Apple reveals new features coming soon to iPhone

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
New features coming soon to the iPhone and Apple Watch.
Should you opt out of Amazon's sidewalk I've been riding
the coolest electric bike ever. Plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich
on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer the questions you send me. I'm

(00:34):
the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Welcome to the show. Thanks for tuning in. I mentioned
that last month was the best month for the show
in a long time, probably like a year, you know,
since people are finally commuting back to work and all
that good stuff. So thank you for all the downloads.

(00:56):
Thank you for listening. If you're new, thanks for being
on board. If you're you know, a regular, Thanks for
sticking with me.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Sixty five weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
By the way, it's been sixty five weeks that I've
worked at home. I just asked Siri. I can't believe it.
And you know, I've been asking to go back into work.
It's kind of complicated. It's not like as easy as
you think in California at least, so apparently there's some
rules and regulations for people going back in and it's
a whole big thing, and so I you know, they said,

(01:28):
just stay stay at home, just kind of stay put, relax,
do your thing. You're doing great, everything's good. So I'm
gonna keep doing what I do. Although the world is reopening,
which is really nice. I mean, you know, we had
some friends over last night, which was the first time
that we've all been together. Well that's not true. We
went to the park a couple times. So what I'm saying,
like in our backyard. It's the first time we've all

(01:48):
been together at my house in over a year. So
it felt really good. The kids were just wild. They
were all running like they were just wild, wild maniacs
for like the first hour and then they realized like,
oh okay, yes these are all my friends again, like
I can you know, play again, and it was great.
So it was a nice time and it felt felt

(02:10):
pretty normal. I gotta say, so hopefully things are probably actually,
if you're listening outside of California, things have probably been
like that for a while. In California. We're kind of
like this, we're our own thing, right, I Mean, California
is just it was just a little bit different throughout
this whole thing, but it seemed to work because you know,
it's I guess we're getting back to very normal very soon.

(02:32):
So that's going to be exciting for most of us.
This week another virtual event from Apple. Apple held their
Worldwide Developers Conference twenty twenty one, and they showed off
the new features coming soon to the iPhone, coming soon
to the iPad, coming soon to mac Os Monterey, keeping

(02:53):
with a California theme, and then what else, there's Apple Watch,
so all kinds of stuff. I'm not going to go
for everything, honestly, Quite honestly, yes, there was a lot
of updates. Was any of it like, oh my gosh, Like,
was I sitting in my chair just going this is
just mind boggling?

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Probably not, but a lot of it was cool.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
A lot of it, you know, a lot of it's
catching up to Android. And I know I'm not saying
that facetiously. It's just kind of like the reality of
the way Apple does things versus Google, and it's just
you know, Google kind of does things, or early Samsung
does things. Early Apple takes a little bit more time,
but they do it with a little bit more refinement.
And it's also just a different way of thinking about things.

(03:37):
And I've talked about this before. With the iPhone, the
features go to millions and millions of devices around the
world all at once, whereas with Android things are much
more fragmented. Google might have a feature and it might
not reach every phone, but it's available, it's out there,
and it's gotten better, i think in recent years. But
some of the major updates Share play. This is kind

(03:59):
of like the ability to do things on your phone
with other people, so share your screen, share TV shows
and stuff that you're watching. Of course, a lot of
this requires that you have an iOS device on the
other end or an iPhone on the other end, and
also depending on the app letting you do this, So
that's one thing. FaceTime got some big updates. You know,

(04:20):
it's kind of too little, too late, but of course
a lot of people use FaceTime, so I'm sure these
features will be used. But it's kind of like all
the stuff that you had available on Zoom and other
video chatting programs are now coming to FaceTime. So you
can look at people in a grid view. There are
microphone situations to kind of block out background noise, a
portrait mode to blow your background spatial audio. Apple's really

(04:43):
big on spatial audio right now, which is audio that
comes in from all directions. They just introduced it on
Apple Music, which I tested it out and it was fine.
I mean, it's one of these things that you know,
it's probably a slow burn. You know, it's like, we'll
take it for granted that will have it in a
few years right now. It's not like you know, they
said it was kind of like going from SDTV to

(05:03):
HDTV or to whatever. But to me it didn't really
feel that way. But I still need to listen to
it in a better pair of headphones. I just tried
the AirPods.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Now.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
I will say, if you do listen to this podcast,
you say.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Rich, what are you talking about? You were going wild.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Over spatial audio when you listen to it when you
watch that movie on your iPad up in Seattle or
Redmond back in January, And yes I did.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I was.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I thought the movie sounded fantastic. So maybe I just
need to listen a little bit more. I think the
problem with audio is that, you know, like music, the
way I consume it, I'm always it's either in my
car or in my house. It's more of a background thing,
like I'm never actively listening per se, and I know
a lot of people probably do that, but I just don't,
Like I don't sit down on my couch and like

(05:46):
listen to the new album from someone or listen to music.
Like it's always just put on in the background, and
so the three D spatial audio stuff doesn't really occur
to me because it's just not a way that I listen.
But in general, it's kind of cool the iPhone getting
some new ways to focus, these focus filters, so you
can have like sort of different home screens or different
setups for your different situations.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
I think this is a big one because I struggle
with this a lot.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
You know, on the weekends, I really want to be
a little bit more disconnected from my phone, but it's
really tough because you know, in social media and with
just your phone, it's just it's just very tough to
give it up and just you know, like I ideally
would just travel with my Apple Watch, but then I
don't have a camera, and then what I'm gonna bring
like a standalone camera, which I don't really have at

(06:30):
this point, so I'd have to buy one of those,
and then that's kind of weird because then you got
to sink all the stuff up, So I haven't found
a good way of doing that.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
What else, what Else?

Speaker 1 (06:41):
A big addition, Oh, Apple Wallet, they did this thing
where it's like you can store your ID, but they
didn't really say which states you're going to support it,
but that's coming soon. That's kind of my personal dream
that if that is a thing, that would be amazing.
You know, if I could travel with just my iPhone
and a couple bucks in my pocket, you know, like
some cash and then just use tap to pay, that

(07:01):
would be really cool and have my ID there. I
know you can in California, at least I believe you
can use a digital copy of your insurance card on
your phone. So I've never tried that. I still print
mine out, but it's still pretty cool that I think
they accept that in California, So we're getting there. It's
not like California is not totally on board with that.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
What else? What else? Live text?

