What's new with Apple Watch Series 7

Thoughts on the Apple Watch Series 7; upcoming tech events from Apple, Google and Samsung; Tile revamps it's tracker lineup; Best Buy introduces Totaltech membership nationwide; Fire TV Stick 4K Max available; easier one-time password sharing from 1Password; GM begins Bolt battery replacements; easy site to redact photos.Listeners ask about the best outdoor security cameras, which phone to get after the iPhone 6 Plus, why their computer monitor keep going to sleep, switching from fiber to cable internet, deleting photos from Google Photos without affecting iCloud Photos and the best app to keep track of TV shows and movies you want to watch.LinksFollow Rich on Social!Apple Watch Series 7 reviewNew Tile lineupBest Buy TotaltechFire TV stick 4K Max1Password sharing toolGM Bolt issuesWebsite to easily blur photosApp to keep track of TV shows and MoviesSee 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

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Not one, not two, but three tech events in one
week from Apple, Google, and Samsung. Can You Handle It?
Tyle revamps its lineup, and best Buy introduces total Tech Everywhere.
Plus your tech questions Answered? What's going on? I'm Rich
Damiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where
I talk about the tech stuff I think you should

(00:31):
know about. It's also the place where I answer the
questions you send me. That's right, you right there listening. Yeah,
don't look around, it's you. My name is Rich Smiro,
tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hopefully
you are having a fantastic day. Hope all as well.

(00:52):
Right before I came on to the show, McDonald's announced
they are going to have the mcplant burger at eight
restaurants in the US starting November three. They worked with
Beyond on the patty, which is made from peas, rice
and potatoes. It's got all the regular toppings, including American cheese,
so not really a vegan dish here, But locations that

(01:15):
they're going to test it include Texas, Iowa, Louisiana, and California.
Kind of a cross section of the US. Nothing on
the East coast. Interesting, of course, I am going to
try to get my hands on one of these burgers
to taste test it, because I if you follow me,
you know that I love tasting the new I don't
want to call it fake food because it's food, but

(01:38):
and I don't want to call it franken food because
you know it's it's not necessarily manufacturer well I guess
it is, but it's made from things in the in
the world. It's not something that's like made in a
chemical factory. And I've been to these the Beyond, like
plant where they come up with this stuff, and it's
really fascinating. They kind of like they take little cross

(02:00):
sections of all kinds of food and figure out how
to reproduce it, or I guess recreate it using different things,
you know, different seasonings, different plants. So it's really fascinating. Anyway,
I can't wait. Maybe I'm just hungry, but it looks
delicious to me, and I'm up for you know, I'm
fine with a regular burger, but I'm always fine with

(02:21):
a plant burger as well. So the thing is a
lot of the comments on my Facebook page are quite negative,
but the reality is these things can coexist and we're
not trying to replace meat. We're just trying to give
people an option, especially in places where you know you
may not be able to have all the options that
you want. I think I've talked about this before, but anyway,
we've got a lot to talk about in today's show,

(02:43):
so let's just get right to it. Next week, a big,
big event happening or three, well probably two big events
or just one, depending on how you look at it.
But there's going to be an Apple event on Monday,
then a Google event on Tuesday for the Pixel, and
then a Samsung event on Wednesday. And of course all
three companies except for Google, haven't really said what we're

(03:04):
gonna see. But Apple, according to nine to five Mac,
expecting redesigned fourteen and sixteen inch MacBook pros, which I've
talked about how much I can't wait to get a
new MacBook Pro sixteen with the new M one chip.
And this is gonna be the M one X, which
is gonna be a little bit modified, probably even better.
But now that push comes to shove and I have

(03:25):
to spend my hard earned cash, I don't know. I'm like,
I think my computer's just fine. I don't know if
I need that, but you know I want it, so
we'll see. And since I'm not selling my old devices
anymore because I have so many kids, I have to
trade them, you know, pass them down to them. So
it's not like I have any trade in money either.

(03:46):
So this is this gonna be a big expenditure, but
we'll see. I don't know if I'm gonna do it
just yet. We'll have to see. Like I said, they'll
have the new M one x chip which might support
up to thirty two gigs a RAM, which you need
on the MacBook Pro. Mine's got sixteen and it it's fine,
but it could be better. Return of mag safe to
plug it in, which is the magnetic connector that not

(04:06):
the same as the thing on the iPhone, but similar.
I mean it's all magnetic charging. And then let's see
HDMI port. They say they're bringing back in an SD
card slot, which would be really handy. No more touch bar,
which touch bar is horrible. There's no reason for it.
It's literally the worst thing on this computer. And I

(04:27):
don't understand why they dedicated a tiny strip at the
top to it. There's just no need. And if you're
not getting a new computer, we'll find out when mac
Os Monterey comes out. That should launch probably any day
now in October. And then let's see, we've got Google
with the Google Pixel. Very excited for that. You know,

(04:48):
I'm also thinking about getting one of those Google Pixel six.
I'll probably go for the pro. If I get it,
we'll see. I definitely don't have to review it because
I'm curious what the camera is all about. But that's exciting.
A lot of that been leaked, but we don't know
the full picture just yet. We know a lot of
bits and pieces, but until reviewers get them in their hands,
which some of them probably already have for the past

(05:08):
couple of weeks under embargo, we won't know what the
capabilities of that camera really is. And then, finally, not
to be left out, Samsung says, oh, we're doing one too,
Galaxy Unpacked Part two, And I don't know this one
is a little sketchy because they say it's very I mean,

(05:30):
Samsung's already released all of their big devices for the year,
so there's not like they need to do something else.
But they say, our users live life in so many colorful,
interesting and unique ways. As such, the technology they use
every day should reflect their individual out individuality. Come see
how Samsung is opening up new experiences for self expression

(05:52):
through technology. That to me sounds like it's not that exciting.
Some people are speculating that it's different color phone. I
don't know. We'll see, but they're not really promising too
much there, so it's not like it's that big of
a deal. All right, Let's get right to the first
question of the day. Joyce says, my name is Joyce.

