Pixel 6 and new MacBook Pro models unveiled

Google finally reveals exact details on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro; Apple unwraps powerful new MacBook Pro models, 3rd generation AirPods and more; Samsung takes the wraps off a Bespoke edition of the Flip3; Bitcoin goes wild thanks to Wall Street.Listeners ask about the iPad Mini "jelly roll" issue, whether to buy AirPods 3rd gen or Pro, if the iPhone X will stop working in December 2021, how to take smooth walking video on a smartphone, adding tablets to an SUV, a recommendation for a good photo scanning app and if the Muama Portable Wireless Router is legit.LinksFollow Rich on Social Media!Google Pixel 6M1 MacBook Pro'sMacBook system reset in MontereyAirPods 3rd genHomePod Mini in colorSiri Apple Music PlanSamsung BespokeBitcoin crazinessRich's favorite smartphone gripCar tablet headrest holderPhoto scanning app from GooglePhoto scanning app from PhotomyneMobile hotspot Rich likesSee 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 (00:10):
Google unveils the Pixel six and the Pixel six Pro.
Apple on veils new MacBook pros and new AirPods and more.
Samsung on veils new colors for its flip phone. Plus
Your tech questions Answered.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I Richdemiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast
where I talk about the tech stuff I.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Think you should know about.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's also the place right answer the questions that you
send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
in Los Angeles. Welcome to the folks watching on Facebook
Live right now. Sometimes I do it on Facebook Live,
Sometimes I don't. It just depends how I'm feeling that day.
If I'm inspired to put it on Facebook, I will.

(00:52):
But a lot of people when they're watching on Facebook
are like, what's going on here? Like what's this guy
talking about? Like who's this guy in my feed? So
it happens. So a couple things this week, Big big
tech week. Oh my gosh, so many events. We had
an event on Monday for Apple Virtual of course, and
we had an event on Tuesday for what was the

(01:14):
second one? Then it was Google, and then the third
one was Samsung.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Not so much. I'll be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I didn't really have to tune into that one because
I kind of knew what it was and it's interesting,
but it's not as groundbreaking as the gadgets we saw
from the other ones. But I did do something fun
over the weekend. I went to Irvine, California. If you've
never been, I highly recommend. It's a totally underrated place.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I mean, it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
It's like, actually like number eleven best place to live
in America. And I've been trying to convince my wife
to move there, but she won't have it. She's from La,
so she wants to stay in the La proper. But
it is so nice. It's so clean, everything's so new.
They actually have a lot of tech companies down there.
We went to a place near the Irvine Spectrum Mall,

(02:02):
which is it was like a family reunion kind of thing.
So we're meeting up with a bunch of people. We
all stay at the Marriott. It was fantastic. If you've
listened to me on the show, I don't know I've
ever talked about this, but I've always been a Hilton
person and I've always pooh pooed Marriotts. I don't know
why the Marriotte was so nice and it was like
just a basic hotel, and so now I think I
got to switch my allegiances to the Marriott. But I

(02:25):
try not to play the points game too much. I
really don't because I don't want to get like suckered
into like all these different little schemes that these marketers
do with the points. So I do try to like
stay I got. I did get suckered in with Hilton.
But anyway, long story short, Marriott was nice, Irvine was nice.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
And over the.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Weekend I tested out these ray band stories. These are
sunglasses from ray Ban and Facebook, and they have little
cameras in them and they allow you to record things
as you walk around. You can record video, you can
take pictures. And I had a blast with these things
testing them out. I've got some thoughts. I'll put them
in a future TV segment, But the bottom line is

(03:06):
these sunglasses have gotten so close to actual just regular
sunglasses that you can put on and kind of forget
that there's a camera in there except for battery life
and transferring all the pictures. That it is a very
compelling new way to capture video and pictures. And I
don't know if it's there just yet, but I will
say it's pretty phenomenal what they were able to do

(03:28):
in a form factor that is pretty much typical sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
They're just a little bit thicker on the edges. But
I had a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
The one thing I noticed about that is that I
bounce around a lot, like when I walk, your video
is going to be very shaky. And you also look
around a lot in different places. So when you do that,
your video is just kind of all over the place.
So it kind of it takes a bit to realize
that you're taking a video and you should stay in
one place. But that was really cool. Let's just get
into the top story of the week. I guess this

(03:59):
debate what the top story is. It could be the pixel,
it could be the MacBooks. But because the pixel, well
I don't know. I'm gonna start with with Google because
I've been talking about this on the podcast for so long.
How I can't wait to switch to this pixel? And
I got to say number one, I'm just gonna get
this out there. Google really just kind of like threw
me under the bus with this. I don't know why.

(04:20):
I don't know what I did to Google. I don't
know what I said, maybe my last review of the
I need to look at my review of the Pixel
five and see what I said, because they just exed me.
They did not communicate with me about this press conference.
They did not send me anything. They did not send
me the phones to review. And when I say they

(04:42):
didn't send me the phones to review, I'm not kidding.
They sent a pair of Pixels to every single person
that has a YouTube account. It seems so every single
person that I see on my Twitter timeline has a
gift from Google. Thank you Pixel, Thank you Pixel, Thank
you Google. I mean, people that don't even review review phones,
people that have never even used a Pixel are getting these.

(05:03):
They're given them out like candy. And here me, someone
who runs a national tech segment, did not get one
to review for it. Now I had to ask them
and they are like, well, well, we'll look at your
request and see what we think and get back to you.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
And this was a phone that I actually wanted to
purchase for myself to buy as my new phone. But
now I'm not so sure because I'm like, what's Google
hiding here? Okay, here's what I said. Google's latest Pixel smartphones,
excellent camera and a decent price, but not as exciting
as competitors, So I think that's pretty fair. And then

(05:39):
I went through and kind of like, you know, talked
about the rest of this stuff. I mean, I even
said I would recommend the four A five G for
most people at five hundred bucks. So I don't know anyway,
So that's besides the point. Let's talk about what the
Pixel is all about. You know, the Pixel is all
about a great camera, great software. But now Google is
adding their own profit cesser into the mix. They call

(06:01):
it Tensor, and they're saying it's going to be much
more powerful this time around. And that was really what
was lacking in the Pixels of years past, is that
it never felt like a very powerful phone. In fact,
they admitted it in their keynote. They said, we always
built the software around basically not very good hardware, like
low powered hardware, and now, for the first time, we

