah, it works like a charm. It's
quite amazing. Let's see, let's get to question here. You
guys sell me so many questions, So let's see. Isabelle says,
my daughter has a brand new Apple watch she does
not want to use. I would like to use it
because I think they are very nice looking. However, I

(19:39):
have an Android cell phone. I don't care to connect it,
nor do I care to switch to an Apple cell phone.
My question is can I still use it? The only
thing I actually want to use is the time and
the watch. I only want to see the time. Is
this possible, please help Isabelle. Yes, it is possible, and
there is a setting for the Apple Watch. You do
need an iPhone to set up an Apple Watch, but

(20:01):
once it's set up, it will work on its own.
And I don't think you're gonna get the full benefit
of having an Apple Watch.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
But if you just.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Want the time, like you're saying, then surep you can
absolutely do this, and it will do some other basic
things as well. Now I do think you're gonna need
to set up an iCloud account to do this, so
if you don't have that, it's free, you can do that.
But the feature is called family set up, and you
actually need to use your daughter's iPhone to do this.
So once you reset the Apple Watch, go into settings

(20:30):
and factory reset it. That'll bring it to like a
fresh start. Use your phone, your daughter's iPhone to set
up the Apple Watch, and it will say are you
setting this up for yourself or a family member? And
you are the family member, so say yes, I'm setting
this up for a family member, and it will guide
you through the process of setting up that phone for
you and not her phone, so all of your stuff

(20:51):
will be just on the watch. It will be separate
from anything that she has on her account. But like
I said, you will need to log in with your
own iCloud account just so that Apple can keep track
of everything and make sure that you've got your own
account on there, so you can set that up for
free during the setup time. And if you just want
to use the time and the watch, that's fine, but
you can use other features. I mean, you could use

(21:11):
like you know, the stop watch, the calendar. My kids
have Apple Watches and they use them independent of a phone,
and they do a whole bunch of stuff. They've even
downloaded little games on there. So there are definitely things
you can do on the Apple Watch even if you
don't have an iPhone. And this is because a lot
of people use these for their kids or even adults
that you know may have a disability or something like

(21:34):
that where you want to be able to keep track
of them or have this watch on their wrist, but
they're not necessarily using an iPhone.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
So there are many many reasons.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Why you might want to set this up this way,
but it can be done very easily. A good question Isabelle,
Thanks so much for writing Let's see. Rob from Los
Angeles says, Hey, Rich, I follow you on social media
and your podcast, and I think you're pretty funny and informative.
Oh well, thank you, Rob. I have a question about
two factor authentication apps. I use two FA open source

(22:03):
app and Microsoft Authenticator app on my accounts. What if
I want to stop using Microsoft Authenticator and switch to
the two FA app?

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Will that create.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Conflict since my accounts were accepting codes generated by the
app the Microsoft app before, or do I have to
stick with the same Authenticator app once I attach the
account to one app.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Please explain.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Thanks in advance, Rob in Los Angeles, Rob, great question.
Now it's interesting because I don't I don't talk about
the two factor authentication apps too much, but I think
they are very very important. And if you've heard of
me talk about securing your online accounts, there are two
ways you do that. Number one, very strong password, unique
password for every account, and then the second way is

(22:47):
with a two factor authentication enabled on your account. And
there are two ways of doing that, and this is
why it gets a little bit complicated. And I don't
want to I don't want people to be detracted from
doing this right like I want them to do this,
so I want to make it as simple as possible.
And the simplest way to do two factor authentication is
with the text message code. And so you put in

(23:09):
your phone number on something like Instagram and it says, hey,
we're going to text you every time you try to
log in. If you don't give us that secret code
that we text you, we're not going to allow this
log in to happen. Well, the problem is that the
cell phones and phone numbers are a little bit easier
hacked than we'd like, and so some people could get
a hold of your cell phone number or intercept that
code and hack you still even if you have two

(23:32):
factor on. But it's still a very good way to
protect your account in most, like ninety nine percent of cases.
But if you really want to be safe and secure,
what you want to do is use one of these
two factor authentication apps. And what these apps do is
they generate a unique code every thirty seconds or so,
and when you want to log in, you just go
to this app and you check out the code and

(23:52):
you just type it in. And again that's the second factor.
The first is you logging into the account. The second
is this app that is generating a code. Now, the
app is nice because it is independent of your phone number.
So if you switch phone lines, if you get a
different carrier, if you get rid of your phone number altogether,
you don't lose those ways to log into your account

(24:13):
because you can no longer access those codes. You can
get them on this app no matter what service you're using.
So that's why I like to use this service whenever possible.
And there are apps called authie. There are Google Authenticator,
there's Microsoft Authenticator. There are several of these authentication apps
out there. You just have to pick one that you like.
I would personally say pick one that does not have

(24:34):
any sort of cost because you don't want to be
paying for this down the line over time.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
So the question rob is can you switch apps?

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And I had to do some research on this one,
but I looked up on Wired had an article about this.
And it's funny because I've been not wanting to switch
because it is a time consuming process, but it can
be done. And so, as I suspected, you basically have
to disable the two factor authentication temporarily and then re
enable it using the new app. And the way that

(25:03):
you do that is once you enable it. Typically, you
just scan a QR code on your screen to enable
this two factor authentication. It links up and then all
of your codes are right on that app. So, for instance,
I use an app and I've got all of my
codes on here for Twitter, I've got it for my Facebook,
I've got it for my website at work, I've got

(25:24):
it for my Instagram. And so of course the number
one thing you're thinking is, well, what if someone hacks
that app?

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah, you've got to be careful.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
And this is why you have to have a password
on your phone or face ID or a fingerprint scanner,
and there is a log in for that app as well.
So again, all of these things do require a little
bit of planning, a little bit of kind of just
setting things up so that they work. And I know
people get very hesitant to set this stuff up because

(25:54):
it sounds so complicated and it feels like you're never
gonna be able to get into your your logins when
you need to. But believe me, I will tell you
I get emails every single day, every single day from
people that get hacked on Facebook, on Instagram, on their email.
And when you do that, there is no guarantee that

(26:14):
you're getting that account back. And I have people that
are saying, rich, I have my photos on there, I
have my emails, I have all kinds of personal data
that I will never be able to get back, and
I say, you know what, I'm sorry, but the reality
is you have to lock down these accounts, and most
people just don't want to. And if you don't, you
will be hacked. I'm telling you that because it's not

(26:36):
like they're they're targeting you. They are just coming after
a lot of people. By the way, coming up on
the show, we've got a couple of great guests. Marcel
Campos is going to talk about the one plus Open.
This is a new foldable phone. After the break, i'll
tell you some details about that phone. And Michael Sino
later in the show is going to talk about tips
on how to protect yourself online. He is a Google

(27:00):
Google he is a Google cybersecurity expert, and we had
a great conversation about some of these ways you can
protect yourself and some of it is pretty basic, like
I said, the two factor authentication, but Google is also
pushing this new way of authentication called pass keys, and
this actually uses your phone as.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Almost an authentication app.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
So instead of actually using that app to generate a code,
your phone is the authentication code. So let's say you
go to a website and it says, hey, you log
in with your password, and then it says, okay, now
go to your phone and okay that log in and
you scan your fingerprint on your phone or you scan
your face and it will then accept that and let

(27:42):
you log into the website. So again, we're basically protecting
ourselves from phishing attempts, from scam attempts, from all this
stuff because there are people out there twenty four to
seven that.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Are trying to figure out how to hack us.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
And believe me, it's pretty easy because there's so many
people out there that just are wide open. So it's
it's not that tough for them to do this stuff.
But when it happens, it's not good. All right, Phone
lines are let's see triple eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one
on the website richon tech dot TV. Hit contact if

(28:16):
you want to get in touch, give me a call.
You have a question about technology. My name is Rich
d'miro and you are listening to Rich on tech. Welcome
back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking tech
with you. You can follow me on social media. I'm
at rich on tech, on Instagram, Facebook, X and threads,

(28:40):
and I usually go over what I posted to uh Instagram.
This previous week, ooh, I posted some pictures I was
talking about being back east. I posted some pictures from
my trip. You can see if I come from a
family of five siblings, so when we get in the room,
it is a instant party.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
And believe me, they are a wild group of folks,
my siblings.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
So if you want to see them and see some
of the pictures of me and my family are at
the wedding we went to, you can do that on
my Instagram at.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I posted a tip about you ever be on the
iPhone and it shows you like, hey, would you like
to rate this app on the app Store and it
pops up like a little five stars, and it's like
right in the middle of what you're trying to do.
So I posted a tip on how to get rid
of that and make it so apps can't ask you
to do that anymore. I also posted this cool light

(29:27):
up clothing. It's let's see what's it called. It's called
go Glow by Pat Pat and these are really fun.
I always try to do something like unique and techie
for Halloween.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
So these are light up clothing.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
So they have like a skeleton on them that lights
up and changes color. You know, they have different things
that they do, and it's really cool because I've tried
this type of clothing before that lights up. This is
the best I've seen because the battery pack is so tiny,
it's rechargeable, it's USBC, and the clothes are washable too.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Some of the other ones I've.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Tried in the past they have like these big cables
you got to run through the clothes.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
This one, it's all self contained. It's very very cool.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
And then finally, have you heard of Fingerlings? These are
the little toys that you put on your finger and
they are kind of an animated I don't know, it
looks like almost like a monkey, and it's really really cute.
And so I was talking to the creator of the fingerlings.
She's got a new product out, so we were talking about that,
and then she showed me the old one that sort

(30:23):
of you know, gave her a pretty big name because
she's very young. I think she invented these under thirty
and anyways, she has a new product that my kids love,
so I'll be talking about that soon as well.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Let's see, let's go to the phone lines.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Let's see here, we've got Francesca in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Line one. Francesca, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
Hello. I love to listen to you. You're very knowledgable
and charming and all that, and I am in big trouble.
Of course, I finally decided to overcome my anxiety by
the cell phone. I had a bad case of cancer
and I was told that if I don't need the

(31:06):
cell phone now, I should not have it because of
the radiation. So because of this, I was very paranoid.
Now this is many years later, I decided stop that
and get the cell phone. Now I don't really even
know how to make a phone call, so if you

(31:28):
could help me with that, I'm not sure you know
when I'm changing the pages, whether I'm using I should
be using one finger to swipe or three fingers. I
can't read the instructions because it's too tiny, and even

(31:48):
with my glasses, I can't read it. So I'm going
to have to get new glasses.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Well, thanks for the kind words. Sorry that you had
to go through what you went through with the cancer.
I hope you're doing or with that. The phone? What
kind of phone did you get?

