January 29, 2021 • 51 mins
Apple reaches 1 billion active iPhones; smartphone sales around the world; Robinhood users upset over blocked trading; cheapest Ring video doorbell yet; Alexa's new guard features; a way to hide your real email address; Sling TV raises prices; new Apple features for HomePod Mini and Apple Watch.Listeners ask about the best wireless earbuds under $100, a good way to store 36,000 photos amassed on an iPhone, cheaper alternatives to carrier smartphone insurance, low cost or free VPN services and turning off "Hey, Google" on a smartphone.Notes:Follow Rich!Synology NAS driveApple 1 billion phonesSmartphone salesRobinhood controversyRing Video Doorbell WiredAlexa GuardFirefox Relay to hide emailSling TV hikes pricesHomePod Mini new featuresApple Watch Time to WalkLetsfit $30 wireless earbudsOnePlus $50 wireless earbudsibi photo storage deviceSquaretrade phone insuranceGoogle One VPNOpera browser VPNNordVPNTurning off Hey GoogleLeave a voicemail for the show!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Ring makes its cheapest video doorbell yet, but there is
a catch. Who's the winner In smartphones? Another streaming service
raises prices? Plus Your tech questions answered? What's going on?
I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
you should know about, and it's where I answer the
(00:29):
questions you send me. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you're
having a fantastic day. So I finally did something that
I've wanted to do for so long. This has been
a project that is I don't know, evaded me for many,
many years. I took down my NASS, which is my
(00:50):
network attached storage drive, probably a couple of years ago,
like maybe two three years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's probably two years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I never set it back up again, and I just
always wanted to, but I never got around to it.
And so finally I've been running up against this problem.
It's this whole Google thing charging for storage that has
really gotten me to clean up my act with my
cloud files. So I wanted to back up my Google
Drive to the NAS and then move a bunch of
(01:19):
files in the Google drive to the NAS, and NAS
means network attached storage. It's basically a hard drive that
plugs into your network so that you can access it
from all your computers. And you know, you can have
these big hard drives in it. Right now, I've only
got like a four terabyte in there. But ideally what
you do is you mirror the drives and that way,
(01:40):
whatever you put on the one drive copies to the
other drive, and so if something ever happened to one
of the drives they fail, you've got the other drive,
and so it's kind of a fail safe method for
backing up your stuff. You should also have your stuff
in a third place, which is, you know, a cloud
or the original file itself, which in my case would
be Google Drive. But anyway, I finally did this. I
(02:01):
finally SYNCD my Google Drive to it, and now I'm
ready to move out this giant batch of files and
free up some space on my Google Drive. And it's
a long story what the files are, but they're basically
the old Google photos files, and so I'm not sure
this is what I don't know just yet. I don't
know if those Google file Google photos files are actually
(02:21):
taking up storage on my Google drive right, like my
quota of two terabytes, I'm not sure. I don't know,
so when I move them out, I will find out.
I have a feeling they are, but I don't know.
Originally they were not, and then I feel like maybe
they are now. So anyway, the network attached drive is
great because you just have a ton of storage that
you can just move files between. And it's been a
(02:42):
lot of fun. The one I have in case you're
interested in, is from snology sy no l O g
Y Snology. I have the disk station and it's an
old one, but I looked up the new one. It's
the DS two twenty plus, which is kind of the
consumer solution.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It holds too hard drive and was at USBC on
the front.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
No, it's just regular and that is three hundred dollars
on Amazon. I believe I paid a little bit less
than that, but anyway, really cool, and I'm you know,
I'm trying to not pay extra for Google Drive at
this point because now they're charging for everything in my
Google Photos. They're charging for that starting soon, so I
want to make sure that I don't have anything in
my Google Drive. And those two terabytes I pay ten
(03:24):
dollars a month for any more than I need in there,
like I only need the absolute essentials. So I'm going
through my whole drive file by file and just making
sure that it's all cleaned up and ready to go.
Let's move on to the first story in today's podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
By the way, Apple crosses one billion active iPhone users
for the first time this according to nine to five Mac,
Tim Cook, in an interview with Reuter, said they have
one hundred one point sixty five billion devices active, but
one billion of those are iPhones. Can you imagine a
billion iPhone around the world. I mean, this company is
(04:03):
just printing money all those iCloud messages every day. Oh
you have no more storage in your iCloud. We couldn't
back up your phone. Oh charge me some more. They
last time they mentioned how many active iPhones, it was
nine hundred million in twenty nineteen. That's a lot of
phones and Apple is just killing it. The latest numbers
from IDC, who tracks this stuff, that's International Data Corporation.
(04:25):
The fourth quarter was really good for smartphone makers and
really really good for Apple. In the top five Apple
number one, they sold ninety million phones or they shipped
I should say, I don't know if that actually means
they sold them, but I think that means pretty much
the same ninety million devices, and mostly that was driven
(04:47):
by the the iPhone twelve. How successful that is, So
ninety million phones in one quarter, I mean, that's just phenomenal.
Samsung number two with seventy three million, well, let's round
it up to seventy four million now the twenty nineteen
Q four. So just to give you an idea of
how many people upgraded in twenty twenty versus twenty nineteen,
(05:08):
seventy three, let's say seventy four million were sold in
twenty nineteen the last quarter, compared to ninety million for Apple,
sixty nine million. Well, let's say seventy million for Samsung
versus seventy four million. So both companies did see an increase,
which is pretty amazing during a pandemic. But for Apple
that increase was very dramatic and very pronounced. The rest
(05:30):
of the companies, there's really no competition anymore. There's only
Samsung and Apple, and the other ones are all Chinese
manufacturers Jaomi.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Appo and Huawei.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And Huawei has been hit really hard. I think on
this very podcast I mentioned how Huawei was like number
one for global shipments and now for this fourth quarter
of twenty twenty they're down to the one, two, three,
four fifth. But if you take it big picture, for
the whole year in twenty twenty, Samsung number one, Apple
number two, Huaweih number three. So it's interesting. I'm obsessed
(06:05):
with smartphones. I love them.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Today.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The Samsung Galaxy S twenty one series is out best
Samsung devices in years. I will say it again. If
you're gonna upgrade your Samsung, do it this year. The
phones they came out with are just phenomenal. The S
twenty one series is fantastic. I find that the S
twenty one Ultra, as I find with a lot of
these big phones nowadays, it's just too big. And I
(06:30):
love that phone and I want to carry it around.
I want to switch to it, but I can't. It's
just too big. I can't carry that thing in my pocket.
I always use the kind of the wedding as the example.
You know, if you're dancing at a wedding, could your
phone be in your pocket? With the Ultra no Way,
no Way, iPhone twelve pro, Yes, Samsung S twenty one, Yes,
(06:50):
S twenty one plus I'm not sure. I have not
held that one yet, but that would be probably. I
gotta say the S twenty one is a perfect size.
It's the same exact size as the I Phone twelve
Pro and the iPhone twelve. So if that's you know,
if you like a nice size phone, nice screen size,
but not giant, go with the S twenty one. It's
a great little device, and I have not found any
(07:11):
problems with it whatsoever. I wish it had a little
bit more memory. It has eight gigs of RAM. I
wish it had closer to the I think the Ultra
comes with sixteen or twelve, but I wish it had that.
I think the Ultra sixteen. But anyway, let's get to a.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Question, shall we. Jody Wrights, Hello, they're rich.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for wireless earbuds
that are not over one hundred dollars sent for my iPhone.
You know, it's funny when people send me questions, I
generally get a little indication of the answer I should
give them with how they're sending me. So if it
says sent for my iPhone, generally I will recommend AirPods
ten out of ten times times because air pods are amazing.
(08:02):
They sync with the iPhone, they seamlessly switch between devices.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
They're just perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Now, Jody is asking me for something under one hundred dollars,
and generally you can't get the air pods for under
one hundred dollars. So in that case, I will defer
to two different pairs of headphones that I've liked in
the past year. Number one are called the Let's Fit
T thirteen. They are dirt cheap under thirty dollars and
they work fantastic. I will say for under thirty dollars,
(08:30):
the Let's Fit T thirteen are just great, not a
lot of fuss. They work great, they charge fast, the
battery lasts, they stay in your ears, they feel good,
they sound good, and actually sound amazing. So that's my
number one pick.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The second pair that I like is from one Plus.
They made a pair this year called or last year
called the one plus buds Z. These were fifty dollars
and I find myself going back to them over and over.
They're excellent and they stay ears. They had a little
problem at the beginning where they were pausing during workouts
(09:07):
a lot because there's something with the sensor, but I
think they fix that with the softwareupdates. I don't really
see that happening much anymore. And those are fifty dollars.
You might be able to get them cheaper online if
you look around, but those are the two that I recommend,
and they will both cost you under one hundred dollars,
and I think you'll be very happy with either pair.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Jody, thanks for the question. Now.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I don't know if you're following what was going on
this week with Robin Hood and these stocks, but these
Reddit traders were pumping up the prices of these random
stocks like game Stop, BlackBerry, AMC movie Theaters. I think
American Airlines was in there at some point, but oh,
they have them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
All listed here BB. I think that's best buy.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But what they did was they pumped up the prices
because all of these hedge fund traders apparently. And I'm
not a stock market person, believe me, I know nothing
about this. I only do mutual funds. That's the only
thing I invest in. I don't do individual stocks. I
set it, I forget it, that's it. I don't even
look at it again ever again. I just put the
(10:08):
money in and leave it there. So that's my way
of doing investing. I just don't really put a lot
of thought into it. I figure, you put it in early,
and you'll leave it in there for as long as
humanly possible, and hopefully when I retire something will be
made off of this stuff. But these people are you know,
if you know what you're doing, you could day trade
and you could make money.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I guess I, you know. I to me, it's just
much too much work.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So this whole thing of robin Hood is is one
of these apps that people were using to buy these stocks,
and apparently they stopped people from trading these random stocks
like game Stop and you know all these other ones.
And the Robinhood traders were pretty mad because they were
all on Reddit, and you know, from everything I read
(10:53):
what they were doing, there's really nothing wrong with you're
you're allowed to unless someone was giving false information or
you know, putting out misleading information or insider information about
the companies. Like what they were doing seems to be
legal from everything that I saw.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Now, is it right? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean that's a whole nother topic, you know, I
think what the the bottom line about all this is
that we are seeing the use of the Internet and
social media to coordinate things in ways that we never imagined,
in ways that were never possible before. And we're going
to continue to see this. We are going to continue
to see social media enable things that we never thought
(11:33):
was possible in our society. And I'm telling you, the
implications of this stuff is very, very far reaching. We've
seen it with election We've seen it with protests, We've
seen it with anything where you can get a whole
bunch of people together all at the same time and
move things in big ways very fast. And sometimes that's
(11:56):
good and sometimes it's not so good. I'm just saying
that we're going to see more of this, and I'm
not sure that the social media companies can keep up
with the implications of their technology.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
A lot of this is inspired by that documentary on
Netflix that I watched, This Social Dilemma. It really resonated
with me because we know, when I was a kid,
you'd go on the BBS, right the bulletin board system,
and you'd write something, and you know, you'd go to
sleep and you'd wake up and you'd see a couple
replies to what you said. It was really cool. Now
(12:30):
you talk about teenagers posting on Instagram, and they refreshed
their Instagram posts so fast to see how many likes
they're getting and how many comments they're getting. If they
don't get enough in a certain amount of times, they
delete their post. That's how immediate gratification we have gotten
to in our society. And so same thing here with
this Robinhood stuff. These people just banded together, they decided
(12:51):
to do what they wanted to do, and it worked.