Speaker 1 (07:24):
So this was a kind of a big demo they did,
but I didn't find it that exciting because you know,
this is Google Lens, and basically it's the ability to
use your camera to search for things. So when you
take a picture of something, you can search the text,
you can scan the text, you can copy a phone number,
you can dial a phone number, you can see a
landmark whatever.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
You know, that's been going on on Android for a
long time, or not just on Android, It's been going
on on Google Lens for a very long time. And
you know the difference is now that Apple's doing it.
It's built into iOS, which means more people will just
somehow discover it because it's part of the operating system.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Now.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
You know, with Google you had to use a Google app,
you had to download the app. So this all goes
back to kind of the way Apple does things versus
everyone else. And you know Apple, when they do things,
they build it in. It's at it's it's very much
at the core of their operating system. And that's kind
of like the big difference. I think that's about it
for for iOS fifteen. Again, nothing to me like screaming

(08:25):
my name, like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to
update to get these features, but I think the focus
will be kind of cool. Notifications got a little upgrade
as well, so we'll say I mean I think that
it's always you know, Apple has gotten to the point
where it's just kind of a solid upgrade. It always
adds useful features. They do a really nice job with things. Yes,
the Android folks will say it's been on Android forever,

(08:46):
but it's you know, I was one of those people
for so long, But it's just Apple people don't care
about Android. They're not looking at Android. They're they're not
using the features on Android. So to them, it's it's
different and it's new, so you can't really compair the two.
And it's not one of these things where you know
it's one is good, one is bad.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
They're just different.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
There are, like I've always said, there are things I
like about Android, there's things I like about iOS.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
And yes, I've been.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Using an iPhone quite regularly for a long time now,
which is I think the longest I've ever gone. But
you know, I do find myself itching to get back
to Android, especially with the Pixel six if that's going
to be a solid device. I'm hoping that Google launches
something because I do like to go back and forth,
because they do offer different things and I think that

(09:33):
they both have their pros and cons. All right, let's
get to the first question. This is actually a comment.
Greg says, hey, Rich last Friday, I believe you were
answering a question I guess the last podcast about saving
messages from an iPhone a while back.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
I use this app called phone View.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Is saves text messages, including photos just as they were written,
also voicemails, media. I'm not sure how up to date
it is, but it worked very well. Hope this helps.
I looked it up. It's from ECAM and I love
ECAM software. Some surprised that it wasn't aware of this app,
but phone View it does kind of what we were
talking about where it's, you know, Apple lets you make

(10:12):
a backup of your phone, but it doesn't really let
you see what's in that backup easily. And so this
is thirty dollars. And again this kind of goes back
to what I was talking about that it's it's a
paid thing. So on Android, yes, I believe the app
I mentioned was free, but it was like five bucks
if you wanted to get no ads or something. But
on iPhone they don't really have a free solution that

(10:32):
I found. So yes, this phone view will do it.
And it seems I haven't tested it, but it looks
like it would the other one, I think Tony regular
listener chimed in with I Amazing and I looked at
that one and I actually got in touch with them
to get a demo account, and I did download it,
and yes, this one looks like it does exactly what
you want. It's kind of like their entire business, and

(10:53):
so it's actually pretty cool. You can browse the contents
of your phone in a very easy way. It's kind
of like the app that you wish that Apple would
have made, right, It's kind of like what iTunes, just
it covers everything up, makes everything very complicated to kind
of transfer stuff and things like that. But this seemed
like it was very easy. Now I could not actually

(11:15):
test it out just yet because my phone has so
much stuff on it right now that I need to
clear off all the pictures because it just tries to
back up everything and you can't just browse your phone.
It has to actually make a backup of your device
and then it browses the contents of the backup. So
it's a little tricky, I think, because they're getting around
some of the things that Apple puts in place. But again,

(11:37):
it's called Imazing dot com. And now, how much is
this one? Because they gave me a license.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
To check it out.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
This is a device lifetime for five three Apple devices
is fifty bucks. One device is thirty four ninety nine
for lifetime. So that's not too bad. You know, one
time purchase thirty five bucks. You can you know, kind
of crack into your iPhone. It's not doing anything bad.
It's just that's you know, I just use that term.
It's not a bad thing. But those are some of

(12:06):
the apps. The other one that I like is called
Walter and this is kind of a one way app
but wa lt r and they just come out with
a new version I believe, called Walter Pro. And this
allows you to drag and drop any file onto your
iPad or iPhone. And so if you use an iPad
or an iPhone a lot with a lot of different
things like books and kindle books and videos and stuff

(12:29):
and music and you just want to like drag and drop,
this program is fantastic. I have not tested the new one,
the Pro, but I use the old one for many
years now and it's the real deal. It just works
really really well. And that's thirty dollars. But again, all
these apps, you know a lot of these apps have
built a world around the iPhones. You know, I'm not
going to call it trickery, but the complications that arrive

(12:51):
from using a rise from using you know, the whole
situation with the iPhone. You know, Android's very simple. It
gives you access to like the file system and all that,
but iPhone is just it's always been a little bit trickier.
But those are some of the ways that you can
get around that. All right, now, we talked about iOS fifteen.
Let's talk about watch os. I'm not going to go

(13:14):
into the other stuff because I feel like the Mac stuff,
you know, it's like gets a little nitty gritty there,
and the I can't really remember anything else that I
saw there that was like totally you know, like I
need to talk about.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
But watch os.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Actually, let me look at my story I did for KTLA,
because that's where I put kind of like the big
things that I thought were interesting. That's probably an easy
way to do it. So let me see. Okay, let's see.
We got iOS fifteen FaceTime spatial audio. Oh, this was interesting.
On iOS fifteen, Apple's adding a feature that lets your
friends know and you have do not Disturb turned on

(13:46):
so that when they try to text you. It will say, hey,
your friends got do not disturb? Do you still want
to send that text? And this got a big reaction
on Twitter. People were like, hey, I don't want Apple
telling people when I have d ON d on DN
d on, but I believe that you'll be able to
obviously turn this feature on or off. It's kind of
like CarPlay. In the car they send a text to
people that says, hey, Rich is driving right now. He'll

(14:07):
get back to you when he's not driving. Let's see
what else I talked about, the Apple wallet stuff, the
live tech stuff, Oh, Legacy Contact.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
This is a big one.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
So Legacy Contact lets you set a loved one or
a friend that will get access to the contents of
your iCloud after you die, which I thought was a
really nice feature because I know it's a topic we
don't want to talk about. But at the same time,
it does cause a lot of headaches for people, you know,
family members trying to tap into you know, the photos
or the videos or the you know whatever people had

(14:38):
stored on their phone. And this also got a lot
of reaction on Twitter. But again, it's something you can
set up. You don't have to set it up, but
if you want to, you can. Google has something called
Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook also has a legacy contact
So it's not a new idea, it's just something that
you can do.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
All right.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Watch OS eight, Let's see, I didn't really see anything
huge and Watch OS eight, but they have a new
photos watch face. It was it was revealed that the
photos watch face is the most popular watch face on
the Apple Watch, which I would not have thought of.
But now they have a portrait version, so you can
now choose your portrait photos to go in there. I
don't know, I mean, I don't really, I don't know.