(06:13):
My husband and I watch you in Saint Louis. We're
interested in buying a home security system for the outside
of our home, preferably three cameras. We do not want
inside cameras. We're in our sixties and pretty overwhelmed with
all the choices options. Don't know if I can get
recommendations from you on good, reliable system that will help
us monitor the outside of our home, anything would be appreciated.
Thank you so much, Joyce. Well, Joyce, there's a couple

(06:35):
different may I mean, there's so many different cameras. You're right,
there are many different brands out there, from Google to
to Whys to Blink to you know, even like the
simply safes of the world, like if you want like
a full alarm system. Then of course you have the
wise cameras, the ring cameras, I mean there's a lot,

(06:56):
But then you have Arlow. Of course you have SWAN
for like the actual like DVR systems. But I would
say I would say it comes down to two things
that you need to decide. Do you want to record
this footage the entire time, like twenty four to seven
you can go back and see anything that happened on
those cameras, or do you just want events to be recorded?

(07:20):
And events mean when someone walks in front of your camera,
it will trigger a recording for sixty to ninety seconds.
So if you want the simplest and the cheapest solution,
I think for that is definitely going to be the
ring cameras and also the most elaborate when it comes
to setting them up. Because you say you want three cameras,
you can easily put up three ring cameras either with

(07:41):
solar or with a battery and just replace that battery,
which I wouldn't fully recommend, or you can plug them
in a do they make an outdoor that you can
plug in? I'm not sure, but I think you would
just go solar in that circumstance. So that's option one.
I think that's going to be your best option. You
can see all the cameras on the same page. They
work really well. Ring is very proven. Once you fall

(08:02):
in love with the Ring cameras, you'll buy a whole
bunch of other stuff from Ring as well. Now, your
other option, which I think is your cheapest option, and
this will give you twenty four to seven recording, is
going to be the wisecams and so they've got a
Wisecam outdoor bundle. You get the bundle which will include
a little base station inside and then one camera, and
then you can purchase two other additional cameras that will

(08:24):
work with that wireless base station. And these cameras are
they are battery operated, so you know you'd have to
decide if that's right for you. You can also get
a solar panel for them if you want, but I
don't think they make a native one. I think you
have to buy like a I tested one from a
third party company which worked just fine. And that's your

(08:47):
second option, And that does give you the option to
put a micro SD card into the base station and
record the cameras twenty four to seven, So that will
use significant amounts of battery. So I would say, if
you want twenty four seven recording, you're gonna have to
invest neither these solar panels or the plug in cameras.
And Whyse does make cameras that plug in outdoors as well,

(09:10):
it's just not the outdoor camera. It's just the Whyse.
I think it's the version three just works indoors outdoors,
so you can put that outside. So you can do
that too. Now if you want something that's a little
bit more expensive, but let Google handle sort of the recording.
Twenty four to seven. Those are gonna be your nest
cams and they just came out, the whole lineup of
new ones and those will record twenty four to seven

(09:33):
onto Google servers, and it's really easy to sort of
go back and see what's going on and make clips
and all that good stuff. And that's I think it's
from six to twelve dollars a month for that. You
will pay a monthly service. With Ring you will pay
a monthly service as well, But I think it's just
three dollars a month for the for the entire system,

(09:54):
you know, for all those cameras unlimited, So those are
your main choices. I would probably go with RING, just
because most people just need the standard event based recording.
They don't need it to be rolling twenty four to
seven unless you've got some sort of high security operation
happening at your house or around your house, or neighbors
that you don't like, or something that you know you

(10:14):
want to keep an eye on all the time. But
I would just go with RING personally or wise. I
would just compare those two and see which ones you
like better. All right, let's talk Apple Watch. Apple Watch
Series seven launched or launches depending on when you're listening
to this, on Friday, October fifteenth. It is available. I've
had it on my wrist for a while now, and

(10:37):
what can I say, It is the perfect accessory. You've
heard me go on and on about how much I
love the Apple Watch, and this is no different, and
well it is a little different. So let me go
through some of the differences on the new Apple Watch
Series seven. And the number one difference is that it's
the case is just a millimeter bigger, but the screen

(10:58):
is twenty percent bigger. And you might think that that
doesn't make a big difference, but it does. And so
as soon as the first time I had to type
in my pin code to unlock this watch. I noticed
the difference in screen size. The buttons were so much bigger,
and it was much easier to tap in that four
digit code. Now, that's not a reason to upgrade, but
and I'm not sure there's any reason to upgrade on

(11:19):
this device other than the fact that you need a
new Apple Watch. So if you have one of the
older models that doesn't have the the only reason really
to upgrade your Apple Watch at this point in time
is if the model you currently have does not have
the sensor that you need, whether that's blood oxygen or
whether it's some of the newer sensors that they've added
to these watches. But if you don't need those, there's

(11:42):
no reason to upgrade, because the Apple Watch is one
of those things that you only upgrade for a key
feature that you need. And I might even change that
to a want, because do you really need it? Maybe not,
because most of the watches, even from the Apple the
Series three and up, I think they all do like
the fall detection and all that good stuff. So okay,

(12:03):
so you've got the bigger screen you've got for the
first time ever on an Apple Watch built in a
quirty keyboard, which the irony is that the the buttons
are so tiny on that you would only use that
for like the most extreme circumstances of like you'd want
to type something out that's like a proper name or
an address or something like that, or Siri just isn't

(12:24):
understanding what you're saying and you have to type something,
so that is a good thing. You can also swipe
on that keyboard, which actually is much more useful. So
this is exclusive to the series seven at least for now.
Apple could always add that to any other watch in
a heartbeat with an OS update, but they're saying that
the screen the larger real estate is the only reason