Speaker 5 (32:03):
The track phone?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Okay, it's a track phone.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Is it a smartphone or is it just a flip
standard phone?

Speaker 5 (32:10):
I think it's a smartphone.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
It is a smartphone, okay, So it has like Android
on it?

Speaker 5 (32:15):
Maybe I don't see that shine anywhere.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
On the does it is it a is it a Samsung?
Is it an Apple? Is it an iPhone?

Speaker 5 (32:28):
I don't really know. It was given to me. It's
a t.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
TC okay, TCL, Yes, got it. Okay, that's an that's
an Android phone. Yep, TCL.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
So TCL is the company that's they're pretty famous for
TVs now on this phone because TCL makes two different
types of phones. They make a flip phone. So does
it have a physical keyboard or is it all screen?

Speaker 6 (32:55):
Like?

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Does it have buttons you can physically press?

Speaker 5 (32:58):
I have to press but yeah the symbols?

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yes, okay, but it's all on the screen.

Speaker 5 (33:06):
I got it.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
So it's not like it's not like an right, Okay,
got it? So it is a smartphone. Okay, So it
sounds like you have you know, one of their TCL smartphones,
which are good little phones. But again you have to
learn how to use this. So if you want to
learn how to use an Android phone, the main things
that you need to do are make a phone call
and you're calling me, so maybe you figure that part out,

(33:29):
but it really comes down to downloading apps and just
getting this phone to do things that you need to do.
So what I would do is just set up the
home screen with the things that you want to do,
and if that is Facebook, maybe you put that app
on there.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
If it's your phone, you put that app on there.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Texting you're probably gonna want to text folks as well,
so you want your texting app on there. And you
can do other stuff too, like of course take pictures,
you can surf the web. But I think if you
just want to get the basics down, the way to
learn this phone is just to use it. There is
typically in smartphones and app called tips, so you might
search for that, and the way that you search on

(34:08):
your phone is you swipe up and then you search
inside there, or you can just search on the bar
that says Google right on your phone screen. So it
is a little bit intimidating. I understand because you are
just getting to learn this phone. I would also think
that TCL probably has a book about this phone online,

(34:28):
so if you have access to a computer and you
want to read kind of like a simple book on
how to use this But I think the main thing,
Francesca that you need to know is that you want
to be able to make calls on this phone, and
you want to customize it for the things that you
want to do. And I would say, personally, if you
have a family member or a friend or a neighbor
that has an Android phone, just ask them, just say, hey,

(34:50):
how do you make phone calls? I would say one
thing you probably want to make sure you're doing is
connecting it to Wi Fi in your home if you
do have Wi Fi in your house, because otherwise I'm
not sure how much data you have with your plan
with trackphone, but it's typically not that much with them,
and so you probably don't want to gobble up all
that data when you're at home if you're in a
Wi Fi area, So try to connect to Wi Fi

(35:12):
as much as possible.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
But you know, these.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Things are mainly just a matter of trial and error.
You're not going to break anything. I would also I
would try to learn how to turn the phone off
and on and also restart it, and that's typically going
to be either holding down the power button on the
side or swiping down from the top and pressing the
settings which looks like a little gear. The other thing, Francesca,
I think is really fun is just searching Google. So

(35:36):
there's a microphone icon on your home screen. Just tap
that and ask Google whatever you want answers to and
you can have a lot of fun there too, So
have fun with the phone. I'm glad you are coming
around and getting into the twenty first century here, So
thanks for the call today, appreciate it and enjoy You
are listening to rich on Tech. Phone lines are open
at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight

(35:58):
eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about the one plus
open foldable smartphone. Plus I'll give you my thoughts on
some of Samsung's new products, including the Galaxy Buds f
E and the Galaxy tab S.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Nine f E.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
These are affordable gadgets from Samsung, and I've got thoughts
because I used them.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
You are listening to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
What's going on rich de Barrow here, rich on Tech
talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Doing the show today from Paso robles, a U an
area in I guess it's central California that is known
for their wine and their restaurants and just kind of
a nice, relaxed place. It's a fun place to spend
a weekend, for sure, if you haven't been. Gloria wrote
in on the website richon Tech dot TV. We were
talking about how people mispronounce names of places, and Glory says,

(37:00):
there's a street in your Belinda baston Cherry, but everyone
pronounces it as baston Cherry. And when I try to
explain the why, they just ignore me. Yeah, you know,
people are setting their ways sometimes. Coming up on this hour,
we are going to talk about the one plus Open.
This is a new foldable phone. I'll tell you about
some details on that in just a moment. We're gonna

(37:22):
talk about.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
The Galaxy Buds FE and the Galaxy tab S nine
f E. These are two new.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Less expensive products from Samsung that deliver a lot of
the things that people like, and we're gonna take more
of your calls.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
So let's get to.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
The calls right now, let's go to Mickey and so
here's a city that people mispronounce cam Rio. Right, So
Mickey and Camerio line too.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
You're on with rech. How do you say Camrio?

Speaker 6 (37:48):
Hi?

Speaker 7 (37:48):
Yes, good morning cam Mario.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, I got it right. See, oh there you go. See.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
I think when I first moved to California, I might
have said like Camarillo.

Speaker 7 (38:00):
Yes, many do.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
So what can I help you with?

Speaker 7 (38:06):
Okay, I'm pulling over. I've had conflicting let me make
sure you can hear me.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 7 (38:12):
Be careful please, okay, yeah, no, I'll pull over. So
I had conflicting information from my uh the anti virus company. Well,
I was told to leave this VPN at home and
on my mobile my cell phone okay, and the cell
phone house also another antivirus. But anyway, so I even
talked to a manager. This manager told me. I told

(38:35):
the manager, I was told by one of your representatives
in the tech department tech support that the VPN uh
A lady. She said, Oh, you're supposed to leave it
on at all times? Who told you turned it off?
I said one of the text one of the tech
support people, because I've called back and forth several days times.
They said said, no, leave it off when you're on
your computer at home, and uh off on your phone

(38:56):
off here at home, but once you leave home, turned
on your VPN. And then and yet someone else told it.
And the lady says, no, you're supposed to leave your
VPN at home on the computer. Should be on twenty
four to seven. She said, the one that told you
to leave it off, I am going to do. You
don't know the name, I said, know you, well, I'm
going to report that. I said, I don't know why
he would have told you that the supervisor. Then I
called the nex Baseball was the supervisor. Supervisor said VPN

(39:18):
should be on twenty four to seven phone and mobile devices.
So of course I'm taking the words of a supervisor
and he just he described, you know, some website the
VPN will work with it to turn it off and
turn it back on, et cetera. And anyway, So I'm
just really you know, I'm taking a heart what the
supervisor said, but I'm just really confused a little skill.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Okay, what company are you using for your VPN?

Speaker 7 (39:42):
This is for McAfee. I had Basic and I went
to McAfee Advanced Assists, so few days ago.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
There's a lot of advertising around VPNs. There's a lot
of talk around VPNs for privacy. We had on a
privacy or a VPN expert a couple of weeks ago,
David Huerta, and so I highly recommend that you go
back and re listen to that interview.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
That is the last.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Show if you go to the podcast rich on Tech
podcast and if you look at the episode that is
titled Let's see it is, oh, VPN's Explained October seventh.
So I highly recommend that you listen to that episode
and he will explain exactly when you should use a VPN.

(40:29):
Because there's so much advertising, because there's so much push,
and because there's so much profit on VPNs, and of
course privacy is paramount to everyone, there is a lot
of misconceptions about when you need to use a VPN.
So here is my rule of thumb. If you're on
your home Wi Fi network, you do not need to
use your VPN. There is no reason for it unless
you are trying to mask what you're doing to your ISP,

(40:53):
your Internet service provider you want to change the location
of where you are and you want to look like
you are surfing the web from a different place, or
you're like really really top secret and just don't want
any sort of trackers tracking you as you move around
the Internet. So those are the reasons why you might
want to use a VPN at home. I don't recommend it.
I don't think you need it now. When you're out

(41:14):
and about, I would say, stay on your cellular network
for all of your stuff as much as possible, and
in that case, you do not need a VPN unless
the same things apply. If you don't want your ISP
to know what you're doing, if you don't want to
be tracked all that good stuff, you can use the
VPN even on your mobile network. Now, it's when you're
on Wi Fi that I think you might need a VPN,

(41:36):
but only during specific use cases. Only when you're doing
something very sensitive on that Wi Fi network, might you
want to consider using a VPN. So again, let's say
you are a public shared plate. Do you want to
check your bank account? Maybe that's when you might use
a VPN. But the trick is a lot of these
VPNs don't actually let you log in if you're sorry.