They got these stock prices up and up and up.
But then all of a sudden, robin Hood said never mind,
you can't trade. And they're like, wait, hold on, is
that is that what you're allowed to do? Because I
didn't realize that was in part of the terms of service.
So they went on Google Play. They gave it one
hundred tons of one star reviews. They are asking for
(13:13):
Apple to remove robin Hood from the App Store, and
I think we're just gonna see this kind of shake
out more and more because I guess they were trying
to stick it to the man. The hedge fund folks,
who I guess have like giant short positions in these
big you know, in these in these in these troubled
companies like game Stock, and when game stop stock starts
(13:35):
going up and up and up, these hedge fund traders
lose their shirts and they lose a lot of money.
And I'm simplifying this in a way that I this
is what I understand from this, but it just it
was wild. I was looking at these stock prices and wow,
uh no, it did not tempt me to jump in
or jump out. And so that's that's kind of my
thoughts on this stuff. But it's pretty wild to watch,
(13:57):
that's for sure. I have a little sip of my
tea here. Annabella says, Hey, rich, I wanted to talk
to you to ask what device do you recommend to
download and store pictures from my iPhone? I have over
thirty six thousand pictures currently on my phone. Whoa any
(14:18):
and need to do something to save them and delete
them from my phone? Anything you can recommend, TIA. I'm
guessing that means thanks in advance. Thank you, Annabella. Okay,
this is a great question, and thirty six thousand pictures
on your phone that is a lot. I would recommend
a couple things. So number one, you can go with
(14:38):
something like this synology that I recommended that earlier in
the show, but that seems to be a very it's
kind of a a you're putting a fire hose.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
On a on a I don't know what would the
term be? A matchstick?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Is that even like a phrase sounds good though right
you're using you know it's it might be too much
for your what you need.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So a couple of things you can do.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Number one, if you want a free solution and an
easy solution, just get Google Photos. Install that on your phone,
let it go to work. It will back up all
thirty six thousand pictures and then it will give you
a message when it's done, and it will say now
you can go ahead and delete all these pictures from
your phone.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
It will actually do that for you. That's one way
of doing it.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
The downside of that is that I would recommend at
this point don't use high quality for Google Photos anymore,
because there's no point that they're not giving it away
for free anymore, So why you're going to degrade the
quality of your pictures. So in that case, you would
want to spring for Google Storage. You get fifteen gigs,
which might hold your thirty six thousand pictures, depending how
big they are, or you might have to pay a
(15:42):
little bit more each month, maybe three dollars a month
to store all those I think that's perfectly reasonable, and
I think that's a great way to do this. If
you want something that's more integrated with the iPhone, you
can just go ahead and sign up for iCloud and
you can get fifty gigs of iCloud storage for I
think it's a couple bucks a month, three dollars a
month I pay, or maybe I pay for two hundred gigs.
(16:03):
Let's see iCloud storage pricing. Let's see how much your
pricing plan is for this. So with iCloud in America,
it's fifty gigs for ninety nine cents, which I think
would hold your pictures, or two hundred gigs for three
dollars a month. Either way, you're looking at under three
hundred three dollars a month. So a year, that's thirty
(16:25):
six dollars a year. Now, if you don't want to
do the cloud route, which it sounds like you might
not because you're asking me this question, so you may
not want them in the cloud, I would say the
next best thing is probably this device called eb that's ibi.
It's made by sand Disc. It's very similar to the
synology that I was talking about, but it's just for
pictures and it's.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It's very simple.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
You install the EB app on your phone, you hook
up this hard drive to your Wi Fi at home,
and next thing you know, every time you open up
this app on your phone, it will back up the
pictures to this hard drive. And it's store not in
the cloud, It's stored on the drive in your house. Now,
the danger of that is that your photos are not
properly backed up because you need them in two places.
(17:09):
So I'd want to see them on this hard drive
and then somewhere else as well, And so for that reason,
I'd probably go with the iCloud. I'd go with a
combination of two things. I'd probably go with like an
iCloud storage or Google Photos. Maybe do Google Photos for
free as much free as you can get, and then
go with the EB for the rest of it. The
(17:30):
EB is like a hundred bucks for one terabyte, so
good question. I get that a lot, but back up
those pictures. Back up those pictures. You do not want
to lose your pictures. I get so many emails from
people saying, rich is there any way to recover my
pictures anyway.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And I say, did you back them up?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Because yeah, it's really easy when you back them up,
and they say, no, I didn't back them up, and
I say, I don't know what to say because I
always talk about backing them up. You're not listening to
this podcast, and I get it. A lot of people aren't,
but a lot of people are. But I know if
you're listening to the podcast, you probably are backing up now,
full disclosure. Right now, at this moment in time, my
(18:11):
Google Photos are not backed up. And so that's a
big old for rich DeMuro. And again that is what
I'm working on with my This is all part of
my snology plan, because I am working on a plan
to get my Google Photos backed up on a reasonable schedule.
And you can actually do this, by the way, in
(18:32):
something called Google Takeout.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
They will. It's a little complicated, but.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
What they can do is they can automatically export your
data to a cloud service on a schedule, so on
a on a regular basis, you can have your Google
Photos backed up to a random you know, like these
various let me see.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
What I think.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I talked about this on the show before. But you
can have your Google Photos backed up to like a
cloud service. And this is my ultimate plan. So look
at export every two months for one year, and you
can back up to Google Drive, which is what I'm
gonna do. So my goal is to basically I need
(19:17):
to free up my space on Google Drive so that
this can just back them up to Google Drive regularly.
And then you can also do Dropbox. You can do
one drive and you can do Box. So again you
would just have your photos backed up every two months
for a year, so you don't have to think about
this and your photos are backed up in a physical place.
That's what I recommend, all right, Sling TV, we talk
(19:42):
about these streaming services. We talk about how everyone wants
to cut the cord to save money. Guess what we've
all learned. The cutting cord saves you exactly zero dollars
unless you are only subscribed to one streaming service like
you know, like Netflix or some thing. But in the end,
what we're seeing here is that these streaming services, you
(20:04):
have to have multiple streaming services if you want to
watch all the shows that everyone's talking about. And yes,
everyone's talking about Bridgerton right now. No, I have not
watched it. Yes, I've heard what all the fuss is about,
because it's basically kind of like the shows that used
to be on like Cinemax in the Middle of the
Night or HBO in the middle of the night, if
(20:24):
you catch my drift. So all these people are talking
about how great Bridgerton is, but yeah, we know why
you're watching it. It is a little skin involved in
that show apparently. Yeah, so anyway, if you want to
watch all these shows, you got to have all these
various services. And Sling TV is a cable service. I
(20:45):
get it. It's not like a Netflix, it's not like
a Disney Plus. But we've seen them raise prices as well,
and SlingTV, just like the rest of them, is raising
prices right now five dollars a month for new customers.
So now the minimum plan is thirty five a month
through them, and new customers are sorry. Existing customers will
have their prices jump in July. So thank you Sling
(21:07):
for the little runway there of six months for existing customers.
But here's the funny part about this is that when
Sling sent me this email, they kind of headlined it
with how they're expanding free DVR storage to fifty hours
versus I think it was ten before for users, and
so that was the headline and I was like, oh,
(21:29):
that's cool, but is that really that Oh and then
you read a little further and oh, there's the news
of the five dollars there. It is buried in the email. Now,
they did do something nice. They did expand, like I said,
the free DVR storage to fifty hours, which is nice
and that's actually quite useful. But the DVR Plus now
(21:49):
if you pay extra five dollars a month for that,
it's now two hundred hours of storage instead of fifty.
So again Sling is saying, look, our hands are tied here.
We had to raise our prices because the cable or
the I guess they are cable TV channels are raising
their programming fees to us. And this is something we've
seen over and over. It's what the cable companies all
(22:11):
all complained about. Is said, it's not us, We're not
raising your rates. It's just that all these providers keep
charging us more, so we have to pass that along
to you. And I'm sure some of that's true and
some of it's not. But at the end of the day,
what we've seen over and over is that. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's the same old thing.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
If you're getting programming, the prices are going to go up,
whether they go up every year or every other year
or every year and a half, they go up on
a regular schedule. We've seen it with Netflix, We've seen
it with Disney Plus, We've seen it with everything except
I don't even want to say this out loud, but
the music services. The music services have not raised their
(22:50):
prices since they started. If you think about it, Spotify
Premium started at nine to ninety nine a month and
it's continued at nine to ninety nine a month. The
only cheaper music service out there is Amazon Music, which
you can get for seven ninety nine a month. Why
am I not subscribed to that for cheaper? I'm paying
so much. I'm paying for Apple Music, I'm paying for
(23:11):
Google Music, and I'm not paying for Spotify. But I'm
paying for two music services and what's the other one, SiriusXM.
So I'm paying like thirty thirty five dollars a month
for music? Gosh, why am I doing that? I should
just go with Amazon and just be done. But I
haven't even used their music service. I'm guessing it's the
same for eight bucks a month. Why am I not
(23:32):
doing that?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I should?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
All right, let's get to another question. Joseph Fina says, Hi, Rick,
thank you for your services. You've been a blessing for
me and I have learned a lot from you. My
question is this My phone carrier is T Mobile. We've
been paying for insurance protection on a plan of three
(23:56):
of my family members for a while. Now we all
have iPhones. My question is do you know of any secure,
free app that we could use? T Mobile charges are high?
We pay eighteen dollars a month per phone. Whoo. I
think by now we've already paid the cost of the
phone twice just by paying insurance. Thank you, say hi
to your beautiful family, Sent from my iPhone Josephina. Josephina,
(24:20):
you are correct in your assessment that, yes, you have
already paid for a new phone in the insurance that
you've been paying for.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So diligently every month.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So what's my recommendation, Well, I have two number one
and this is the ideal recommendation. If you have any
savings whatsoever, dump the insurance because if you do the
math on insurance, yes you're insuring an eight hundred nine
hundred dollars phone. But do the math if you actually
have a problem with this phone other than a screen,
you know, a screen crack, which they're going to charge
(24:52):
you know, twenty nine bucks for whatever, or maybe even
do it for free. You know, if you look at
these other things that they're doing, there's a pretty deductible
of probably one hundred, one hundred and twenty nine to
you know, two hundred dollars depending on what needs to
be done. And so if you add that up with
the monthly fee, so twenty dollars a month times twelve months,
(25:15):
is two hundred and forty dollars a year. Now, if
you have one problem with that phone, let's say you
spend another one hundred dollars. Now you're up to three
hundred and forty dollars. So if you don't have a problem,
all that rolls into the next year, and now you're
up to you know, four hundred dollars for the insurance.