(15:18):
I don't really use a photos thing on my watch.
I think it's just not for me.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
The Breathe app is gone.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Now it's gonna be called the Mindfulness app because now
it's gonna be doing daily reflections and daily breathing, which
you know, I'll be honest. I was at a funeral
a couple of days ago, and you know, it was
it was sad, and I actually did use the breathe
function on my Apple Watch while I was sitting there
listening to everyone talking, because you know, it was it
was definitely emotional and I just felt like Okay, this

(15:48):
probably helped me kind of just you know, rest, you know,
relax a little bit, take it, take some deep breaths,
and it was kind of like, you know, I just
activated the feature on my watch and I just took
some nice deep breaths and it did really help. So
I don't use the breathe app often enough. I feel
like I should and it really does help. So I
always ignore the notification and I just shouldn't, you know it,

(16:09):
because it really the breathing is such a such a
powerful thing for the body.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Let's see what else.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
It's gonna support respiration tracking while you sleep, so basically
kind of how you breathe at night, and it will
it will. It just uses the accelerometer in your watch.
They're actually not measuring anything on your skin. It's just
the It's kind of what Google's doing with their home
their Google Home Hub or their Nest Hub whatever they
call it, a little tiny one that has sleep tracking

(16:36):
built in. It actually looks at the rise and fall
of your chest. This is doing the same thing, but
just figuring out the rise and fall of your body
using an algorithm. So it's like monitoring micro movements, small things.
There will be the timer app on the Apple Watch
can handle multiple timers. You can also label them. And
there's a new contacts app on your wrist on your watch,

(16:57):
so that's kind of cool. And you can respond to
mesages using gifts. So I think those are the big,
kind of main things on the Apple Watch. I just
think the Apple Watch continues to get better and better.
It just really really is an amazing device. I've said
it over and over. I don't think I could live
without it, And even if I switched to Android, I'd

(17:19):
still probably find myself using it, Like I'd still keep
it on and figure out how to still use it.
I mean, my big thing is my minutes every day,
like I've got to hit those, you know. Oh, also
find my is going to be on the Apple Watch,
so that's kind of cool. So you'll be able to
see where your devices are on your Apple Watch as well.

(17:40):
All right, let's get another question. Hello, Rich, my best
friend recommended that I contact you about a problem with
my iPad. I guess you've helped her a lot. My
iPad pro I bought it July twenty seventeen, still works
for my needs, email, reading eyebooks, playing solitaire, no music,
very few pictures, it loses battery life very rapidly, so
I keep it plugged in. My question is is it

(18:02):
time for a new iPad? If so, which one is
the best for my limited use? Or do I wait?
Thank you, Maria, Well, I think in odd July twenty
seventeen to twenty twenty one? Is it twenty twenty two
or twenty Oh my gosh, I don't even know what
year it is. What year is it? I think it's
twenty twenty one. Yeah, it's twenty twenty one. Still, Okay,

(18:24):
that was weird. I like had this feeling it was.
I knew it was twenty twenty one, but I just
wanted to make sure because I know we've been locked
up for so long. Okay, yes, twenty twenty one, so
that is three that's four years, So four years your
iPad should still be working just fine. I mean, it's
probably slow, and you know, but the funny thing is

(18:45):
you didn't say that it's slow. So you know, for
your needs, you're doing email, you're reading books, you're playing Solitaire,
no music, few pictures, so it's not like you're really
asking a lot of this device. And a four year
old iPad should still be able to handle those things. Now,
the battery life depending on how you charged it and
how you used it, Yes, it could be an issue.
So what I would do is number one, before you

(19:06):
do anything crazy, like you know, buying a new iPad,
I would actually go into settings and then if you
scroll down, you'll see a battery situation and then you
click that, and then you click battery health and it
will tell you under that maximum capacity and see what
that numbers at. Right now, my phone says one hundred percent.

(19:28):
So if it's at like, you know, sixty percent something
like that, it it may be you know, that's probably
why your battery is not lasting that long, so you
might want to you.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Know, there's a couple of things you could do.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
If your iPad is perfectly fine, I would bring it
to a place like you break eye fix or any
local place that you have that does repairs and see
how much they charge for a you know, a repair.
So if you want to do like, let's see, let's
see how much that's let's see does it give you
like a let's do iPad. Let's do iPad. What did

(20:02):
you say it was? You said it was an iPad
pro July twenty seventeen. So let's say iPad Pro. I'm
guessing that's the maybe the second generation, maybe the first.
I'm just gonna say, we'll just go with the second
and we'll just see if it gives me Okay, broken screen.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Don't know, and I don't know if you.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Can get an estimate, because if you can get an estimate,
you know, what I would say is get an estimate
from one of these places to see how much it
costs to do your repair, and you could just replace
the battery. Yeah, it doesn't say how much, so you know,
take it in and see how much it is to
replace the battery.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
If it is, I would say under one hundred dollars.
Maybe I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I'd actually say under eighty bucks because one hundred seems
like a lot. That's that's a third of the price
of a new iPad. So basically, what I'm saying is,
figure out how much it costs to replace the battery,
figure out if your battery is a problem, and also
uninstall any apps you don't need, you know, maybe make
all the software updates, and then figure out the battery situation.
Then bring it in see how much it would cost.

(21:03):
They'll give you a free estimate if it's like under
one hundred dollars, like I'm talking eighty bucks. Maybe if
that's worth it to you to just replace the battery,
you don't have to really deal and you can you know,
two years, you can figure this out. I mean, you
can go longer, but it may be too slow at
that point, or you can just buy the new iPad
for three hundred. I would recommend the one for three
hundred and twenty nine dollars. It's just a standard iPad.
And I would also go on Google and search iPad deals,

(21:26):
and the bloggers generally blog about the best iPad deals
out there, and so you can see the iPad ten
point two just got a massive price cut, and let's
see how much that is. It is two hundred and
ninety nine dollars. So I would buy the new iPad
for two ninety nine if you feel like the battery
situation is gotten to a place where it's just too

(21:47):
expensive you don't want to deal with it. And then,
by the way, sell your old iPad pro on Gizmo
Go Gizmo Gizmo Goo dot com and get rid of
it and get some money back for the new iPad.
So a great question. All right, I probably spent way
too long on that question. All right, Amazon sidewalk, Oh
my gosh, the scariest thing to ever hit neighborhoods. Right,

(22:08):
if you've been listening to the news, it's like everyone's
just pooh poohing on Amazon sidewalk. Here's how to opt out,
here's how to opt out. And you know, I'm guilty
of this somewhat. I did my Amazon Sidewalk story back
in December. It was my understanding that they were going
to turn on the network back then. I guess they didn't,
but it turned on I believe January or June eighth.

(22:28):
And so if you have pretty much any echo device,
or when it comes to ring devices, if you have
their wired floodlight cameras, and I think there might be
another one, but it's mostly I think it's a spotlight
cam and the wired floodlight cameras, those are all on
this Amazon network. And I think the thing that Amazon
did that everyone got really up in arms about is

(22:49):
that they they kind of turned it on automatically. They
didn't give people the option to say, hey, do you
want to turn this on or you do not want
to turn it on. So my feeling is number one,
Apple did the same exact thing, by the way, a
couple of weeks ago when they they, you know, did
the whole find my thing. I mean, that's the same
thing that's going on. I mean, I know it's using
you know, Bluetooth, but it's it's basically the same thing.