(42:00):
A lot of these banks and things won't let you
log in if you're on a VPN because VPNs can
also be tricked, and so they want to make sure
that you're on a direct connection through a cellular company
or through.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
A Wi Fi.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
So I think the bottom line is there for the
average person, there are not many many times when you
need to use a VPN, but there are specific use
cases where I will fire up the VPN to protect
my web browsing, or to protect what I'm doing, or
if I'm on a sketchy Wi Fi network that I'm
not really sure, I will probably use a VPN to
just protect those things. But most of the time I

(42:33):
will stay on cellular, which is very, very secure, and
there's not really a need for a VPN during those times.
But Mickey, I understand there are so many questions about
this stuff. I think the last episode on October seventh,
VPNs explained with our guests. We'll explain a lot, but
I kind of summarized what he had to say just now.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
So thank you for the call. Appreciate it. Use a VPN.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I don't think you need to pay a ton for it.
I don't think it needs to be activated all the time.
I think that again, just the times that I mentioned
are the critical times when you might want to do that.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
All right.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
So I was using the Galaxy Buds FE and the
Galaxy tab S nine FE on my flight back to
New Jersey last week. So the Galaxy Buds FE are
earbuds that are ninety nine dollars. These are brand new
from Samsung. They've got active noise cancelation. They've got ambient
sound modes. They've got really long battery life up to

(43:26):
eight and a half hours of playback time thirty hours
with the case. They've got decent water resistance. They're only
IPX two, which means they are splash resistant. They fit
in my ears great, they sound really good. They have
a three mic system, so it's got good, clean, clear calls.
I will tell you though, I did not think these

(43:46):
were that loud in my ears, especially on the plane.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
I don't know what the deal was.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
I'm not sure why, but they were tough to hear,
and I'm not sure if that was just limited to me.
But I will say I switched to between these and
several other earbuds, and the other earbuds did sound better.
So I think these sound fine when you're not in
a place like a plane, but and maybe they need
a software update to sound better. But overall, I will
say I do like them. I took them on a run.

(44:13):
I thought they sounded good during the run. But it's
one of these things where you know it's they're good.
Maybe wait for the price to go down to they
they retail at ninety nine ninety nine. I think that
they're going to be cheaper during the holidays. So that's
the Galaxy Buds f E. I think overall they're fine.
They're not. They they sounded okay on the plane. They
weren't the best noise cancelation headphones I've ever used on

(44:36):
a plane, but a lot of the ones I use
are maybe double the price of these anyway, So if
you want something that's simple, basic, I think they're going
to be a good bye.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Especially if you have a Samsung phone.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Now, when it comes to this Galaxy tab S nine
f E, this is a large tablet and I will
say I actually really like it, and I typically recommend
the iPads, and that's for a reason.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
You get a lot for your money.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
This starts at four hundred and fifty bucks that's a
lot of money. It's got a large screen, either a
ten point nine in screen or a twelve point four
in screen. It's got a great refresh rate. It's got
an s pen included, so it's got a stylus included,
which is kind of nice. It's got up to two
hundred and fifty six gigabytes of storage. It's got a
micro SD card. You can get one with a SIM card,
so if you want to use cellular on this. The

(45:20):
other neat thing about this tablet is that it is
IP sixty eight, which means it's water and dust resistant,
which means you can take this thing like in a
pool and get it wet and it's fine. I wouldn't
put it underwater for a long time, but if you
want to read in the pool, watch a movie in
the pool, you can. I don't know why you'd want
to do that, but you could if you want it to.
It's got up to twenty hours of video playback. I
had no problems with the battery situation. It charged really

(45:43):
nice and fast.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Again.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
It has five G connectivity available and this starts at
four hundred and fifty dollars. The biggest downside to this
tablet and I watched a couple movies on it.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
I used it on the plane.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Is that it's just heavy, and I thought it was heavy,
and then I confirm my suspicions by weighing it against
the iPad, and yeah, it's definitely heavier than the iPad.
So my only issue with this tablet is that it's heavy.
But otherwise and the price, I think again you should
wait for the price to come down on this because
although they're releasing it at four forty nine, I think
it's going to be cheaper during the holidays. This is

(46:16):
the kind of stuff The fe product line is made
for discounts. Samsung puts these products out there. They have
a lot of great features at a great price point,
but the price point gets even better during the holidays
when they say, you know what, we're gonna make a
lot of people buy this stuff, so we're gonna make
these prices too good to refuse. And so I suspect
the buds will be anywhere from seventy fifty nine to

(46:36):
seventy nine bucks, and this tablet, they'll probably take a
hundred bucks off this price to the tablet during the holidays.
So if you're looking for a tablet that is Android
that is not iPad. I still think the iPad offers
a better selection of apps and a better experience overall,
but I do like this, and I do like how
Android tablets actually download stuff in the background, which the
iPad really does not unless it's an Apple app. So again,

(46:59):
Galaxy Fie Galaxy Tabs nine feu, put them on your
list for the holidays. Definitely gonna make some good gifts,
and I think the prices are gonna be right. Rich
on Tech is my website, rich on tech dot TV.
Go ahead, check me out on Instagram at rich on
Tech and uh, like I said, download the podcast of
this show. So if you want to listen to all
the segments and all the answers and all the guests,

(47:20):
they are always there.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Two four one zero one back with the one plus
open after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Phone
lines are open at triple eight rich one O one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Wife just texted said she's going on a hike up

(47:48):
here in the mountains, and I reminded her that because
she's got a newer iPhone, you need to know about
this feature called Emergency SOS. So, if you have an
iPhone fourteen or fifteen, you have a satellite on your iPhone,
which means if you ever needed help and you didn't
have a cell phone signal, you could still get help
just by having a clear view of the sky. So,

(48:09):
if you have an iPhone fourteen, iPhone fourteen Pro, iPhone fifteen,
iPhone fifteen Pro, familiarize yourself with Emergency SOS via satellite.
This will let you text emergency services even when you
don't have a cellular signal or a Wi Fi signal,
and you can still get help. It's a very very
amazing feature that Apple has built into the latest iPhones.

(48:30):
You can familiarize yourself with it by going into Settings
and scrolling until you see Emergency SOS and then scrolling
all the way down and you can try a demo
of the satellite feature. It's not going to make you
call it the police or the fire or anything like that,
but it can help you understand how this feature works
because it is new and so not a lot of

(48:52):
people understand it, and it's just basically works that if
you don't have a signal and you try to dial
nine one one, it will redirect to the basically the
staffed response centers that can help you with your emergency.
And it's not a phone call, it's a back and
forth text. And by the way, it does take some
time because it's going over satellite, so it's not instantaneous.

(49:15):
I mean it is eventually, but it could take a
minute to connect or something. It is going to a
satellite that's thousands of miles above you.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
But it is a really cool feature.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Again, if you have iPhone fourteen or fifteen, you need
to familiarize yourself with emergency sos and set up those
emergency contacts as well, because hopefully you'll never need them,
but it's better to be prepared. If you're on Android
and you want something similar, they have an add on
called the Motorola Defy and this is the Motorola Defy
Satellite Link, and it's basically a little accessory for Android

(49:47):
phones that puts a satellite enabled messenger on your phone.
So your phone connects this little link and then the
link sends the messages up to the satellite. So if
you need help or you can just text someone no
matter where you are, if you hike a lot, you're
on an oil rig in the middle of nowhere, whatever
it may be in your life that you know, you
want to stay connected without a cell phone signal. These

(50:08):
little systems will work, and hopefully we'll see the first
Android phones with this satellite technology built in very soon.
Let's go to line three, Jerry and Northridge.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (50:19):
Jerry, Hey, Rich, great show. I had a quick question
about the how good the security is for the latest
vision of Ventura. You got an older iMac is at
twenty eighteen, so it cannot upgrade to Sonoma. Is that
a big security risk?

Speaker 2 (50:34):
And the only thing you can run on it is
what the highest.

Speaker 8 (50:38):
Thing could run on is the latest version of Ventura.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Okay, so you've got to look online and see if
Ventura is still getting security updates. So typically Apple will
give out security updates for you know, a little while,
even after they stop supporting the operating system, so it'll
it'll continue to be supported for a while. So if
I'm looking at Ventura right now, Ventura the last time

(51:04):
it got a security update was September seventh, twenty twenty three,
so that is very recent. That means that Apple is
still supporting this. Typically they support these for a while,
and so I think you're fine. As long as you
can update that computer to the latest security patch, that
should be fine. Obviously, with the newer computers, you want
to put them on the latest software. But no matter

(51:25):
what software you're running, the system number one, the security
updates have been getting longer and longer for almost every
operating system. So Google just announced that they're doing seven
years of security updates for the latest Pixel phone, so
Pixel eight it is twenty twenty three. You'll be able
to get security updates for that phone until twenty thirty.
And Apple has typically supported their devices for at least

(51:49):
five years I'd say maybe five maybe six years with
the latest iOS updates. But they've also separated the operating
system update from the security updates. So even though they're
not doing let's say a big operating system update for
your device, like you said, on your computer, it can
still get security updates. So as long as it's still
getting those security updates, you should be fine. I would

(52:10):
just check for the end of life date for the
various operating systems and see what it says about that.
I'm not sure what it is for Ventura, but it's
easily findable online. But again, just came out with the
security update on September seventh, So I think you are okay,
Jerry for letting that run as long as possible. But
the main thing is you just don't want to click
any links that might be phishing and all that stuff,
because that's really how they're getting you these days. All right,

(52:33):
coming up, we've got a guest that is going to
talk about the one Plus Open. This is one Plus's
first foldable smartphone. Before we get to the guest, let
me just tell you about this phone. I've been using it,
and yeah, the reviewers really like it, including myself. This
is called the one Plus Open. It launches on October
twenty sixth. It's got a big outside screen six point
three inches, which means it's like a regular smartphone on