So again, if you have any any savings whatsoever, think
(25:35):
about maybe imagining that a portion of that savings is
to protect your phone investment. And I say investment, it's
not really an investment because the price drops so it's
not an investment, it's a what's the thing that the
car is. It's like, when you drive it off the lot,
it just goes down in price. It's a it's not
an investment at all. It's a it's a diminishing returns product.
(25:56):
Right as soon as you drive it off, it's it's
lost some of its value. Same thing with your phone.
So again, when we look at this, this phone charge
for eighteen dollars a month times a family of three,
that is a lot, that's sixty dollars a month. Practically,
I think you're better served doing two things. Number one,
(26:16):
start a little fund that is just for your iPhone insurance.
Put in one hundred bucks and just start with that.
Then take a portion of your eighteen dollars a month,
which let's say you're paying. You know you said almost sixty.
Let's just say you put in twenty five dollars a month. Automatically.
Just put in twenty five dollars a month. At the
end of a year, you will have twenty five dollars
(26:36):
times twelve, you'll have three hundred plus your original one
hundred dollars. That's four hundred dollars that should cover a
repair should you need it. And I'm talking a repair outright.
You just go to you break, I fix whatever, I crack,
you break whatever, all those things. You go into one
of those stores and they say, oh, your screens crack,
We're gonna have to charge you two ninety nine. You go,
(26:57):
oh cool, I've got four hundred in this little account.
Here you go cash. Now does it feel as good
as paying thirty bucks because you have insurance?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
No? But the reality is when you really do the math.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
The thing about insurance is you're gonna end up paying
for it, and it's gonna cost you a lot. And
this a phone that you can if you save up
this money eventually eclipse the cost of the insurance that
you're putting in every month, and it turns out to
be a much better deal. Now, if you don't want
to do that, the thing that I would recommend is
a company called Square Trade. They are now owned by
(27:29):
all State, and their iPhone plan is four phones for
twenty dollars a month. Four phones twenty dollars a month,
covers accidents, protects a new phone, protects an old phone,
and that's it. It just there is a deductible and
the deductibles are kind of high, but it's one hundred
(27:50):
and forty nine dollars deductible. So but again this is
what I'm talking about. If you know so one forty
nine plus that twenty a month, one month in if
you have a problem, you're already looking at fifty one,
sixty one and seventy dollars to fix your phone. So
I think it's better just to save the money and
self insure, as I would call it. But on the
(28:10):
flip side, the only thing about the Square trade that
I remembered when I did a story with them many
years ago, and maybe they changed this is that you
have to have your phone so they they will not
replace a lost phone or a stolen phone. It has
to be a damaged phone. So even if you had
to bring your phone to them in a little plastic
(28:30):
baggie all messed up, they will take it, and they
will they will give you a new one, a refurbished one,
but they can't do a lost or stolen phone. And
that's how they keep their price so much cheaper than
what you're paying, because I think in your plan they
may give you a new phone if you lost it,
but you have to check the terms of your plan.
But great question. And it was funny. I was in
(28:52):
Apple buying a phone. This was a couple of years ago,
and I think I told this story, but you know
they they were like, do you want Apple Care? And
it was like ninety nine and I said, no way, no,
I'm not doing Apple Care. I'll just self ensure. And
then I proceeded to buy a case for fifty dollars
half the price of the Apple Care for.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
The two or three years whatever, maybe a year.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Amazon's Alexa device is getting smarter and smarter and smarter.
And I got to say, I used to really pooh
pooh the Alexa, and I think that they have really
come a long way. And I think Alexa and what
app Amazon is doing with Alexa is pretty good. I
still think that Google responds to commands just a little
(29:35):
bit better and a little bit smarter. But I think
that Alexa has gotten really really good, and the amount
of things that you can do with Alexa has just
gotten so good.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And the ecosystem of products.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That work with Alexa and where it is and how
you can access it has just gotten really really good.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
But some new features.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Number one, Alexa has always done this thing where it's
called hunches, where it would light up. Don't use Alexa
a lot, so I'm not particularly sure about this, but
if it thought about something proactively, it would light up
and then you say, oh, what's going on a and
it would say to you like, I think you left
this light on. Do you want me to turn it off?
And you go sure, Now it's gonna do that by itself.
(30:15):
So I think this is brilliant. And you know, let's
say you leave your house for the weekend, you forget
to turn off your lights, or maybe you leave your
music playing or something. You know, Alexa kind of knows
your patterns and it says, huh, that's not like Rich
to leave his lights on for twenty hours. I'm gonna
go ahead and just turn that light off. And it
does and it won't ask you permission to do it,
which I think is really cool. And I'm sure you
(30:37):
can turn this off. Don't don't scream at me.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And say, Rich, how dare we let these things do
their own thing? They're just gonna at some point kill us. No,
we'll be okay. I think we'll be okay.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Now this is even cooler. This is Alexa's new feature
called guard plus. This is five dollars a month. But
it kind of turns any echo speaker into a security system.
And what it does is it links up with ADT
and when it listens for sounds and it hears something
that seems like it could be part of a break
(31:09):
in or yeah, basically burglary, break in, smoke fire, it
will alert you. And it will it will listen for
these sounds. It will listen for the sound of a
smoke detector, it will listen for the sound of glass breaking,
it will listen for the sound of when you're not home,
someone talking in your house or outside your home. If
it can listen that far, and it will call you. Well,
(31:31):
it will alert you on your phone. And then once
it alerts you, you can say you can listen in
on your device, which is just brilliant, and then you
can decide if you want to call the authorities, and
with one more click you can get you know, you
can reach one of these Alexa I guess it's like
a you know, like one of those call centers for
your for your alarm companies. It's like that, but it's
(31:52):
you know, now handling these Alexa requests. And I probably
said a way too many times. I probably set off
all your smart devices. I apologize, but this is five
dollars a month. I think it sounds really cool. The
other thing that it can do is it can make
the sound of a dog barking. So if you are
not home and this thing here's someone outside your house,
(32:14):
you're a speaker, can just start sounding like a dog.
And I have not tested this, so I don't know
how good it sounds. But I mean, this is just
this stuff is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I mean, it's just getting so smart, and I mean,
why would you not want that, you know, I mean
it just sounds it sounds like something that you would want.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Let's get to the next question. Let's see here.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Eric says, is there a good, totally free or very
low cost VPN for an older Mac desktop? Thank you, Eric, Well,
I am not fully up to speed on VPNs, and
I know that the Holy Grail is is a free VPN,
and I'm sure if you search for free VPN there
are probably many, many of them that show up. But
(33:08):
I would be a little concerned about a free VPN
because VPNs cost money to operate and especially to keep
them private and secure. So I probably would not want
a free VPN. Now, with that said, there are some
free VPNs out there. I know that if you have
Google Drive, if you pay for storage on a certain tier,
(33:29):
they do have a free VPN available for your Android device.
And if you let me see where that page is,
if you look at VPN by Google one. So if
you just go just Google Google VPN, sorry, Google Google
one VPN, and it's included in your price of Google
(33:52):
one membership. And oh, oh wow, Google just chimed in.
I did not say, h hg but okay, but you
can turn this on.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh look at this.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Okay, so this is actually this is actually pretty cool.
I did not realize this. But the VPN is included
on Google one membership with two terabytes in higher, which
is what I pay for. That's ten dollars a month
right now. The VPN is for Android phones, but it
says it is coming soon to iOS, Windows and mac
so that is a very good added benefit. Now you
(34:28):
may want to debate me on do you trust Google
with your VPN information.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I'm assuming that Google has documented exactly what they keep.
It says here some minimum logging is performed to ensure
quality of service, but your network traffic is never logged
and your IP is not associated to your activity. I mean,
that's kind of cool. Maybe I'm gonna start installing this
on my Android phones. That's really neat.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
The other thing that you can do is if you
want something that's totally free. Opera, the Opera web browser
has a built in VPN that's free, and there's probably
some limitations on just how much you can use it
for free, but that's another freeway of doing it. So
that's what I'd recommend Eric, if you want some free options.
If you want to pay a little bit, I'm not
(35:16):
really an expert in the best VPNs out there, but
I do hear Nord VPN over and over and over.
They've got apps for everything from Android to Linux and
Firefox and iOS. So if you want to pay a
little bit, Nord VPN is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And it's if.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You pay for a two year plan, it's three dollars
and seventy one cents a month. Yeah, so it's eighty
nine dollars for the first two years. If you just
do it month by month, it's very expensive. It's twelve
dollars a month. I'm sure that there are some deals
out there, like some promo codes and stuff for NordVPN,
but that's what i'd recommend. If you are a Google
one subscriber, I would check into that first.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Great question.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Oh, speaking of Amazon, you know they own Ring. I'm
just gonna spend a short amount of time on this,
but they came out with a new small and cheap
video doorbell from Ring. It's called the Ring Video Doorbell Wired.
It's their cheapest and smallest doorbell yet at just sixty dollars,
you get ten ADP HD video, night vision, live view,
two way talk with noise cancelation, and basically everything you
(36:21):
need the main thing, and I would definitely definitely recommend this.
If you have a doorbell on the front of your home,
go with this wired Ring video doorbell versus the battery
one because you'll never have to change a battery and
that is a win in my book. All I know
is I'm constantly charging the battery for my Ring outside
(36:43):
and I wish it was wired. But I did not
have a wired doorbell on my house when I moved here,
and I talked to an electrician or several of them
to get that you know, that little low voltage installed,
and it's kind of a pain if it's not already there.
It's kind of a pain because they base have to
use a transformer at the top and then run that
(37:04):
wire down. I'm sure it's not that big of a deal,
but they made it seem like it was kind of
a pain. And so I just said, you know, I'll
just go with the battery, but I would love, you know,
I might revisit this actually, And and because I think
I'm gonna switch over everything to ring at this point,
because I really like what they're doing. And I just
I'm sick of my doorbell going dead, right, It's like,
why is my doorbell dead?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh, I gotta charge it again. I've had people standing outside.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Friends, not recently, but you know in the past, in
the in the before days, when friends would come over
and they just stand out there because they rang the
doorbell and it didn't work, and they and finally you
hear this little knock, like and they'd be like, I'm
like someone at the door, and sure enough they'd been
standing out there because the doorbell didn't work. So yeah,
(37:52):
I gotta I gotta get on that. I do try
to I've gotten alerts before from ring to like charge
my doorbell, but I didn't see one recently, and my
mother in law came by and she said, your doorbell
was not working.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Rich, Well, maybe that was a reason.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Just kidding, just kidding, all right. Uh. Marvin says, I've
noticed on many occasions that Google has responded to a
stream of words used in a conversation as if I
had pressed the Google Assistant button on my phone? Is
there a means to turning this standby mode off? Thanks
(38:28):
sent for my iPad, Marvin. You know it just happened
on this podcast. It often happens when you say the
word Google and you didn't actually say the h Google.