(06:22):
get to build software around high powered hardware, and it
just opens up a whole bunch of stuff. So Number one,
the prices on these phones are pretty amazing. Six hundred
bucks for the standard one and then nine hundred for
the Pro, which has a bigger screen, faster refresh rate.
But the camera set up is pretty identical, except the
Pro has a zoom camera whereas the standard one does not,

(06:43):
and it's got this weird design They call it a
camera bar, but it's just as weird, like shelf on
the back of the phone for the camera.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I think it's kind of odd.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
I like much more symmetrical phones, and I also don't
like phones where the edges taper off, so I've gotten
really used to how the iPhone has a nice blocky
feel these days, and I think it's like the perfect
phone design. So I'm not sure that I'll like this
design even so. There Google, They say the Pixel six
Pro is inspired by the finishes you see in luxury

(07:11):
jewelry and watches. They do kind of a fun thing
with some of the colors, you know, it's got Android
twelve on it, and this big thing about material you
where it kind of like matches the whole theme of
the phone to your wallpaper. That is not a selling
point to me, but it's cool. They've also extended the
security support update to five years now. That's a pretty

(07:34):
big win in my book, because that means if you
purchase this phone, you can pretty much use this thing
for five years. If you're a casual, average user that
just wants a nice phone that takes great pictures. Five years,
that's do the math. That's a great investment. It says
they capture one hundred and fifty percent more light compared
to the Pixel five, four times optical zoom up to

(07:54):
twenty times zoom with their super res The front camera
records four K video. It's got this magic eraser feature
that automatically deletes things from your pictures. It's got various
modes to like help you take pictures of your kids
without them, you know, having blurry faces or whatever. They
also tweak the camera so that it gets appropriate and

(08:14):
proper skin tones for all skin types, not just one
group of people.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
So that's nice.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Let's see what else. Pixel six oh improves speech recognition.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
This is big.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know, Google's done a lot of work with AI
when it comes to speech recognition, Google Translate, so a
lot of that is built into this. And we know
that the voice recognition on Android is way better than
the voice recognition on iPhone. Now, it's gotten a lot
better on iPhone over the past couple of years. I'll
give it that but Siri absolutely cannot handle anything very

(08:48):
complex proper names business names. Google takes a lot of
different cues from like let's say you say you want
to call business. It will look at like where you're
located and know that if you say Al's car shop,
it knows that you want the Al's car shop near
you wherever you are, and not just some random place
like I've asked serious stuff and she'll find stuff like

(09:08):
thousands of miles away that makes no sense.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Maybe it's gotten a little better.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
It also has all the Google smarts, like for phone calls,
like it'll tell you how long to wait or wait
times are at a big business before you call. It
will decode phone trees on your phone screen so that
if it says tap one for this, tap two for that,
it'll show that on your screen. It's got a lot
of live translate features which work in I know, Japanese
and a couple other languages offline, which is really oh, English, French, German, Italian,

(09:40):
and Japanese. So that's really cool. You can get all
those language interpretations done even offline, which is really nice
in some cases, like the first time I ever went
to Japan, what a nightmare. It was because my phone
didn't work and everything was just tough. And nowadays everything
works everywhere that I've seen and been. But anyway, but

(10:01):
the translation stuff is pretty.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Nice, all right.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
So six hundred dollars for the standard, nine hundred for
the pro. They're in stores on October twenty eighth. I'll
probably just walk over to Target and pick up one
of these things. Even if I don't end up keeping it,
I can always give it to my mom because she's
a Pixel user and I usually get her a pixel anyway,
So if I hate this thing, I'll just give it
to her. But I always like to have an Android

(10:24):
phone to use, and I think that this phone's gonna
be great. Right now, they have this weird embargo going
with all the people that they sent the phone to
that where they can't show pictures from the phone. So
this is a phone that's known for amazing pictures, and
Google told all ten thousand people that it sent free
phones to don't post any pictures from this phone. That's weird.

(10:46):
Why did they do that, I don't know. So October
twenty eighth will get it in stores, and we'll probably
get a better idea once the embargo lifts and people
can actually post stuff from.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
This phone and about this phone.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
All right, let's get to the first question of the day.
Susie says, I recently read an article that the much
anticipated iPad Mini six has a jelly roll screen issue.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Sounds delicious to me.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
The article also indicated that Apple has no plans to
fix the problem, probably because it's not a problem. I
also really enjoy having a per size iPad that I
can carry with me. But I'm gonna quandary over purchasing
this device with a known scrolling problem. My Mini four
is exhibiting some issues, and I don't know how much
longer it can perform. What would you suggest making the

(11:32):
purchase waiting alternative device. Thank you for any help you
can offer, Susie, And Vice Salia, Vice Salia. I was
just there in Vice Salia, Susie, I could have said
hi and answered your question in person. Susie, here's my
thoughts on this. Just ignore the jelly roll issue. I
doubt it's a big deal. I just it's one of

(11:53):
these things where let me see what so I mean,
it's one of these things where who came.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Up with it?

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Okay, so, where did the jelly roll, so it can
it originated. Okay, the issue was not mentioned in any
iPad reviews, according to Eymore, but it was first reported
by The Verge, and then Reddit has latched on and
saying there's a bunch of people who you know, experience
the same issue. And let me look at the Reddit

(12:22):
comments real quick, ninety four comments. So I think, Susie,
this is a whole bunch of don't worry about it.
It's not a big issue. Now here's my recommendation. Go
to the Apple Store. You can pick up one of
these little iPad minis and feel it and go to
a website that you would typically go to. Go to
a website with a long article, scroll through.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
The jelly effect.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
The jelly roll effect is like when they said, like
one side of the screen kind of goes up and
it looks like it's advancing faster than the other side.
I don't we've heard about this before with all kinds
of phones, but I think at the end of the day,
it's maybe people getting used to a new display.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
But the reality is you can go into the Apple Store,
go to a bunch of websites, play with this thing.
See if you notice anything. If you don't notice anything,
you're gonna be just fine. I'm sure this. I'm not
one hundred percent sure because sometimes with Apple stuff comes
out later and later, but I have a feeling that
it will probably be just fine. So I say, go

(13:20):
get the iPad Mini. I've got my eyes on one
of these things. I'd like to get one as well.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
They're so nice.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
I went too the Apple Store at the Irvine Spectrum
and it was just it's so amazing that it's just
how lively the Apple Store is. You go into any
other store in the mall and yeah, there's a couple
of people here and there or whatever, but you go
into the Apple Store and it's just like alive. There's
so many people and they're all doing something, and there's
so many people there to help you. We went into
Chipotle last night and for dinner, which, by the way,

(13:49):
the brisket was delicious, and I've wanted to try that
for a while. But I'm telling you, the place was
like it felt like I was on life it was
on life support. There's like three people working the entire place.
And I mean, we've seen this over and over with
a lot of places where it's just tough to get
help right now, but the Apple store doesn't have that problem.
There were so many people everywhere I turned, Hey can

(14:10):
I help you?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I
help you?