(12:44):
that's possible, but who knows. Then there's two new watch
faces that take advantage of the extra screen real estate.
One is called Contour. This has numbers that go to
the edge. It's kind of like a mix of old
school and just it just kind of looks like a
like a melted watch face on the edges. I don't
know how to explain it. And then Modular Duo if
you want the maximum amount of information on a screen,

(13:05):
like if you wanted two of the giant Modular displays.
You know how most on almost every well on all
the Apple Watch faces, there's only one big kind of
complication and the rest are all small ones. Well, this
one you can actually get two complications on the screen
at once. Other improvements include a more crack resistant face,

(13:26):
which will be nice because I've scratched a lot of
the old Apple watches. Dust resistance, but I've never had
an issue with dust on previous Apple Watches, so I'm
not really sure what that would add. I've taken mind
to the beach, I've taken them on hikes. I've never
even thought about dust in my life. Now. Battery life
is not improved, which is a total bummer, but they
did improve the charging by about fifteen minutes. It's fifteen

(13:48):
minutes faster, double is fast. If you have an older model,
like if you have one of the Series three or
something like that, you're gonna see significant charging upgrades to this.
There's also a new USBC charging cable in the box.
It's got this silver I don't know what you call it.
The puck is like silver, so you know that it's new, right,
instead of the old ones. The old ones will still
work with the new watches. The new thing will still

(14:10):
work with the old watches. They just will charge at
their appropriate speech. You're not gonna get faster charges on
the old watches, and it will be slower on the
new one with the old ones, so he kind of
need that new one to unlock the faster charge. Now.
The other thing they're doing is eight minutes of charging
on this watch will give you enough juice to track
eight hours of sleep. But quite honestly, the sleep data

(14:32):
on the Apple Watch is pretty much the native sleep
data is just not there. And I think Apple's doing
that on purpose because in the future they are going
to upgrade the sleep capabilities of this when they finally
mix in that startup that they purchased, I forget what
it's called, like Bettet or something. Once they get that
sleep thing figured out on the back end, they will

(14:52):
make a big to do about it and that will
be the new crown feature of the Apple Watch. But
that's not ready right now and it's not here. That's
for sure. Basically tells you how long you've slept, which
is like useless compared to things you get from Fitpit
and all that. Lots of fun new colors you've got
Midnight you've got Starlight, you've got blue, red, and green.

(15:14):
It starts at three hundred and ninety nine dollars four
ninety nine for Cellular, which I think is actually a
price increase. I think Cellular used to cost less. Still
the best smart watch around no matter what it's, it
just is. It's amazing. You've got great notifications, excellent fitness tracking,
fun faces, wide range of helpful complications, although I wish
there were some more, and Siri is probably the biggest

(15:37):
sore spot. She just can't figure out what you're saying,
especially when it's proper nouns, especially when it's anything that's
like a business name. It's just really painful to use
her to dictate almost anything to this watch. And that's
my biggest downside to the Apple Watch is that if
it had Google Assistant on it, it would be a
real killer device. But overall still an amazing, amazing accessory

(16:01):
if you have an iPhone. I really wish that Apple
would set this device free and let it work without
an iPhone. I know it does with the family set up,
but it's still a little convoluted. They hold back some
features and it's not a pretty setup. So Apple, please
let people activate in Apple Watch all by themselves without
anything else, which, yes, the family set up kind of

(16:23):
does that, but it's still it's not meant to be
just a standalone device. But there you have it. Let
me know if you're gonna get an Apple Watch, big
upgrade if you have like a three, maybe or a four,
But if you have a five or six, obviously not
a huge update. All right, let's talk about Tile. Tile
is upgrading all of their products in an effort to

(16:44):
better compete with the air tag, and so Tyle says
that in the first half of twenty twenty one, Tile
has grown revenue over fifty percent and it shows no
sign of slowing down. So the company is sending a
message saying air tags did not destroy our business. So
first off, you've got the Pro, which is Tyle's most
powerful tracker, that's got a four hundred foot finding range,

(17:07):
and it's got a new look and feel, So basically
it has a hole in it, a big old hole
that enables you to clip it to a bag or
a purse or a key chain. Then you've got the Mate,
the Sticker, and the Slim. Those all have a two
hundred and fifty foot finding range. Which is twenty five
percent more and sixty seven percent more for the sticker.

(17:29):
The sticker is really handy for a remote control. In fact,
I may buy the sticker just for my remote because
I need that. The kids don't care about the remote,
They let it fall between the couch cushions, and I
think I need that. How much is the sticker The
sticker is twenty nine ninety nine. I'm definitely that is
that's a purchase right now now. Additionally, the three models

(17:52):
now have a louder ring, which makes it easier to
find them, especially like I said, the remote control. They've
got a three year battery life and they've got IP
sixty seven water resistance, all of them do, which means
they could be submerged in one meter of water for
up to thirty minutes. There's also this new QR code,
and I love the fact that I've been talking about
QR codes for literally a decade and it took a

(18:15):
pandemic for people to actually care about them. And now
everyone in the world knows how to scan a QR code,
which is really cool because QR codes do have a
lot of uses. It brings you directly to something fast,
whether that's information, a website, someone's contact information, whatever it is.
It's just an easy way versus typing. You just aim
your phone at something. And so we've seen those things everywhere.

