March 4, 2022 • 53 mins
Tech companies' responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Apple sets a date for its next event; Amazon closes physical store locations; Instagram dissolves IGTV; TikTok goes 10 minutes; Waymo can charge for autonomous rides in SF.Listeners ask how to turn off text message previews on the lock screen, how to lock down apps on a Samsung phone, whether to stick to Android or switch to iPhone, how 5G home internet is, how to save voicemails as an audio file and Pixel 6 Pro vs Samsung S22 Ultra.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
How tech companies are responding to the crisis in Ukraine.
Apple sets a date for its next event, Amazon closing
its physical stores. 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 know about. It's also the place where I
(00:30):
answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter
at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. What is going on?
Hopefully you're having a great day. Let's talk about the
big topic of the week. I mean, gosh, so we
finally I mean I live in Los Angeles, one of
the most tightly locked down cities in the world for
(00:53):
the pandemic, and we are finally, finally, just getting out
of it. I think tomorrow, as every request, this is
the first day that a majority of the restrictions are
finally being lifted when it comes to masks and rules
and all this stuff. I think for kids in schools,
it's happening in the next two weeks. So we are
very much behind the rest of the world, the rest
(01:15):
of the US, But nonetheless none of that matters because
this is where I live, and so for me personally,
it's a very exciting time because I went to the
gym the other day and today and you know, no
mask required, walked into a couple stores, didn't require mask.
So and also people's attitudes just around this are changing,
like we're finally getting to a point where people are
(01:36):
a little bit more comfortable, people are gathering more, and
so it feels like a sigh of relief. And then
we have Russia invade Ukraine. So it's like we go
from finally some sense of taking a breath to this.
And I'm not going to get into the entire war
because number one, I'm not even sure it is a war,
(01:57):
because it's just basically Russia invading Ukraine. And I'm not
an expert in anything's anything politics over there. I have
no idea. I mean, I've tried to read up and
try to understand what's happening. But the reality is this
affects a lot of people. It affects a lot of
innocent people. It affects the fabric of those two nations
(02:19):
and our world at large, because this this world we
live in is no longer an isolated place. It is
it is fully connected in every way, shape and form.
I've been to Russia and I've I've been to Moscow
and it was, uh, you know, it was it was
intimidating to be there in regular times. And I'm just
(02:43):
not sure what the future holds for for visitors to
that country, if anything ever gets back to a place
where we might be able to do that again. I mean,
it's just it's a very like it's always been such
a mysterious place to Americans and now it's just very
much so even more so, and just trying to understand
(03:04):
and unpack everything is really tough, I think for the
average American myself included. So my thoughts are with the
people over there in Ukraine and also you know, the
people in Russia that don't don't want what's happening to happen.
I'm sure there are many dissenters and people that just
want to have a regular life that are totally one
hundred percent affected by this. And what I'm going to
(03:25):
talk about is really the way that the average person
over there has been or is just greatly affected by
what's going on. And so I'm going to take this
from the tech angle because that's what I cover, and
it's just it's been phenomenal Obviously, America and other countries
have sanctions against Russia, but when it comes to private corporations,
(03:48):
these sanctions have been really swift and really far reaching.
And technology is this connector for all of us in
the world, and the tech world has really come down
fast and hard on Russia and restricting so many of
the things that people there can do, and so it's
(04:10):
really really quite wild. So let's start with Apple. Apple
paused all of their product sales in Russia, so you
can't buy an iPhone over there if you wanted to.
You can't buy a Mac computer if you wanted to.
They also remove the RT News and Sputnik News from
the app store outside of Russia, so people in Russia
can still access those, if you're outside Russia they can't,
(04:31):
the idea being that those are spreading propaganda and so
they don't want that happening. They also disabled apple maps
live traffic feature in Ukraine. The idea there is that,
you know, the Russian forces could use the live traffic
information to see where people are going, where people are headed,
where the concentration of people are and so that has
(04:52):
been disabled. When it comes to Google, they also removed
the RT and Sputnek apps from the play Store. They
also removed Oh Wow, Russia state outlets from its news,
so if you're looking at Google News, you're not going
to see those. Google Maps is also not displaying the
live traffic information or what they call the busy areas.
So in Google Maps they've really ramped this up, but
(05:14):
there's something called busy areas. So let's say you fly
into Indianapolis for the night and you want to see
where the hot areas of town are. You can just
go onto the Indianapolis map on Google Maps and we'll
say busy area and you can say, Okay, that's kind
of a cool pedestrian walking area. There's a bunch of restaurants, shops, whatever.
They've disabled that in Ukraine because again, if you're seeing
where a large concentration of people are, that could potentially
(05:37):
be risky for those people. Traffic navigation is still available. Meta,
which of course owns Facebook, is demoting any content that's
linked to Russian state media outlets on Facebook and Instagram.
They also are doing encrypted Instagram dms in Ukraine and Russia,
which we should have that every day everywhere. Encrypted is
(05:57):
good and the idea there is that you know, Russian
intelligence could not see what people are writing on their dms.
YouTube also part of Google blocking the Russia back to
RT and Sputnik in the EU and also in the UK,
TikTok is shutting down access to RT and Sputnik in Europe.
(06:21):
Netflix is not adding any Russian channels in the country.
So apparently there's this new law in Russia that says
you have to carry twenty or so local channels, which
of course people call propaganda channels. You know, they're channels
that are state sponsored. And so Netflix was supposed to
add about twenty of these channels on March first. They
have not done that. So Netflix's future in Russia at
(06:43):
this point is definitely up up in the air for
going against that law. Snapchat is not doing any ads
in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They also pledge fifteen million
dollars to relief organizations. They also have three hundred UK
Tranian staff members in its ar in their ar arm.
(07:04):
They are helping to relocate them as well. Twitter is
labeling tweets that link to Russian state backed media outlets,
So if you tweet something that's from one of these
Russian media outlets, it's going to say, hey, this is
from a state backed organization, and they actually do that
kind of across the board with a lot of government
officials and things to let people know, you know, they're
(07:25):
trying to avoid this fake news and this you know,
this propaganda stuff and just just in general trying to
give people more clarity about what they're seeing and what
these news sources are. It's really really tough for all
of these social media networks, but they're trying. Airbnb says
it's going to provide short term housing for free from
up to one hundred Ukrainian refugees. Last year they housed
(07:48):
over twenty one thousand Afghan refugees. But we know from
the latest numbers that there's nearly a million Ukrainian refugees
and this could be one of the biggest refugee crisises
crises in history because people are getting out of that
country as fast as possible and they are going to
other countries. Some countries many countries are welcoming them. But
(08:11):
no matter what, when you have a million people on
the move or more, it causes so many issues. And
so it's just I mean, I was talking to my
wife just like, can you imagine that you just have
to get up and go and you don't know where
your next meal is coming from, you don't know where
your next this is coming I mean, and then families
are separated. I mean, it really really is a terrible
humanitarian disaster over there. Now. One one, I guess, one
(08:36):
sector that is sort of bucking the trend is cryptocurrency.