(23:12):
It's a it's a low power, low energy network that
uses a little bit of your phone's power and internet
to kind of help out other people. That's what Amazon's doing.
They're using a little bit of your internet to connect,
you know, help these devices connect to each other and
also to you know, the greater uh situation that's going on.

(23:33):
So let me give you an example. Okay, let me
give you just a real world example. Let's say that
you buy a new Amazon product, right and you have
an iPhone. The way it typically works, you have to
have your phone sense the product and it you know,
it goes through this whole thing where you might have
to connect to that product's Wi Fi and you have
to switch in your Wi Fi settings to figure it out.
You got to find the product and you got to

(23:54):
switch back to your WiFi. It's like a whole big
thing that is a little bit complicated, especially in the iPhone. Now,
let's imagine that that product can now just find the
Amazon Sidewalk network all by itself, and because it knows
how the proximity to your phone, it says, oh, we
see you've got a new device to set up.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Would you like to set it up?

Speaker 1 (24:13):
And it uses the Amazon network to send all of
your information to that device and set it up automatically
in about two seconds versus all this back and forth
and go to your Wi Fi settings and it's done.
And not just that, the tiles. Tiles are going to
connect to this Amazon network. So now you have a
nice competitor to Apple. Why should Apple? I mean I

(24:36):
literally was having this debate with my friends last night
about you know.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
They were like, oh, I got.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
To turn off sidewalk, and I'm like why, Like why
is everyone so ready to turn off sidewalk without even
knowing anything about it?

Speaker 2 (24:45):
And I get it.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Amazon turned it on without people's permission, but so did Apple.
I mean, find myzon by default in your iPhone and
you have to go in and turn it off if
you don't want to be a part of that crowdsource network.
Amazon's doing the same thing. So the other little nugget
I think thought it was interesting. Someone commented on my
I don't know if it was my Facebook page or whatever,
but they said, and this is a blog post from

(25:07):
twenty nineteen when Amazon was testing sidewalk in Los Angeles.
They said that they got their Amazon employees and friends
and family to conduct a test and with just seven
hundred ring lights that supported nine hundred megahertz connections, they
were able to cover almost all of the Los Angeles

(25:27):
basin with just seven hundred devices. So Amazon knows that
a lot of people are going to turn this thing off,
But they also know that, like literally, with just their
devices that their employees are using that are probably gonna
leave them on, or just a fraction of people leave
these things on. Their network's going to be just fine.
And you know what, I'm good with that because I
actually like the fact that we have a competitor to

(25:50):
Apple's Find my Network. Let's give Tile a little run
for its money, or Apple a little run for its
money with these tiles, And I'm totally good with that.
What about when Google decides to do this with Android
phones and Google Nest devices, which they probably will end
up doing. And yes, Google's going to get a hard
time as well. But Amazon's just getting a lot, a

(26:10):
lot of a lot of I don't know, they're just
I don't know what the word is. Flack Is that it?
But I thought the best article was actually written by
John Chase of Wirecutter, and.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
He was the only one that was.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
I don't know, had the courage to write a headline
that said, Amazon sidewalk will share your Internet with strangers.
It's not as scary as it sounds. So John, thank
you for being a voice of reason in this world
of I call him klingons of just all these little
blogs that say, oh, a lot of traffic, let's just
get all the traffic that people are Let's make Amazon

(26:47):
really scary because it's a big, scary company doing mean things,
and it just that's the way it is. And everyone
just wrote those articles about here's how to turn off sidewalk,
here's how to turn off sidewalk, without really explaining what
it is and how it works. And yes, there are
definitely some questions about the security, but let's be honest,

(27:08):
Amazon's a big company. I think that I want to
believe they're doing good and I hope they are, and yes,
I think you should be skeptical and very critical of
all these things, but I think that you should also
understand the entire situation and put it into perspective with
what's going on in the world at large, and when
you do that. Personally, I'm leaving the Sidewalk Network on

(27:31):
because I want to help people find their lost dogs
and their lost keys and all that good stuff. And
I want to give Apple a little bit of competition
so that the air tag is not the only thing.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
That is able to find stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
So hopefully you still listen to my podcast even though
I just totally gave my support.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
To Amazon's Sidewalk How dare I? All? Right? Hi? Rich?

Speaker 1 (27:56):
We are not too tech savvy and are afraid of
adding apps onto our home computer. We only use a
home computer, no cell phones. We get Instagram posts, but
we seem to be missing out by not getting Instagram
stories that people are referencing all the time. Is there
a safe and easy way or an app that you
know is safe so we can get Instagram stories on
our home computer.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Thank you? Wow, no name given. That's a rarity.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, super easy Instagram dot com. Just go there and
tap Instagram in the upper left hand corner if it's
not already tapped, and you should see a whole bunch
of circles on the upper left hand side of the page.
You click these circles and you will see people's stories
and you can see and scan through them and swipe

(28:40):
through them. Well, it's mostly clicking, just the way you
would on a phone. Now, if you don't have that option,
maybe you need to update your web browser. I'm using
a recent Chrome version and it works just fine. It
might not work on every web browser, so, but that's it.
Just go to Instagram dot com. As long as you're
logged in, you should be able to see storre worries.

(29:00):
Instagram has slowly but surely been increasing the amount of
things you can do on their website. Right now, you still,
as far as I can tell, cannot post. You cannot
post uh posts from Instagram on the website, but you
can upload Instagram TV, IGTV.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Why am I not able to do that? What's going
on here? Uh?

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Why am I not being able to see that? Usually
I do. I'm curious why mine's not doing this? It
used to just have a place where I can upload
a new story. Let's see, do I have to go
to my Huh did they take that away?

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Here it is, okay, Yeah, you have to go to
you have to go to your own profile and then
click igtv and there's.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
An upload button.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
So if you ever want to upload igtv content from Instagram,
you could do that. By the way, can I tell
you that, you know, I'm playing Instagram's game with this
whole vertical video thing on.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Instagram, And it's just it's not that you know Instagram.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
When ig TV first came out, it had to be
vertical video, and I used to do the thing where
I used to say, oh, rotate your phone because I
still wanted to make it full screen. But here's the thing.
I do things the way I consume stuff. So when
I think about what I do for the viewer on
my social media I platforms, I'm trying to do things
in the way that people use the platform. So with Instagram,

(30:22):
I don't sit there and turn my phone to the
side ever. And I also hate looking at videos that
are small. So if it's a sixteen by nine video
that yes, you can upload to Instagram TV, it will
work just fine. It's so tiny on my phone screen
that I don't want to watch that, and so if
I don't want to watch that, I'm assuming that other
people don't want to watch it in that format as well. Now,

(30:44):
on the flip side, when I upload stuff to igtv
in the vertical video format, which I've been doing, I
love it because it fills up my entire phone screen
and it just feels like I'm immersed in that content.
And so that's why I've really been doing that with
all my videos. As much as I don't want to
shoot videos that way because I just feel like they're
unnatural for Instagram, that's how it works, and that's what