Speaker 2 (14:13):
And I'm like, Wow, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Okay, so let's talk about the MacBook pros. These are
the new highly anticipated computers. I know, just speaking for
myself because I want to get one. But I was
waiting for the M one chip to come out on
when I bought my MacBook Pro, but it didn't. So
I'm glad I didn't wait, because it was like two
years ago that I bought this computer. I would have

(14:36):
been waiting a long time. But now they've got the
MacBook Pro fourteen and sixteen inch. They've got two new processors,
the M one Pro and the M one Max. And
bottom line, I'm not going to spend a whole bunch
of time on specs, but these are processors that Apple
has ditched Intel to make their own processors. They started
with the M one last year and it got great reviews.

(14:58):
People went nuts over it. Now they're coming out with
even higher, higher end versions of this processor, the Pro
and the Max, which supposedly are gonna be even better,
and I'm sure they are, because I don't think there's
one reviewer that didn't say the M one was amazing.
So the fourteen and sixteen inch MacBook Pros, they've got
a new.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Display with a higher refresh rate.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
They've got a FaceTime HD camera, so now the cameras
are actually upgraded, or the camera, I should say. Let's
see what else. It's got a bunch of ports on it.
So you've got Thunderbolt three, Thunderbolt four ports, an SDXC
card slot, HDMI port, and mag Safe three and of
course a headphone jack. And the mag Saf three is

(15:42):
the old mag Safe coming back. So on these laptops.
Apple took everything away in the last couple of years,
and now they've brought it all back, all the features
that the pros wanted, and so I'm glad they listened
to people. Let's see what else. I forgot to mention something.
I've got the ports. Oh yeah, touchbar. Touch bar is gone.
Now this is a feature that I did not I

(16:04):
begrudgingly bought my laptop with the touch bar on it,
and I did not want the touch bar, but to
get the features that I wanted in my computer. I
had to get the touch bar, and so I got it.
I've never used it. It's horrible, and I am so
glad it's gone with real keys now because there was
just no use for it. It didn't make sense for

(16:24):
me to have this thing on my computer. Clearly I
was not I was with a lot of other people.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
On that one.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
That's basically all you need to know about the MacBook pros.
I mean, obviously, if you're gonna get one of these,
you're gonna look into all the dimensions of it and
exactly what it can do and.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
All of the specs.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
But it's two thousand dollars starting price for the fourteen inch,
twenty five hundred for the sixteen inch. And don't forget
that there are education prices on these things, so if
you're a student or you're in that world, you can
get it as low as eighteen fifty for the fourteen
inch and twenty three hundred for the bigger sixteen inch.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
But here's the thing. I don't say this all lightly.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
This is a lot of money, but if you're buying
a pro computer, I call it the money maker, because
this computer is what enables me to make a living
and it's what I use every day.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
I rely on it. It's it's my baby.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
And honestly, I could get a work issued computer if
I wanted, but I don't want it. I want this.
I want to spend my money on this computer because
I can do things my way. I can set it
up the way I like, and I own it.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
And by the.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Way, my computer that I bought two years ago for
probably twenty five hundred bucks or twenty eight hundred dollars,
I don't know how much it was, I need to
look up the receipt I can get about fourteen hundred
dollars for it as a trade in, and so they
hold their value. Now. If I was going to give
this to my son, that would be great, but I
think this is a little bit too powerful for a
ten year old. I don't think he needs this. I
was going to hand down my computer to him. He

(17:52):
can hand down his computer to my littler kid, but
I feel like we don't need to do that right
now because it's computer. Plus, I kind of just want
the fourteen hundred bucks towards the new one because I'm
looking at spending a lot of money here in the
next couple weeks, but that's it. Those are coming out
on Tuesday, October twenty sixth.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
If you've got by the way, the.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Battery life on these things are amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
The one downside is the notch in the display.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
I love how Apple spins it. They say the display
features even thinner borders and extends up around the camera.
They don't say notch to provide users with even more
room for their content. Oh Apple, it's a positive thing
that you added this weird looking notch. So they said
they work with developers to try to make the top

(18:36):
area more for like the menu and all your little
icons and stuff, which they did. But still it's just
kind of funny. Like people give the notch a hard
time on the iPhone, now they can give the notch
a hard time on the on the laptops as well.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Oh, the one thing if you want to know is
mac os Monterey will be available as a free software
download on Monday, October twenty fifth, and so I will
be updating my computer on Monday. And there's a reason
for that, and I'll get into it later in the podcast.
All right, uh, Saban says, hey currently using AirPods one.

(19:14):
Now I want to get the new ones, but the
third generation doesn't have noise cancelation.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
What do you recommend?

Speaker 1 (19:18):
AirPods three or AirPods Pro? Price doesn't matter which ones
are better? Sent from my iPhone.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Oh you know what, I will.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Actually go into my story about the h the AirPods.
I didn't realize this question was about the AirPods, So
let's talk about the new AirPods. This is also what
Apple introduced. The new AirPods now look just like the
AirPods Pro, but they don't have those little rubber tips
on them.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
And they don't seal up your ears.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
And the design is just a little bit different. They
look like kind of like mini pros, but they're really
nice looking, and they've got some new features including adaptive VQ,
spatial audio, and dynamic head tracking. And if you have not,
if you have not experienced spatial audio or dynamic head tracking,
it's pretty darn cool. So those are new features that

(20:03):
are really nice on these. Also, they're sweat and water resistant,
which is kind of funny because how many people in
the world have used their AirPods while working out and
never had a problem or in the rain or something
maybe in the rain, but working out, I mean sweat.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Come on, I've so many people use these.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
My wife has the regular AirPods that don't you know,
and she's never had a problem. But anyway, we've got
that new feature. And then the case. This is something
that's interesting. The case is also water resistant. It's ipx four,
which is not like the biggest in the world, but
it's good, which means if you drop your case and
like a puddle, it's not going to totally short out
your air pods, which is nice. They also have this

(20:44):
four sensor on the stem, which I'm not a big
fan of, but it's just how it is.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
That's how the AirPods Pro are. You get a lot of.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Battery life six hours listening time and then thirty hours
total with the charging case, which is by the way,
not only wireless charging compatible, so you can put it
on any wireless charger, but you can also put it
on a mag Safe charger, the same one that you
use on your iPhone and it will charge these things up.
So these are the third generation AirPods. It's gonna be
confusing because they look like the AirPods Pro and but