So if you've been following cryptocurrency with this war and
this invasion, it's actually been kind of a savior. It's
there's both sides to it. So it's been a savior
for the Ukrainians because people were tweeting out QR codes
(08:57):
that were super easy to scan and send money to
where it's needed instantly, fast efficient. But on the flip side,
Russian you know, anyone in Russia also has access to
the same thing, so they can use cryptocurrency to get
around some of the sanctions that have come down from
some of the major banks and some of the major
(09:18):
clearinghouses like they Russia is basically banned from like Swift,
which is like the bank the international bank clearinghouse. So
if I want to send money from one bank to another,
it all goes through this Swift thing. So yeah, I know,
even if you're using PayPal and all this stuff, it
still has to go through some sort of clearinghouse when
you're doing ach transfers, and so swift is a big
way of doing that. You kind of learn all that
(09:39):
stuff when you buy a house, like all these wire
transfers and things like that. But cryptocurrency is really peer
to peer and so it's kind of it can be
sent to anyone anywhere, anytime without a middleman, and so
that has been key on both sides, you know, good
and bad. But so with that in mind, you know,
(10:00):
the government, I think the government asks to I guess
Ukrainian the government they're asked to freeze Russian and Belarusian accounts.
But coinbase, Binance and some other cryptocurrency exchanges said, now,
we can't really do that because you know, the whole
point and what we promote about cryptocurrency is that it
(10:21):
is sort of a leveling currency, you know, available to everyone.
And if we start doing this then it causes problems
down the line with like the entire fabric of this system.
But on the flip side, if there's sanctions against a
particular person or you know, a group, they will comply
with those and so if those sanctions come down from
(10:41):
like a government, then that's different, and I guess they
will comply, like if they want to freeze someone's assets
or something like that. So it gets a little tricky.
I'm not exactly sure how they're doing all that stuff,
but I know there is some ways. I like, if
you have you know, there's there's something called a custodial account.
So if you have an account in coinbase, basicly Coinbase
is managing that money for you, But there are ways
(11:03):
of having a cryptocurrency account that is non custodial, which
means it's like literally you're on the blockchain directly, and
so in that case it's a lot harder to control,
whereas if your money is being managed by Coinbase in
a custodial account, they control it, so it's much easier.
So that's kind of a quick rundown of what the
(11:24):
media or sorry, what the tech companies are doing in
their efforts to kind of help out here. But it's
just just observing what's happening over in Russia. I mean,
are they are essentially isolated from the rest of the world,
both by sanctions and by what individual companies are doing so.
(11:44):
Another example is like I don't know how you say
the name, but it's like Saber or Sabre. It's the
company that does all of the flight coordinations, like they
basically you've seen the name before, it's Sabre and they
do kind of all of the coordinations of you know,
flight bookings, and they kind of do the back end stuff.
So if you're booking a ticket on an airline, they
(12:05):
sort of handle the interaction between the website and the
actual you know, taking the payment and all that stuff
and actually you know, making sure that seat is available
or you know, with working with all these expedias and
stuff on the back end to make sure that everything
runs smoothly. Well, they basically went ahead and said, you
know what, we're no longer servicing Aeroflot, which is the
UH I guess it's the state airline of Russia. That's
(12:28):
actually the airline that I flew to Russia at one point.
And so they said, we're no longer funding or not
funding it, but we're no longer powering their back end.
So that makes them unable to sell seats on their planes.
So again it's just all these tentacles that we have
in the world where everything is so far intertwined that
(12:49):
it's really it's really tough to be an isolated nation.
And I mean, you know, the only other nation I
can think of in the world that is very ice
like this is North Korea, and Russia is getting right
up there with them with all these sanctions. I mean,
you can't travel in there out, you can't you know,
you can't buy stuff you couldn't use. They actually disabled
(13:12):
Apple Pay for a lot of people. So I saw
a tweet on Twitter. I guess that's where you'd see
a tweet. I saw a tweet on Twitter where there
was like long lines of people trying to get into
the subway in Russia because they couldn't use their tap
to pay, and so it was just you know, in
Google Pay, I'm sure is affected too. It's just it's
just pretty wild and far reaching. Just how much, you know,
(13:33):
we rely on these systems that are sort of global
and international, and when something goes wrong here and the
wrong is being this invasion, that's when all these companies
can can jump in and say, hey, you know, we're
gonna stop, We're gonna stop servicing you, and that in
some ways is really really going to affect your day
to day life there in Russia. So anyway, thoughts are
(13:56):
with everyone that is affected by this, whether you're here,
whether you're there, innocent people that are just you know,
kind of bystanders in this whole thing. But let's hope
for a resolution on that very soon, and a peaceful
one at that, if that's even possible at this point.
All right, let's get to the first question of the podcast.
(14:17):
Brenda says, thanks for always showing a variety of things.
My sister just got an S twenty two Ultra and
can't seem to figure out how to turn off text
messaging previews. We looked and looked and can't seem to
find that feature on this phone. Hope you can help.
Thanks in advance, sent for my iPhone. Oh interesting, okay,
so Brenda, Oh that's funny. Brenda has an iPhone and
her sister got the S twenty two Ultra. And the
(14:39):
way that the iPhone works is you're by default, your
messages are private until you do face ID, and once
you do face ID, it unlocks your phone, but it
also reveals your notification. So typically it would say something
like I message if your phone is locked on a notification,
(15:00):
but then if your phone is you know, if the
lock is undone with your face, it would then reveal
the contents of the message. So that's sort of like,
I think that's a fault on Apple. You can turn
that off, you can make it so that your messages
are private no matter what. I'm always a little suspect
when I see that on someone's phone. I'm like, what's
you hiding over there? Huh, why do you need those
to be so private all the time? But it's I understand.
(15:21):
I mean, it's a privacy thing. So if you want
to stay private, absolutely you should. They do have a
similar feature on the S twenty two Ultra because when
I get a phone. When I was testing the S
twenty two Ultra, I go through every single setting on
that phone because I want to see exactly what's going on,
what's new, what's different, what my options are. And on
(15:44):
the Samsung there are just so many options. And this
is one of the things that really strikes me about
Android versus iPhone is that iPhone has a lot of options,
but they're kind of like they're all kind of you know,
it's what Apple wants you to do. You know, you
get your choice of a couple of little things, but
you can't truly, truly like change the fabric of the
whole phone, whereas on Android you could really just make
it all your own. And so one of the things
(16:06):
you can do is turn off those previews. And the
way you do it is you go to settings and
then you go to lock screen and notifications. So I
noticed this on the Samsung a couple of generations ago,
where they switched it from showing the actual notification to
just showing an icon of the notification, which bugs me.