And I asked Google how they get around this. I
actually asked some of my contacts at Google. I said,
you're you're around these things all day, like what do
you say? And they use the term hey G. So
(38:49):
if they don't want it to activate, so hey G,
hey G, and it won't activate. So I try to
remember that on my show, but generally I mess it up.
But if you so on the iPhone, there's a simple,
simple way to do this, And on the iPhone, all
you have to do if you don't want Siria to listen.
Is just flip your phone over on its face and
if you lay your phone face down on the table
(39:11):
and you say H Siri, she will not spring into action.
It's amazing, it's simple, it's easy. It's something that you
probably have never done, but it works. Maybe you've inadvertently
done that with the Google stuff. It's not that easy now.
On the speakers, generally they have a little slider that
you can do or I think I don't know if
(39:32):
you can say, uh, don't listen. I'm not gonna try
it right now. But anyway, if you're on your phone,
if you have a speaker, generally look for a switch
in the back. That's the short answer to that question.
But if you are on the phone on Android, just
go into your Android into Assistant settings and then under
(39:52):
all settings, tap General and then you can turn Google
Assistant on or off. There used to be a way
that you can have H Google turn a Wait a second,
did they did they turn off the ability to have
H Google or Hey G. It used to be you
could turn off. Well, maybe you can only turn it
(40:14):
off when the screen was off.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Anyway, it seems like anyway, you can go into settings
and turn it off completely. If you don't use it, it's fine. Personally,
I would recommend.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Against turning it off. And here's why.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
If you ever found yourself and I know this is
weird dark places, but if you ever found yourself in
an emergency situation and your last chance at life was
to call Google for help, right, And I'm just saying
this is I don't even know if you could or
if it would work or whatever, but let's just say
you were in some sort of situation where you couldn't
(40:50):
do anything except use your voice and your phone was nearby.
How frustrated and sad would you be if you didn't
make it because you turned off the hey g functionality
on your phone. You'd be really mad, right, You'd be
looking down from heaven at yourself, being like, why'd you
turn that off?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It could have saved you. And so I know it's a.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Very small case scenario and it's weird, but you know
this is.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I have to think of all things.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
And so that's why personally, I would rather deal with
the the misfirings and the the false activations of hey
G versus turn it off completely on my phone but
that's just me.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I mean, I'm just one person. I'm just giving you
my opinion.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
You're tuned into the rich on Tech show, so I'm
giving you what rich on Tech thinks, which is me.
You may think differently, but that's what I think. And
so that's you know, that's it's one of those things.
It's you know, do as you please. But I'm just
giving you all of the information, all of the information
at hand, so that you can make the best possible
(41:56):
decision with it. All right, should we take a question
from the voicemail? I usually get some voicemails on the
website at let's see it's rich on tech dot TV
slash podcast And if you look in the lower right
hand corner, you can actually leave a voicemail for me.
And this one has no name, but let's just hear
what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Hey, rich Chip from Long Beach. A couple weeks ago,
Australian guy was asking you to have your podcast on
a little bit longer hour and a half and you're
explaining how hard that would be. But my question is
when is KTLA gonna start giving you more time for
your news segments? You only get about two and a
half minutes. You need more. The weather is like six
(42:40):
segments within the hour, So we want more time with
you on your KTLA news segment.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Oh that's funny. Wow, Chip, you are near and dear
to my heart. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
I do appreciate you asking that. But you have to understand.
You have to understand, you know, you have to understand
local news. You have to understand the news business and
my segment. So my segment is, for all intents purposes,
(43:08):
a feature segment on technology. Now do I think it's
the most important segment in the show.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Of course I do.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
I think that everything that I talk about and everything
I put in my segment is is super super important
and it's highly you know, I craft my segments around
what I think people should know when it comes to
consumer technology, and so yes, what I like more time?
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Of course, would.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Katy La like to give me more time? I think,
I mean, they don't, but you know, what can I say?
The other thing is it's also the timing of the show.
There are days when they say, Rich, you've got more time.
But in general, you're right, you must have taken a
stopwatch to my segment. But in general, yeah, It's about
two minutes and thirty seconds, and I'm thankful every time
(43:53):
it's on, honestly because I've been there for ten years
and I've you know, I really feel like what I'm
doing is very important to be honest the way. Yes,
what I love to sit there and chat with the
anchors for ten minutes about all this stuff. Yes, but
it's also tricky because it gets a little nerdy, and
you know, it's it is a newscast where they have
a lot of pressing day of air stuff to get
to as well. But with all that said, I feel like,
(44:16):
and this is what keeps me kind of going in
the scheme of things. I feel like I'm a three
hundred and sixty degree product, not just the KTLA News.
So yes, of course, the KTLA news segment is my
bread and butter. But I've got the podcast, I've got Instagram,
I've got Facebook, I've got Twitter, I've got Facebook Live,
(44:38):
I've got Instagram Live. So all these little things where
people can reach me and also not just see the
one angle to my story that I put on KTLA,
but also you know, you can maybe comment on my
Instagram with a question about it, or maybe I explain
it a little bit more in depth on my Facebook page,
or maybe I do a video on it. So again,
that's the way I see it, and so to me, yes,
(45:00):
that's what I love.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
More time on the show, of course, and do I
ask for it, of course.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
But at the same time, I think that between everything
that I do, I really.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Try to feel like if you.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You know, I feel like the KTLA segment is a
little taste and you're like, oh, that's interesting. Let me
go to the website and see what are the resources
Rich has on that. And that's the way that I
see it. So good question. Thank you Chip for looking
out for me. I feel like I should hire you
as my agent.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
All Right.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I got a couple of new features for Apple stuff
this week, so I'm just gonna go through them kind
of quick. Number one, if you have an Apple Watch,
there's a new feature called Time to Walk And they
don't call it a podcast, but for all intents and purposes,
this is a podcast on your Apple Watch that you
can listen to while you walk. And the first four
were a bunch of celebrities that you know, like Shawn
(45:49):
Mendes is on there, Draymond Green basketball, you know, very
very famous basketball player and these these are stories that
are so it's a story from the person twenty five
to forty minutes that you're meant to like kind of walk.
They're walking while they tell the story, and you're walking,
and so you're just walking with them basically, and there's
(46:09):
no host or anything. It's just them kind of talking
to you in your ear. And you know, Apple says
that walking is one of the easiest forms of exercise.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
This will get people to walk more.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Now, I think it's kind of tough because it's basically
a podcast, and I think people are listening to a
lot of podcasts. But hey, if it's going to get
people to walk more and your favorite celebrity is on there,
why not. You know, I'm sure you can find a
million interviews with these people that they have on regular podcasts.
But hey, you know whatever, So you have to have
an Apple Watch. It's part of Apple Fitness Plus. I
(46:40):
should probably mention that, so you do need a subscription.
You know that the Fitness Plus subscription to access these
But if you want to see what they're all about,
all you have to do is make sure your phone
is updated and your Apple Watch is updated and you
open up that fitness app on your watch and it
should just open up and you should see the the
I don't know what they call it, like a tie
right at the top with one of these one of
(47:02):
these walks time to walk on that tile and you
can download them. I think they auto download your watch
or you can download them so you can do it
all offline.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But again, I mean, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
And the main difference between this and a podcast is
twofold number one. It's a story and then it's like,
I think three songs that the influencer or celebrity or
whoever inspiring person that they're interviewing, whoever they pick, I
think three songs that move them. And then those three
songs are at the end of the walk. And then
(47:36):
during the walk, while they're telling their story, there are
little pictures that are synced to the story. So for example,
Dolly Parton was talking about this statue that's in her
I guess the city she grew up in, and you
know it's in like the middle of the square and
you you know, goes ding ning And while you're listening
to this, it will show you the little picture of.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
The statue on your watch.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
So that's kind of unique, and that's yes, that sets
it apart from your standard podcast. Uh. The other thing
is that if you have a home pod, and all
of these features really refer to very new Apple stuff.
If you have a HomePod Mini and an iPhone eleven
or twelve, there is an update for the HomePod Mini
that makes hand off just a little bit slicker, a
little bit cooler, and a little bit easier. So the
(48:19):
iPhone eleven, the iPhone twelve, and the home Pod Mini
have this special chip in it. I think it's called
the you. I think it's called the U one chip
or the UW chip, U one chip, let me see
if it's the U one Yeah, U one chip, And
the U one chip has ultra wideband technology, which is
just fancy term for things that can tell proximity to
(48:39):
each other. And so now your phone and your speaker
know when they're close to each other and they can
kind of just exchange information faster and easier because it
knows that you're nearby. And so it's got this new
revamped screen that you know, makes listening to stuff easier
and also starting and stopping music on your HomePod easier,
and setting alarms on your HomePod easier. If there's nothing
(49:01):
playing on your HomePod and you bring your phone nearby,
it will give you some suggested things to play, kind
of like if you've seen that happen with AirPods. If
you put them in your ear and you look at
the lock screen on your phone, it suggests a whole
bunch of things that you can just tap once and
start playing, whether it's podcasts or music.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
So it does that, and.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Then finally you can view the media controls without unlocking
your iPhone and anyone in your home I tried to
nail Apple down on an answer on this. They don't
really give me a straight answer, but it sounds like
anyone with an iPhone near your device can can bring
up those music controls from the HomePod and press play
stop or perhaps change the music on there. But I'm
(49:40):
not really sure. Yes, see and control what's playing. Oh
see and control what's playing. Okay, so you can't change
the music, but you can control it. So that means like,
you know, play pause, whatever. Now, if you want to
get these things, your HomePod should automatically update, and if
you want to manually check for the updates, just go
into the home app on your iPhone, select home settings
(50:02):
and then software update and that should find it.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I did it. It's different. It's not like a huge difference.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
But it's definitely a little bit different and a little
bit better than before. The haptics are really improved. They
are very different. When you get your stuff nearby your phone,
near to the HomePod Mini, I should say this doesn't
apply to the regular home pod. Oh my gosh, listen
to the sound of that music.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
You know what that means. It is the end of
the show.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
If you would like to submit a question for me
to answer, there are two ways to do just that.
You can go to richon Tech dot tv slash podcast
and hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, or
you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com
slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send
email button.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
It should still be there.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I know Facebook just redesigned everything, but it should still
be there. If not, just hello at Richontech dot tv
also works. Also. I would love it if you would
rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it.