(21:14):
they're not. And so these are just the standard AirPods
now and those are kind of like the main features.
Let me see if I left any features out on
their AirPods. No. Five minutes of charge will give you
an hour of use, which is kind of nice if
you ever like, pick up your AirPods and they're kind
of dead and you want to, you know, go on
a run or something. One hundred and seventy nine dollars,

(21:36):
so not cheap, not cheap at all. One hundred and
eighty dollars. Now they are cheaper than when AirPods first launched.
They were one ninety nine, and so you're getting more
for your money for less. So if you look at
it that way, look on the bright side, you're you're winning. Tuesday,
October twenty sixth is when these come out. So to

(21:56):
answer your question, Saban about AirPods, you want to get
them now? The new ones, the third generation, they do
not have noise cancelation, and I would say, actually, my
preference are the AirPods three because I think the Airpod's
three will feel better in your ears if you don't
like that closed out kind of like when you put

(22:17):
the AirPods pro in, it's like sh you're just like
sealed up, you know what I mean, your air You're
there's nothing getting in your ears, nothing getting out. It's
like a very like underwater feeling that I'm personally not
a fan of, which is why I don't really wear
the AirPods like walking through the airport and stuff, because
it's just not that comfortable for me. But the AirPods three,
I think will be a lot better because they don't

(22:39):
do that. They don't seal out your ears. Now you
do lose the noise cancelation. So if that's important to you,
I would go with the AirPods pro. But otherwise I
think that pretty much that's the big differentiator between these
two devices. And so I think that between those two things,
you know, I mean not gonna it's let's see, I'm

(23:01):
trying to see if I have some information on these
AirPods that are that I can go into a little
bit more depth here.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
But I don't think I do. Yeah, I don't. Let's see,
do I have it right here?

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:15):
I do?

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Okay, So let me just see real quick there's anything
different on these things that would be like a major Okay,
so AirPods pro versus Okay, so they've got the four
sensor active noise cancelation on the Pro. They've both got
the dynamic head tracking and spatial audio. They both have
Adaptive EQ, they both have automatic switching, they both have
auto sharing, they both announced notifications, they both have h SERI,

(23:37):
they both have the Find my Network, the proximity view,
the separation alerts. They do have the The charging is
the same, The ip x four is the same, but
you get the.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Case on the Pro.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
On the AirPods third generation, and you do get a
little bit more listening time on the Airpod's third generation.
So I would say go with AirPods third generation unless
you need the no cancelation. All right, good question. All right,
let's move on to Samsung. This is gonna be real quick,
but Samsung had an event where they announced the Galaxy

(24:10):
Z Flip three Bespoke Edition. The Bespoke Edition. This is
a phone that you can customize the color on. Samsung
says they tested thousands of color options and identified hues
that would perfectly complement each other no matter the combination,
which is handy for a guy like me that cannot
match if my life depended on it. The result is

(24:31):
a palette of forty nine possible color combinations for the
Bespoke edition of the z Flip three, customers can mix
and match to create their own combination. You've got phone
frame options of black or silver, and front and back
colors of blue, yellow, pink, white, or black. You can
also register to replace your device panel with new colors

(24:52):
at Samsung dot com. So that means you can keep
pace with your evolving style. You gotta be really uh,
that's that's that's a bit much. So. The Bespoke Edition
is one thousand, ninety nine. It comes with twelve months
of Samsung Care Plus, which is kind of nice. You're
covered from accidental damage, including a screen replacement, water damage,
and back cover replacement. Could also get up to a

(25:14):
six hundred dollars trading credit. And the regular flip I believe.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Is nine ninety nine. Oh my gosh. This.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
I know all this stuff like the first day it
comes out, and then I forget it like later on
because I just, you know, like I don't have to
remember it.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
So let's see the full Let's see how much is it?

Speaker 1 (25:36):
The z flip three is yeah, nine ninety nine, So
I mean you're paying like one hundred bucks more for
a Bespook edition. All right, let's get to the next
question of the show. Tracy says, is it true that
iPhone X and below will no longer be able to

(25:59):
be used after December twenty twenty one. Now I had
to look this up because I was a little I
was like, wait, is there something I didn't hear about iPhone?
Did I say iPhone X iPhone ten? It's written X,
but it's iPhone ten. So Tracy, I'm gonna give this
a big old hold on. Let me put the volume

(26:20):
up here. Definitely not true. I don't know where you
saw this rumor, but it's not true. If you go
to the iOS fifteen web page, this is when it
tells you all. If you scroll all the way to
the bottom, it will tell you all the phones that
iOS fifteen is supported on, which iOS fifteen just came out.
So if this was true, then the iPhone ten would

(26:44):
not be listed on this page. And by the way,
it is, and a whole bunch of phones before the
iPhone ten are still supported all the way back to
the iPhone's success. And so you've got success, you've got seven,
you've got eight, you've got there's no nine. And then
you've got ten, so you've got, like, I think, at
least two more years, three more years before this phone

(27:08):
is not supported, more like three years. So I don't
think that that's going away anytime soon. But you know,
this is what happens. We see all these rumors and
memes and stuff online, and we you know, it's tough.
There's a lot of misinformation out there. It's just the
reality of kind of like people being able to share
whatever they want, which is great, but it leaves us
to be the fact checkers. And when you scroll through,

(27:30):
it's like I'm scrolling through social media and I'm reading
something and I'm.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Like, is that true? Wait, okay, And.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Then I got to go and search Google and see
and cross checking. All of a sudden, I'm like a
mini like Jeopardy fact checker, you know, and I find
the answer and I'm still not sure sometimes, but the
answer from me is yes, the phone will be fine.
It's not going to be no longer used after December
twenty twenty. And I don't even know where they got

(27:57):
that date from, because Apple doesn't even do anything in December.
They don't like, they don't change anything, they don't release
new software, they don't really do anything, all right. Moving on,
Apple has a new voice only music plan. This is
called the Apple Music Voice Plan, and you save a
whole bunch of money. It's only four ninety nine a month,

(28:19):
which is amazing. Who doesn't want to say fifty percent
off of a standard subscription that's more like nine ninety
nine a month. And by the way, mark my words,
music services have held steady at nine ninety nine a
month for a very long time. So I would not
be surprised if we see them go up in price.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Now.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I'm hoping that doesn't happen, but we've seen a lot
of prices increase lately on all the streaming services, just
in everyday life, and so I would not be surprised
if these streaming music services use this sort of inflation
we're experiencing as a way to sneak in a little
dollar dollar month the upgrade or a dollar monthly increase.