I don't want to just see that I have an icon.
I want to see the actual notification. That's part of it.
(16:28):
It's like triaging my messages or my notifications is seeing
like what is what's what am I getting pinged about?
And so if you go in there, you should be
able to turn it on so you can actually see
or just see it that you have a notification and
not exactly what the contents of that notification is. All right,
moving on, Let's talk Apple, everyone's favorite tech company in
(16:51):
one way or another. Right, So Apple has their first
event of twenty twenty two, and it is called Peak
Performance p E e K. What does that mean? And
it's an ar invite, so they've done that before. But
the event is happening on Tuesday, March eighth, at ten
(17:11):
am Pacific Steve Jobs Theater, probably pre recorded, they already
sent out. So I got an invitation from Apple, but
it's not in person. So there's no way of going
to this thing in person at all. So the reality
is it's probably I would have to guess their final
virtual event. I believe WWDC will hopefully be in person,
(17:36):
but I'm not sure because WWDC happens in June, and
you know, people come from all over the world, about
five thousand people, five thousand developers, and so to get
that many people March April May June, I got a
couple months March April May. It's really about three four
months max, depending on when they do it in June.
(17:56):
So I mean, you could technically probably hold that in person,
and I think it really does help to have those
things in person. I think by then we should be,
you know, clear and clear out of this whole pandemic.
And you know, right now we're sort of we're in
the kind of the the end phase of it, but
hopefully by June we should be in a phase where
people are much more comfortable in a big way. Although
(18:19):
if you go to some concerts and things, people have
been comfortable for a long time. But it just depends
what group you're in, you know, it depends who you're
run with. Let's see so Steve Jobs Theater, first event
of twenty twenty two, again I said there will be
no one in person. In fact, all these you know,
these things are all recorded. But so peak performance, what
does that mean? Pee K? Of course, we've been waiting
(18:41):
for two major things from Apple at this point, in
twenty twenty two and in twenty twenty one. In twenty
twenty we've been waiting for the VR headset and we've
also been waiting for the Apple Car. And so those
are the two things that we need to figure out.
What's going on with them? Are they gonna come out
with these things? And so I don't know. Is a
(19:05):
peak a peak at the car? Is it a peak
at the Virtual Reality headset? Does it mean peak eyes?
I don't know. But what we can't expect to see
here is a next generation of the iPhone se, the
iPhone SE three, which may have five G probably will
of revamped iPad Air and some sort of Mac with
the Apple Silicon Chip updated M two. So yeah, if
(19:31):
you're yawning right now, I understand this event has never
been Apple's most exciting event. It just never has. And
so it's just, you know, we'll see I mean, look,
it's Apple. There's always something in there. There's always some
sort of nugget that's really interesting. But if it's these
three gadgets and nothing else, no car peak, no VR,
(19:52):
it's not gonna be the most exciting thing. But then again,
you know that's that's the reality of this stuff. So,
I mean, Apple is very much. It's so interesting with
the whole idea of where everyone's waiting for this car
and waiting for this VR headset. But Apple takes their
time with things, and so it could just be a
while before we see those things or before they're ready
(20:12):
to divulge even a snake peak of those All right,
let's get to the next question of the podcast. Adrian says, Hey, Rich,
I enjoy your report, your tech reports and podcasts. What's
the best app block for a Samsung phone? Wow, lots
(20:33):
of Samsung questions. I know why. It's because I did
my Samsung S twenty two Ultra review the other day.
A security app to keep people from accessing things like
Facebook contacts, financial apps, or other apps that have personal information.
I have the Galaxy S twenty one to five G.
Thanks for your recommendations in advance. Well, I had a
feeling that the Samsung has this built in because Samsung
(20:54):
has this security system called Knox. And I remember, you
know the fact that there's like some sort of secure
folder that is, you know, that is available on there,
and so I dove into the settings on the Samsung
and sure enough, there it is. It's under Settings Biometrics
and Security and then Secure Folder. Now I did not
(21:16):
play enough with the secure folder to completely figure out
how it works, but it looks like you can just
drop apps in there and then when you want to
use them, it will require your fingerprint or some sort
of biometrics to unlock that. You can also put little
pictures in there, you can put notes in there, whatever
you want basically, so it's kind of just a simple lock.
It's a secondary lock for your apps. So you know
(21:38):
you've got the standard lock that unlocks your phone, that
gives people access to everything. This is sort of a
secondary lock that will secure anything that you want on
your phone and on the iPhone, they have this with
a lot of not that there's a secure folder you
can put things in, but many of the apps that
might have personal data will ask you if you want
(22:00):
to do a secondary face ID or fingerprint. Not so
much these days anymore because a lot of those phones
are faced out, but a face ID to truly unlock
the app one more time. So kind of think of
your banking app, like, even though your phone's unlocked, you
open up your banking app, it doesn't just go into
your accounts. You got to do a secondary authentication. So
again settings, biometrics, and security, secure folder. Check it out,
(22:22):
set it up, and get on with life. All right,
Let's talk Amazon. This came as a huge surprise to me.
But Amazon, you know, this is the thing I was
I was really thinking about this with Amazon and also
with Google. Compared to Apple and even Facebook, I mean
basically anyone compared to Apple. Apple does things, and I
(22:45):
mentioned this earlier, they do things very slow, very methodic,
very well thought out, and they don't kind of shut
down a lot of stuff fast now when it comes
to even if it's not working, like even like things
like paying remember their little social network, their music social network,
like it takes them a while and they don't make
a big deal. They just kind of like sunset it,
(23:06):
you know, and you just kind of never hear about
it again. But they do. I mean a lot of
their stuff has a long I mean, look at the
iPod Touch. That thing is like still still being sold
in stores after all these years, and it's like really
not being developed. But it's just they have it if
you want it. So again, when you look at Amazon
and you look at Google, and you look at Facebook
(23:27):
and these companies, they just throw anything at the wall
and see what sticks, and if it doesn't, they move
on and they just kind of cancel it. Now with
that in mind, Amazon, according to Reuter's, is shutting down
sixty eight retail stores, including sixty six of them here
in the US. Now, these are not Amazon Fresh stores.
These are not there just walk out stores. They're Amazon
(23:49):
Books stores. They're four Star stores and also any pop
up shops they might have at the mall or in
other places. Most of the time they're at the mall.
In fact, most a lot of these stores are at malls.