You can go to rate this podcast dot com slash
rich on Tech to do that. You can find me
online at rich on Tech if you are not already
following me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the likely places
(51:12):
you can find me there. My name is rich Dimiro.
Thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate the
little community that we have here of listeners to this show.
I say little, I mean I think it's big, but
you know what I mean, I meant tight knit community,
because I really do. It's amazing how many people reference
the podcast when they email me or you get in
touch with me, so I love it. Keep it coming,
(51:34):
stay safe, I will talk to you real soon
Ring makes its cheapest video doorbell yet, but there is
a catch. Who's the winner In smartphones? Another streaming service
raises prices? Plus Your tech questions answered? What's going on?
I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
you should know about, and it's where I answer the
(00:29):
questions you send me. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you're
having a fantastic day. So I finally did something that
I've wanted to do for so long. This has been
a project that is I don't know, evaded me for many,
many years. I took down my NASS, which is my
(00:50):
network attached storage drive, probably a couple of years ago,
like maybe two three years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's probably two years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I never set it back up again, and I just
always wanted to, but I never got around to it.
And so finally I've been running up against this problem.
It's this whole Google thing charging for storage that has
really gotten me to clean up my act with my
cloud files. So I wanted to back up my Google
Drive to the NAS and then move a bunch of
(01:19):
files in the Google drive to the NAS, and NAS
means network attached storage. It's basically a hard drive that
plugs into your network so that you can access it
from all your computers. And you know, you can have
these big hard drives in it. Right now, I've only
got like a four terabyte in there. But ideally what
you do is you mirror the drives and that way,
(01:40):
whatever you put on the one drive copies to the
other drive, and so if something ever happened to one
of the drives they fail, you've got the other drive,
and so it's kind of a fail safe method for
backing up your stuff. You should also have your stuff
in a third place, which is, you know, a cloud
or the original file itself, which in my case would
be Google Drive. But anyway, I finally did this. I
(02:01):
finally SYNCD my Google Drive to it, and now I'm
ready to move out this giant batch of files and
free up some space on my Google Drive. And it's
a long story what the files are, but they're basically
the old Google photos files, and so I'm not sure
this is what I don't know just yet. I don't
know if those Google file Google photos files are actually
(02:21):
taking up storage on my Google drive right, like my
quota of two terabytes, I'm not sure. I don't know,
so when I move them out, I will find out.
I have a feeling they are, but I don't know.
Originally they were not, and then I feel like maybe
they are now. So anyway, the network attached drive is
great because you just have a ton of storage that
you can just move files between. And it's been a
(02:42):
lot of fun. The one I have in case you're
interested in, is from snology sy no l O g
Y Snology. I have the disk station and it's an
old one, but I looked up the new one. It's
the DS two twenty plus, which is kind of the
consumer solution.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It holds too hard drive and was at USBC on
the front.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
No, it's just regular and that is three hundred dollars
on Amazon. I believe I paid a little bit less
than that, but anyway, really cool, and I'm you know,
I'm trying to not pay extra for Google Drive at
this point because now they're charging for everything in my
Google Photos. They're charging for that starting soon, so I
want to make sure that I don't have anything in
my Google Drive. And those two terabytes I pay ten
(03:24):
dollars a month for any more than I need in there,
like I only need the absolute essentials. So I'm going
through my whole drive file by file and just making
sure that it's all cleaned up and ready to go.
Let's move on to the first story in today's podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
By the way, Apple crosses one billion active iPhone users
for the first time this according to nine to five Mac,
Tim Cook, in an interview with Reuter, said they have
one hundred one point sixty five billion devices active, but
one billion of those are iPhones. Can you imagine a
billion iPhone around the world. I mean, this company is
(04:03):
just printing money all those iCloud messages every day. Oh
you have no more storage in your iCloud. We couldn't
back up your phone. Oh charge me some more. They
last time they mentioned how many active iPhones, it was
nine hundred million in twenty nineteen. That's a lot of
phones and Apple is just killing it. The latest numbers
from IDC, who tracks this stuff, that's International Data Corporation.
(04:25):
The fourth quarter was really good for smartphone makers and
really really good for Apple. In the top five Apple
number one, they sold ninety million phones or they shipped
I should say, I don't know if that actually means
they sold them, but I think that means pretty much
the same ninety million devices, and mostly that was driven
(04:47):
by the the iPhone twelve. How successful that is, So
ninety million phones in one quarter, I mean, that's just phenomenal.
Samsung number two with seventy three million, well, let's round
it up to seventy four million now the twenty nineteen
Q four. So just to give you an idea of
how many people upgraded in twenty twenty versus twenty nineteen,
(05:08):
seventy three, let's say seventy four million were sold in
twenty nineteen the last quarter, compared to ninety million for Apple,
sixty nine million. Well, let's say seventy million for Samsung
versus seventy four million. So both companies did see an increase,
which is pretty amazing during a pandemic. But for Apple
that increase was very dramatic and very pronounced. The rest
(05:30):
of the companies, there's really no competition anymore. There's only
Samsung and Apple, and the other ones are all Chinese
manufacturers Jaomi.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Appo and Huawei.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And Huawei has been hit really hard. I think on
this very podcast I mentioned how Huawei was like number
one for global shipments and now for this fourth quarter
of twenty twenty they're down to the one, two, three,
four fifth. But if you take it big picture, for
the whole year in twenty twenty, Samsung number one, Apple
number two, Huaweih number three. So it's interesting. I'm obsessed
(06:05):
with smartphones. I love them.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Today.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The Samsung Galaxy S twenty one series is out best
Samsung devices in years. I will say it again. If
you're gonna upgrade your Samsung, do it this year. The
phones they came out with are just phenomenal. The S
twenty one series is fantastic. I find that the S
twenty one Ultra, as I find with a lot of
these big phones nowadays, it's just too big. And I
(06:30):
love that phone and I want to carry it around.
I want to switch to it, but I can't. It's
just too big. I can't carry that thing in my pocket.
I always use the kind of the wedding as the example.
You know, if you're dancing at a wedding, could your
phone be in your pocket? With the Ultra no Way,
no Way, iPhone twelve pro, Yes, Samsung S twenty one, Yes,
(06:50):
S twenty one plus I'm not sure. I have not
held that one yet, but that would be probably. I
gotta say the S twenty one is a perfect size.
It's the same exact size as the I Phone twelve
Pro and the iPhone twelve. So if that's you know,
if you like a nice size phone, nice screen size,
but not giant, go with the S twenty one. It's
a great little device, and I have not found any
(07:11):
problems with it whatsoever. I wish it had a little
bit more memory. It has eight gigs of RAM. I
wish it had closer to the I think the Ultra
comes with sixteen or twelve, but I wish it had that.
I think the Ultra sixteen. But anyway, let's get to a.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Question, shall we. Jody Wrights, Hello, they're rich.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for wireless earbuds
that are not over one hundred dollars sent for my iPhone.
You know, it's funny when people send me questions, I
generally get a little indication of the answer I should
give them with how they're sending me. So if it
says sent for my iPhone, generally I will recommend AirPods
ten out of ten times times because air pods are amazing.
(08:02):
They sync with the iPhone, they seamlessly switch between devices.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
They're just perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Now, Jody is asking me for something under one hundred dollars,
and generally you can't get the air pods for under
one hundred dollars. So in that case, I will defer
to two different pairs of headphones that I've liked in
the past year. Number one are called the Let's Fit
T thirteen. They are dirt cheap under thirty dollars and
they work fantastic. I will say for under thirty dollars,
(08:30):
the Let's Fit T thirteen are just great, not a
lot of fuss. They work great, they charge fast, the
battery lasts, they stay in your ears, they feel good,
they sound good, and actually sound amazing. So that's my
number one pick.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The second pair that I like is from one Plus.
They made a pair this year called or last year
called the one plus buds Z. These were fifty dollars
and I find myself going back to them over and over.
They're excellent and they stay ears. They had a little
problem at the beginning where they were pausing during workouts
(09:07):
a lot because there's something with the sensor, but I
think they fix that with the softwareupdates. I don't really
see that happening much anymore. And those are fifty dollars.
You might be able to get them cheaper online if
you look around, but those are the two that I recommend,
and they will both cost you under one hundred dollars,
and I think you'll be very happy with either pair.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Jody, thanks for the question. Now.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I don't know if you're following what was going on
this week with Robin Hood and these stocks, but these
Reddit traders were pumping up the prices of these random
stocks like game Stop, BlackBerry, AMC movie Theaters. I think
American Airlines was in there at some point, but oh,
they have them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
All listed here BB. I think that's best buy.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But what they did was they pumped up the prices
because all of these hedge fund traders apparently. And I'm
not a stock market person, believe me, I know nothing
about this. I only do mutual funds. That's the only
thing I invest in. I don't do individual stocks. I
set it, I forget it, that's it. I don't even
look at it again ever again. I just put the
(10:08):
money in and leave it there. So that's my way
of doing investing. I just don't really put a lot
of thought into it. I figure, you put it in early,
and you'll leave it in there for as long as
humanly possible, and hopefully when I retire something will be
made off of this stuff. But these people are you know,
if you know what you're doing, you could day trade
and you could make money.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I guess I, you know. I to me, it's just
much too much work.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So this whole thing of robin Hood is is one
of these apps that people were using to buy these stocks,
and apparently they stopped people from trading these random stocks
like game Stop and you know all these other ones.
And the Robinhood traders were pretty mad because they were
all on Reddit, and you know, from everything I read
(10:53):
what they were doing, there's really nothing wrong with you're
you're allowed to unless someone was giving false information or
you know, putting out misleading information or insider information about
the companies. Like what they were doing seems to be
legal from everything that I saw.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Now, is it right? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean that's a whole nother topic, you know, I
think what the the bottom line about all this is
that we are seeing the use of the Internet and
social media to coordinate things in ways that we never imagined,
in ways that were never possible before. And we're going
to continue to see this. We are going to continue
to see social media enable things that we never thought
(11:33):
was possible in our society. And I'm telling you, the
implications of this stuff is very, very far reaching. We've
seen it with election We've seen it with protests, We've
seen it with anything where you can get a whole
bunch of people together all at the same time and
move things in big ways very fast. And sometimes that's
(11:56):
good and sometimes it's not so good. I'm just saying
that we're going to see more of this, and I'm
not sure that the social media companies can keep up
with the implications of their technology.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
A lot of this is inspired by that documentary on
Netflix that I watched, This Social Dilemma. It really resonated
with me because we know, when I was a kid,
you'd go on the BBS, right the bulletin board system,
and you'd write something, and you know, you'd go to
sleep and you'd wake up and you'd see a couple
replies to what you said. It was really cool. Now
(12:30):
you talk about teenagers posting on Instagram, and they refreshed
their Instagram posts so fast to see how many likes
they're getting and how many comments they're getting. If they
don't get enough in a certain amount of times, they
delete their post. That's how immediate gratification we have gotten
to in our society. And so same thing here with
this Robinhood stuff. These people just banded together, they decided
(12:51):
to do what they wanted to do, and it worked.