(29:02):
I should say, I'm just saying I don't know, I
have no I've not privy to any information there, but
I just feel like we've been hovering at that. I mean,
Spotify has been out now for I mean many years.
Let's see Spotify launch date July twenty twenty July twenty eleven.
So July twenty eleven, you're talking ten years at nine

(29:23):
to ninety nine a month, I think we might be
seeing a price increase. So I would be careful, just
you know, put that in your budget, but just budget
ahead for you know, the twelve extra dollars for the
year or whatever. If you're like me, you're paying for
all these various services because they're all don't know.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
I won't get into my problems.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Uh. Anyway, So this new service plan is called Apple
Music Voice Plan. You get access to everything. You get
ninety million songs, tens of thousands of playlists, including hundreds
of brand new playlists.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
So what they did was they went through and rewrote.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
All these playlists to say, H SERI play music for
Italian dinner party, or H Siri play some cocktail music,
or H Siri play some music for drinking Margarite's Oh well,
where's my mind? H Siri play some music for working
out there you go, and so she will or Siri

(30:17):
will play you know, the music that's appropriate. So but
you can call out a song. There's a lot of
confusion about this because people thought it was like Pandora
where you can't necessarily say a specific song. You have
to play like kind of a mix. But no, you
can say a specific song you want, but it all
has to be through your voice and you have to
use Siri. And this works on all your different devices
car Play, AirPods, HomePod, whatever, iPhone. But it's five dollars

(30:41):
a month, four ninety nine, and you can't you know,
I kind of pressed Apple on this. I'm like, well,
so I open the app, and what happens. I can't
type in like an artist I want to listen to.
And I don't think I got a straight answer, honestly,
but it sounds like that's the case. Like when the
app will be different, it will be tailored just towards
this voice plan. So we'll see how this works. I mean,

(31:02):
if I was a single plan user, like if I
was just by myself and I just had a music plan,
i'd probably do this because why not for to say
fifty percent of well, I don't know, I do like
browsing playlists, and so that's.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Maybe I wouldn't do this, But I mean, and I
don't actually use a lot of voice commands to play
music because I don't know what I want to listen to.
So a lot of times I'll just open up Spotify
and I will just look through all the different playlists
and like I'll start at a genre, be like workout. Okay,
I've got workout, workout, whatever that is. I've got workout
sunny days, whatever that is. I've got workout motivation, I've

(31:40):
got beast Mode. It took me so long to play
the beast Mode playlist because I think I talked about
this before, but they have this big old muscle guy
on the front, and I was like, well, that's not me.
So clearly this is for like guys in the gym,
like doing like hard weights, right, like lifting all that.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
What do they call it? Not metal?

Speaker 1 (31:58):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Pushing?

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Pumping iron, pumping iron? You know guys like pumping iron.
And I'm like, well, that's just not me.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
I'm more like an Apple fitness guy and like a
runner and a peloton guy. You know, I do like
very easy workouts just to stay in shape, keep the
heart healthy. But you know, I'm not sitting there like
you know, mister muscleman.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
But anyway, so I.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Finally played that playlist and it was awesome, and it's
a really cool playlist. It's called beast Mode, And what
I like about it is that they actually played just
the selects of the songs, like the best parts. So
if you're listening, you know how song like starts slow, Okay,
let's get to the heart of this song. Okay, let's
get to the chorus. Let's get to the better part. Well,
beast Mode kind of like gets right to that part,

(32:40):
which is really nice.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
So that's kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
So I don't know, Siri Apple Music Voice Plan. I
think that a lot of people, especially the dare I
say younger set, will take advantage of this because maybe
they're used to I mean, my kids, I know that everything,
everything is voice with them. And so if if you
want to see where the future is going, hang out
with some kids, hang out with some teenagers, if you

(33:05):
want to see where things are right now, because everyone
is at a different kind of level in their life.
Like my kids grew up with you know, Google all around,
and so they just ask it everything, whereas for me,
like I'd still rather type in my questions unless it's
something that's like super easy to answer, Like they'll ask
very complex questions that I'm like, there's no way that

(33:26):
Google can answer that. And sure enough, if it can't
answer it, like in a simple way to just read
a web page with the answer, I mean, it's pretty
good actually, but there you have it. Did I digress?
Dare I digress? Uh? Let's see Bab says good morning.
Everyone says good morning to me on their emails because

(33:47):
they see me on TV in the early morning, and
that's when they are like, oh, yeah, I should email
that guy and ask him a question.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
What can I get to attach to my iPhone thirteen
pro so when I walk and talk and take videos,
it's smooth.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Thanks so much?

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Actually, on how much I should be thanking you, because
every time you review something, I go out and buy it.
Face plan emoji, crying face happy emoji sent from my iPhone. Babs,
sorry to hear that, and I honestly, I am aware
of that that phenomenon that when I mentioned something, people
purchase it, and so for that reason, I do take

(34:22):
that into consideration with my segments with my Facebook posts.
But the reality is people love cool stuff, and honestly,
it's what resonates the most with people. There's two things
that resonate with people online. Actually three that I post.
Number one is things that are like gadgets, Like any

(34:44):
sort of new gadget that's new and unique. People love
to see it, and they love to see me go on,
go into the nuances of that gadget, so you know,
taking it out of the box, showing you the gadget,
like just going over like what's different, what's new, what's unique,
showing you the ports on it.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
All that stuff, because it just helps you.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Like it's like Home Shopping Network, except like way better
because I'm actually an impartial person. That's just like telling
you about this gadget and what I know about it,
and I'm not trying to sell it to you. I'm
just trying to show you what's out there so that
you know when you buy something like, oh, here's the competition,
here's what's new, here's what's different, Here's what to look
out for, here's the features that set it apart, here's

(35:22):
the pitfalls.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
And so that's number one.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Number two is things that help you, so like tips
And when I wrote my book, this is the inspiration
for my book was actually I wrote a book on
tips for the iPhone. It was actually when I posted
stuff to Facebook. It went viral whenever I would do
like an iPhone tip, and I was like, what, people
don't know how to do this stuff on the iPhone.
You got to be kidding me. And then I realized, like, oh,