(52:54):
the outside. Then when you open up on the inside,
it's seven point eight two inches, So it is big
on the inside, big on the outside, and that's kind
of the main thing. But it's also very lightweight. It's
got a good camera setup. I think the camera is
hit or miss in my testing. You can look at
my Instagram at rich On Tech. I took some pictures
against the iPhone. It's got all the best specs, sixteen

(53:15):
gigabytes of RAM, five hundred and twelve gigabytes of storage,
a giant battery, no wireless charging, which is a bummer,
but the charging that is wired is really fast. The
price seventeen hundred dollars, but if you trade in any phone,
they're gonna give you this for fifteen hundred bucks. So
any phone, I'm talking like literally any phone, they'll give
you two hundred dollars off, effectively bringing the price down

(53:38):
to fifteen hundred dollars. So how does this compare with
the Pixel Fold and the Samsung Fold five. I think
the Pixel Fold still to me, is better because of
the camera. But I think that this is a very
strong contender for a foldable phone because it has such
great specs, It has such a great kind of stance
and the screens. The only thing I wish it had

(54:00):
a little bit better was the camera. But otherwise, the
price is pretty strong, the design is pretty strong, and
we're going to hear more about this from Marcell Campos
with one plus coming up right after this. Rich Demiro here,
rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show. I am
on location in New York City at the one plus

(54:24):
event for the launch of their latest foldable phone. Joining
me now is Marcel Campos with one Plus. Thanks for
joining me.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
It's my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
So let's talk about one plus as a company. First off,
explain what one plus is all about.

Speaker 9 (54:38):
One plus is a tech company. We start focus on
smartphones mainly, and we are expanding to other devices like keyboard,
zero phones. Many other things are coming and we are
trying to establish our presence in US in a more
broader way.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
One thing I've always appreciated about the one plus phones
is the software. It's smart, it's speedy, it's smooth, and
that has really set the phones apart.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Do you really focus on.

Speaker 9 (55:06):
That fastens move that's our mantra. Yes, that's pretty much
the essence of our product, the smartphones. That's how we
got popular with but also with a lot of feedback
from the community. We are very focused on community, and
the community kind of drive us in the right direction.
Sometimes we have some decisions we go in one direction,
community come back and say we don't like that.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
We prefer if you're doing a different way.

Speaker 9 (55:29):
We listen today and try to incorporate their needs, their
feelings about the products for the next generation products. That's
pretty much how we work. That's our way of working.
Listen to the community because they know better than anyone else.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
The first time I ever saw one plus phone, I
was actually in San Francisco. I landed at the airport.
I got a newber and the driver had a phone.
And I cover phones for a living and I've seen
most of them, but I'd never seen this phone.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
And I said, excuse me, what phone is that?

Speaker 1 (55:56):
And he said, oh, it's a one plus. I said, wow,
it was such a good looking phone. That was the
original device.

Speaker 9 (56:01):
Yeah, the one right, the first one, the original one
that was crazy right, you could only buy by invitation.
The back of the phone has a very distinctive feeling
and texture. I think it was a very good debut.
It went to the market in a very aggressive way.
I think the receptions was definitely way better than we
could expect. But from that moment on, you know, we

(56:24):
are in our ear. This will be the ten year
of one plus worldwide since we launched the brand, and
a lot of things change and change for good. Those
changes also make the products not only more interesting and
more tachy, But we cannot forget or man mission to
never settle. So we have to always go and look

(56:46):
forward for what is new, but also what is important.
Sometimes what is new is not necessarily important or something
that is really going to change our mind. So finding
the right compromises to have the best price possible with
the best device possible, getting away from the fluff, keeping
only what people really need and use. I think that's

(57:09):
still the main focus of the company.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah, you're up against big players like Samsung and Apple
and of course Google Pixel and so those are some
of the biggest phones here in the US. But you
continue to put out a product that is a little
bit different, and I think that's what people appreciate about it.
Let's talk about the one plus Open, because this is
the foldable phone. In the US, we have only a
handful of foldables. Other markets there are many more. Are

(57:33):
first off, just kind of give me what the OnePlus
Open is all about.

Speaker 9 (57:37):
It's a votable phone, not a flip phone. Right, there's
a difference between flip phones and photable phones. Flip phones
are those who you can fold in the middle and
that become smaller. Votable phones in the market is the
ones you have the right size of the phone. We
call it candy bars, just like the format because like
a retangle and then you can open and enlarge the screen.

(57:58):
So those are the true differences Flip and photobos. This
is a photoble phone. The main thing about that is
it is not only another photable phone in the market.
There's only two competitors with that right now and they
are doing great. But we believe we have something unique,
something that people enjoy. One of the things that we
focus very much on this product is to provide the

(58:18):
front screen and the right sizing because people spend more
than seventy eighty percent of the time in the front
screen and when they want to share something or then
when they want to have some content consuming content in
a bigger.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Screen, they can open and have it.

Speaker 9 (58:32):
Or even in productivity you can have different apps together.
But when you don't need it, you're going to use
like a normal phone and have a narrow screen or
have a blocky screen. It's not the right racial size
for the people. Most of the people, they want to
use the phone as a normal phone. So to make
it thin, light and at the same time the right
size of the screen, the front screen.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
That's the key for this product.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, I mean, you're not going to come out and say,
but I can. You've got the super narrow screen on
the Samsung Fold the Ball, and then you've got kind
of a more squat screen on the Google Pixel Fold.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
They both take different approaches.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Those phones are very nice, but this is more like
a traditional smartphone that also opens up into a nice
big screen.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Inside.

Speaker 9 (59:14):
It just feels right when you have in your hand.
It just feels right. And there's an additional thing that
I'd like to mention is about the cameras, because usually
in foldobles you are fighting against the internal room, how
much space you have inside the phone, how many things
you put inside. Because you have the hinge, which takes

(59:35):
a big part of it. It has to be durable,
has to be sturdy, has to you know, be something
nice to open and close hold on.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
While you're talking about that hinge up on stage, you
mentioned that you have tested it for a million folds,
when many of the other phones are several hundred thousand,
maybe three hundred, four hundred thousand.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
So this is going to be pretty durable.

Speaker 9 (59:55):
Yeah, supposed to last at least ten years, just the hinge,
So you can imagine The idea is to show something
that if you invest your money, it can last. We
consider that no matter how much dollars you're putting our product,
no matter which product, it should be a product that
may last, should be future proof. And that's one of
a good of examples of how we do that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Okay, so back to that camera.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
You've got three lenses on this camera, so you do
have the ultra wide, you got the standard and a telephoto.
What is the quality going to be like on those cameras.

Speaker 9 (01:00:28):
It's going to be top notch quality. We have three cameras.
They are amazing. They are We have a partnership with
Hasselblaff to fine tune those cameras and have the best
caller science behind it to have the best callers, the
best picture.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
So the outside screen is six point three inches, the
inside screen is seven point eight inches. You're really getting
a two in one here. You're getting a standard almost
a standard smartphone, plus that that tablet screen on the inside.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
What is the thought behind a fold of ball? Who
needs a fold of ball?

Speaker 6 (01:00:58):
Not?

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Everyone? Definitely not.

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):
I think this is still a kind of a niche product,
still enlarging and growing. We see a lot of people
migrating for this format and trying and testing. But the
most important thing to have in mind is once you
start the using, you find your own users. For that
for me was the case in the airport. I have
a delay in a flight, I don't have my computer

(01:01:22):
with me, and I want to start working and doing
meetings that suppose that I should not. And when I
open the screens, then when I start feeling ops, Now
I see the difference.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Now I see why this is good.

Speaker 9 (01:01:33):
And then I went to the airplane and I put
like Netflix videos that I download and start watching them
on the airplane.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
And seeing in a.

Speaker 9 (01:01:40):
Bigger screen changes the experience with the product. So you
need to use it to figure out how it serves you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
I'm telling you that is one of my favorite aspects
of foldobles.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
And it's tough because people are not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Wowed very easily these days because we have so much
stuff like chat, GBT and AI and various gadgets and
everyone has a smartphone. The best thing I have realized
is that you just take a picture and open up
the phone and let them see it on that big
screen and they're like wow, because you've never seen your
smartphone pictures like that. People don't even look at them
on their computer screens. It's only on social media, it's
only on a tiny screen.

Speaker 9 (01:02:13):
It's an excellent device for sharing all the content you have,
not only videos you made, pictures you took, but also
the contents like I mentioned Netflix, Disney Plus, no.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Matter which one. If you are a guy that is
always on the goal.

Speaker 9 (01:02:26):
If you are kind of these digital nomads, you need
to work in different places during the week, and you
are always moving from one place to another, but you
know the working keep going. This is the perfect companion.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Again, we're talking about the one plus Open. This is
the company's first voltable phone. It will launch with five
hundred and twelve gigabytes of storage, twelve or sixteen gigs
of memory, sixteen hundred ninety nine dollars fourteen hundred ninety
nine dollars if you trade in pretty much any smartphone.

Speaker 9 (01:02:54):
Now we don't get it, it's any phone. You go
to one plus dot com. You can any phone any condition.
If you have those old lendline phones will accept if
it's broken, the screen is broken, if it's not working,
if it's the old Nokia you have the unbreakable one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
You can trade that and.