They got these stock prices up and up and up.
But then all of a sudden, robin Hood said never mind,
you can't trade. And they're like, wait, hold on, is
that is that what you're allowed to do? Because I
didn't realize that was in part of the terms of service.
So they went on Google Play. They gave it one
hundred tons of one star reviews. They are asking for
(13:13):
Apple to remove robin Hood from the App Store, and
I think we're just gonna see this kind of shake
out more and more because I guess they were trying
to stick it to the man. The hedge fund folks,
who I guess have like giant short positions in these
big you know, in these in these in these troubled
companies like game Stock, and when game stop stock starts
(13:35):
going up and up and up, these hedge fund traders
lose their shirts and they lose a lot of money.
And I'm simplifying this in a way that I this
is what I understand from this, but it just it
was wild. I was looking at these stock prices and wow,
uh no, it did not tempt me to jump in
or jump out. And so that's that's kind of my
thoughts on this stuff. But it's pretty wild to watch,
(13:57):
that's for sure. I have a little sip of my
tea here. Annabella says, Hey, rich, I wanted to talk
to you to ask what device do you recommend to
download and store pictures from my iPhone? I have over
thirty six thousand pictures currently on my phone. Whoa any
(14:18):
and need to do something to save them and delete
them from my phone? Anything you can recommend, TIA. I'm
guessing that means thanks in advance. Thank you, Annabella. Okay,
this is a great question, and thirty six thousand pictures
on your phone that is a lot. I would recommend
a couple things. So number one, you can go with
(14:38):
something like this synology that I recommended that earlier in
the show, but that seems to be a very it's
kind of a a you're putting a fire hose.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
On a on a I don't know what would the
term be? A matchstick?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Is that even like a phrase sounds good though right
you're using you know it's it might be too much
for your what you need.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So a couple of things you can do.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Number one, if you want a free solution and an
easy solution, just get Google Photos. Install that on your phone,
let it go to work. It will back up all
thirty six thousand pictures and then it will give you
a message when it's done, and it will say now
you can go ahead and delete all these pictures from
your phone.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
It will actually do that for you. That's one way
of doing it.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
The downside of that is that I would recommend at
this point don't use high quality for Google Photos anymore,
because there's no point that they're not giving it away
for free anymore, So why you're going to degrade the
quality of your pictures. So in that case, you would
want to spring for Google Storage. You get fifteen gigs,
which might hold your thirty six thousand pictures, depending how
big they are, or you might have to pay a
(15:42):
little bit more each month, maybe three dollars a month
to store all those I think that's perfectly reasonable, and
I think that's a great way to do this. If
you want something that's more integrated with the iPhone, you
can just go ahead and sign up for iCloud and
you can get fifty gigs of iCloud storage for I
think it's a couple bucks a month, three dollars a
month I pay, or maybe I pay for two hundred gigs.
(16:03):
Let's see iCloud storage pricing. Let's see how much your
pricing plan is for this. So with iCloud in America,
it's fifty gigs for ninety nine cents, which I think
would hold your pictures, or two hundred gigs for three
dollars a month. Either way, you're looking at under three
hundred three dollars a month. So a year, that's thirty
(16:25):
six dollars a year. Now, if you don't want to
do the cloud route, which it sounds like you might
not because you're asking me this question, so you may
not want them in the cloud, I would say the
next best thing is probably this device called eb that's ibi.
It's made by sand Disc. It's very similar to the
synology that I was talking about, but it's just for
pictures and it's.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It's very simple.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
You install the EB app on your phone, you hook
up this hard drive to your Wi Fi at home,
and next thing you know, every time you open up
this app on your phone, it will back up the
pictures to this hard drive. And it's store not in
the cloud, It's stored on the drive in your house. Now,
the danger of that is that your photos are not
properly backed up because you need them in two places.
(17:09):
So I'd want to see them on this hard drive
and then somewhere else as well, And so for that reason,
I'd probably go with the iCloud. I'd go with a
combination of two things. I'd probably go with like an
iCloud storage or Google Photos. Maybe do Google Photos for
free as much free as you can get, and then
go with the EB for the rest of it. The
(17:30):
EB is like a hundred bucks for one terabyte, so
good question. I get that a lot, but back up
those pictures. Back up those pictures. You do not want
to lose your pictures. I get so many emails from
people saying, rich is there any way to recover my
pictures anyway.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And I say, did you back them up?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Because yeah, it's really easy when you back them up,
and they say, no, I didn't back them up, and
I say, I don't know what to say because I
always talk about backing them up. You're not listening to
this podcast, and I get it. A lot of people aren't,
but a lot of people are. But I know if
you're listening to the podcast, you probably are backing up now,
full disclosure. Right now, at this moment in time, my
(18:11):
Google Photos are not backed up. And so that's a
big old for rich DeMuro. And again that is what
I'm working on with my This is all part of
my snology plan, because I am working on a plan
to get my Google Photos backed up on a reasonable schedule.
And you can actually do this, by the way, in
(18:32):
something called Google Takeout.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
They will. It's a little complicated, but.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
What they can do is they can automatically export your
data to a cloud service on a schedule, so on
a on a regular basis, you can have your Google
Photos backed up to a random you know, like these
various let me see.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
What I think.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I talked about this on the show before. But you
can have your Google Photos backed up to like a
cloud service. And this is my ultimate plan. So look
at export every two months for one year, and you
can back up to Google Drive, which is what I'm
gonna do. So my goal is to basically I need
(19:17):
to free up my space on Google Drive so that
this can just back them up to Google Drive regularly.
And then you can also do Dropbox. You can do
one drive and you can do Box. So again you
would just have your photos backed up every two months
for a year, so you don't have to think about
this and your photos are backed up in a physical place.
That's what I recommend, all right, Sling TV, we talk
(19:42):
about these streaming services. We talk about how everyone wants
to cut the cord to save money. Guess what we've
all learned. The cutting cord saves you exactly zero dollars
unless you are only subscribed to one streaming service like
you know, like Netflix or some thing. But in the end,
what we're seeing here is that these streaming services, you
(20:04):
have to have multiple streaming services if you want to
watch all the shows that everyone's talking about. And yes,
everyone's talking about Bridgerton right now. No, I have not
watched it. Yes, I've heard what all the fuss is about,
because it's basically kind of like the shows that used
to be on like Cinemax in the Middle of the
Night or HBO in the middle of the night, if
(20:24):
you catch my drift. So all these people are talking
about how great Bridgerton is, but yeah, we know why
you're watching it. It is a little skin involved in
that show apparently. Yeah, so anyway, if you want to
watch all these shows, you got to have all these
various services. And Sling TV is a cable service. I
(20:45):
get it. It's not like a Netflix, it's not like
a Disney Plus. But we've seen them raise prices as well,
and SlingTV, just like the rest of them, is raising
prices right now five dollars a month for new customers.
So now the minimum plan is thirty five a month
through them, and new customers are sorry. Existing customers will
have their prices jump in July. So thank you Sling
(21:07):
for the little runway there of six months for existing customers.
But here's the funny part about this is that when
Sling sent me this email, they kind of headlined it
with how they're expanding free DVR storage to fifty hours
versus I think it was ten before for users, and
so that was the headline and I was like, oh,
(21:29):
that's cool, but is that really that Oh and then
you read a little further and oh, there's the news
of the five dollars there. It is buried in the email. Now,
they did do something nice. They did expand, like I said,
the free DVR storage to fifty hours, which is nice
and that's actually quite useful. But the DVR Plus now
(21:49):
if you pay extra five dollars a month for that,
it's now two hundred hours of storage instead of fifty.
So again Sling is saying, look, our hands are tied here.
We had to raise our prices because the cable or
the I guess they are cable TV channels are raising
their programming fees to us. And this is something we've
seen over and over. It's what the cable companies all
(22:11):
all complained about. Is said, it's not us, We're not
raising your rates. It's just that all these providers keep
charging us more, so we have to pass that along
to you. And I'm sure some of that's true and
some of it's not. But at the end of the day,
what we've seen over and over is that. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's the same old thing.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
If you're getting programming, the prices are going to go up,
whether they go up every year or every other year
or every year and a half, they go up on
a regular schedule. We've seen it with Netflix, We've seen
it with Disney Plus, We've seen it with everything except
I don't even want to say this out loud, but
the music services. The music services have not raised their
(22:50):
prices since they started. If you think about it, Spotify
Premium started at nine to ninety nine a month and
it's continued at nine to ninety nine a month. The
only cheaper music service out there is Amazon Music, which
you can get for seven ninety nine a month. Why
am I not subscribed to that for cheaper? I'm paying
so much. I'm paying for Apple Music, I'm paying for
(23:11):
Google Music, and I'm not paying for Spotify. But I'm
paying for two music services and what's the other one, SiriusXM.
So I'm paying like thirty thirty five dollars a month
for music? Gosh, why am I doing that? I should
just go with Amazon and just be done. But I
haven't even used their music service. I'm guessing it's the
same for eight bucks a month. Why am I not
(23:32):
doing that?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I should?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
All right, let's get to another question. Joseph Fina says, Hi, Rick,
thank you for your services. You've been a blessing for
me and I have learned a lot from you. My
question is this My phone carrier is T Mobile. We've
been paying for insurance protection on a plan of three
(23:56):
of my family members for a while. Now we all
have iPhones. My question is do you know of any secure,
free app that we could use? T Mobile charges are high?
We pay eighteen dollars a month per phone. Whoo. I
think by now we've already paid the cost of the
phone twice just by paying insurance. Thank you, say hi
to your beautiful family, Sent from my iPhone Josephina. Josephina,
(24:20):
you are correct in your assessment that, yes, you have
already paid for a new phone in the insurance that
you've been paying for.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So diligently every month.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So what's my recommendation, Well, I have two number one
and this is the ideal recommendation. If you have any
savings whatsoever, dump the insurance because if you do the
math on insurance, yes you're insuring an eight hundred nine
hundred dollars phone. But do the math if you actually
have a problem with this phone other than a screen,
you know, a screen crack, which they're going to charge
(24:52):
you know, twenty nine bucks for whatever, or maybe even
do it for free. You know, if you look at
these other things that they're doing, there's a pretty deductible
of probably one hundred, one hundred and twenty nine to
you know, two hundred dollars depending on what needs to
be done. And so if you add that up with
the monthly fee, so twenty dollars a month times twelve months,
(25:15):
is two hundred and forty dollars a year. Now, if
you have one problem with that phone, let's say you
spend another one hundred dollars. Now you're up to three
hundred and forty dollars. So if you don't have a problem,
all that rolls into the next year, and now you're
up to you know, four hundred dollars for the insurance.