(31:05):
I do, and so that's kind of why when you
look at my Instagram, it's the reason why I.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Have my videos vertical.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Because it's IGTV, I can go a little bit longer
than the sixty seconds they give you as a square video,
but it's also not so annoying as a as a
sixteen by nine horizontal video that's so small that on
a phone screen you just can't see. Now, on Facebook,
it's just the opposite. I don't mind putting things on
Facebook that are sixteen by nine because you know, it's

(31:33):
I don't know, it's Facebook, And that's I'm much more
used to watching video content on there like that, but
also you can watch it on your TV screen, also
on your computer screen. Most people are consuming Instagram on
their phone, and it's also in a vertical mode. So
that's why I'm doing that, and I feel like it's
the most immersive, even though for me as a quote
unquote content creator, I mean, you know, to use that

(31:56):
word loosely. For me, it's it's just not ideal. Like
I wish I could just do you know, sixteen by nine.
I could fit much more into the video and I
could put it in more places, but it's kind of
they've locked me in with this IGTV. So that's why
you see my stuff in that format, all right. Speaking
of videos, I did one on this bike. I The

(32:20):
headline is I rode the Tesla of electric bikes and
it completely changed the way I think about getting around town.
This has been the most popular story on the KTLA
website for three days now. I don't know why. I mean,
it's not like that many people are interested in this bike.
But I actually emailed our web team to say, hey,
where is all this traffic coming from? Like, because I
looked on Reddit, it wasn't on it wasn't posted to Reddit.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
It wasn't.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
It's not like a I don't know where this is
coming from, but I now I have an idea because
he said all the traffic is coming from Google itself,
and so I think what happened is that this story
got tagged as either a Tesla story or the van moved,
the bike itself, or electric bikes as a broader top
and it's being served up to everyone's Google discover feed

(33:04):
or Google news feed and they're customized Google News And
when that happens with the story, it's almost magical because
it just gets taken away in this like whoosh of
like traffic, because it just Google serves your story to
so many people if they've ever shown a big interest
in either Tesla electric cars, are sorry, electric bikes or
even I would think less. So the van Move, which

(33:26):
is the specific bike I'm talking about, but anyway, I
hope I didn't talk about this on the podcast before,
but I've been driving around the van Move, which is
the electric bike that it took a while for them
to send it to me because I kept saying, no, no, no,
this bike is too expensive. I don't want to you know,
I don't really feature super duper expensive stuff in my
reports because I'm not really expecting people to buy a
twenty two hundred dollars electric bike. But when I go

(33:48):
to a bike path in Ventura or in Santa Monica
and I see half the bikes whizzing past me are electric,
or if I'm stopped on the bike path, you know
here in La and I'm seeing a lot of electric bikes,
I'm like, Okay, I gotta do trend piece and I
need some hands on time. So that's when I said, okay, fine,
send me the van move I put it together. This
bike is just phenomenal. It is literally the electric bike

(34:09):
that I would purchase if I'm going to purchase an
electric bike, and I may end up buying this bike,
I don't know. But it's expensive. But you set this
thing up and it looks like it's just sleek, it's slick,
it charges up nicely, it connects to your iPhone or
your Android. It's got like this little digital display on it.
I did a video on it on my Instagram of
just the bike. Soon I'll do on me riding it,

(34:30):
so you can get an idea. But it's just so
cool because you give yourself. I didn't know this about it.
I didn't know how electric bikes work. And this is
why I like to get hands on time we call
it background experience with these devices and these things, because
then I can talk about it as someone who's actually
used it, right, And so that's why it does take
a little bit extra work for me to do my
reports in the way I do them. But I do

(34:51):
like to have some hands on time with these gadgets
and these things because then I can talk about them
and answer questions in a smart way versus reading a
press release and saying, oh, yeah, these electric bikes are
very popular. People are buying them and you know, and
I don't really know because I've never really been on one.
So I've been riding this bike around, you know, not
too much, but enough, and it's it's really fun. It's

(35:14):
such a slick looking bike. Everyone looks at it when
you stop at a stoplight or whatever, and it's so
smooth you can So I didn't know this about electric bikes.
You get the power, at least on the ones that
there's different models, but the one I'm using is the
power is in the pedaling, so when you pedal, it
actually gives you like a little boost, like when you
one rotation is going to take you a lot further

(35:36):
because the engine kind of carries you. It gives you
like or the motor whatever you want to call it,
not the engine, the electric motor kind of like gives
you like this little boost as you press turn the
pedals and you can decide what kind of boost you want,
and it's on this bike.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
It's from one to four, or you can do no
boost at all.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
And that was my big concern with electric bikes was
that I was like, if I'm gonna be bike riding,
I want to get the exercise. And on this bike
and maybe all electric bikes, you can just have the
option of no boost and so you can ride with
it as a zero. And so I did that. I
rode it with my son. We had a great time,
went on like a nine mile bike ride. And the
cool thing is you can go on a really long

(36:13):
bike ride, but then you can use assistance on the
way back. So if you're tired, you get a little assistance.
Then there's a boost button, so on the handlebar there's
a boost so you press that and you get an
immediate jolt of boom. You just go and the battery
goes anywhere between thirty and ninety miles. This bike goes
up to twenty miles an hour. I test drove another
one at a place called electric Bike Attack rather in Venice,

(36:37):
and they have bikes that are, you know, similar to
the Van Move. The van Move is definitely the most
high tech I've ever seen. But a lot of electric bikes.
Some of them look like moped, some of them look
like motorcycles. You know, they're much more electric than this
this bike that I tested, which is more like a
kind of like an everyday bike, but it's just powered
with electric electricity versus some of these other bikes are

(36:58):
much more bikey and like motory, right, Is that makes
any sense? It just depends what you want. Some people
want like a high powered motorbike. I would rather have
something like the van Move that is much more like
a bike that also happens to be electric. But it's
kind of sly, right, And so now once you have
an e bike, you're just thinking of all the ways
that you can drive that e bike instead of your car.

(37:19):
And so around my neighborhood, I'm like, oh, I can
go to breakfast. So I drove to breakfast with my
friends on a Sunday morning. I said, I'm taking my
bike and it's you know, it's only fifteen minutes. And
I used Apple Maps and found my little way there
on Apple Maps because they have biking maps, and it
was just such a cool experience, something that I just
have never done before. And now that this idea has
gotten in my head, I'm like, Okay, I think I

(37:41):
could be that person who takes your bike on different
errands for the weekend. You know, if I want to
go to seven eleven or something, or you know, go
to the I don't know wherever, I could just take
my bike and you know, pick up a little backpack whatever,
or go out with friends, you know, drive to my
friend's houses that are nearby and just park my bike
and you know, instead of driving, I just take a bike.