(18:37):
And now all tiles are going to have this little
QR code on them that lets you scan the QR
code and see who it belongs to or not who
it belongs to. Well, I guess they will allow owners
to put their contact information in there, but you can
put in whatever you want, whatever you feel comfortable with.
Then they've got a new app to help with unwanted tracking.
It's called Scan and Secure feature, So anyone with a tile,

(19:00):
it's actually just a feature inside the tile app can
scan for nearby devices and identify an unknown device near them.
That's for like the stalker situations. And then you've got
looking to the future, the new Tile Ultra because Tyle
doesn't want to say they're being left out in this
race with the ultra wideband technology, so they will have
Bluetooth an Ultra wideband built into a tile that's coming

(19:23):
out in early twenty twenty two. All right, So the
Tile Pro is thirty five bucks, the Mate is twenty five,
the Slim thirty five, and the sticker is thirty and yes,
I need to go buy that sticker right about now.
All right, next question comes from Laura. I'm a single,

(19:44):
disabled mom. I need to spend my money wisely. It's
finally time for a new iPhone. My old one has
had it. Can you cut through the chase and tell
me which iPhone is your fave? I have the iPhone
six Plus. I love it. I've been thinking maybe I
should just get another one, but I'm certain that if
anyone knows which phone can top this six plus, that
would be you. I'm going straight to the top. Rich
Which phone is the easiest to operate with? The very

(20:05):
best camera feature? Is all I ask? Please share, sincerely, Laura, Laura. Uh, Laura, Laura,
Laura U. Well, you want Okay, you're giving me a
couple things here. You're saying that you want the best camera,
but you also want You love the six plus, which
is a bigger phone, So that would lead me to

(20:25):
believe that the iPhone thirteen Pro Max would be your
best choice. But I'll be honest, I think that's way
too big of a device. Now, maybe you're so used
to the size of this phone that it's fine and
you don't mind. But it's also a very expensive device.
And I think that if you are willing to sacrifice
a little bit in the screen size, the standard iPhone
thirteen will be exactly what you need. You're gonna get

(20:48):
a great camera, not the very best, but you're gonna
get a great camera, and you're going to get a
really fast processor. You're gonna get a big screen. You're
not gonna get the biggest screen. But the problem is
is they don't make that middle phone anymore. The the
you know, the ten R sort of phone, you know
that used to be like in between the iPhone, the

(21:09):
Promax and the standard iPhone. They don't really make a
model like that anymore. So I think that if you
want to go with the thirteen Promax, that will be
the absolute best of the best. The Crem to the crem,
is it the cream of the crop, cream of the crop.
But I don't I think that's a little bit overkill.
I think that the twelve will be just fine or sorry,

(21:31):
the thirteen will be just fine, And I think that'll
be a good combination of price and features. You've got
an iPhone six plus, which came out several years ago,
so it's not as if you are, you know, needing
the latest, greatest, best, fastest, most amazing thing. You You've
been happy with this device, so I think you're gonna
be happy with the iPhone thirteen. That would be my

(21:52):
choice for you. Let me know what you get. Let's
talk best by their Total Tech is now available nation wide. Now,
this is an interesting membership. It costs two hundred dollars
for the year, So I don't know. Here's what you get.
You tell me if you think this is a good deal.

(22:14):
It's available nationwide starting now. Okay, so free geek Squad
Tech support available twenty four to seven, three sixty five
on all the technology in your home, no matter where
you bought it. So basically that's like me in this podcast.
But twenty four to seven available for two hundred bucks
a year. Now, that does not mean that geek Squad
is going to come to your house to do anything.

(22:36):
That's a thing that I think people need to realize
about this. That's not totally totally clear here. It's geek
Squad tech support, not hands on support, Total tech expert
access of VIP service with access to get dedicated phone
and chat teams. Whatever that means. Up to now, this
is pretty good up to twenty four months product protection

(22:56):
on most Best Buy purchases during your active membership, including
Apple Care Plus on Apple products. So if you just
do the price of Apple Care Plus on the iPhone thirteen,
which I don't know how much that costs, but let's
find out how much it is, do they tell you?
Let's see by now, so let's see that is the iPhone? Uh,

(23:22):
you have to sign in darn it. Well, I don't
know how much it costs then, but the reality of
it is it's not cheap. So if you get something
like Apple Care, let's see, let's see if I can
find the price of this thing. Hmm. That doesn't okay,
so uh doesn't really say okay, here we go. Apple

(23:46):
Care pricing according to mac rumors for the iPhone, it's
one twenty nine to one nine nine. So if you
paid the one twenty nine and this is sixty dollars
more or how much would that be eighty dollars more?
I don't know. One's seventy to two hundred, al right, sorry,
one thirty would be seventy dollars more. So for seventy

(24:07):
dollars more, you get protection on all of your products,
including your iPhone, free delivery and standard installation, exclusive member prices,
twenty percent off labor for repairs, sixty day extended return window,
and free haul away on most product replacements. So that's
the deal. I mean, I don't know. I think that

(24:27):
this is you're buying peace of mind with something like this.
I think if they came to your house and fixed stuff,
I think that would be a huge win on this plan.
But the problem is the plan that would be I
think prohibitively expensive for Best Buy to offer. But I
think there's this a good start. It's funny because they're
doing one ninety nine per year because most people like

(24:50):
to pay monthly. So I think if they introduce this
as a monthly, so two hundred divided by twelve would
be sixteen seventeen dollars a month, which, you know, let's
say they rounded it down to fifteen a month. I
think that they would maybe have a bit of a
winning hand here. It's gonna say winning hand in their hand.

(25:10):
But that doesn't you can't use the word twice, you know.
All right, Let's see Mary Anne says, is there a
virus or something making the monitor go black? I was
using the desktop and the monitor blinked and went black.
I got to use monitor, same thing. I got to
use desktop the same My sister's computer do the same
at the same time. We have tried three computers, four monitors,

(25:31):
and four cables. Nothing seems to work any ideas there
is power to all. Monitor says it's going to sleep.
Thank you, Mary, R. Mary. This is quite the quite
the question. You're telling me that you got three different computers,
four different monitors, and four different cables and tried them
all and none of this worked and the computers all
go to sleep. Wow, that's quite interesting. Well, I think

(25:55):
it sounds like you've got your sleep settings, can figure
in your Windows energy settings or your Mac energy settings,
and that's what's causing this to go to sleep. Now,
that typically would happen, if you know, if your computer's laptop, yes,
the monitor goes to sleep. If it's a desktop, typically

(26:15):
it takes a little bit longer to go to sleep,
but it will go to sleep eventually. Now, if you
said you're actively using the computer, that's odd because typically
computers don't go to sleep when you're actively using them.
There's a timeout period of anywhere you can set it
from one minute to never. But this is odd, and
I can't believe it's happening with your sister's computer as well.