So again, if you have any any savings whatsoever, think
(25:35):
about maybe imagining that a portion of that savings is
to protect your phone investment. And I say investment, it's
not really an investment because the price drops so it's
not an investment, it's a what's the thing that the
car is. It's like, when you drive it off the lot,
it just goes down in price. It's a it's not
an investment at all. It's a it's a diminishing returns product.
(25:56):
Right as soon as you drive it off, it's it's
lost some of its value. Same thing with your phone.
So again, when we look at this, this phone charge
for eighteen dollars a month times a family of three,
that is a lot, that's sixty dollars a month. Practically,
I think you're better served doing two things. Number one,
(26:16):
start a little fund that is just for your iPhone insurance.
Put in one hundred bucks and just start with that.
Then take a portion of your eighteen dollars a month,
which let's say you're paying. You know you said almost sixty.
Let's just say you put in twenty five dollars a month. Automatically.
Just put in twenty five dollars a month. At the
end of a year, you will have twenty five dollars
(26:36):
times twelve, you'll have three hundred plus your original one
hundred dollars. That's four hundred dollars that should cover a
repair should you need it. And I'm talking a repair outright.
You just go to you break, I fix whatever, I crack,
you break whatever, all those things. You go into one
of those stores and they say, oh, your screens crack,
We're gonna have to charge you two ninety nine. You go,
(26:57):
oh cool, I've got four hundred in this little account.
Here you go cash. Now does it feel as good
as paying thirty bucks because you have insurance?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
No? But the reality is when you really do the math.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
The thing about insurance is you're gonna end up paying
for it, and it's gonna cost you a lot. And
this a phone that you can if you save up
this money eventually eclipse the cost of the insurance that
you're putting in every month, and it turns out to
be a much better deal. Now, if you don't want
to do that, the thing that I would recommend is
a company called Square Trade. They are now owned by
(27:29):
all State, and their iPhone plan is four phones for
twenty dollars a month. Four phones twenty dollars a month,
covers accidents, protects a new phone, protects an old phone,
and that's it. It just there is a deductible and
the deductibles are kind of high, but it's one hundred
(27:50):
and forty nine dollars deductible. So but again this is
what I'm talking about. If you know so one forty
nine plus that twenty a month, one month in if
you have a problem, you're already looking at fifty one,
sixty one and seventy dollars to fix your phone. So
I think it's better just to save the money and
self insure, as I would call it. But on the
(28:10):
flip side, the only thing about the Square trade that
I remembered when I did a story with them many
years ago, and maybe they changed this is that you
have to have your phone so they they will not
replace a lost phone or a stolen phone. It has
to be a damaged phone. So even if you had
to bring your phone to them in a little plastic
(28:30):
baggie all messed up, they will take it, and they
will they will give you a new one, a refurbished one,
but they can't do a lost or stolen phone. And
that's how they keep their price so much cheaper than
what you're paying, because I think in your plan they
may give you a new phone if you lost it,
but you have to check the terms of your plan.
But great question. And it was funny. I was in
(28:52):
Apple buying a phone. This was a couple of years ago,
and I think I told this story, but you know
they they were like, do you want Apple Care? And
it was like ninety nine and I said, no way, no,
I'm not doing Apple Care. I'll just self ensure. And
then I proceeded to buy a case for fifty dollars
half the price of the Apple Care for.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
The two or three years whatever, maybe a year.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Amazon's Alexa device is getting smarter and smarter and smarter.
And I got to say, I used to really pooh
pooh the Alexa, and I think that they have really
come a long way. And I think Alexa and what
app Amazon is doing with Alexa is pretty good. I
still think that Google responds to commands just a little
(29:35):
bit better and a little bit smarter. But I think
that Alexa has gotten really really good, and the amount
of things that you can do with Alexa has just
gotten so good.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And the ecosystem of products.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That work with Alexa and where it is and how
you can access it has just gotten really really good.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
But some new features.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Number one, Alexa has always done this thing where it's
called hunches, where it would light up. Don't use Alexa
a lot, so I'm not particularly sure about this, but
if it thought about something proactively, it would light up
and then you say, oh, what's going on a and
it would say to you like, I think you left
this light on. Do you want me to turn it off?
And you go sure, Now it's gonna do that by itself.
(30:15):
So I think this is brilliant. And you know, let's
say you leave your house for the weekend, you forget
to turn off your lights, or maybe you leave your
music playing or something. You know, Alexa kind of knows
your patterns and it says, huh, that's not like Rich
to leave his lights on for twenty hours. I'm gonna
go ahead and just turn that light off. And it
does and it won't ask you permission to do it,
which I think is really cool. And I'm sure you
(30:37):
can turn this off. Don't don't scream at me.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And say, Rich, how dare we let these things do
their own thing? They're just gonna at some point kill us. No,
we'll be okay. I think we'll be okay.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Now this is even cooler. This is Alexa's new feature
called guard plus. This is five dollars a month. But
it kind of turns any echo speaker into a security system.
And what it does is it links up with ADT
and when it listens for sounds and it hears something
that seems like it could be part of a break
(31:09):
in or yeah, basically burglary, break in, smoke fire, it
will alert you. And it will it will listen for
these sounds. It will listen for the sound of a
smoke detector, it will listen for the sound of glass breaking,
it will listen for the sound of when you're not home,
someone talking in your house or outside your home. If
it can listen that far, and it will call you. Well,
(31:31):
it will alert you on your phone. And then once
it alerts you, you can say you can listen in
on your device, which is just brilliant, and then you
can decide if you want to call the authorities, and
with one more click you can get you know, you
can reach one of these Alexa I guess it's like
a you know, like one of those call centers for
your for your alarm companies. It's like that, but it's
(31:52):
you know, now handling these Alexa requests. And I probably
said a way too many times. I probably set off
all your smart devices. I apologize, but this is five
dollars a month. I think it sounds really cool. The
other thing that it can do is it can make
the sound of a dog barking. So if you are
not home and this thing here's someone outside your house,
(32:14):
you're a speaker, can just start sounding like a dog.
And I have not tested this, so I don't know
how good it sounds. But I mean, this is just
this stuff is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I mean, it's just getting so smart, and I mean,
why would you not want that, you know, I mean
it just sounds it sounds like something that you would want.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Let's get to the next question. Let's see here.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Eric says, is there a good, totally free or very
low cost VPN for an older Mac desktop? Thank you, Eric, Well,
I am not fully up to speed on VPNs, and
I know that the Holy Grail is is a free VPN,
and I'm sure if you search for free VPN there
are probably many, many of them that show up. But
(33:08):
I would be a little concerned about a free VPN
because VPNs cost money to operate and especially to keep
them private and secure. So I probably would not want
a free VPN. Now, with that said, there are some
free VPNs out there. I know that if you have
Google Drive, if you pay for storage on a certain tier,
(33:29):
they do have a free VPN available for your Android device.
And if you let me see where that page is,
if you look at VPN by Google one. So if
you just go just Google Google VPN, sorry, Google Google
one VPN, and it's included in your price of Google
(33:52):
one membership. And oh, oh wow, Google just chimed in.
I did not say, h hg but okay, but you
can turn this on.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh look at this.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Okay, so this is actually this is actually pretty cool.
I did not realize this. But the VPN is included
on Google one membership with two terabytes in higher, which
is what I pay for. That's ten dollars a month
right now. The VPN is for Android phones, but it
says it is coming soon to iOS, Windows and mac
so that is a very good added benefit. Now you
(34:28):
may want to debate me on do you trust Google
with your VPN information.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I'm assuming that Google has documented exactly what they keep.
It says here some minimum logging is performed to ensure
quality of service, but your network traffic is never logged
and your IP is not associated to your activity. I mean,
that's kind of cool. Maybe I'm gonna start installing this
on my Android phones. That's really neat.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
The other thing that you can do is if you
want something that's totally free. Opera, the Opera web browser
has a built in VPN that's free, and there's probably
some limitations on just how much you can use it
for free, but that's another freeway of doing it. So
that's what I'd recommend Eric, if you want some free options.
If you want to pay a little bit, I'm not
(35:16):
really an expert in the best VPNs out there, but
I do hear Nord VPN over and over and over.
They've got apps for everything from Android to Linux and
Firefox and iOS. So if you want to pay a
little bit, Nord VPN is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And it's if.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You pay for a two year plan, it's three dollars
and seventy one cents a month. Yeah, so it's eighty
nine dollars for the first two years. If you just
do it month by month, it's very expensive. It's twelve
dollars a month. I'm sure that there are some deals
out there, like some promo codes and stuff for NordVPN,
but that's what i'd recommend. If you are a Google
one subscriber, I would check into that first.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Great question.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Oh, speaking of Amazon, you know they own Ring. I'm
just gonna spend a short amount of time on this,
but they came out with a new small and cheap
video doorbell from Ring. It's called the Ring Video Doorbell Wired.
It's their cheapest and smallest doorbell yet at just sixty dollars,
you get ten ADP HD video, night vision, live view,
two way talk with noise cancelation, and basically everything you
(36:21):
need the main thing, and I would definitely definitely recommend this.
If you have a doorbell on the front of your home,
go with this wired Ring video doorbell versus the battery
one because you'll never have to change a battery and
that is a win in my book. All I know
is I'm constantly charging the battery for my Ring outside
(36:43):
and I wish it was wired. But I did not
have a wired doorbell on my house when I moved here,
and I talked to an electrician or several of them
to get that you know, that little low voltage installed,
and it's kind of a pain if it's not already there.
It's kind of a pain because they base have to
use a transformer at the top and then run that
(37:04):
wire down. I'm sure it's not that big of a deal,
but they made it seem like it was kind of
a pain. And so I just said, you know, I'll
just go with the battery, but I would love, you know,
I might revisit this actually, And and because I think
I'm gonna switch over everything to ring at this point,
because I really like what they're doing. And I just
I'm sick of my doorbell going dead, right, It's like,
why is my doorbell dead?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh, I gotta charge it again. I've had people standing outside.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Friends, not recently, but you know in the past, in
the in the before days, when friends would come over
and they just stand out there because they rang the
doorbell and it didn't work, and they and finally you
hear this little knock, like and they'd be like, I'm
like someone at the door, and sure enough they'd been
standing out there because the doorbell didn't work. So yeah,
(37:52):
I gotta I gotta get on that. I do try
to I've gotten alerts before from ring to like charge
my doorbell, but I didn't see one recently, and my
mother in law came by and she said, your doorbell
was not working.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Rich, Well, maybe that was a reason.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Just kidding, just kidding, all right. Uh. Marvin says, I've
noticed on many occasions that Google has responded to a
stream of words used in a conversation as if I
had pressed the Google Assistant button on my phone? Is
there a means to turning this standby mode off? Thanks
(38:28):
sent for my iPad, Marvin. You know it just happened
on this podcast. It often happens when you say the
word Google and you didn't actually say the h Google.