(35:47):
there's a whole world of people out there that don't
sit there and think of the iPhone tips for their
entire lives like I do.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
And so I wrote a book about it.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
It was very successful, and that was all based on
tips on you know, Instagram and Facebook. And then the
third thing is family. People love to see personal life.
You know, what I do in my spare time, all
that good stuff. And you know, we're pretty boring. I
mean we you know, we're just a family that just
does normal family stuff. I shouldn't say normal, I should
say typical family stuff, you know, going to the park,

(36:17):
going out to places.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
You know, we do live in LA so there's a
lot of things available and I do get invited to
a decent.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Amount of stuff, So that's fun.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
But anyway, so I like sharing that as well because
I like to inspire people. If they see me go somewhere,
they're like, oh, I should go to that place or
I you know, I'll take my kids on a hike
or whatever. And I love seeing other people doing stuff
so that I get inspired to do it.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Okay, I digress, as I often do on this show.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
So Babs asked what can she attach to her iPhone
thirteen pro to make video smooth? And honestly, my answer
is really nothing. I don't I don't think you need
anything now if.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
You were gonna.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I do video for a living and I've shot entire
stories on my iPhone and that have aired on television,
and honestly, I don't really use a lot of stuff.
I will tell you what I've used in the past.
I've used two things. Number one is a long time ago,
basically just a little handle. It was called the Olo

(37:16):
clip pivot grip and it was just a little tiny
handle that you would attached to your phone and it
just gave you like a better grip on your phone
and so but it didn't stabilize it or anything. It
just helped you, you know, grip your phone better. Now
I don't have that. I don't really use that anymore,
but I've I've replaced it with my new favorite, which
is called the Tentacle, and it's this is kind of

(37:38):
an octopus looking thing. It's a little mount that has
suction cups and it's also flexible, and so you put
your phone in it. You put your phone in there,
and then you kind of just grip the bottom of
it and you can easily use it to move your
phone around and watch stuff or to record stuff, i
should say, And it works great now.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
It does not stabilize anything.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
But I think the main thing about stableation that I've
noticed is that number One, people move their phones around
way too much. People don't remember that you need to
kind of stay stable when you're when you're recording, like,
don't move your phone a lot. And if you just
think about that, ninety nine percent of your videos will
be way better than they are right now. And I've
had people when I'm running like Rich, how do you

(38:18):
keep your phone? Like what's your phone on? What kind
of a mount? And I'm like nothing, I'm just literally
holding it out. Just remember to not move. And shaking
is also a big problem, because you know, people shake
when they kind of like hold their stuff and they're
a little bit shaky, and so that's a problem and
you need to just be cognizant of that and to
get over that. You can actually brace your arms, don't

(38:41):
hold your phone. The further out you hold your smartphone,
the shakier you're going to be with that phone, because
think about it, you're holding your arms out. It takes
a lot of energy to hold your arms out and
to balance into you know, your your your gyroscope, your
human gyroscope in your body is like working over time
to stabilize it, which I would guess is your core
maybe and your arm muscles. But when you when you
put your arms in, you brace in. It will actually

(39:04):
hold your phone steadier because you can now use your
whole body as a way to steady things, and you're
you're using the force of your whole body and not
just held out arms. So keep your arms close tight
to your chest, and that will be a great way
to do. Uh to do that, And actually learned that
tip from a friend, uh, Juan Bagnell. He also runs

(39:26):
a YouTube channel called Some Gadget Guy, and he actually
taught me that. So I was not aware of that.
I maybe was vaguely aware of my head of that
of how to shoot like that, but I'd never had
someone put it into words until we did a segment
together about how to take better smartphone pictures. And he said, yeah,
use your use your arms as a brace, like almost

(39:47):
like a human tripod. And I was like, oh, wow,
that's a great idea. So thanks Wan for that for
that tip, and check them out. Some gadget guy he does,
he's you think I get cranky? I love one for
his rankiness on his videos. He really he has taken
on the establishment, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
So check him out. All right.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh and yeah, that's it, So let's get to the
next story.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
I guess okay.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
So I said earlier that I was going to and
I promised this whole show is not oh that kind
of is all Apple. But I said earlier that I
was gonna upgrade my MacBook Pro to Monterey before I
traded in.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
And there's a reason for that.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
And this is a really cool feature that they finally
built into MacBooks. It's been on Windows for a while,
but now Apple finally has it. And one of the
listeners told me that this was always on the MacBook,
but I guess never easily findable. But now you can
format your MacBook and basically erase it to factory settings

(40:49):
with a setting, versus going through and having to do
this all manually. So great example of this is a
story my boss, my former boss, gave me a computer
that was his and he said, and this was this
was pretty big of him. This is this is the
level of trust. And so he said, Rich, can I
trust you to erase this computer and recycle it properly?

(41:11):
And I said, yes, sure. And it was an old
iMac and I'm not kidding. This thing sat in my
garage for I don't know a while, a couple months,
and I was it taxed me every day because it
wasn't easy. I had no original discs, I had no Internet.
Everything was like old on this computer. So it wasn't
I wasn't able to do the standard things that I

(41:31):
do on my computer to factory format it, which involves
using like like booting up from a USB drive or
a DVD or a CD back in the day, and
then getting into like disc utility formatting it.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
And then it was just a whole thing.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
I forget what the actual steps are, but it's a lot.
And so I this computer every day sat in my garage.
I said, oh my gosh, if someone steals his computer,
they have all of his information, Like, oh my gosh.
But I made a promise to my boss that I
would do it, and there's also the temptation and just
like look through this computer and this is like a
computer that had, you know, all of his personal information
on it. Now, this is a reason why I am

(42:08):
a trusted person and why people often tell me their
passwords and they do it because I don't. Even with
like my mom and my dad, even though I have
access to their accounts, I don't go into their accounts
without asking them first, because that's a level of trust
that I'm not just going to go in and you know,
like if my mom, if she wants me to like
check her credit card bill or something, I will not
just go in and look at it. I will say, Mom,

(42:30):
I'm going in, or I say, can I may I
go in and access your bill? At this point, sure,
but I think that's a level of trust that as
a tech person you have to have with people, because
I don't just go into people's stuff and I don't
just like anyway. So this computer sat there for I
don't know, let's say, six months before I was able
to kind of figure out how to do it, and

(42:50):
I did get it. I did finally erase the whole thing.
I was so proud of myself, and then I was
calling a recycling company to actually get it taken away
and properly recycled, and so it all worked out very nicely.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
But I tell you that story because.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Not to prop up my personal integrity, but to tell
you that now this process is gonna be a whole
lot easier in Monterey because all you have to do
is go into the settings and there's a new erase
all content in Settings feature, And so all you have
to do is do this select this in system preferences,
and it will remove your Apple ID, your fingerprints, all
your accessories, your Apple pay disabled, find my and it