(26:37):
And you bought a used monitor, same thing you got
to use desktop. I can't believe it. You troubleshooted all
these things. So is there a virus on all these things?
I think not, But if I had to guess, it
is either the power settings. The other thing could be
is whatever program you're using, there's some sort of something

(26:58):
happening with the video I'll put and maybe that's causing
this to not work properly. But that's a that's an
odd question or an odd problem to have. I don't know.
Let me know if you find a solution to that one,
because that's a that's a weird one. All right, let's
talk about fire TV stick. So I was listening to
an interview with gosh, what's his name, Dave Limp of Amazon.

(27:22):
He runs up their products division. There wasn't a whole
bunch of like stuff that I was like, oh my gosh,
oh yeah, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,
like this is such good stuff. But there was a
couple of little nuggets in there that I thought were
really good. And you know, there's a couple of little
things he revealed about how Amazon does business. But I
just read the Amazon book, so some of that stuff

(27:43):
wasn't new. But you know, I thought it was interesting
how he talks about how Alexa makes money. And I
found it fascinating that, you know, if you're listening for
free on Spotify, that Amazon just like kind of like TV,
they get a couple barter ads, so inside your your
ads that they are playing, Amazon owns a couple of

(28:03):
those spots and can sell them. So I thought that
was pretty interesting because that's how old school TV works.
Like let's say I gave my tech segment to a
bunch of random TV stations nationwide. You know, not we
do that, but those are stations we own. But let's
say I just happen to have, you know, my own business,
and I made a tech segment. I sold it to
TV stations. I would say, okay, you can have this

(28:24):
segment for free, but you got to run this advertisement,
and you give me one of your commercials an hour,
and then I go to best Buy and I sell
them a sponsorship package and saying, hey, you know, a
hundred stations are running my tech segment. Here's you know,
pay me a million bucks and they will run your
commercial in the in their breaks. And that's how that's

(28:47):
how that barter system sort of works. Very simplified obviously,
But anyway, this is the new streaming stick. It's fifty
five bucks and if you have a fire TV stick.
This is one of the things that Dave mentioned that
I thought was pretty interesting. He said that, you know,
Amazon is not really interested in you upgrading your products
every year. Said in fact, if that's kind of happening,
they're not doing their job very well. They want you

(29:09):
to buy something and use it pretty much until it's
broken because they want to update it through software and
make it function better. And so I thought that was
pretty interesting because he's right. I mean, it's like the
new Kindles came out and I'm like, well, why do
I need a new one? Or the new fire stick
comes out and it's like, oh, my old one's working
just fine. It still streams Netflix, still does whatever you

(29:30):
need to do. And so that's why it's kind of
one of these things kind of similar to the Apple Watch.
It's like you upgrade when you need it, you know,
if it breaks or if there's a new feature that
you have to have. Now, the new feature here is
Wi Fi six. Wi Fi six is you know, it
might work in the further recesses of your home, it
might stream faster, it might buffer less, but you have

(29:51):
to have a Wi Fi six compatible streamer. And I'm
looking at a review here for Mashable, by the way,
so that's basically the new feature. It's all also a
little bit faster. It's got a quad core processor, two
gigs of rams, so supposedly it's forty percent faster than
the previous four K model. So this reviewer says that
it does of as they say, hums along beautifully, So

(30:15):
that's nice. The UI, you know, all the fire sticks
got the UI, and again you know doubles as a
gaming stick. But are people really playing the Amazon games
just yet? I'm not sure. But the reality is, if
you need a new fire stick, fifty five bucks is
pretty inexpensive. Yes, it's a little bit more than some
of the other Roku sticks out there that are like

(30:36):
twenty twenty or thirty dollars, and even some of the
cheaper fire sticks out there, but I would go with
the most expensive firestick you can get because these are
the kind of things that you keep for a few years.
They're cheap to begin with, at fifty five dollars. Buy
them on a day when they go on sale, which
is you know, Black Friday's coming up, or any day
that Amazon, you know, just do a price watch on

(30:57):
these things. All of Amazon's first party electronics that they
make go on sale, and so I would definitely just
do a watch on those. But the other thing is
that fifty five dollars you can save. The offer I
got was they said, if you trade in one of
your old fire sticks, you'll save twenty percent. So right there,
you can save a little bit more than ten bucks

(31:19):
if you want to, you know, trade in one of
your old sticks, which you probably would, you know, wouldn't
mind doing. And in fact, I've got a couple sitting
around here because I purchased almost all of them over
the years. So just trade in one of the oldest
the oldest one gets traded in, and you save twenty percent.
That's a pretty pretty simple deal. But anyway, fire TV
stick four K, the new one is available now. It's

(31:40):
been a couple of years since they updated it. So
if it's been a couple years since you upgraded, you
feel like you're just getting a little slow. You want
that new remote control with the voice Alexa voice on it,
go ahead and give it the old upgrade. I do
like the Fire TV stick. I think it's the one
I recommend, I think for most people because it just
does everything and it's I like it slightly better than Roku. Obviously,

(32:03):
Apple TV is nice, but it's so expensive, and the
Google Chrome Cast is nice. But I feel like there's
definitely more progress behind the Fire platform or the Fire
TV platform. I should say all right, Tye says, Hey, Rich,
this might be a stupid question. I was going to
change my ISP from Frontier FiOS to Spectrum since I'll
be moving. I've read that fiber optic is faster than cable,

(32:27):
and I was told that Frontier will no longer offer
FiOS to new customers. Should I keep Frontier FiOS for speed?
Love your tech reports? Thanks tie Well. I hadn't heard
that Frontier is no longer offering FiOS to new customers.
That's news to me. That's interesting because I saw commercials
for Frontier like as of a couple of weeks ago.
But your question is should I change my ISP to Spectrum.