Speaker 9 (01:03:12):
You're gonna have at least minimum two hundred dollars on
OnePlus dot com. We are doing that for the life
cycle of the product, so it's not something only for
the launch, it's something for the whole life cycle of
the product.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Effectively, that takes the price down to about fifteen hundred dollars.
Marcel Campos of one plus, thanks so much for joining
me today.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Oh, thank you very much. Was a pleasure to be
here with you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
All right, And of course, if you want to see
some of the pictures that I've been taking on the
one plus open, go to my website.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
It is rich on Tech dot TV.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
More show coming up right after this, Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Earlier, we had a question about running
an older software operating system on a computer and I
found a good website, end of life dot Date, and

(01:04:03):
this has the end of life dates for every platform
you could ever imagine, the iPhone, the iPad iOS, iPad os,
mac Os, Windows. I mean, this is pretty thorough. So
someone clearly does their homework with this website end of
life dot date, and so if you look at Apple macOS,

(01:04:25):
it says all the different releases you got. Sonoma Ventura, Monterey,
Big Sur, and Catalina, and it tells you the service status,
if it's still being serviced, and when it got its
latest software update. So if you look at this, macOS eleven, twelve, thirteen,
and fourteen are still all getting software updates and Big

(01:04:46):
Sur was so released two years and eleven months ago.
Service status yes, latest update was September eleventh and September
twenty first for the Monterey Ventura Sonoma. So anyway, great
website to see if the software where you want to
run is still being supported with active security updates. Let's

(01:05:06):
go to line one FERUSA in Los Angeles. Did I
say that right?

Speaker 6 (01:05:11):
Yes?

Speaker 10 (01:05:12):
You did?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Oh great?

Speaker 11 (01:05:15):
How much for taking my call?

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Absolutely? What can I help you with today?

Speaker 6 (01:05:21):
I have an iPhone six and this holiday season I'm
going to upgrade to an iPhone thirteen or fourteen, and
I'm particularly interested in the double Eastern feature because I
do travel internationally a fair bit and I just wanted
to understand is it the same on both the thirteen

(01:05:45):
and fourteen and how.

Speaker 10 (01:05:47):
Does it work?

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Yeah, it is the same feature.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
They've been I think they've had this on the iPhone
since the iPhone ten. They did it secretly for many
years just to test it out, make sure it worked,
and then they decided to say no more simcard with
the last year's phone, So now there's no there's no
physical SIM card slot inside the iPhone anymore. But the
way the eSIM works, especially for travel, is that you

(01:06:11):
would have your regular SIM, which is still an e SIM,
but you can have multiple SIMS on your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
You can have a bunch of them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
I had I think like two or three on my
phone at one time, and you can activate them, you
can deactivate them. You can keep one on there for
a long time and just activate it when you go
to a different country. But the way you install it
is you just you know, let's say you have one
of your main carriers here, that's you know, Verizon, T Mobile,
any you know, Mint Mobile, whatever it is. You've got

(01:06:38):
your main SIM, and then you can add a secondary SIM.
And that secondary SIM could be an international SIM, it
could be even a secondary cellular line here in America.
So let's say you wanted one SIM for your phone
calls and one for your data, or even.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
Two for your data.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
You can set that up so it's really unlimited what
you can do. But the way it works over In particular,
what I do is I typically turn off my main
SIM and then flip on the international SIM and then
that way I can still use my data through the
international SIM and not pay the roaming charges. And there's
a lot of different ways to do this, but that's

(01:07:15):
kind of generally how it works. If you're traveling internationally
to a different country, you can pick up a local
eSIM there, or you can use one of these companies
that lets you activate an eSIM right from your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
So the one I always talk about is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Aralow Us Mobile also has one, but there are many
many different companies that do this, and so if you
just look up eSIM for the country you want to
go to, you can do that and set it up
very easily here in the States before you leave. But
I think that it's a very simple system. The only

(01:07:49):
place where it gets a little complicated is if.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
You want to continue.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Most of these eSIMs are data only, but that's also changing.
So the eSIM that you get for overseas might just
candle and not calls. But that makes sense because you
don't want to give someone a different phone number just
when you're overseas. They just want to call your regular
phone number. So in that case, I recommend that you
turn on your your not your roaming, but your Wi

(01:08:13):
Fi calling. And actually, you know what, we just did
a story on KTLA about this, a TV story because
I travel a decent amount and I was figuring out
all the different ways of staying connected. So if you
go to rich on tech dot TV, scroll down to

(01:08:33):
the October eighth story, it says cheapest ways to stay
connected abroad, and that will bring you to the different
methods you can use to stay connected overseas, and I
explain what eSIMs are. I explain the Wi Fi hotspot,
I explain Wi Fi calling and roaming with your carrier,
So you can get all of that explained rich on

(01:08:54):
tech dot TV, and then just scroll down until you
see the story that says cheapest way to stay connected abroad.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Good question.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Thanks so much for the call today, Jony on Twitter
at rich on tech or x I should say, says,
is there any way to take low resolution.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Photos on the new iPhone?

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Those three point eight megapixel photos eat up storage and
I don't always need the high res thanks rich on Tech. Well,
the photos aren't three point eight megapixels. I think the
storage space is three point eight. And yes, on the
new iPhone, the default megapixels is twenty four now, which
is amazing because you're getting so much more data on

(01:09:35):
your photos, which means you can zoom in, you can crop,
you just have a lot more flexibility with the amount
of data these photos carry because they are twenty four
megapixels by default. If you don't want them to be
twenty four megapixels, if you want to go back to twelve,
you can. You go to settings, you go to camera,
and you go to formats and then inside there it

(01:09:56):
says photo capture photo mode twenty four megapixels. You tap
there and you can tap twelve and you can take
your twelve megapixel.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Photos just like before.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
According to Apple, a twelve megapixel photo will be about
two megabytes, a twenty four megapixel photo will be about
three megabytes. But like you said, Jony, it's probably closer
to about three point eight. Let me see on my
phone here what my latest picture is. So if I
just pick one of these photos here and let's see,
this photo is oh five point eight mega five point

(01:10:29):
eight megabytes. Wow, so Apple, Apple's really being conservative in
their estimates. But again with today's storage on the phones.
I would say take the bigger photos. But if you
don't need to need that, just go ahead and you
can change that in the settings. Tom says, Hey, Rich,
sounds like you're enjoying the scenery up in Passo. Great choice.
I need a new watch band for my Apple Watch.

(01:10:49):
Would you recommend Amazon or just go to the Apple Store.
I've come to believe Amazon could be kind of hit
or miss. Thank you, Tom, Tom, I you hit upon
a nerve with me. I I'm not a fan of
imitation Apple watch bands. Okay, there are so many random
bands out there on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
I do not like any of them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
They are cheap, they are yucky, they look bad, and
yeah they're cheaper than what Apple sells. Apples bands are
fifty bucks. But I mean, don't you want something that
was made for the device that you're using. I see
so many people with cheap Apple watch bands and it
just bugs me. So, yeah, you can get something on Amazon.
It's gonna be hit or miss. It may work, it

(01:11:30):
may pop out, the threads may not work. There may
be an you know, it may irritate your skin. You
don't know, and again you won't know until you get it.
Apple makes really beautiful bands. Yes, they are a little
bit more expensive for your watch, but I say stick
with the official bands. Go to the Apple store, pick
one out, see which one you like, and hopefully it

(01:11:51):
will fit for you. I am wearing the Nike Recycled
Apple band right now. It is made from recycled Apple bands.
I guess fell on the floor in the factory. I
don't know, but it's like it's like almost all recycled.
I think it may be one hundred percent recycled. I'm
not sure, but it looks really funky because it's got
like all these different band colors, kind of like it's

(01:12:12):
as as if you took a whole bunch of Apple
bands just melted them down and then made a new
band from it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
That's what it looks like. So it's pretty cool. But
that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Recycled, and that's kind of Apple's new push. The other
company I do like for Apple bands is Nomad. They
made two bands that I wore for a long time,
and one was glowing in the dark one was bright orange,
and so I do like those bands as well. Nomad
is the company that makes them. I'm sure there's other
companies out there. That make nice Apple watch bands. But
I feel like Apple just makes such nice bands? Why
not just stick with the official Thanks for the text

(01:12:43):
on Twitter, or I should say X Tom, thanks a
lot for that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
All right, you can find me on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
I am at rich on Tech the website again rich
on Tech dot TV.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Coming up later in this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Show, we're gonna talk to Michael Sino, a cyber security
expert at Google. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you talk in technology at Triple eight.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Rich one oh one.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show.
Thanks for listening to the show. Overall, just thank you.
This is one of my favorite parts of the week.
Why because I get to talk to you, I get
the feedback, and although you have completely decimated my inbox

(01:13:35):
with all of your messages, I do appreciate it because
that means you're listening. That means you're interacting. That means
you think I have something interesting to say and you
want to hear more.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
So that all means a lot to me, So that
is not lost on me. Believe me. I can't write
back to everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
The more we do the show, the more it's getting
tougher to write back to all of the emails I'm getting.
But I do get them, I do read them, and
I do process them either for the show. If I
can answer them quickly, I will do that, or maybe
it might take me a little bit longer. But rest
assured your messages do see my eyeballs. That sounded really weird.
Hi kid had a birthday recently. We got him a

(01:14:13):
drone and he he's been a kind of a drone
wizard for a while, like really really good on these things,
and so we got them little drones over the years,
and then finally he wanted to upgrade to like a
big drone for this birthday. He's nine, by the way,
So we got him the Dji Mini three. It was
one of those things, you know, those like impulse buys
at Costco.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
And I got to say, we took it out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
It took us a little bit to get it kind
of set up and stuff, because I've been out of
town in things.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
But you know, this last week we took it to
the park a couple times.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
We had such a good time and It is so
fun to watch your kid excel at something, especially when
it's something that you're not good at, you know, whether
it's sports, whether it's you know, electronics, whatever it is.
But this was just so cool to watch him fly
this thing and with such confident and he's watched all
these YouTube videos about how to do this. I said,