(43:32):
says that it actually because storage is encrypted on the
Mac with newer Mac systems with Apple Silicon or the
T two chip. My computer, I believe has the T
two chip, the system is instantly and securely erased by
destroying the encryption keys, and so is my computer. Oh yeah,
a lot of computers are on this T two chip,

(43:52):
all the way back to the Macmini of twenty eighteen,
Mac Pro twenty nineteen. My computer, MacBook Pro sixteen in
sh yeah, twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Is on there.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
So all I have to do is go in and
do this little setting and boom, my computer's erased. Ready
to go for the next person that we'll have to
deal with a horrible, horrible touch bar okay, I must says, hey, Rich,
hopefully you can advise me. I'm interested in buying dual

(44:23):
TVs from my SUV when we have our granddaughters with us.
I would like to stream for my phone Hulu, Disney
plus Netflix to them. Thanks and advanced Dora Dora. I
would recommend getting a It's funny how a lot of
times when these questions come up, people go through like
the most like complex things like just simple easy. I
would go with a Fire TV tablet.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Two of them.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Sounds like you want to get oh yeah, two and
I would get amount for the back of your your
headrest and so the tablet the fire I would recommend
going with the Fire eighth. I know it's a little
bit more expensive than the eight, but I just think
it's gonna better. It's kind of have a bigger screen,
it's a better battery life, just a little bit faster.

(45:09):
So that's one hundred and fifty dollars each. And if
you want to save some money on it, just wait
until Black Friday or close to it, and you will
get a deal on this thing. I'd say at least
twenty dollars off. And since you're buying two, you probably
want to get Yeah, you probably want to get a
little bit of discount on this so that you're not
spending a whole lot of money on that. So three

(45:31):
hundred bucks gets you the tablets, and then after that,
I would recommend just going on Amazon and searching for
the magic keywords of headrest mount holder Kindle Fire, and
the one that I found is twenty one fifty. It's
got five thousand reviews. It looks pretty straightforward. It straps
onto the back of your head rest and it holds

(45:53):
the tablet and the kids can watch their shows. You're
out three hundred and fifty dollars, the kids are quiet
in the backseat, and Grandma looks like a major winner.
So that's what i'd write. Oh, oh, Dora is your name?
Sorry Dora, not i'ma I don't know where I got
i'ma Dora. That is what I would recommend. And the
Fire tablets can easily handle all those places to stream.

(46:14):
You can set your phone as a hot spot so
they can watch stuff or better yet, you can just
download stuff. I mean, Prime Video has a whole bunch
of stuff for kids. You can download Disney Plus, lets
you download, Hulu, lets you download, Netflix, lets you download.
And it's really funny because I remember the days when
Netflix said we would never let people download our stuff,
no way, and sure.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Enough they did. Oh more Apple News. Are you sick
of it yet? Well?

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Sorry, I told you this was a big week. This
one's really simple. Apple has introduced the HomePod Mini in
three new colors. They describe them as bold and expressive.
I describe them as yellow, orange, and blue. So the
HomePod Mini is a ninety nine dollars smart speaker. Apple
says it sold really well this year, and I don't
see why not. I gave it really high marks in

(47:02):
my review. I reviewed the white one. They also make
a space gray version as well. They're great. They're great
if you use Apple Music. They're great if you use Siri.
They're great if you have an iPhone. They're great if
you have a small place and you want a small,
little speaker to match. They're great if you want to
put a speaker in every room for cheap. They're great
if you want an alternative to Sonos. I don't have

(47:25):
them running in my house just because I've got sons
and I really like sons. But these speakers are fantastic.
I bought several of them. I bought one for my
niece for her college dorm room. I bought one for
my sister for her gym.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
I mean, there's not much more to say about it.
It doesn't really work with the major music services. It
works great with Apple Music, it works good with Pandora,
but after that, I believe with Spotify and the other
ones you have to airplay the stuff, which is not ideal.
So if you don't mind, if you only use Apple Music,
then I think this will be a great thing. And
the colors look great. They're you know, they're just different colors.

(48:06):
Not much more to say about that ninety nine bucks.
They'll be available starting in November. Next question from Laura.
I'm looking for a good photo scanning app form my
iPhone thirteen. Do you have a recommendation? Yes, it's pretty simple.
It's called photo scan by Google. This is a an

(48:29):
app from Google.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Let's see when the last.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Time they updated this app. I feel like it's getting
a little old, but let's see if they've updated it.
Last time they updated it oh gosh ooh sheesh March tenth,
twenty eighteen. So uh yeah, they've given up on this.
Let's see when the uh android one was was last updated.
Maybe they've maybe they've given a little more more love

(48:51):
to the Android one. Let's see tell me when this
was updated April twenty six, twenty nineteen. So they haven't
really done much work on it. But I mean, what
do you need to do on this? I mean, there's
not much you need to do. So photo scan by
Google Photos. It it takes four different pictures of your
photo and it will merge them into one using Google

(49:14):
Smart Ai and it will save it to your Google
Photos or you can save it to your camera roll whatever.
This is a very manual, very slow process.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
So if you're.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Scanning a whole bunch of pictures, I would recommend taking
them to someone like scan my photos dot com. Or
you can have someone come to you like Scantastic here
in the LA area. Or you can get a photo
scanner like the epsyn Fast Photo. But I mean, there's
a lot of ways you can do this. But if
you're gonna scan a bunch of pictures, This scanner is

(49:44):
really more for like one, two, three, a couple pictures,
But if you're gonna do a whole bunch, you probably
want something a little bit more high powered. But you
said you wanted a photo scanning app, so that's your
that's my recommendation. Let's see scan slide it's there is
a another company that's doing a lot with photo scanning

(50:06):
and it's let's see what they're It's called photo Mine
m y n E photo Mine, and so they make
a photo scanning app that is called photo Mine, and
this one was let's say, I guarantee this was just
updated recently.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
It was updated.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Where's it tell me version history? Yeah, October fourth, twenty
twenty one. So if you're looking for something that is
really cutting edge, really up to date, I would check
out photo scan app by photo Mine p h O
t O M y n e uh. It's got a
lot of ratings. I've not tested this Vernon. I tested
the slide scan version of it, which for slides, and

(50:53):
it was amazing. The only thing is you are gonna
have an in app purchase, so they're gonna let you
do a couple and then you're gonna have to pay
so I think the payment is just par for the course.
If you're scanning a bunch of photos, why not pay
and you can do a yearly for forty bucks. You
can do it looks like monthly for anywhere from you know.
Just they've a whole bunch of in app purchases that
I'm seeing, so you can choose the the subscription that's