And I asked Google how they get around this. I
actually asked some of my contacts at Google. I said,
you're you're around these things all day, like what do
you say? And they use the term hey G. So
(38:49):
if they don't want it to activate, so hey G,
hey G, and it won't activate. So I try to
remember that on my show, but generally I mess it up.
But if you so on the iPhone, there's a simple,
simple way to do this, And on the iPhone, all
you have to do if you don't want Siria to listen.
Is just flip your phone over on its face and
if you lay your phone face down on the table
(39:11):
and you say H Siri, she will not spring into action.
It's amazing, it's simple, it's easy. It's something that you
probably have never done, but it works. Maybe you've inadvertently
done that with the Google stuff. It's not that easy now.
On the speakers, generally they have a little slider that
you can do or I think I don't know if
(39:32):
you can say, uh, don't listen. I'm not gonna try
it right now. But anyway, if you're on your phone,
if you have a speaker, generally look for a switch
in the back. That's the short answer to that question.
But if you are on the phone on Android, just
go into your Android into Assistant settings and then under
(39:52):
all settings, tap General and then you can turn Google
Assistant on or off. There used to be a way
that you can have H Google turn a Wait a second,
did they did they turn off the ability to have
H Google or Hey G. It used to be you
could turn off. Well, maybe you can only turn it
(40:14):
off when the screen was off.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Anyway, it seems like anyway, you can go into settings
and turn it off completely. If you don't use it, it's fine. Personally,
I would recommend.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Against turning it off. And here's why.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
If you ever found yourself and I know this is
weird dark places, but if you ever found yourself in
an emergency situation and your last chance at life was
to call Google for help, right, And I'm just saying
this is I don't even know if you could or
if it would work or whatever, but let's just say
you were in some sort of situation where you couldn't
(40:50):
do anything except use your voice and your phone was nearby.
How frustrated and sad would you be if you didn't
make it because you turned off the hey g functionality
on your phone. You'd be really mad, right, You'd be
looking down from heaven at yourself, being like, why'd you
turn that off?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It could have saved you. And so I know it's a.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Very small case scenario and it's weird, but you know
this is.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I have to think of all things.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
And so that's why personally, I would rather deal with
the the misfirings and the the false activations of hey
G versus turn it off completely on my phone but
that's just me.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I mean, I'm just one person. I'm just giving you
my opinion.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
You're tuned into the rich on Tech show, so I'm
giving you what rich on Tech thinks, which is me.
You may think differently, but that's what I think. And
so that's you know, that's it's one of those things.
It's you know, do as you please. But I'm just
giving you all of the information, all of the information
at hand, so that you can make the best possible
(41:56):
decision with it. All right, should we take a question
from the voicemail? I usually get some voicemails on the
website at let's see it's rich on tech dot TV
slash podcast And if you look in the lower right
hand corner, you can actually leave a voicemail for me.
And this one has no name, but let's just hear
what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Hey, rich Chip from Long Beach. A couple weeks ago,
Australian guy was asking you to have your podcast on
a little bit longer hour and a half and you're
explaining how hard that would be. But my question is
when is KTLA gonna start giving you more time for
your news segments? You only get about two and a
half minutes. You need more. The weather is like six
(42:40):
segments within the hour, So we want more time with
you on your KTLA news segment.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Oh that's funny. Wow, Chip, you are near and dear
to my heart. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
I do appreciate you asking that. But you have to understand.
You have to understand, you know, you have to understand
local news. You have to understand the news business and
my segment. So my segment is, for all intents purposes,
(43:08):
a feature segment on technology. Now do I think it's
the most important segment in the show.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Of course I do.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
I think that everything that I talk about and everything
I put in my segment is is super super important
and it's highly you know, I craft my segments around
what I think people should know when it comes to
consumer technology, and so yes, what I like more time?
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Of course, would.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Katy La like to give me more time? I think,
I mean, they don't, but you know, what can I say?
The other thing is it's also the timing of the show.
There are days when they say, Rich, you've got more time.
But in general, you're right, you must have taken a
stopwatch to my segment. But in general, yeah, It's about
two minutes and thirty seconds, and I'm thankful every time
(43:53):
it's on, honestly because I've been there for ten years
and I've you know, I really feel like what I'm
doing is very important to be honest the way. Yes,
what I love to sit there and chat with the
anchors for ten minutes about all this stuff. Yes, but
it's also tricky because it gets a little nerdy, and
you know, it's it is a newscast where they have
a lot of pressing day of air stuff to get
to as well. But with all that said, I feel like,
(44:16):
and this is what keeps me kind of going in
the scheme of things. I feel like I'm a three
hundred and sixty degree product, not just the KTLA News.
So yes, of course, the KTLA news segment is my
bread and butter. But I've got the podcast, I've got Instagram,
I've got Facebook, I've got Twitter, I've got Facebook Live,
(44:38):
I've got Instagram Live. So all these little things where
people can reach me and also not just see the
one angle to my story that I put on KTLA,
but also you know, you can maybe comment on my
Instagram with a question about it, or maybe I explain
it a little bit more in depth on my Facebook page,
or maybe I do a video on it. So again,
that's the way I see it, and so to me, yes,
(45:00):
that's what I love.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
More time on the show, of course, and do I
ask for it, of course.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
But at the same time, I think that between everything
that I do, I really.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Try to feel like if you.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You know, I feel like the KTLA segment is a
little taste and you're like, oh, that's interesting. Let me
go to the website and see what are the resources
Rich has on that. And that's the way that I
see it. So good question. Thank you Chip for looking
out for me. I feel like I should hire you
as my agent.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
All Right.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I got a couple of new features for Apple stuff
this week, so I'm just gonna go through them kind
of quick. Number one, if you have an Apple Watch,
there's a new feature called Time to Walk And they
don't call it a podcast, but for all intents and purposes,
this is a podcast on your Apple Watch that you
can listen to while you walk. And the first four
were a bunch of celebrities that you know, like Shawn
(45:49):
Mendes is on there, Draymond Green basketball, you know, very
very famous basketball player and these these are stories that
are so it's a story from the person twenty five
to forty minutes that you're meant to like kind of walk.
They're walking while they tell the story, and you're walking,
and so you're just walking with them basically, and there's
(46:09):
no host or anything. It's just them kind of talking
to you in your ear. And you know, Apple says
that walking is one of the easiest forms of exercise.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
This will get people to walk more.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Now, I think it's kind of tough because it's basically
a podcast, and I think people are listening to a
lot of podcasts. But hey, if it's going to get
people to walk more and your favorite celebrity is on there,
why not. You know, I'm sure you can find a
million interviews with these people that they have on regular podcasts.
But hey, you know whatever, So you have to have
an Apple Watch. It's part of Apple Fitness Plus. I
(46:40):
should probably mention that, so you do need a subscription.
You know that the Fitness Plus subscription to access these
But if you want to see what they're all about,
all you have to do is make sure your phone
is updated and your Apple Watch is updated and you
open up that fitness app on your watch and it
should just open up and you should see the the
I don't know what they call it, like a tie
right at the top with one of these one of
(47:02):
these walks time to walk on that tile and you
can download them. I think they auto download your watch
or you can download them so you can do it
all offline.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But again, I mean, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
And the main difference between this and a podcast is
twofold number one. It's a story and then it's like,
I think three songs that the influencer or celebrity or
whoever inspiring person that they're interviewing, whoever they pick, I
think three songs that move them. And then those three
songs are at the end of the walk. And then
(47:36):
during the walk, while they're telling their story, there are
little pictures that are synced to the story. So for example,
Dolly Parton was talking about this statue that's in her
I guess the city she grew up in, and you
know it's in like the middle of the square and
you you know, goes ding ning And while you're listening
to this, it will show you the little picture of.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
The statue on your watch.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
So that's kind of unique, and that's yes, that sets
it apart from your standard podcast. Uh. The other thing
is that if you have a home pod, and all
of these features really refer to very new Apple stuff.
If you have a HomePod Mini and an iPhone eleven
or twelve, there is an update for the HomePod Mini
that makes hand off just a little bit slicker, a
little bit cooler, and a little bit easier. So the
(48:19):
iPhone eleven, the iPhone twelve, and the home Pod Mini
have this special chip in it. I think it's called
the you. I think it's called the U one chip
or the UW chip, U one chip, let me see
if it's the U one Yeah, U one chip, And
the U one chip has ultra wideband technology, which is
just fancy term for things that can tell proximity to
(48:39):
each other. And so now your phone and your speaker
know when they're close to each other and they can
kind of just exchange information faster and easier because it
knows that you're nearby. And so it's got this new
revamped screen that you know, makes listening to stuff easier
and also starting and stopping music on your HomePod easier,
and setting alarms on your HomePod easier. If there's nothing
(49:01):
playing on your HomePod and you bring your phone nearby,
it will give you some suggested things to play, kind
of like if you've seen that happen with AirPods. If
you put them in your ear and you look at
the lock screen on your phone, it suggests a whole
bunch of things that you can just tap once and
start playing, whether it's podcasts or music.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
So it does that, and.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Then finally you can view the media controls without unlocking
your iPhone and anyone in your home I tried to
nail Apple down on an answer on this. They don't
really give me a straight answer, but it sounds like
anyone with an iPhone near your device can can bring
up those music controls from the HomePod and press play
stop or perhaps change the music on there. But I'm
(49:40):
not really sure. Yes, see and control what's playing. Oh
see and control what's playing. Okay, so you can't change
the music, but you can control it. So that means like,
you know, play pause, whatever. Now, if you want to
get these things, your HomePod should automatically update, and if
you want to manually check for the updates, just go
into the home app on your iPhone, select home settings
(50:02):
and then software update and that should find it.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I did it. It's different. It's not like a huge difference.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
But it's definitely a little bit different and a little
bit better than before. The haptics are really improved. They
are very different. When you get your stuff nearby your phone,
near to the HomePod Mini, I should say this doesn't
apply to the regular home pod. Oh my gosh, listen
to the sound of that music.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
You know what that means. It is the end of
the show.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
If you would like to submit a question for me
to answer, there are two ways to do just that.
You can go to richon Tech dot tv slash podcast
and hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, or
you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com
slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send
email button.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
It should still be there.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I know Facebook just redesigned everything, but it should still
be there. If not, just hello at Richontech dot tv
also works. Also. I would love it if you would
rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it.
You can go to rate this podcast dot com slash
rich on Tech to do that. You can find me
online at rich on Tech if you are not already
following me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the likely places
(51:12):
you can find me there. My name is rich Dimiro.
Thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate the
little community that we have here of listeners to this show.
I say little, I mean I think it's big, but
you know what I mean, I meant tight knit community,
because I really do. It's amazing how many people reference
the podcast when they email me or you get in
touch with me, so I love it. Keep it coming,
(51:34):
stay safe, I will talk to you real soon
Host
Rich DeMuro
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