(01:15:04):
you know, look, before we go to the park to
do this, I want you to make sure all the
software is up to date. I want you to make
sure you know how to do it, make sure you've
watched a couple tutorials.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
And he did.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
He said, Dad, you know, I want to sit down
and control this thing, because that's what a guy said
pro tip on YouTube about how to control these drones better.
If you sit down, it's easier to control because you're
not holding the control in your hand, it's in your lap.
I said, sure, try it, and so we had such
a fun time. I'm just telling you this because drones are, like,
you know, they for a while they were like amazing,

(01:15:33):
and then people were, you know, hating on them, and
now they're just kind of like the part of our
lives and they do a lot of amazing things in
this world. But if you haven't tried one or you
haven't flown one, they're really fun. Try to get your
hands on one, even one of the small ones. Like
at Target the other day they had like this twenty
dollars like tiny little drone that works inside. It was
literally like fits in the palm of your hand. So

(01:15:55):
just try it. They're really really fun. So I love
the fact that my kid can fly this thing so well,
like he just the video that comes off of this
Dji thing is just so crisp and smooth, and it's
got to gimbal on it so it looks really really good.
So anyway, I just tell you that because it's just fun.
Let's see here, got a couple of stories I want
to get through. Maybe we'll make this sort of a

(01:16:16):
lightning round of stories.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Consumer Reports has an app called Permission Slip, and it
will help you use state laws to your advantage to
tell companies to stop selling your personal information or delete
it all together. This app, again is called Permission Slip.
It lets you easily request companies stop selling your data
or delete your data. And you can even put this

(01:16:39):
on autopilot, so if a new company comes into their database,
that they can work with, they will ask them to
get rid of it. They work with about one hundred
different companies, whether it's a big retailer or whether it's
one of these data collection companies that just collects a
whole bunch of data on us. They will make the
opt out process a lot easier. Again, this is from

(01:16:59):
Consumer It's called permission Slip. It was recently updated and
I have not tried this personally, but I know a
lot of people have and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
They've seemed to have good responses.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
But I think these companies have up to a certain
amount of time to get back to you to let
you know if they've deleted your info. But anyway, check
it out Permission Slip from Consumer Reports. It is free,
there's no subscription required. Apple this week introduced a new
lower cost Apple pencil for the iPad. This is a
seventy nine dollars Apple pencil that will work with all

(01:17:30):
iPads that have a USB C port. So there are
now three different Apple pencil models. There is the Apple
Pencil first generation, the Apple Pencil second Generation, and now
the Apple Pencil Usb C. This one sits in the
middle of these two based on price and features. I
believe or maybe it's Actually it's the cheapest. It's seventy

(01:17:52):
nine dollars, so it's pretty inexpensive. I mean still expensive
if you ask me for a pencil, but it's you know,
it's an iPad, it's an Apple pens so it's going
to be expensive. This Apple pencil has a few features
that are new and a few features that are not there.
So it charges via USBC. It magnetically attaches to the
side of compatible iPads, but it does not charge like

(01:18:14):
the us This is so confusing. But the Apple pencil
Generation two charges magnetically on the side of the iPad.
This one will connect, but it will not charge. Also,
it does not have pressure sensitivity, so if you want
to make like a thicker line by pressing harder on
the Apple pencil on the screen, it will not do that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
The second generation does.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
So this is so complicated that Apple actually has a
matrix on their website about the three Apple pencils you
can choose. So they've got the first gen, the USBC,
and the second gen. And you can't get this one
in grave for.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Free for some reason. I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
But again, new Apple pencil, just be careful when you
buy the Apple pencil because you need to get one
that works with your iPad. And I would probably wreck
going to an Apple store and making sure you know
the model number of your iPad. And you can find
that by going into settings on your iPad and then
tapping settings General about and it will give you the

(01:19:12):
model name. And that same thing goes for your iPhone.
I ask people all the time, Hey, which iPhone do
you have? I don't know, it's just an iPhone. Well
look in the settings.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
Let me know. You probably heard about this story.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
T Mobile raising prices for some unlimited plans, but you
can opt out. So if customers are on one of
these old plans, the T Mobile one Simple Choice Magenta
Magenta fifty five plus, they are moving these folks to
a new unlimited plan, which happens to be about ten
dollars more per month. Now this has started on October seventeenth.

(01:19:44):
So and here's the thing. This was such a big deal.
It's got so many headlines that T Mobile had to
come out and say, ho, hold on, hold on, hold on, Uh,
you know it's not what you think.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
This was a test.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
This was not something we're doing for everyone. And so
they can out with a like a whole explainer, and
they said, Look, here's what they said. I want to
make it clear that the test hasn't actually yet launched.
When it does, we will reach out to a small
subset of customers who are on older rate plans, some
up to a decade old, to let them know they
have the opportunity to move from their existing plans to new,

(01:20:19):
better plans that offer more features and more value relative
to what they have. None of this has happened yet,
but in the near future, eligible customers will get a
text and or an email from us before anything changes
on their account. All of them will be given the
option to stay on their current plan or a similar
plan if they choose so. Again, T Mobile will be
changing things, but it's not for everyone and it's not

(01:20:40):
an immediate thing, so just be on the lookout. If
they do email you, you can opt out of that
new plan. But if you have a plan that's ten
years old, you might get some new benefits from a
more expensive plan. IRS is going to do a direct
file pilot program for the twenty twenty four tax season,
so eligible taxpayers in thirteen states will be able to

(01:21:01):
file taxes directly with the IRS.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
For free.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
The goal is to test the feasibility of this and
to identify, you know, sort of any challenges before they
launch this wider. You know, for the whole US. This
is pretty limited. They're only in thirteen states. Like I said,
I think California, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York are part of these.
You can see the full list on the IRS website.

(01:21:26):
It's for people with simple tax situations, so you know,
basic things like a W two. Maybe you have some
extra income through you know, interest in things like that.
But it's very it's for simple tax situations. This is
not for complex tax situations. But again there will be
and it's not for everyone. Not everyone's going to have
the option to do this, but you may see that

(01:21:46):
you will have the option.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
You might get something in the mail that says.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
Hey, you're eligible to do this IRS direct file, which
is free. Now it's supposed to be a questionnaire style
form that's supposed to be easy to fill out all
by yourself. Now you might be saying, rich, what's difference
between this and something like TurboTax. Well, yes, there is
a free file program through some of the tax providers,
but that goes through a third party like TurboTax or

(01:22:10):
you know, into it whatever. This is directly with the IRS,
so they're basically starting their own tax filing service on
their website. I guess the way I would think about
this is if you just went and downloaded the tax
forms and filled them out manually, it's kind of like
the same thing, except you're doing it now through the
IRS website. So that is what's happening with the IRS.

(01:22:32):
I don't know what I think about this. I think
that taxes are very complicated. I think that if you
have a very simple tax situation and you go on
something like TurboTax, and there were, by the way, big
lawsuits about this because even though they offer a free
filing program, they hit it from people so that they
didn't actually find it and it would be really tough,
and they would just pay fifty bucks to file their
taxes even though they could do it for free.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
So the fact that the IRS.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
Is going to make this easy simple, there's a lot
of people out there that just have one W two
and maybe nothing else and they just want to file
their taxes in two minutes done.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
You can do it through the website.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
So we'll see what the results are of this pilot,
but uh, it's probably a good thing that they're doing it.
I think taxes should be simplified in general. They're just way, way,
way too complicated. People pay a lot of money to
a lot of people to do their taxes, and that's
great if you have a complex tax situation. But if
you have a simple tax situation and you're paying money
to the government, and I'm not going to get into

(01:23:28):
the whole you know, that whole side of things, but
you know it should be easy to give your money
to this unknown mass of anyway, you know what I'm saying.
Rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here at Triple eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Coming up on the show, we're
going to talk to Michael Sino, a Google cyber security expert.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
Plus more of your calls, emails, tax.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
Tweets, and more tech news. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Let's go to Tatiana
in Banning, California, Line one, Tatiana your own with Rich Hi.

Speaker 11 (01:24:09):
Well, I was calling about her about YouTube. You know,
I wonder if you know, if you could help me.
I have a prime membership with YouTube, and it's worked
fine until last week and the last few days, I
keep receiving all those you know, notification that I have

(01:24:31):
a blockers I have either to unblock or to switch
to Prime membership, and I already have Prime membership, and
I keep telling them sort of, and they said, report
the issue if it's not correct, and I keep reporting that, Hello,
I am a pro, I have Prime membership, and you

(01:24:52):
keep blocking me because sometimes they block and block, and
yesterday I was not able to watch you tube at
all and not that I you know, but plinty is
that why should I? You know, I have my Prime
membership and the worst thing is to reach anybody on
YouTube by a phone is not possible. They offer you

(01:25:16):
chat and the chat, you know, I tell him, Okay,
I have Trime membership. Why you are you want me
to switch to Prime if I already have fun and
you are blocking me? And she says you have to
remove ad blocks, but okay, I show them up. You
know that's what you understand?