So clearly, if they're shutting these things down, many of
them have not been around that long. I mean, you're
talking just a handful of years. That is not a
(24:10):
good sign. So you're telling me that Amazon, the world's
smartest online retailer, cannot figure out a way to have
a harmonious relationship between an online store and an in
person store. That's unbelievable to me. Now, every time I've
been into one of these stores, ninety nine percent of
(24:31):
the people are returning stuff, and I think that that's
probably where it's at. So to staff these stores, even
though Amazon has a lot of data about their customers, like,
for instance, the four Star stores and even the bookstores,
what they did was they sold a lot of products
that were top sellers in those areas. But here's the thing.
Most people that are Amazon shoppers are so used to
(24:54):
shopping online for Amazon stuff that they don't want to
go into a store. And so, yes, they were brought
into the store when they needed to return something or
when they were in a mall and they happen to
see it and they said, all right, let me stop
in here. But were these destinations probably not. Were they
even a big hit on people's radar when they went
(25:16):
to the mall, probably not. Now, personally, I could not
go to any mall without stopping one of these. I
love the Amazon stores. I thought they were so cool.
I love the fact that I knew the prices in
them were really good and just the same that I
was going to pay on the website you as a
prime member. And so I think it's kind of confusing
(25:37):
that they're getting rid of these now. There may be
some more things at work here. There may be some
union labor issues there, maybe some pay issues, like who knows.
I mean, it seems like Amazon is always pursuing efficiency,
and I think that these stores, just by nature of
having a brick and mortar store, they're just not very efficient.
(25:57):
There's just a lot of waste, in know, in human workers.
And I'm not knocking human workers. Obviously they're fantastic, but
I'm saying I'm saying waste the in the When you
look at an online website, it's just like running twenty
four to seven on a server. It's so efficient. When
you look at a store, you've got to have someone
to clean it. You've got to have someone to do
(26:18):
loss prevention. You've got to have someone to organize it.
Stock the shelves, you know, put things out, put things back.
I mean, it's a whole thing. I mean there's just
a lot of manpower or people power that you need
to run a store. And Amazon is like, wait a second,
it's costing us all this money to run this thing
when we can run our website and make even more sales,
and okay, let's close them. So what are they going
(26:40):
to concentrate on now. They're going to concentrate on their
physical stores, including Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and a lot
of the whole food stores are now being converted into
the just walk out technology. I know, they just opened
the first one in Washington, d C. They converted it
or they I don't know if it was new or converted,
but that's happening and I've heard that they're going to
(27:02):
do that to more stores as well. So the writing
is on the wall. Amazon wants to be fully automated.
That's the reality. They want you to go into their
stores walk out. It's got to be a very efficient thing,
just as efficient as the website. So they're concentrating on
Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Amazon Go, which is their convenience
stores again that have that just walk out, and also
(27:23):
the Amazon style. So a bunch of stores in the
LA area are going to be closed, and of course nationwide,
but we've got a bunch here in LA. And so
Amazon's Style was a new clothing store that was going
up at the Americana at Brand. It looks like that's
still going to happen, but again, that is a store
that employs some efficiencies with when it comes to workers
(27:46):
and the way that they do things. And so I
guess they'll test that and if it doesn't work, they'll
cancel that as well. Christina writes, Hey, Rich, I'm a
longtime Android user. Wow, this is all andro today. I'm
looking to upgrade. Which phone do you recommend? I'm open
to switching to iPhone. I'm curious what you have to
say about each product and your overall pick. Kind regards
(28:09):
and blessings, Christina. Christina, you are asking me the million
dollar question. I mean, here's a thing, like you know,
I love the iPhone. I love, love, love the iPhone.
I mean, it's it's like the perfect phone. In fact,
I can't get away from it. I wanted to switch
to the S twenty two Ultra because it was so great,
but there's just so many little things that the iPhone
does and Honestly, it's really about the ecosystem that they've
(28:32):
got you in. And I'm not talking I message like,
that's a big part of it, for sure, but it's
also the Apple Watch, It's the air tags, it's how
it works with the Apple TV, it's how it works
with Apple Fitness, and you know how it works with
you know, I can see where my kid is on
a map. I mean, there's just so many little things
that Apple has over the years built into the phone
that it's not just the iPhone anymore. It's this entire
(28:53):
world that you're entering. Yes, we've heard the ecosystem all
the time, but it's true. I mean, it really is.
It's kind of like a world that you get into
that is not just one thing. It's not just the iPhone.
It is a whole bunch of stuff that all adds
up to a really really unique experience. Now with that said,
(29:14):
I am open to you switching and if your friends
have the iPhone, it's kind of nice because you can
finally get on those group conversations with them and not
be the green bubble. You also get access to a
ton of accessories, the best apps, easy repairs, you can
go to any store. If you need help with your iPhone,
(29:34):
you can ask any random person on the street, a
do you know how to do this? How do I
flip my phone into airplane mode? And any random person
can tell you because they've chances are have an iPhone
here in the US. Now, when it comes to Android,
you have more choices, and so there are many many
different types of phones out there. With Apple there are
two at this point, You've got everything from the Mini
(29:55):
to the Standard, to the Pro to the Promax and
also the iPhone SE and then you've got all the
old models as well. But with the Android, of course,
there's a bunch of different models. The only Android phones
I'd recommend at this point are the Pixel six, the
Pixel six Pro, and the Samsung S twenty two plus
(30:15):
or the S twenty two and then the Ultra. You
didn't say which phone you have, so oh, longtime Android user,
but you didn't say exactly which one you have, and
you know, so those are the phones with the Android
that I'd recommend. But the you know, it just kind
of depends. It depends what you want. Do you want
to customize your phone? Do you want more options? It's
just a different world, and so personally, I love the
(30:38):
operating system and the way it works on Android and
the way I can customize things. But it's the iPhone
has really gotten me so locked into like this world
of apps and things and the way stuff works that
it's really tough for me to switch at this point,
and it's kind of frustrating. Actually, oh, the Apple watched.
I even mentioned that that's a whole nother thing. So
(31:00):
you know, if your friends and family have iPhone, you're curious,
you just want to see what it's all about, what
the hype is, go for it. It's a good time
to switch. The new phones just came out on both sides,
whether it's a pixel you know, they all came out
kind of October November or I guess September October and
now with the SAMSUNGS, so you're you're getting pretty new,
new model phones that are going to last a bunch
(31:21):
of years. So either way, you know, like I said,
it comes down to a personal choice. Do you want
to get jump into that Apple world where you're gonna
start buying a bunch of stuff to accessorize your phone
and accessorize you know, your experience, or do you want
to go Android where you have a bunch more options
and a little bit more flexibility when it comes to
how you personalize your phone and device. It's just it's
just like I said, personal preference. But I'm fine with
(31:43):
you switching if you want. If your family members are
on there and they're really pressuring you, then maybe it's
time to take a look at that. Instagram is shutting down.