(32:49):
So it really comes down to the speed and the price.
I think when it comes to Internet, I've got a
gigabit connection here, which is a thousand down, a thousand up,
and honestly, my life is not that much different than
when I had a four hundred megabit connection. So is
it slightly faster sometimes? Yes? Is it fully noticeable every

(33:09):
single thing I do in my house? No? Now, the
one thing that I think is the big differentiator here
besides the price, I mean would I would go on
price first, because Spectrum standard is four hundred, Frontier is
either five hundred or one thousand, and I would go
by price. So whoever gives you the better price, just
go with because that both of those speeds are going
to be just fine for anything that you need to

(33:30):
do in the house. Now, the big difference is the
up the upload speed. So when you upload on a
Spectrum versus Frontier, Frontier is going to be the same
speed up and down. So if you're getting five hundred down,
it's most likely five hundred up. And if you're uploading
large video files, you will notice the difference there. Now,

(33:51):
Spectrum sneaky sneaky, They don't mention the upload speeds almost anywhere,
it's always a four hundred download speed, and so the
UP I think last I checked was like thirty five.
Maybe they've changed that, but that's basically it now. To
their defense, they're saving bandwidth on the other side, because
they know people want faster downloads than uploads ninety nine

(34:11):
point nine percent of the time, unless you're someone like
me or a creator, or someone who's exchanging large video
files on a daily basis like myself. And so for
that reason, if you have any sort of job where
you need the upload speeds to be really fast, I
would consider sticking with Spectrum with a FiOS otherwise, Spectrum,
I think will be just fine. But in the big
scheme of things, I think that you go with whoever's cheaper,

(34:34):
and those prices do kind of expire after a year
or two, so you can always swap after that. One
Password has a new feature where you can securely share
your password with anyone and even if they don't use
one password. But this feature is only for one password users.
So I thought at first maybe you could share it

(34:55):
like through a web aapp, but no, you have to
be a one password customer. And the company says in
a blog post that they know. A lot of people
share passwords for things like streaming services and whatever, and
we've all shared a password with someone, right, And what
you do is you typically text it to them or
you send it in the email. All these very insecure
ways of moving information, especially a password. So now this

(35:17):
is a link that you generate and the link can
expire in thirty days, fourteen days, one day, or one hour,
or even after one person views it. Now that doesn't
keep them from taking a screen shot or anything like that,
but yes, you can do this. It is a little
bit more secure. And again they can copy the screenshot

(35:37):
or a screenshot or copy it and write it down
somewhere else. Doesn't keep them from doing that, but it's
just one more way of making it a little bit
more safe to share a password with someone. And then
you can also change the password right after they use it.
You're not sharing the original item in one password, you're
sharing a copy of the original item, so it's kind

(35:58):
of a snapshot, so they want to make that clear.
That's in bold. But you also get an activity log
as the owner, so you can see the name of
the shared item, who shared it, along their IP address,
the day and time when the link expires, the email address,
how many times the recipient viewed it, and the IP
address of the recipient who viewed it. So it's kind
of a cool feature. I think that it's I don't know.

(36:21):
I mean, people, look, people are still going to share
the same old way they share over and over. People
are still going to have weak passwords over and over.
I don't understand why people don't get the message to
stop using terrible passwords, stop using the same password over
and over, and stop sharing common passwords with your friends
and family, because all these things just lead into the

(36:45):
fact that if something gets hacked, like you know, today
we heard about Visible getting hacked, and Visible did not
actually get hacked, so to say, like they didn't figure
out people's email addresses. It was really social engineering. These
hackers found a bunch of passwords on line and user names,
and they said, wonder if they'll work Invisible, And sure enough,

(37:05):
they went over there and a whole bunch of them worked.
Because guess what, people use the same email address and
password across a bunch of websites and if you do that,
you're putting yourself at major risk. Let me say that again.
If you're using the same password across multiple websites. You're
putting yourself at major risk Because I get these things

(37:26):
all the time. I get email notifications from this monitoring
service I have for identity monitoring, and it's like, rich,
your information has been found on the open web. And
just this week it was everything my name, my address,
my phone number, my email address, passwords. I mean, it's like,
if you're in this came from a website that I

(37:46):
signed up for and ordered something from one time, and
now they were breached, and now my information is everywhere
on the open Web for people to find. And that
really is not fun. And as soon as this happens,
what do you think happens next thing? No, I start
getting a whole bunch of emails in my inbox. You
know with spam that you can tell is all based

(38:08):
on the fact that a fresh email just made its
way into the spammer's hands or the hackers hands, And
so the reality is you can't really recall that information.
But if you have unique passwords on every website, sure
they can get that password, but it's going to look
like gobbledegook to any other pass to any other website.
And you don't want your Amazon password out there. You

(38:30):
don't want your cell phone password out there. You don't
want your email password, you don't want your bank password,
you don't want your credit card password. Make these things different.
If at the very least you just make your core
passwords different, that's the best I can ask right now.
I don't think you should be re using the same
password for anything, but you know, that's just the reality is.