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
It is so a couple of things happening here. So
number one, uh, you're referring to YouTube prime membership. So
Amazon offers a prime membership. So if you have an
Amazon Prime membership, that does not give you access to YouTube,
you know, without ads. So that's number one. So it
is a separate membership. So if you are talking about YouTube,

(01:26:00):
what it's called is YouTube Premium. When it first was
introduced a couple of years ago, it was called YouTube read.
They have changed the name to YouTube Premium. And the
way that you can check if you have YouTube Premium
if you are paying, I believe I pay twenty two
to ninety nine a month.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
I don't know how much.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
I think it's fifteen ninety nine a month for the
standard I've got the family plan, but let's see the
standard plan individuals. Yeah, thirteen ninety nine a month. Family
is twenty two ninety nine a month. So you can
check to see if you are on a YouTube Premium
plan which gives you YouTube and YouTube music ad free
offline and in the background. You can go to YouTube

(01:26:38):
dot com slash Premium and when I go to that page,
it says you have YouTube Premium managed.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
So that's the first thing, Tatiana.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
If you don't see that when you go to that website,
you don't have YouTube Premium. Now, the second way to
check is to go to YouTube dot com and in
the left hand corner, in the upper left hand corner,
your YouTube icon changes from YouTube to a little icon
of the YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Screen and it says premium. So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
We just need to make sure that you're actually referring
to what you have. If you have Amazon Prime, that
does not give you access to YouTube Premium. Now the
second part of what you're talking about, the ad blocker.
YouTube has been cracking down on people using ad blockers
to get rid of ads on YouTube. Why because YouTube
and Google make a whole lot of money on serving

(01:27:26):
up ads during YouTube videos, and in the past people
were able to get around some of those ads by
putting an ad blocker on their computer. Well, YouTube does
not like that, so they are cracking down, not on everyone,
not in every instance, not on every time, but they
are cracking down on some of the use of ad
blockers on YouTube. So if you do have an ad
blocker on your system and you're trying to access YouTube,

(01:27:49):
you will have to pause that ad blocker, and you
can do that by tapping your ad blocker, and usually
you can what's called allow list the website, so you
can say do not use this ad blocker on the
YouTube dot com website because it will not function properly.
And in general, if you're using an ad blocker on
your computer, you can disable that for a website. If

(01:28:13):
a website you visit is not working or it feels
a little wonky, then it's probably your ad blocker that
is interfering. But Tatiana, in response to your YouTube, when
you said about the customer service getting someone on chat,
you're right, it is tough to get someone on the phone.
But I do find that the YouTube. I had to
use them the other day for customer service, I did

(01:28:35):
find that they were actually pretty good. But yes, you
do have to chat with them, and you can go
and they try to they try to evade your chat too,
like they do anything to make you not chat. But
eventually you will be able to get them if you
keep just saying I want to talk to a representative,
like if they ask you questions on the website, it
says like, oh, can we help you with this, and
they try to give you a help page, just keep

(01:28:55):
saying like no, no, no, like click down, say this
did not help me, this did not help me, this
did not help me, And that will get you to
the chat person. But yeah, that's the way these websites
work nowadays. You've got to do something, you got to
do it all through chat, just because that's the way
they want you to do it. Thanks for the call today, Tatiana.
Before we go to our next interview after the break,
I just want to tell you about this app. It's

(01:29:17):
called Google Magnifier. So Google has launched a magnifier app
for low vision users. So if you have a Pixel phone,
go to the Google Play Store and download a new
app called Magnifier, and make sure it's the one from Google,
because I'm sure there's going to be some others in there.
But this will let you use it as a user phone,
as a magnifying glass. You can zoom in on things

(01:29:38):
using your camera. You can read small text menus, signs
from afar. And because it's for people with low vision,
it's got different adjustments color filters, brightness contrasts. You can
better see things no matter what your level of eyesight is.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
So this really.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
Aims to help people with low vision in their everyday tasks. Again,
Google launch a new app called Magnifier. It is only
available for the Pixel phones. I don't know why they
did that. Google, please open this up to all Android phones.
You say, there's twelve million Americans that have vision impairment,
so please let's help them. Let's open this up to everyone,

(01:30:16):
not just pixel users. Again, Google Magnifier app for Pixel users. Now,
Apple has a similar feature on their phone on the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
It's built in. It's called Magnifier.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
You're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, we're going
to talk to Michael Sino, a Google cyber security expert,
with tips on how to protect you online.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Recently
I chatted with Michael Sino, Google cybersecurity expert about cybersecurity
tips and tools. He dropped a surprising fact that last
year scammers made two hundred and ten million dollars off
of people under twenty. Yeah, surprising. So I started by

(01:31:04):
asking him, what is google stance on security?

Speaker 10 (01:31:08):
Security at Google is one of our primary concerns. We
take it extremely seriously given our mission to organize the
world's data. That you know, it's also there to protect
the world's data.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
Now you're saying you've seen a rise in young people
falling for online scams. Why do you think this generation
is more susceptible to these scams when you would think
the opposite would be the case.

Speaker 10 (01:31:33):
I think it's a matter of exposure. Young people are
spending more and more time online in different apps in
different ways, and scammers are honestly adjusting to learn their
habits and and and you know the trigger you know
their triggers. So the technology is getting better to try

(01:31:53):
to scam them, and while at the same time they're
spending you know, a much larger amount of time online.
And let's just say my mother, or my grandmother or
even me in many cases.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
So what are some of the examples of the types
of online scams that we're seeing target young people.

Speaker 10 (01:32:12):
Yeah, one of the biggest is still fishing, right, so
the oldie but a goody, you know. Nine of data
breaches start with fishing, you know, from from small from
you know, small things. Where's it's one person that give
out their credit card number two large companies getting getting
hacked via phishing attempts, and they're getting harder and harder

(01:32:35):
to detect because people, the people perpetrating these scams are
getting smarter about how they do it. The wording is
getting better because in many cases it was easy in
the past to spot them because the wording would be off.
If it was in English, it wouldn't it would just
look incorrect. The fhreezing would be a correct But with

(01:32:56):
the rise of AI and a number of other tools,
it's starting to look you know, much more legitimate and
harder to detect. But you know, in many cases, you know,
if you're using Gmail, uh, you know, we block one
hundred million fishing attempts a day, so it's like ninety
nine percent of them, but some still slip through. So

(01:33:17):
if if if you're not sure of the link, this
is what I tell both my daughters, don't click it,
take a look. If it's from a business, make sure
that you call the business if you're unsure to see
if this is legitimate, or if it's someone trying to
get money from you or get your personal information. You know,
the biggest tip is, I don't give out anything unless

(01:33:38):
you know exactly who you're talking to. Right, if you're
talking to your bank, right, if you're talking to a
business that you've engaged with before, great, But if you're
not sure, don't do it. And you know, if if
an offer you get looks too good to be true,
like you know, a device for a dollar, or you
know you can get free headphones, that is most likely

(01:33:59):
going to be not a legitimate offer, so don't fall
for it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
So a lot of this is education, just being aware
of the various types of scams, the various methods that
scam artists use. It used to be back in the
day we were worried about viruses infecting our devices. I
always tell people these days, it's really you against the
scammers that that are trying to send you these links
and different things that try to trick you.

Speaker 10 (01:34:25):
It's true, and in many cases one can lead to
the other. You'll get an email that says click this link,
and the link isn't there to harvest your data, but
it's there to get you to install a virus or
or malware onto your machine. That is, you know, that's
a whole you know, a whole whole. Other problem is
some of these links will then be you know, persist
on your machine and harvest data or or take data

(01:34:48):
off off of your machine. So it is a combination
of viruses combined with phishing and other other attempts.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
So October is cybersecurity awareness month, What what is mean
exactly and what do you think people should do to
not celebrate but to honor this, you know, this month
and and really educate themselves about this stuff.

Speaker 10 (01:35:12):
You know to me cybersecurity, whereas a month is a
good opportunity for everybody to take stock of how how
they behave online and what they use online. And one
of the biggest things is evaluating your passwords. In May,
we announced that we are deploying what's called now pass
keys to Google accounts and it's a much easier way
to log in. All you need to use it. It's

(01:35:34):
the same way you would log into your computer with
a face scan or a fingerprint or a pin code,
and it can be linked to not only your Google account,
but we've partnered with Uber and Hope depot in a
number of others and it's it's a much more you know,
a much more secure way and you don't have to
give out any information. But we realize that not everybody's
there yet, So the next piece is looking at your

(01:35:57):
passwords and ensuring that you use a complex password and
you don't use the same passwords everywhere, so you know,
in that case, using a password manager like Google Password
manager will help generate the passwords for you and store
them and then keep them on all of your devices
so that you don't you don't really have to enter anything.

(01:36:17):
It will enter it for you, and it will keep
them different. So your your your bank password is different
from your other bank password, which is different than an
online retailer password. So in case one gets compromised, they
don't they can't log into any of the other accounts.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Okay, we're going to talk about pass keys in a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:36:35):
I want to go back to that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
But this password manager idea. I've been a big advocate
of password managers for a long time, but still many
many people are hesitant to use them because they see
them as very complicated, and they also get scared when
they see those complex passwords that they are generating, and
they think, there's no way I'll ever remember that. And

(01:36:56):
if I can't remember it, I'm going to be locked
out of my account. So can you explain in a
little bit more detail how those password managers work and
how they get you back into your accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:37:07):
You know, automatically.

Speaker 10 (01:37:09):
Sure each password manager, you know, whether it's Google password manager,
I know other stores your passwords securely in Google's case
on our servers, and in many cases, there's no need
for you to remember the individual password for the site
because it will it will auto fill it. Like I
can honestly say, I don't know most of my bank
passwords by heart. They're stored there. They're storage securely, they're encrypted,

(01:37:34):
and if you have multiple devices like a phone and
a computer, it will replicate across both of them, so
it will store them there, so wherever you are and
whatever you're logging in on, it can auto fill them
for you. On top of that, you know, on top
of passwords, Two step verification is another good option to
ensure even if your password does get compromised, there's a

(01:37:54):
second factor of authorization and authentication to get into your account.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
On the past keys.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
If I lose the device that is my past key,
can I use multiple devices to actually authenticate my logins
or is it tied to just one device.

Speaker 10 (01:38:11):
It depends on how you set it up so multiple
it can be replicated across multiple devices. But yeah, so
you can also recover your account. In many cases it would,
it would take multiple steps and it's not the easiest process,
but that's for the for the safety, for your safety,
so accounts can be recovered from a Google perspective, but yes,
they can be used on multiple devices.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
Okay, where can people go to find more information about
all of these online safety resources.