(38:01):
And so anyway, it's it's just a really really cool
thing that until you actually kind of get on one,
you don't really think of this stuff. And again, this
is why I like to do this, because I think
about it and it changes little things. The little pathways
in your brain change so that you your brain is
now considering all things, not just one option, which in
the past has been a car or walking or you know,

(38:23):
a regular bike. But this van Move is just I
can't speak highly enough. You got to watch the video
on the Instagram. It's just such a cool, cool bike
and I just can't get over it. And van Move
from Oh can I talk about that? I don't know
if I can. Anyway, I can't. I don't know if
I forget. Sometimes I forget when people tell me I'm

(38:43):
not allowed to talk about something. But anyway, van Move
is a really cool bike company. They're based out of
somewhere in Europe, and they have some stores in different cities.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
I think they had to pop up in Los Angeles
at once.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Maybe they're coming back to LA at some point, But anyway,
I just thought this was really cool and just I'm
now a believer. I really like my headline said it all.
I rode the tesla of electric bikes and it completely
changed the way I think about getting around town. It's
one hundred percent right, because when you're on an electric bike,
you can go way further than you could on a
standard bike.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
And yeah, I get all these people.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Don't don't come after me for the whole exercise thing,
because I'm I believe that same thing, like you should
get exercise. But at the same time, there's a lot
of people out there who may have mobility issues, who
may have joint issues, who may have an injury from
sports or just in general with their knees, and so
this is this also opens up possibilities for them. So
no matter how you look at it, it's just it's

(39:41):
just really cool that we have this option. And seeing
a bike as slick as van move to me is
just like this is the future. Like when bikes are
this slick and the price comes down, it's like game over.
You know, people will be deciding in urban areas of Okay,
I could just get a bike and really get by
between a bike and Uber and lyft and scooters and
and it's that's a win for for a lot of

(40:01):
different situations. All right, let's talk another question. Laura says, Hey, Rich,
I have an iPhone ten R with Boost as my
current carrier. Is there way to permanently disable the horrible
amber alert alarm I have. I'm fine with a visual notification,
but that alarm is beyond alarming. Thanks for all you do,

(40:23):
Laura of Long Beach, Well, Laura, yes, I think you're
doing this. I think you're saying this because we got
an amber alert in Los Angeles last week, and you know,
in my house with all the various devices around, you
know it definitely it was like on my watch, it
was on my phone, it was on my wife's phone,
it was on my kid's iPad. Maybe not the kids iPad,
but you know it definitely it definitely rang a few things. So, yes,

(40:46):
you can turn these off in settings under settings notification
at the very bottom of the screen it says government
alerts and you can turn the alert on or off.
But you know, as much as I'm also jarred by them,
I leave them on because I just I don't know,
Like I just don't want there to be a situation
in the world where I need to know something right.

(41:08):
So you have three options, at least on my phone,
you have Amber alerts, you have emergency alerts, and public
safety alerts. So if you want to turn the Amber
alerts off, go ahead, turn them off. I mean, I'm
I'm not going to recommend it, just because I feel
like I like the fact that you know, yes, it's
annoying and it's definitely you know, it butts into whatever
you're doing. But at the same time, it's like, I

(41:29):
don't know if it's just I don't know. I feel
better having it on, you know, I'm trying to trying
to be a good human. I guess the you know,
but you can do whatever you want, and a lot
of people turn these off, believe me. With news and
internet nowadays, it's like, if there is an amber alert
in your area that does apply to you, you're probably
gonna see it in another way so or someone around
you has a phone where they're gonna get it. So

(41:50):
I've been on planes where we get special alerts and
the whole plane just erupts in.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Like you know, the.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
You know sounds. So anyway, that's where you turn them off. Now,
with the sounds, I think, I don't I could be wrong.
I'm not sure if that I think the sounds might.
I think they're silent if your phone is on silent.
My phone is on silent like ninety nine point nine
percent of the time, and so I don't think I
ever hear sounds on my phone ever, because I'm always,

(42:17):
you know, I'm always shooting something like recording something, and
so I've just grown up in TV and I'm always
you have your phone on silent, you know, it's on vibrate.
And with the Apple Watch, it's been amazing because I
never need to think because my wrist is going to
tell me what I need to know. But that's how
you do it. And no judgment. If you want to
turn these off, I'm I'm you know, turn them off.
I mean, that's that's your progative. It's your phone. You

(42:37):
could do whatever you want, you know, so that's that's
that's your you know, your decision to make.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
But that's how you do it, all right. Uh.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Instagram revealed a little bit about it kind of pulled
the curtain back a little bit, and maybe this is
not interesting to you at all, Maybe it is.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I don't know, you know, I tweeted this.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Not too many people care, so I probably shouldn't even
talk about it on the podcast, but I will just
really quickly. I thought it was interesting because it's always
people are always curious about why isn't my stuff being
shown on Instagram? Who sees my stuff on Instagram? And
you know, people think it's this mysterious algorithm, which it is.
There definitely is some mysteriousness to it, but Instagram kind
of revealed a little bit and I thought it was interesting.

(43:16):
So here is the bottom line with the signals in
the algorithm. Right, So number one in order of importance
when you see feeds and stories, right, this is how
algorithm ranks them.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Number one.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Information about the post. How many people have liked it before,
So if a lot of people like a post, yes,
it's going to be shown to more people. Also, how
old the post is, right, so if it's an older post,
they're gonna start showing it to less people. That just
makes sense. Information about the person who posted it. So
if the person is interesting to you, that means like,
if you interact.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
With that person a lot, they're gonna show you their
stuff more.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
And you can easily just do this with my account
if you're tapping on my stories a lot or my
you're liking my Facebook post or my Instagram posts rather
a lot Instagram says oh cool, we got one, we
got one.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
We're gonna show that person more to them.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
It just makes sense, right, I Mean, if you like something,
you're gonna see more of it your activity, So how
many posts you've liked on that person? That's kind of
That's another thing, Like I also, you know This kind
of goes about the person, but also the activity in
the posts that you like from that person. So you
may you may never like a post on that person,
so they might not show you as many posts, but

(44:24):
if you like those posts a lot, they're gonna show
you more. And then of course your history of interacting
with someone, and this is a big one is the comment.
So if you don't comment on someone's posts a lot,
they're gonna show their posts to you less. So that's
basically it. So imagine the more like this is the
bottom line. They kind of condense it into this. The

(44:45):
more time that they think you're gonna spend on a post,
comment on it, like it, save it, or tap the profile,
the more they're gonna show you that post. That's it
bottom line. I mean, it's very easy.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Of course, there's a lot of signals that go into that.
You know a lot of like no crunching and formulas
and all that stuff. But that's the bottom line, and
it just makes sense. The more you interact with people
on Instagram, the more they're going to show you their posts.
The more you do on Instagram, the more you're gonna see,
the more you like stuff, the more you're gonna see
similar stuff. I mean, it just kind of makes sense, right,
So now you know, all right, another question, let's see

(45:22):
what question? James says, Hey, Rich A few days ago,
I went to the Delta website to book round trip
tickets to Cancun, and the economy plus was seven thirty eight.
I had points to bring it down to three thirty.
A day and a half later, the same fare increase
to five hundred. I know there are fair checker sites
where you enter a date and destination, but I have
specific Delta flight numbers. Is there a site that can