It's this doesn't this This is like a story for
the one percent, one percent of people who care. Rahm
is shutting down at standalone IGTV app. I mean, have
(32:03):
you used the IGTV app anytime in the past year.
Absolutely not. I don't think so. So IGTV was this
big push by Instagram. You know, Instagram started as a
pure photo sharing app, and then they added IGTV so
they can get into video or I think I think
they had maybe short videos where you can do like
(32:25):
a sixty second video. Then they did IGTV so you
can have longer form, bigger videos. That were they all
had to be sixteen by nine, which was a whole pain.
And now they're just saying, you know what, never mind,
We're just going to do video on Instagram. That's what
it's called. You can do sixteen by nine. You can
do square, you can do four by three, you can
(32:45):
do horizontal, vertical, whatever you want. It's all gonna work
inside Instagram video. Now. The one major downside to this
is that a lot of people made money on IGTV videos.
There was like, if you're you can have ads in
your videos, and you would make money on those ads.
So that's going away. But on the flip side, right now,
(33:06):
what Instagram's doing this is the reason why you're seeing
so many reels. And I've talked about this because they're
paying creators' money bonuses to make those reels, and so
when you make those reels, you make a little money
on them, and so that's how they're getting so many
people to do those reels, and so that's why you're
seeing so many of them. So you know, look, we're
(33:28):
seeing an evolution. Instagram used to be the absolute top
of the mountain, and now it is TikTok. And now
not for everything just yet, but TikTok is where a
lot a lot of the energy is and a lot
of the momentum, I should say, the momentum is behind TikTok.
It may be younger people right now, but it will
(33:50):
eventually switch and so you know, you might be saying, oh,
why is Instagram have to change so much? Why is
I have to change? But the reality is Instagram needs
to survive. I mean, it's not a given. It is
not a given that this app is going to be. Okay,
it's owned by Facebook or Meta, i should say, and
(34:10):
Facebook itself, yes, is still a behemoth. But again, this
is what's so wild about the tech world. Any app
can come along and suddenly take the reins. And yes,
it's tougher and tougher because of the money that these
other bigger apps have and a lot of times they
swallow the smaller apps, but there is still a chance.
I mean, TikTok's a great example. TikTok came out of
(34:33):
nowhere and it is absolutely dominating. It dominated that short
form video and YouTube had to race to catch up.
Instagram had to race to catch up. Facebook is just
starting with short form. They just introduced reels on Facebook.
So it is one of these things where you see
these these apps come along and they just kind of
(34:54):
sweep everyone off their feet and next thing you know,
everyone's using them, they've all downloaded them. And TikTok is
definitely that app. I find myself using it more and more,
and it's, Uh, it's full of a lot of garbage,
but there's also a lot of really interesting, useful, fun
silly stuff on there, and it's it's definitely something that
(35:16):
is is it keeps making its way into my mix
because it's really easy to like kind of watch when
you have a couple of minutes of downtime. But it's
also like I have a love hate because I'm like, oh,
all these things are so frustrating, Like there's zero production
quality on ninety nine percent of the videos people will
watch anything. There's so much stuff that's like either you know,
fake or like not real or just like I'm like what.
(35:37):
So you gotta be careful when you're when you're watching
any of these you gotta just keep a keep a
critical eye no matter what you're watching. April says, Hey, Rich,
what do you think of the T mobile five G
home Internet? Good or not good? Sent from my iPad? April, Uh,
(35:58):
It's funny you ask, because I'm actually well doing a
story I've already done it. Did some research on this
for my story for KTLA, where I looked at T
Mobile five G Home Internet and Verizon's five G home Internet.
So those are the two that I would compare Team
AT and T. At this point, I do not believe
has A has a five G home Internet offering, at
(36:20):
least not widely available that I know of. So you've
got T Mobile and you've got eighteen Verison. So I
tested the Verizon five G. You think it's called five
G home or something like that, And I'll be honest,
it's pretty phenomenal. It's so easy, it's it's actually one
of those things. And this happens to me. I've been
covering this stuff for a long time, but every so
(36:41):
often a product comes along and it's just brilliant. So
for so many years, and I've moved to so many
places around the US and my job as a reporter,
and what do you do when you move into a
new place. The first thing you do is you call
the cable people. They install your cable, they install your internet,
and you get your water and power hooked up. You
might get your direct TV installed, whatever you do. But
(37:01):
this was the way you did things for so long.
When you moved, you would have to call someone to
come to your place and connect it, and there would
be a date they'd say, Okay, we're coming out next Saturday.
The cable person will be there from ten am until
seven pm. You're like, oh, thanks for the thanks for
the long extended window that they'll arrive at. You know,
whenever you leave your house or want to, that's when
they'll arrive. But you know, the reality is that's the
(37:25):
way it was done for many, many years. And so
when I tried this team a Verizon box that you
just plug in, and so you plug this box in
it you have to do it in your window so
it can get the best signal. You plug it in,
it latches onto the five G signal, which is brand
new by the way, this five GUW signal, which is
like the ultra wideband that Verizon has. T Mobile is
(37:48):
like I think it's called UC but it's these these
five G spectrum that the carriers have gotten a hold
of is so vast that they are now able to
do this. So when you think of cellular connections, all
we have thought about in the past is our smartphone.
It's like this a little tiny connection that's powering this
tiny screen. Sometimes you might hotspot your phone to your
(38:11):
tablet or your laptop, but it was always like a
not like a very long term thing. So the idea
of having five G wireless internet power everything in your
home is just one of those things that you have
to kind of shift your paradigm. You know, it's like, Okay,
well can this really work? And I can say yes.
And so at my house, I personally don't get the
(38:32):
best Verizon signal. So I didn't test the Tea mobile one,
by the way, but you know, they work very similarly.
But I was able to test the Verizon signal at
a hotel in San Francisco and also at KTLA in
the studio, they have a really good five G Verizon signal.
And so here's the bottom line with this. The plans
(38:54):
are cheaper. T Mobile is fifty bucks, no data caps.
Verizon's even cheap, or if you're a customer, it's like
twenty five dollars for one plan or like fifty or seven.
You know, it just depends on if you're a customer
or not, and also the plan that you want. And
I'm telling you for twenty five bucks a month, if
you're a Verizon customer, this is like a no brainer.
If if you get a good five G UW signal
(39:19):
at your house. If you do not get that signal,
I would not recommend this because the speeds you're not
going to be that great. Now, you might not need
the best speeds. I mean, even if you get one
hundred or fifty, you'll be fine with things, like you know,
if you're just watching Netflix or just surfing the web.
But if you're doing things like heavy duty uploads, heavy
duty downloads, that's where it could it could slow down
(39:42):
a little bit. But otherwise this is a great, great
alternative for so many people if you have access to it.
So there's a couple of things. You have to have access.