Speaker 10 (01:38:37):
You can look at safety dot Google dot com and
also FamilyLink dot Google dot com for tips on securing
your children and your family.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
Many times people will tell me, Rich, I don't really
need to do this because it's they're not targeting me,
They're not trying to come after what do I have?

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
What do you say to that?

Speaker 10 (01:38:56):
What we have is our data, right, are our aims,
our social security numbers, our bank accounts. So they're you know,
I look at it as they're they're targeting everybody because
you never know when someone's going to come trying to
break into your bank account to take your money. But yeah,
it's it's it's it's extremely common. Billions and millions of
dollars go out the window from people every you know,

(01:39:19):
every year on credit card fraud, bank fraud, all from
you know, accidentally clicking the wrong link and giving the
wrong person their information.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
Once again, that was Michael Sino, director of Security Incident
Response at Google. You can go to the website safety
dot Google dot com. For more information on pass keys.
You can also see safety tips and do a security
check up on your Google account and review your privacy settings.
You are listening to Rich on Tech, give me a call.

(01:39:48):
It's triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four two four one zero one. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. And this is the part of the show
where I respond to your emails, your texts, your tweets,

(01:40:11):
your feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
We call it the feedback segment.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
And yeah, there are a lot of comments questions, so
some of you send comments and questions mixed into one.
So some of these will be comments, some will be questioned,
some will be answers. Let me just make sure I
went through everything I wanted to get through today. That
was interesting enough. Oh oh, I wanted to mention this

(01:40:37):
hold on this. So Wirecutter just came out with some
reviews of tabletop radios.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
I thought this was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:40:44):
So if you want to get a tabletop radio to
listen to things like this show, they have a couple
of top picks now. So their top pick for the
tabletop radio is the san Gean WR fifteen for one
hundred dollars. This has a classic style, smooth controls, strong reception,
and rich sound. And that is a radio that stands

(01:41:08):
kind of vertically. If you want a horizontal design, the
sang In WR eleven s is eighty five dollars with
similar features. Now, if you just want a pure and simple,
kind of classic looking radio, the Studa Baker SB two thousand,
Wirecutter says it's very affordable at twenty five dollars, and

(01:41:28):
it's portable. And if you want oh FM only, well, okay,
if you want FM only, Victrola Houston is sixty dollars.
Wirecutter said they tested the radios on things like channel reception,
signal clarity, sound quality, Bluetooth range, and ease of use.
Most shoppers want a radio that's attractive but has a
retro design that will look nice in their home. Ease

(01:41:51):
of use is also important. Sound quality is less of
a concern than aesthetics for most people, and I love
the sound of this. AM reception is considered a must have.
So if you want a tabletop radio, those are the
picks from Wirecutter. I thought that was pretty cool when
I started this show. I got a classic like my
mom bought me an antique classic radio.

Speaker 2 (01:42:14):
That's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
All right, let's get to some of these questions and
feedback things. So Derek says, Hey, Rich, I sent Apple
two older phones, an iPhone eight plus and an iPhone
twelve Promax to replace the batteries. Both phones came back
as motherboards must be replaced in order to do the
battery replacement. Motherboards would be five hundred dollars a piece,
battery replacement one hundred and twenty nine. I had Apple

(01:42:39):
send both of them back to me without doing the repair.
I've since taken them to a non official tech shop
and they replaced both batteries, not the motherboards, and they
work just fine.

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):
I have always trusted Apple. Now I'm not so sure.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Both phones needing motherboard replacements seems fishy to me, Derek. Derek,
I think what you experienced is that when Apple does repair,
they have certain standards to adhere to, and so the
battery probably need to be replaced, but they probably identified
something in the motherboard that also needed to be replaced.
Or maybe they're using a newer battery that needs a

(01:43:11):
newer motherboard. I'm not sure, but that's the beauty of
having options when it comes to repairs. Now, I'm not
sure with this non official tech shop if you got
any sort of warranty or you know, if this is
guaranteed to work for a long period of time. But
I think you were right on not spending seven hundred
dollars to replace these motherboards and batteries on these devices.

(01:43:31):
So the non official tech shop they replace the batteries.
I'm sure it was cheaper than even one twenty nine.
If the phones work, they work, and so good for you.
But it's nice to have options. I think the official
repairs bring with them a little bit more of an
official warranty and things like that, so that's probably the
differentiation there. Kevin says, good morning, Rich. I've been listening

(01:43:52):
to your show for many years and I look forward
to it every week.

Speaker 2 (01:43:54):
We live in a rural area outside of Houston.

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
We've had horrible internet for the past twenty years, and
we're finally blessed with Starlink. I want to bypass bypass
the starlink router and connect one that will accommodate a
fairly large home. Am I better off buying a router
out of the box or using something like an access point?
I'm not sure if I go okay, could you possibly

(01:44:17):
let me know what router you'd recommend that works best
with starlink. I know enough about tech to get in trouble,
but I can't easily always get out. Thanks for taking
the time to read this. Any help would be great,
Kevin Kevin, I would recommend yeah, bypassing the starlink router
and just using something like ero E E r O
or something like Villo v I l O or Netgear

(01:44:40):
orb O r B. I those are mesh networks. I
think any of those will work. You have a big house,
you'll probably need two to three access points to cover
your home. And if you want to do something that's
like outside, like if you have a pool or something,
you might I think the neck gear has the ORB
has like an outdoor access point as well. Bill says,
didn't know if you're following this or how important it

(01:45:02):
is to most people, but this was recently announced by Google,
and he sent a link that said Google Podcasts is
going to be discontinued and switching to YouTube music app.
Bill says, for me, I use the Google podcast app
all the time. I'm not using YouTube very often. I
will be switching everything to Amazon Music, to which I subscribe.
It works well for me, and some of the subscribe
podcasts are ad free with Amazon.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Your podcast is number one for me anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:45:27):
Thanks for continuing to provide such great information, Bill, Bill. Yes,
Google podcast is going away. It's going to be shifted
to YouTube Music. But I'll be honest, I think a
lot of people with podcasts. It's either Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or iHeartRadio app or pocket casts. Those are the
big podcast apps. I don't think Google podcasts ever really

(01:45:51):
took off in a big way.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
And it's Google.

Speaker 1 (01:45:54):
They lose attention very easily, so when they see people
aren't using that app, they say, oh, never mind, we'll
just mix this into YouTube music. It also makes YouTube
music a little stickier because now people are checking it
on a daily basis to get their favorite podcasts, and
then maybe they're playing the music or they want to
subscribe or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
But there you go. Randall says Rich. I enjoy your
radio program on KFI.

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):
I recently bought an inexpensive smart watch eighty bucks through Amazon.
Has all the features whether I need them or not.
There appear to be dozens of smart watches who advertise
on Amazon. They all have the same features. My wife
bought an Apple smart watch. Her cost three hundred and
eighty nine dollars. I know it's a rhetorical question, but
what did my wife get with her Apple watch that
I did not. I haven't compared the two watches, but

(01:46:39):
I bet we'll have some of the same functions.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
Randal.

Speaker 1 (01:46:42):
I mean, yes, I've tested some of these cheapy Apple
or you know watches on Amazon, and yeah, they do
the basics, they do them just fine. But the difference
is you're getting the ecosystem, you're getting the support. You're
obviously paying a little higher price tag because it's an
Apple device. And yes, there are some things that the
Apple want we'll be able to do, specifically with apps

(01:47:03):
that you will not be able to get on your
smart watch. But the bottom line, no matter what is
if it works for you, that's all that matters. If
you enjoy this smart watch that you bought at this
smart price, that is absolutely fine.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
Enjoy it. Jamie says.

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
I'd like to say how thankful I am for Rich
Demiro with all his guidance in technology.

Speaker 2 (01:47:22):
He's one of the main reasons I watch KTLA.

Speaker 1 (01:47:25):
Rich has a good energy and advice, and I hope
we will watch him for a long time. Thank you, Rich, Jamie.
Oh well, thank you Jamie. Uh, that's not from my mom.
That's from Jamie. Thanks for the email. I appreciate that,
Ken says, Hey, Rich, a few months ago, you were
remarking about several different note taking apps. I'm curious, did
you ever eventually choose one? If so, which one? If

(01:47:47):
you can believe it, Ken, after testing every single note
app for weeks on end, Joplin, Obsidian, Notion, every single
little app you can imagine out there, I went back
to ever Note. I will tell you why, just like
I said for the last email. If it works for you,
that's all that matters. Evernote does exactly what I need. Yes,

(01:48:09):
it's expensive. It's one hundred bucks for the year, and
that is not ideal. One hundred and thirty dollars I
think I paid. But it does what I need and
I'm using it for business. I use it to produce
this entire show. You gotta have something that works for you.
If you're doing something, you need the tools that are
right for the job. Ever Note works for me. Maybe
that'll change in the future, but I will say notion

(01:48:31):
was a very close second to what I needed. It
just didn't work in the exact kind of thing I wanted.
All right, One more website, moviewiser dot com. This was
Bluegreen on Instagram, he suggested, moviewiser dot com. This is
an AI website to help you pick your next movie
to watch. Thanks for the feedback, Blue Green on Instagram.

(01:48:52):
All right, that's it. That's gonna do it for this
episode of the show. If you can believe it, you
can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Just go to rich on Tech TV for the show notes.
You can find me on social media at richon Tech.
Next week, I'm going to share my thoughts on the Rivian. Yes,
I said, I drove it up here to pass a
Roboles driving it back down to LA and I will

(01:49:14):
have all of my thoughts on that car. 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.

Speaker 2 (01:49:24):
My name is rich Dmiro. I'll talk to you real soon.

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