(45:43):
alert me when that particular flight changes prices? Thank you, James, Yes, James,
I use this every day. It's called Google Flights. Super
duper easy Google Flights. Just select the exact flights that
you want, so these Delta flights, and once you select them,
there will be a big button that says track prices.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Sort of in the middle of the screen.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
It's a toggle switch, and just track the prices and
next thing, no, you'll get a bunch of alerts from Google.
You'll get an alert when the price is about to
go up if their little prediction says, you know what,
in the next ten hours this is going up fifty bucks.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
You'll get that alert.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
You'll get an alert when the price goes up, which
happens very often, and you also get an alert when
the price goes down.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
And these are not perfect, believe me.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Sometimes by the time you see them, you know, if
you're not checking your email every two seconds, or if
you're not on an Android that might deliver these things
as a notification, you'll you know, you can get to
the website, the Delta site, and the price is already
changed again.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
But that's what I use.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
I am always tracking at least one fair and believe me,
these things they change a lot, and very significantly. I've
seen prices go up, I've seen prices go down. I've
seen prices go up and down and all around, and
it's just there's no rhyme or reason. But I will
tell you one thing, and that it seems to happen
as soon as you track a price, the price goes

(47:04):
up for some reason. And it happens all the time.
And that's why I always say, you know, book, if
you see a price that you like, book it immediately
like that first price that you got might have been
the best price for these Cancun. People are traveling a
lot right now, and prices are are going pretty wild.
In fact, I'm gonna work on a story with some
travel tips because you know, I have a couple sites

(47:26):
that I use. Actually asked folks on Twitter today about
their favorite travel websites and tools, and it's a lot
of the stuff that I've known. But you know, there
are some things that there are some trends where people
you know definitely like the same things and Google flights.
I feel like it's like a hidden gem. I feel
like not enough people know about it because most people
know about Kayak, and maybe they do that, I don't
know if they. If they, I don't really use Kayak. Honestly,

(47:48):
I haven't used it. I remember when Kayak came out.
I was a reporter in Shreveport, Louisiana, and I thought
it was just the most amazing thing ever. The fact
that you could actually compare flight prices on one page
from different airlines was such a new idea. And you're
talking this was what two thousand, gosh, this was probably
two thousand. Let's see Kayak launched. I mean this was

(48:12):
long like two thousand and three, maybe.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Year.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Let's see Kayak launch yet two thousand and four. There
you go, So two thousand and four, I just you.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Know, it was it was just wild.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
It was a search engine for flights, and that was
just something I had never been done before Expedia and
all that stuff. You know it it was a very
different thing. It was much more of like, you know,
things were programmed in, but Kayak was much more like,
we don't really.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Care where these numbers are coming from.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
We're just gonna find them everywhere and put them all
on one page, whereas Expedia worked more like a search
travel engine, I think, and still now I feel like
Kayak is much more like a search travel engine.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
But I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
But anyway, Google Flights is the much I feel like
it's the most kind of like independent out of all
of them, and it just gives you like the most
independent kind of results that are not they're not they're
not putting one thing higher than another because you know,
United paid them for that placement. Does that make sense?
That's kind of anyway. That's where i'd go and that's

(49:16):
what i'd use. All right, This is kind of interesting.
We talked about this whole idea of limited storage on
Google Photos, and so of course there's not to me,
there's not really a good alternative because you know, Google
Photos just does so much. And I already talked about
this in the last podcast, but I have been testing
something called Iedrive Photos, and this is a local company

(49:38):
in Los Angeles. And I'm always very hesitant when it
comes to talking or you know, discussing any photo backup
because there have been so many that have come and
gone that they never survive, and it seems like, you know,
only the big guys survive, you know, like the Microsofts
of the world, the dropboxes.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
And you know, so many have come in gone.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
So I'm very hesitant to recommend this, but I will
say it does work as promised, and I might use
it as a secondary backup because it is unlimited photo
and video storage for iOS and Android. For get this
nine ninety five a year. That's nine dollars and ninety
five cents a year.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
I Drive has been around for a long time. They're
actually a company. I think it's been around for like
over twenty years, and so they are doing this. I
guess they have experience in the field. But I downloaded
the app.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I signed up. You can do a seven day.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Free trial, and so far I've uploaded in my free trial,
and I'm talking just the just the photos that are
on my phone or my new photos. I guess I
have uploaded, tells you which I also like in the
settings fifty nine gigabytes, so sixty gigabytes and no problem.
It's unlimited photos and videos. By the way, at full resolution.

(50:58):
This is called I Drive Photo. And by the way,
the first year is just ninety nine cents. Ninety nine
cents for the first year, and then ten dollars a
year after that. So it's very compelling. And for me,
I think what I'm gonna do is, I think I'm
just gonna pay for this every year for ten bucks
as long as it's around as just a backup backup,
Like if I take a picture on my phone, it's

(51:19):
going into this backup and if I ever need it,
I'm not gonna organize them or anything. I'm not gonna
delete stuff, but I'm just gonna leave it in there.
So if I ever find a thing where my phone
crashes or whatever, or my other cloud storage goes could put,
I just go in here and I'm like, oh, that
was the picture I took yesterday.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Hear it. This is so.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
The website is I drive dot com slash photos. I
drive dot com slash Photos. You can get a free
seven day trial with no credit card needed. Again, I
can't vouch for this company because I don't know how
long they'll be around doing this, and they could change
their mind when people start uploading gobs and gobs of
photos and there's not really like a search functionality. I

(51:59):
guess there's search, but it's very limited. No, the search
is either photos or videos and there's like nothing special
about it except it just organizes them in a timeline
and you can favorite some as your favorites.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
You can see.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Yeah, that's basically it, but it's it does what you need.
It just backs up your photos. So if you just
want like the cheapest solution that does unlimited and you
have to think about much, you know, check it out.
Just make sure it's not your only solution. But I
am going to do a story with this company because
they are local and I'm curious to hear what the
founder says, Like how they think they can do this
when Google itself can't do it is beyond me. So

(52:35):
maybe they're just figuring that because they're smaller than Google.
They're not going to get as many people, you know,
bogging them down. But I feel like if word gets
out about this, you know, people are definitely gonna try
it out. So anyway, I drive photos, I signed up
for it. Will well, I'll keep you posted on how
it works. All right, let's see question here from Denise.