(38:50):
It's a lot to ask of people. They don't want
to use these password managers. It's too much work, it's
too much effort, too much energy. But this is your information.
You don't want a breach. Believe me, they're not fun.
So change those passwords and make sure that you're not
using the same one across various websites. Roy says, Hey, Rich,

(39:11):
if I delete a photo for my Google Photos, will
it automatically delete from my iCloud photo library. Thank you
for your help. Roy. So there's a lot of confusion
about how iCloud photo Library works because it's kind of
built into the iPhone, And it's one more reason I
don't really like to use it, because I like things
that I understand, and I'll be honest, I'm a tech expert.
Or a tech I guess I like told myself a

(39:33):
tech enthusiast. But I'll be honest, I'm a tech enthusiast
and I don't understand how iCloud Photo Library works. Now
I get it, I get how it will. Okay, yes,
I understand how it works. But it's too complicated because
this happens to so many people. They don't realize that
when you delete a photo off your iPhone, you're not
just saving the space on your iPhone. You're going in

(39:54):
and you're that photo is linked to the cloud and
next thing you know, it's getting deleted from my cloud.
So yes, there are times when deleting a Google Photos,
we'll delete it from your iCloud photolibrary. And let me
explain when that happens. When you delete in Google Photos.
There is a Google Photos app for your iPhone. If

(40:14):
you are inside that app and you delete a photo
that is also stored on your phone, it will say
would you like us to also delete this picture off
your phone? And if you say yes to that, yes,
it will delete from the iCloud photolibrary to keep that
from happening. To delete it just from Google Photos and
not from your iCloud photolibrary, which by the way, will
get really confusing very fast. You want to go to

(40:37):
Google Photos on the web, which is photos dot Google
dot com, and if you delete a picture from there,
it has no way of knowing if it's linked up
to the picture on your phone, because it's not on
your iPhone. So go to a web browser on a
computer and do it from there, and then you can
prune your collection that way and it will not affect
your iCloud photolibrary. Now, the way I do stuff like

(41:00):
this is since I'm a perpetual tester, I will always
test things out before I actually do them in a
big way. So what I would do is I would
take a picture of something I recognize. I would take
two or three, and you know, fresh new pictures that
are on my iPhone, and then I would go ahead
and delete them in various ways. I would go into
Google Photos and delete it. Then I would on my phone.

(41:22):
Then I would go into my iCloud photo library on
my phone and delete it there and see if it
deletes from Google Photos. And then I would go into
Google Photos on the web and see if it deletes
it from my phone. And you will find that each
one of those will do something slightly different. So Roy,
good question. I know it's confusing, but hopefully that helped
you out. All right. I got a couple of folks

(41:45):
saying they want me to talk more about electric cars
in this podcast, which I will definitely do. I still absolutely,
one hundred percent, love, love, love my Tesla, best thing
I've ever purchased. I can't believe they raised the price
by two thousand dollars on my car. So I bought
it just in time because I really would have felt
I honestly, if they raised the price by two grand

(42:07):
when I was still contemplating buying it, it probably would
have put my purchase off by another six months to
a year because I would have been like, oh, I mean,
we're seeing inflation across various parts of the economy, and
you know, cars. I don't know what made Tesla raise
the price by two grand, but it just seems like
everything is sort of being raised right now because now

(42:30):
parts are more expensive, they're harder to get, and so
Tesla is kind of known for raising prices and also
lowering them when appropriate. But yeah, that happened, and I
was kind of angry that well, I was angry, but
I was also relieved that I actually got the car
before that price went up, so I still love it.
I'm trying to think there's anything new. There's a couple

(42:51):
of things I would like to change, especially with the software.
Like I'm so surprised that there's not a button on
the console, like on the big screen for voice assistant
like you would now maybe they just want you to
use the button on your steering wheel because that's safer
and you're not touching as many things, but that's like
to me, it's kind of a no brainer to have
a voice activation either, even like a Hey, Tesla would

(43:14):
be nice, which I'm just surprised they don't have. The
other thing that I don't particularly like is the way
music is handled. I like that you can use Spotify,
but the way that the music it's tough to explain
if you have a Tesla, but the music selector there's
like a button that you press for music to come up.
But then when you have there's like three levels of

(43:34):
how it's how big it is on the screen, almost
like a Windows application. So if you press it once,
then you have to swipe up to bring it bigger,
and then swipe up to bring it even bigger. Then
you swipe down to bring it medium, and then swipe
it down to make it a small player, and then
you can get rid of it all completely. It is
way too many steps to be fiddling with while you're
trying to figure out music on your car. So what

(43:56):
I think Tesla should do is they should allow you
in the settings to set your defaults, so if you
to me, I always want a mini player underneath my maps.
So what I want is I want two things. I
want a mini player and I want the big full screen.
Because of full screen, I'm selecting what I'm gonna listen to,
and then as soon as I'm done with that, I
want to just minimize it to the mini player. Those

(44:17):
are the two things I want. Maybe someone else wants
favorites and then the mini player, or maybe they want
favorites and the big screen. I don't know, or maybe
they want no player and then the favorites, or they
want no player plus the big screen. There's like twenty
five different combinations, and Tesla should allow us to choose
which one we want when we tap the little music
button once twice three times to cycle through that. But

(44:40):
those are small, small things, because overall I love, love,
love the car, and I love the idea that I'm
starting out like pretty much every day with a full
tank of gas. That's just like our electricity. But it's
such a weird concept that I just absolutely love. And
it makes you realize how the miles you drive in
a day, like I can tell you like the average
miles I drive in a day, Like I never knew
that before because now I'm watching like the mileage every day.

(45:03):
I say this all because GM and not so much
of a good place with the Chevy Bolt. And this
is really a black eye for Chevy with this bolt,
because they put so much effort and energy and it's
a cool little car. I've test driven it several times
and I really like it. I ended up not going
with a Chevy Bolt because I felt like it was
just a very it was too similar to the other

(45:25):
Cheves out there, and I just felt like I wanted
something totally different. But anyway, Chevy has to replace the
batteries and a bunch of these Chevy Bolts. According to
tech Crunch, the replacement batteries have started shipping to dealers.
Vehicles will be prioritized according to when they were made,
and then the replacement process should take about two days.