(51:18):
best for you. But yeah, I mean, just check out
one of those two. If you want something completely free,
go with Google. If you want something you can try
and it might be a little bit better, check out
photo Mine.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
All right.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Final story is bitcoin. I don't talk about bitcoin too
much on this show, but I am fascinated by bitcoin
because I do think that it is it's a fascinating
or cryptocurrency. I should say, it's just a fascinating topic
to me because it's like it's tech taking over one
of the few things that government and banks and big

(51:53):
business have a real stronghold on and we have not
seen much change in this industry, and technology has a
way of kind of disrupting things, and so far, the
way that I use money has kind of stayed the
same forever, except for the photo. You know, the Venmos
of the world and the paypals of the world. But
realistically those are just layers on top of an already

(52:15):
archaic system, and the banking system and all that stuff
is not very good. Credit cards, banks, it's all very
like old school very much, not digital very much.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Just kind of weird, right.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
So I find crypto really interesting because it's so futuristic,
it's so like peer to peer, it's so clean, and yeah,
I get, you know, all the mining stuff is a
little tricky, but when I say clean, I mean it's like,
you know, person a person. There's not like giant fees involved.
There's you know, you can you can send money to
anyone in the world, less friction, all that stuff, and

(52:51):
it's not really controlled by anyone, which is also really interesting. Anyway,
I say all this because bitcoin reached an all time
high and a new high, I should say, and it's
really on a roll. And the reason for this is
because now Wall Street folks can invest in it, So
they had this new ETF. If you're familiar with that.
ETFs are kind of like a fund that you can

(53:11):
invest in, kind of like a mutual fund, but a
little bit more current, a little more digital.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
How do I explain it. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
All I know about ETFs is that they're like kind
of like a mutual fund, but they're more nimble. I
don't know how to explain. I'm not a financial person,
but this pro shares Bitcoin ETF. It's not investing in bitcoin,
but it's investing in It's kind of like bitcoin style investing.
And so this is the first time that regular investors
can expose themselves sort of to bitcoin style investing. If

(53:42):
that makes any sense at all, I hope I'm explaining
that right. But basically, a whole bunch of people bought
this fund, which makes bitcoin go up because other people
see it, they're like, oh wow, So people actually think
this bitcoin thing is around to stay, so they're investing
in it. And so a whole bunch of people invested
in this fund on Wall Street, which leads bitcoin to
go up. And now bitcoin seems like it's well on

(54:03):
its way to even higher numbers. And this is just
the first of several different funds. So there's going to
be at least, according to the Wall Street Journal, two
more and so two more big funds that let you
invest in bitcoin without actually buying bitcoin, and so kind
of neat. Now, apparently the Securities and Exchange Commission does

(54:25):
not allow direct bitcoin investments buy these funds, so that's
why they're ETFs, which kind of mimic the fund. So
hope my explanation somewhat got it. But the point is,
you know, I would just take a look at this stuff,
kind of follow it, kind of understand it a little
bit because it's it's really interesting. I don't really understand

(54:45):
the whole bitcoin thing to an extent that a lot
of the bitcoin folks do, but I get the idea
that it's disrupting things, and it's going to take someone
like Amazon or someone like, you know, a big company
to accept bitcoin as a cayman for it to really
get the ball rolling. We haven't even seen that happen yet,
so once we do start seeing that happen, it could be,

(55:08):
you know, a really good thing for this stuff. All right,
let's get to the final question of the day. Nora
writes about the Muama Portable Wireless router Muama Portable Wireless Router.
I was wondering, if you know anything about this product,
is it worthwhile? Is it safe to use? Being that
it's made in Lithuania. I would appreciate any information you

(55:30):
might have. I'm definitely not a tech savvy person. I
don't want to mess up my Mac or my iPhone.
Thank you, Nora. All right, Nora, a quick I've never
heard of this this router, but a quick Google search.
Hmm okay, Let's see what the questions are. Which portable
Wi Fi router is best? Is the Mayuma legit? What's
the monthly cost? And does it work? And then the

(55:52):
first the first website is the Muama Ryoku review, does
it work or cheap portable Wi Fi? And where does
it come from? It comes from globalnewswire dot com. Let
me explain something. If you ever see a quote unquote
review of a tech product on a press release website

(56:12):
like pr Newswire or Global Newswire or any newswire website,
that means that the company has put out their own
review as a press release, hoping to get it to
percolate through Google so that you see it when you
search for something like this router. Now, if you search
for a product that is legitimate, you'll see a review

(56:34):
from the Verge, You'll see the review from c Net.
From these reputable tech websites. Now, if you see a
YouTube review. You can't really know if that's gonna be
okay because anyone could put a YouTube review up. So
if you see it from a trusted YouTube reviewer, that's
a little bit better. But all the reviews that I'm
seeing from this are basically yeah, nothing that I'm seeing

(57:00):
that I would trust. And so the bottom line, if
you actually go to the website, get ryoko. It's just
a four G router and that's all it is. And
I would not get this router. If you want a router,
you can go like a hot spot. You can go
to your I don't even know why you need a
hot spot. Your phone should function as this. But you

(57:22):
can also go to your carrier Verizon, T Mobile, AT
and T and get a hot spot that works with
your plan, or if you don't want to get those,
I like the z zte zmax Connect and that is
an unlocked hot spot that's about ninety bucks.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
You can get that.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
You can put in any any you know, simcard to
make it into a hot spot as long as it
supports a hotspot functionality on that SIM card.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
But that's what I would do.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
I would not deal with this random portable wireless router.
That you probably saw advertised on some sort of website somewhere.
That's what I would guess, like a social media site
or something. You always make these things look so good. Oh,
the sound of that music does mean that it is
time for the end of the show. If you would
like to submit a question for me to answer, you
can email me Hello at Richontech dot tv, or you

(58:13):
can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash
rich on tech and hit the big blue send email button,
or you can go to rich on tech dot tv
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That way, other people when they go to the podcast
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(58:37):
like that listen to the show, like why do they
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out there, why do you listen to this one? Just
go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on tech,
or just go to the app that you listen to
and rate it.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
There.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
You can find me on all social media. I am
at rich on Tech, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook,
pretty much it no matter where you live in the US.
You can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV,
Fire TV, and Roku. Once you're there, just scroll to
the tech section and watch all of my TV segments
on demand. My name is rich Dedmiro. Thanks so much

(59:09):
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending
it with me. I'll talk to you real soon.