(53:00):
Denise says, hey, Rich, we currently have the Apple TV
third generation and looking to upgrade since YouTube's no longer
available on it. My husband is somewhat tech savvy, and
our daughter and son in law more so. But did
see that there is an Apple second generation Apple TV
four K that launched in April. Have you done any
research on it? Is it user friendly? What model do
you recommend? We are getting rid of cable and go

(53:21):
with streaming, do you have any recommendations? Will definitely be
a learning curve for me. I appreciate any help. I've
reached out to you in the past, and you are
a great help. Thank you and stay well Denise. All right, Well, Denise,
I know that not everyone watches every segment that I
do on TV, but I definitely did a review of
the Apple TV four K recently when it came out
and you know, you can watch those, by the way,

(53:42):
on the ktla plus app no matter where you live,
download it on your Apple TV, on your Fire TV
stick or your Roku and just open up. It's called
ktla plus. It's free, no sign up and you just
you know, download the app and you can watch all
my tech segments that are that air on TV.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
So it's pretty handy there. Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
But what I what my conclusion is about the Apple
TV four K is it's fantastic. I mean, if you
have an iPhone, it's like the best companion ever. It's
just a very expensive way to stream and if you
don't mind paying the money for it, then it's what
I would recommend because it's it's got great apps. It's
got every app available, it's got a great version of
every app, and yes, YouTube is on there and it's

(54:22):
it works. So you know, as far as recommending the model,
there's two models. There is a sixty four gigabyte and
a thirty two gigabyte. Oh gosh, is that the case
Apple TV four K.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
I got to look that up.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
I think it's sixty four, Yeah, thirty two and sixty four,
And so you know the main thing is just deciding
which one of those you want this the thirty two
is one eighty, the sixty four is one ninety nine.
I would go for the sixty four gigabyte just because
you know, apps are getting huge these days, and thirty
two gigs. Not like you're downloading movies to this thing anyway,

(54:57):
that's the old days. But it's streaming mostly everything. But
it still does need that space for things like especially
if you're gonna play some games on it, Apple Arcade,
you know, if you're downloading just a bunch of apps,
like I just think for the extra twenty bucks, go
for the sixty four gigabyte version. You get the new
remote control, which is really nice, and you know, yes

(55:18):
YouTube does work on there. And as for the streaming,
like cutting the cord, I always recommend a website called
untangled dot tv. So Untangled dot tv is the website
that I recommend you pop in all the shows that
you want to watch, all the channels that you like,
and it will give you a list of all of

(55:39):
the recommendations it has for streaming services. So that's what
I would recommend. Check those out. And you know I've
I cut the cord a couple of years ago. It's
been fantastic. I mean, the big missing link in Los
Angeles was really getting KTLA over an app because we're
not on the streaming services. And once we're on KTLA Plus,
I mean, it was pretty transformative for a lot of people.

(56:01):
I suspect a lot of people cut the chord when
that happened. And you know, now you can watch your
local news, you can watch all of our extra programming
on demand, and then you can also just subscribe to
the things like Netflix and Disney Plus for all the
other stuff that you want to watch. It's worked out
perfectly for us. So Untangled dot tv is the way
to go. Okay, let me just talk about two quick moments,

(56:26):
two quick things before I go Amazon DJ mode. I
gotta tell you, I've been testing all the music services
and I really have Amazon Music is like, I really
like it, and I just, you know, I think it's
actually it's simple, it's straightforward, and I'm actually digging it
because it is so simple, and I find things to
play very quickly because their playlists are not like Spotify

(56:47):
has so many playlists. I'm like, what's country chill versus
country backyard barbecue versus country road versus country, Uh, you
know whatever. It's like, I don't know, like I have
to I spend I have to spend so much time
looking at the nuances of these playlists that it takes
me so long to figure out which one to play.
And Apple Music is great, but it's you know, same thing.

(57:08):
They have so many playlists. I think they said they
have thirty thousand like human curated playlists on there. I mean,
that's just unbelievable. Amazon Music they and then they introduced
this thing called DJ mode, which I personally love because
I've I've mentioned this before. I'm a radio guy. I
love radio, and so you know, to me, when a
streaming service does not have a DJ, it's it's tricky

(57:31):
because you don't know, you have no context for the
song that's playing, right. You don't know if the song
that's playing just came out by that artist or came
out five years ago and they just picked a cut
off an album. And so by having a DJ introduced
songs which like Sirius XM has and iHeartRadio has. It's
kind of fun because you get a little bit of insight.

(57:51):
And Apple Music has it with their you know DJ stations,
like their they have a country radio station, they have
a hit station, they have their original Zane Low station.
So I mean, you know, I think and I kind
of predicted this, but it's the DJ is making a comeback.
The DJ is making a comeback on streaming music services.
So now on Amazon you have four DJ stations. It's

(58:13):
called one is rap Rotation, one is Country Heat, one
is All Hits, and then another one is a Billie
Eilish station. So if you want to play these, just
say the A word, play Rap Rotation in DJ mode,
or play Country Heat in DJ mode, play all Hits
in DJ mode, play the Billy Eilish takeover.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
And I listened to this.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yesterday in my house two ways. I listened on my iPhone,
which was fine, it worked great and alex I almost
said it. The A Word even comes on with some
music trivia, which is kind of fun in her voice.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
But there's also DJs. They're not live.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
It's it's very clear it's recorded and tracked, but it's
still kind of fun and maybe they'll do live later.
Who knows Apple is live, which is kind of fun
a lot on a lot of their morning shows.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
At least or some of their shows.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
I don't know they're live and taped, but it's definitely
much more of like a person sitting there for four
hours like doing the show versus this just sounds like
they go in with like a paper and read a
bunch of stuff. It's a start, but it's fun. It
did not work on Sonos though. I think whatever system
they're using is not you know, it's not compatible with
Sonos just yet, but it'll come. And then the other
thing I mentioned earlier in the podcast is that Apple

(59:17):
Music has this you know this Dolby Atmost spatial audio.
So you can open up your Apple Music app, make
sure you're updated to the latest iOS fourteen point six,
and look under Dolby Atmost under you know in the
music and you can see the spatial audio. They have
a whole bunch of playlists, so you can use your

(59:38):
air pods to listen. You can use your AirPods Pro,
you can use AirPods Max if you have them, beats,
and then if you want to try other headphones which
may or may not work, you can go into the
Apple Music app under settings, choose preferences, and then you
can turn Dolby Atmost on always and it will try
to you know, push out that spatial audio no matter

(01:00:00):
what headset you're listening on. Oh look at that. You
know what that sound means. It is the end of
the show. Thanks so much for listening. That's going to
do it for this episode. If you'd like to submit
a question for me to answer, just go to my
Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech. Hit
the big blue send email button. Also, I would love
it if you would rate and review the podcast to

(01:00:22):
help other people discover it. It's been a little bit
since someone left a written review, so yes, you're rating
it with the stars, which is great. I love it,
Thank you, But please write a written review and that
way I can read it on the show. And I
really do think it helps people discover like just say
what you like about it and leave that in the review,
and I think that helps people like understand like, Hey,
I'm a regular person, I really enjoy this show. People

(01:00:43):
think this show is for techies.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
It's not. It's actually for non techies.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
You can find me on social media at rich on
Tech and no matter where you live in the US,
you can download the free ktla plus app on the
Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Then you can scroll
to the Tech section and watch all of my TV
segments undemand whenever you want. My name is rich Demirol.
Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
you can spend an hour of your time. I do

(01:01:06):
appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I'll talk
to you real soon

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