You have to be in one of the cities that
Verizon allows it or T Mobile. You also have to
be an address that's approved for it. And once you
qualify on those two things, you I think with T
Mobile you don't need to be a customer to get
(40:02):
that fifty dollars rate, but with Verizon you really have
to be a customer to get the best deal. Otherwise
it's just the deal goes downhill pretty fast because the
prices go up. Also, at least with Verizon, they're guaranteeing
the pricing is going to stay the same for two
to three years. Which is kind of cool. I think
it's amazing. In fact, I would probably switch mine at
(40:23):
home if I was able to get that signal that
I wanted here at my house, which I just don't have.
And so it's amazing. You set this thing up and
you can tell your cable company goodbye. You could tell
whatever company you have see you later. And the best
part is if it doesn't work out, Like, there's no contract,
so if it doesn't work out, you unplug it, you
(40:43):
ship it back, and you say, okay, that didn't work out,
and you reconnect your internet from your cable provider. Oh whoops,
we already did a Let's move on to a story. Oh,
speaking of TikTok, TikTok now taking aim at YouTube even
more with longer ten minute video uploads. So not much
more to know about this except you know, TikTok started
(41:05):
out either like fifteen seconds, then they went to like
thirty and sixty, then they went to three minutes. Now
they're going up to well, I guess, okay, so TikTok,
I guess was always sixty seconds. I thought that they
were like fifteen seconds when they first started out, but
maybe they were sixty I don't know, because I wasn't
on TikTok at the very very beginning. But anyway, so
(41:28):
let's just say they were sixty then they tried three minutes,
and now they're doing ten minutes, and that's that's a
significant change because you know, sixty seconds is a challenge
if you're trying to do certain things. You know, if
you're trying to you know, most of the things you
see on TikTok are very very short form, and so
because their short form, people are are forced to sort
(41:49):
of get their point across very quickly, and so they
try all kinds of different things and all different ways
of doing that. And that's why TikTok is very creative,
because creators have to figure out ways of getting there
are points across very fast. But at the same time,
why not have a flexibility to go with longer videos
if you if you have a big following on there
(42:10):
and you want to start doing more, like you know,
more in depth travel videos or more in depth tech
reviews or whatever, it's nice to have this option. So
we'll see. I mean, but this takes aim at YouTube
because you know, YouTube used to be the place where
you would watch longer videos and if you don't have
to go there anymore. You know, it takes away some
of their viewing time. But we'll see, let's not get
(42:30):
ahead of ourselves. I was gonna say so TikTok. One
of the things that TikTok is kind of like very
famous for is their algorithm and what their algorithm does.
And I've noticed this after using it for a couple months.
It really latches on to It knows exactly how long
you're watching videos for, and so if you're watching a
(42:53):
video to the end or even loop that video, it
really registers a real deep kind of like check mark
in its algorithm. And so next thing you know, you
are going to start seeing those types of videos over
and over and over. And so for me, there's a
couple of videos that i'd see, especially the iPhone tip videos.
(43:14):
Like you you start watching one of those, next thing,
you know, your entire feed is a lot of those.
You know, it just depends what you're into because it's
very customized for you. But I've noticed that that TikTok
really latches on and so if you if you watched
a video and now you're kind of like like I
was doing, like a healthy trader Joe's Trader Joe's meals,
(43:35):
and so you know those will be in my in
my feed. But let's say that I get bored of
those healthy Trader Joe's meals because they just don't appealch
to me anymore. I figure this out today. You can
press and hold on a video and it will give
you the option to say not interested, and so you
can press that and now you can get rid of
that sort of type of video on your feed. Next question,
(44:01):
Paul says, Hey, Rich, I have a one plus seventy
Android phone. Wow, another Android. Do you know if anyway
I can permanently save the voicemails on that phone? My
dad just passed away, sorry to hear that, and I
have seven of his voicemails and don't want to lose
them to the automatic deletion. After a certain period of time,
I have to go in and play each one and
resave it. I'm not really at the point where I
could even listen to my dad's voice right now, so
(44:23):
it's kind of tough. My fears if I forget to
retrieve them for a couple of days, they will get deleted.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you, Rich. Well, Paul,
First off, I am so sorry if you're a loss,
I can't imagine and it's even tough for me to
like think about your situation right now. So that's that.
(44:44):
But with this said, I have actually gotten this question before,
and it's a very common thing, and it actually makes
me really sad to even think of this situation because
I do have voicemails for my parents on my voicemail,
and my voicemail isn't even set up it anymore. These
these are voicemails that have been lingering for a long time.
But here are my suggestions. Number one, I believe the
(45:06):
one plus seventy. I'm not sure if it has a
headphone jack, but you can no matter what, if it
has a headphone jack. You can get a cable, a
three point five millimeter cable on both ends, plug one
end into your phone, plug the other end into a computer,
and then open up something like you know, Windows Record
(45:28):
or any sort of recording program you know, or on
a Mac you can open up quick Time and record
and record play the voicemails from your phone while your
phone is plugged in and record them to the computer,
and you know, you can ask a friend to help
you with that, and just you know, try to figure
out how you can do that and just save those
voicemails as MP three's. And again we're talking the Android
(45:51):
here on iPhone. I believe you can download these as
a voice memo. Android. I don't think gives you that option.
But now the other way and okay, now, if you
don't have a headphone jack on that phone, which I'm
not sure it is, if it's on there or not,
you'll you're gonna need a USB C to three point
five millimeter connector that should be in the box with
the OnePlus they included them for a very long time.
(46:14):
I don't know if they include those anymore. But if
you can find your box and you can find that
little connector, it's just a little tiny dongle I guess,
for lack of a better term, that has a three
point five millimeter on one side. That's kind of an
input and then yeah, an input, is it an input? Yeah?
And then it has a a three point or a
(46:36):
USB C on the other side. I guess it's a
female connector is what they call it, on the on
the one side, and then USB C on the other side.
So that's what I would do. That's gonna give you
the cleanest audio. The other thing you can do is
if you just want to make sure that you've got
these things saved. I know you said it's tough to
hear your dad's voice, so maybe have a friend do this.
(46:58):
But you can have your phone, just place it next
to another phone, open up the recorder on that phone,
press record, and then play these these voicemails and they're
going to be better than nothing. I mean, the audio
quality is going to be pretty darn good when you
do it that way, as long as you're in a
quiet room, so at least you have something. Obviously, the
cord the corded way of connecting these would be a
(47:22):
lot cleaner of a connection. But anyway, thanks for the question.
That is a good one and something that you know
is just uh, something that sadly we don't want to
have to do it, but it is. It is good
to be able to do that, all right. Waimo. The
self driving unit of of you know, Google's alphabet I
(47:43):
guess start out as Google self driving car is now
able to charge for rides up in San Francisco. So
this is a an autonomous car that's driving by itself
that now has the ability to charge people for rides.