(45:48):
The new batteries come with an eight year or one
hundred thousand mile limited warranty, and there's also going to
be diagnostic software that dealers can use to check to
see if your car is okay and all so monitor
the battery. So I guess every time you bring in
for some sort of service, they'll say, like, Okay, your
battery's looking okay. There's two manufacturing defects. And I can

(46:08):
tell you having been inside the battery manufacturing plant in Volkswagen,
it's a Tennessee plant. I mean, I gotta tell you,
I'm amazed that these batteries can last one hundred thousand
miles with the intricacies of how they're put together, since
there's so many different parts and they start out as

(46:28):
so many different cells that are then all fused together
with wires and you know, I mean, it's just it's
quite the process. It's not just like one giant like battery.
It's like a whole bunch of little battery cells that
they link together to make this big battery. And I
asked Volkswagen, I said, you know, if one of these
cells ever went bad, is there could you ever replace

(46:50):
the cell and they said, yeah, they actually could. So
it's clearly a process to do this and something that
GM does not want to do, but they have to,
especially because some of these drivers were recommended to park
their vehicles away from their home in case of a
fire and also don't park within fifty feet of other vehicles,

(47:11):
which is really scary. So, I mean, I don't know
if those were official things or just kind of recommendations,
but GM is supposed to is probably going to spend
about almost two billion dollars, which part of that is
going to be from LGKM, which made these batteries apparently,
or help them make these batteries. But wow, it's just
one of these things that you know, I'm giving you

(47:32):
the full story, but in mainstream news that people are
just going to read the headlines or hear about it.
They just know that the bolt batteries light on fire,
and that's not a good thing. That's horrible. It reminds
me of the situation with Samsung with the with their
note phones. Now they've gotten over that. Yes, people still
buy Samsung's, but the reality is, for a while, it
was the butt of the joke all the time. Was
the Samsung battery, and so you don't want the wind

(47:56):
to be knocked out of your sales at this point, GM,
because you know, these electric cars are really starting to
take off in a big way. Coming from someone who
just bought one and is in Los Angeles, so maybe
not so much of the rest of the US, but
they are. The momentum is behind them, and to see
this kind of thing happen, it's just not good for

(48:16):
the entire situation. Coming from someone who just loves, loves,
loves evs now, it's just not good. Okay. Riley says,
Hey rich through Instagram at rich on Tech, do you
have any RECs on apps to track or organize streaming
shows you watched? I can never remember what show is
on what service and the episode drop dates. Thank you. Yes,

(48:39):
I have the perfect app for this. It is called
Real Good r E E L g oo D. It
is what I use. It is fantastic. You can choose
your streaming services to not only see what's new on there,
but you can also keep track of shows. It will
help you even mark off each episode that you've watched,
and you can keep track of the movies you want

(49:00):
to see on there, and you can sort them in
different ways. So every time I get a recommendation for
a movie or a TV show, it goes on my
real good list. And not only does it tell me
when it's available, I can sort it by like popularity,
by recent by whatever. I mean. There's a whole bunch
of ways to sort and slice and dice, and so
it is. I think it's the best one that I found,

(49:22):
and I think that it's just a really handy thing
to have. Now, there's lots of other ways you can
do it. You can do it in Apple TV, the
Apple It's so confusing because Apple. You've got Apple TV
and then Apple TV Plus, and then you've got Apple
So you go, okay, Actually you have Apple TV, the
physical device that sits under your TV. Then you have
the Apple TV app, which is also on your TV,

(49:44):
but it's also on your phone. Then you have Apple
TV Plus, which is a streaming service that is available
across various devices. Now, the Apple TV app is the
one that you can actually use to keep track of
things that you want to watch, and that is your
or I think they call it the up next list
or something like that, and you can also search just

(50:04):
to see when things are available. And what services they're on.
I don't think it's as good as Real Good, but
it'll it'll do something similar. The other thing you can
do if you're on Android is the Android Let's see
what is it called. It's called Google TV. I think
it's called on the the app. It used to be
Google play Watch or something like that or Google I

(50:27):
don't know. See it's a little app that you used
to let you watch videos on your iPhone on your
Android side of things. I can't remember what they changed
the name. I think it's just Google TV now. But anyway,
that app has a way of searching for, you know,
stuff that you want to watch. It'll show you when
it's available, and then it has a bookmarking feature called
what to watch or no watch list, and you can

(50:49):
set that up now. I set that up as well.
But I do think that Real Good, since it's platform agnostic,
it works on iPhone and Android, and it's free, is
definitely your best option overall. There are other apps as well.
There's one called just Watch which does something similar, but
I find that Real Good has the look and feel
that I like, and so definitely check that out. Website

(51:11):
called Redact Dot Photo I thought was pretty cool. Sometimes
you want to share something online or on Twitter or whatever,
and there's just something in it that you don't really
want displayed, like a username, or you know, could be
just some sort of private information, and you can do
the thing where you scribble it out on the iPhone,
but that doesn't always work, and some people say that

(51:33):
you can actually remove that somehow. But I found this
website on a product hunt. It's called Redact dot Photo.
I've been using Skitch for a long time, but it's
not supported anymore. It doesn't seem to be new, but
it's still on my phone, so it works. But this
is very similar. It works in the browser. You drag
and drop a photo and then all you have to
do is drag and drop wherever you want to redact

(51:55):
some of the information on the photo. And the person
who coded this app says every thing happens in browser.
They don't upload any data, and it's all free, and
it's actually really cool. It's really useful. I'm gonna start
using this to redact stuff. You can do some simple
cropping and rotating, but the most important thing is that
you can literally get something blurred out in a picture

(52:18):
very very quickly. If you need it, and we've all
needed that sometimes. Website again is redact dot photo. I
will put it in the show notes, all right. That
sound means it's gonna do it for the end of
this That's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer,
just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash
rich on tech. Hit the big blue send email button. Also,

(52:41):
I would love it if you would rate and review
this podcast. Write a quick line about what you like
to help other people know why they should listen. Just
go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech.
You can find me on all social media at rich
on Tech and no matter where you live in the US,
can download the free KTLA plus on plus app on Apple, TV,

(53:04):
Fire TV, and Roku. Then once you're there, scroll to
the tech section and watch all of my tech TV
segments my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro.
Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
you can spend an hour of your time. I mean,
I know most of it's probably spent watching squid Game,
which I've not watched, but I do appreciate you spending

(53:26):
it with me. I'll talk to you real soon.