So it's really pretty wild to see the progression of this.
It's also allowed to operate twenty four to seven in
(48:05):
various parts of San Francisco, except if it's raining or
if there's heavy fog, which is like every morning in
San Francisco. Maybe not in the city streets so much,
but definitely in the in the mountain areas or I guess,
I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of fog
in San Francisco. I mean, people that live up there
would no better than me of where it actually makes
its way in. But I've you know, I was blown
(48:26):
away by the fog up there. It's so beautiful. But
that's it. So now we have what accounts to an
Uber style service that is autonomous, but you're also you know,
they can charge for us. So that means no tire drivers,
no human drivers, no one you know, drowsy, and it's
just like twenty four to seven. These cars can go.
(48:49):
Maybe they need to be refueled at some point throughout
the day, but that's pretty amazing. Now there is one
little caveat the California State says that they have to
have a safety driver in this vehicle at this point,
still present because they are charging for rides, and that
person can of course take over the steering wheel or
the controls if necessary. But I am sure these cars
(49:12):
have done many, many, many of thousands of miles. I
know they are doing fully autonomous, no driver or no
supervisor in their Phoenix area, where Waimo is also operating.
So it's probably just a matter of time before this
comes to California. But I just figured i'd tell you
that because it's something to keep in mind. I mean, really,
you know, these car services like Uber and Lyft, they've
(49:34):
built they've been built on human drivers. But there will
come a time when there will be a transition, at
least for some of the fleet, not for all of it,
where they will have just cars that just drive you around,
that don't have people and in them no driver. And
it's just one of those things to be aware of.
All right, Lee and Cathy, we enjoy all your tech info.
(49:56):
We are Android owners right now with Pixel threes. We're
having our first grandchild. Oh congratulations. Wondering which phone do
you think is best? We're on Google Fi. They have
the new Samsung S twenty two on sale for eight
ninety nine the Pixel six pro same price. Thanks in advance,
Lee and Kathy yeeha um. And they sent a nice
(50:17):
picture of them with their I don't know if it's
them with their their fish they cow. I don't know,
but Lee and Kathy here's the thing. So I would
totally recommend the Samsung S twenty two except for one reason.
You mentioned your grandchild. Now, I will tell you nearly
every phone that I test has problem with kids and
(50:37):
their movement except for two phones, and that is the
iPhone and that is the Pixel phones. I don't know
what it is, but the iPhone nails it. They seem
to flee, freeze things in mid movement and they just
get it and you get a clear picture. And the
Pixel six does the same thing. The pixels have always
done this, but the Pixel six actually steps it up
(50:58):
a notch. They have something called like I think it's
called face on blur where it's actively looking for like.
They use the example of kids like moving around, and
it will use I believe it uses the wide angle
camera to find a secondary shot of the child's face
not moving. Then it will superimpose that. I know it
sounds weird, but somehow it works and you don't even notice.
(51:19):
I've seen it show up. You can't activate it manually,
but if you're flipping through your pictures in Google Photos,
you'll see that some of them have this little face
on blur icon and you're like, huh, I guess Google
applied some smarts to make sure that this face is
not blurry. So for that reason, and just in general,
I was doing some testing last night with the iPhone
versus the Pixel versus the Samsung, and the Pixel definitely
(51:44):
in the iPhone definitely have a slight advantage over Samsung.
Maybe not even slight, maybe like a really clear advantage
over Samsung when it comes to moving people and getting
a clear shot of those moving people. I mean, I've
got kids, and you know, quite honestly, kids often kind
of direct which phone you need to carry, because you
(52:05):
do not want your pictures of your grandchild to be
all over the place and blurry and smeared looking, because
that's just not good, not good. And so for that
reason I would recommend the Pixel six pro. Go for it,
and I think you are going to enjoy it. Oh
there is that sound, you know what that means? That's
(52:25):
gonna do it for this show. If you would like
to submit a question for me to answer, go to
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(52:46):
You can find me on social media at rich on
Tech and no matter where you live in the US,
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and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand.
My name is rich Merril. Thanks so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend an hour
of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.
How tech companies are responding to the crisis in Ukraine.
Apple sets a date for its next event, Amazon closing
its physical stores. 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 know about. It's also the place where I
(00:30):
answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter
at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. What is going on?
Hopefully you're having a great day. Let's talk about the
big topic of the week. I mean, gosh, so we
finally I mean I live in Los Angeles, one of
the most tightly locked down cities in the world for
(00:53):
the pandemic, and we are finally, finally, just getting out
of it. I think tomorrow, as every request, this is
the first day that a majority of the restrictions are
finally being lifted when it comes to masks and rules
and all this stuff. I think for kids in schools,
it's happening in the next two weeks. So we are
very much behind the rest of the world, the rest
(01:15):
of the US, But nonetheless none of that matters because
this is where I live, and so for me personally,
it's a very exciting time because I went to the
gym the other day and today and you know, no
mask required, walked into a couple stores, didn't require mask.
So and also people's attitudes just around this are changing,
like we're finally getting to a point where people are
(01:36):
a little bit more comfortable, people are gathering more, and
so it feels like a sigh of relief. And then
we have Russia invade Ukraine. So it's like we go
from finally some sense of taking a breath to this.
And I'm not going to get into the entire war
because number one, I'm not even sure it is a war,
(01:57):
because it's just basically Russia invading Ukraine. And I'm not
an expert in anything's anything politics over there. I have
no idea. I mean, I've tried to read up and
try to understand what's happening. But the reality is this
affects a lot of people. It affects a lot of
innocent people. It affects the fabric of those two nations
(02:19):
and our world at large, because this this world we
live in is no longer an isolated place. It is
it is fully connected in every way, shape and form.
I've been to Russia and I've I've been to Moscow
and it was, uh, you know, it was it was
intimidating to be there in regular times. And I'm just
(02:43):
not sure what the future holds for for visitors to
that country, if anything ever gets back to a place
where we might be able to do that again. I mean,
it's just it's a very like it's always been such
a mysterious place to Americans and now it's just very
much so even more so, and just trying to understand
(03:04):
and unpack everything is really tough, I think for the
average American myself included. So my thoughts are with the
people over there in Ukraine and also you know, the
people in Russia that don't don't want what's happening to happen.
I'm sure there are many dissenters and people that just
want to have a regular life that are totally one
hundred percent affected by this. And what I'm going to
(03:25):
talk about is really the way that the average person
over there has been or is just greatly affected by
what's going on. And so I'm going to take this
from the tech angle because that's what I cover, and
it's just it's been phenomenal Obviously, America and other countries
have sanctions against Russia, but when it comes to private corporations,
(03:48):
these sanctions have been really swift and really far reaching.
And technology is this connector for all of us in
the world, and the tech world has really come down
fast and hard on Russia and restricting so many of
the things that people there can do, and so it's
(04:10):
really really quite wild. So let's start with Apple. Apple
paused all of their product sales in Russia, so you
can't buy an iPhone over there if you wanted to.
You can't buy a Mac computer if you wanted to.
They also remove the RT News and Sputnik News from
the app store outside of Russia, so people in Russia
can still access those, if you're outside Russia they can't,
(04:31):
the idea being that those are spreading propaganda and so
they don't want that happening. They also disabled apple maps
live traffic feature in Ukraine. The idea there is that,
you know, the Russian forces could use the live traffic
information to see where people are going, where people are headed,
where the concentration of people are and so that has
(04:52):
been disabled. When it comes to Google, they also removed
the RT and Sputnek apps from the play Store. They
also removed Oh Wow, Russia state outlets from its news,
so if you're looking at Google News, you're not going
to see those. Google Maps is also not displaying the
live traffic information or what they call the busy areas.
So in Google Maps they've really ramped this up, but
(05:14):
there's something called busy areas. So let's say you fly
into Indianapolis for the night and you want to see
where the hot areas of town are. You can just
go onto the Indianapolis map on Google Maps and we'll
say busy area and you can say, Okay, that's kind
of a cool pedestrian walking area. There's a bunch of restaurants, shops, whatever.
They've disabled that in Ukraine because again, if you're seeing
where a large concentration of people are, that could potentially
(05:37):
be risky for those people. Traffic navigation is still available. Meta,
which of course owns Facebook, is demoting any content that's
linked to Russian state media outlets on Facebook and Instagram.
They also are doing encrypted Instagram dms in Ukraine and Russia,
which we should have that every day everywhere. Encrypted is
(05:57):
good and the idea there is that you know, Russian
intelligence could not see what people are writing on their dms.
YouTube also part of Google blocking the Russia back to
RT and Sputnik in the EU and also in the UK,
TikTok is shutting down access to RT and Sputnik in Europe.
(06:21):
Netflix is not adding any Russian channels in the country.
So apparently there's this new law in Russia that says
you have to carry twenty or so local channels, which
of course people call propaganda channels. You know, they're channels
that are state sponsored. And so Netflix was supposed to
add about twenty of these channels on March first. They
have not done that. So Netflix's future in Russia at
(06:43):
this point is definitely up up in the air for
going against that law. Snapchat is not doing any ads
in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They also pledge fifteen million
dollars to relief organizations. They also have three hundred UK
Tranian staff members in its ar in their ar arm.
(07:04):
They are helping to relocate them as well. Twitter is
labeling tweets that link to Russian state backed media outlets,
So if you tweet something that's from one of these
Russian media outlets, it's going to say, hey, this is
from a state backed organization, and they actually do that
kind of across the board with a lot of government
officials and things to let people know, you know, they're
(07:25):
trying to avoid this fake news and this you know,
this propaganda stuff and just just in general trying to
give people more clarity about what they're seeing and what
these news sources are. It's really really tough for all
of these social media networks, but they're trying. Airbnb says
it's going to provide short term housing for free from
up to one hundred Ukrainian refugees. Last year they housed
(07:48):
over twenty one thousand Afghan refugees. But we know from
the latest numbers that there's nearly a million Ukrainian refugees
and this could be one of the biggest refugee crisises
crises in history because people are getting out of that
country as fast as possible and they are going to
other countries. Some countries many countries are welcoming them. But
(08:11):
no matter what, when you have a million people on
the move or more, it causes so many issues. And
so it's just I mean, I was talking to my
wife just like, can you imagine that you just have
to get up and go and you don't know where
your next meal is coming from, you don't know where
your next this is coming I mean, and then families
are separated. I mean, it really really is a terrible
humanitarian disaster over there. Now. One one, I guess, one
(08:36):
sector that is sort of bucking the trend is cryptocurrency.
So if you've been following cryptocurrency with this war and
this invasion, it's actually been kind of a savior. It's
there's both sides to it. So it's been a savior
for the Ukrainians because people were tweeting out QR codes
(08:57):
that were super easy to scan and send money to
where it's needed instantly, fast efficient. But on the flip side,
Russian you know, anyone in Russia also has access to
the same thing, so they can use cryptocurrency to get
around some of the sanctions that have come down from
some of the major banks and some of the major
(09:18):
clearinghouses like they Russia is basically banned from like Swift,
which is like the bank the international bank clearinghouse. So
if I want to send money from one bank to another,
it all goes through this Swift thing. So yeah, I know,
even if you're using PayPal and all this stuff, it
still has to go through some sort of clearinghouse when
you're doing ach transfers, and so swift is a big
way of doing that. You kind of learn all that
(09:39):
stuff when you buy a house, like all these wire
transfers and things like that. But cryptocurrency is really peer
to peer and so it's kind of it can be
sent to anyone anywhere, anytime without a middleman, and so
that has been key on both sides, you know, good
and bad. But so with that in mind, you know,
(10:00):
the government, I think the government asks to I guess
Ukrainian the government they're asked to freeze Russian and Belarusian accounts.
But coinbase, Binance and some other cryptocurrency exchanges said, now,
we can't really do that because you know, the whole
point and what we promote about cryptocurrency is that it
(10:21):
is sort of a leveling currency, you know, available to everyone.
And if we start doing this then it causes problems
down the line with like the entire fabric of this system.
But on the flip side, if there's sanctions against a
particular person or you know, a group, they will comply
with those and so if those sanctions come down from
(10:41):
like a government, then that's different, and I guess they
will comply, like if they want to freeze someone's assets
or something like that. So it gets a little tricky.
I'm not exactly sure how they're doing all that stuff,
but I know there is some ways. I like, if
you have you know, there's there's something called a custodial account.
So if you have an account in coinbase, basicly Coinbase
is managing that money for you, But there are ways
(11:03):
of having a cryptocurrency account that is non custodial, which
means it's like literally you're on the blockchain directly, and
so in that case it's a lot harder to control,
whereas if your money is being managed by Coinbase in
a custodial account, they control it, so it's much easier.
So that's kind of a quick rundown of what the
(11:24):
media or sorry, what the tech companies are doing in
their efforts to kind of help out here. But it's
just just observing what's happening over in Russia. I mean,
are they are essentially isolated from the rest of the world,
both by sanctions and by what individual companies are doing so.
(11:44):
Another example is like I don't know how you say
the name, but it's like Saber or Sabre. It's the
company that does all of the flight coordinations, like they
basically you've seen the name before, it's Sabre and they
do kind of all of the coordinations of you know,
flight bookings, and they kind of do the back end stuff.
So if you're booking a ticket on an airline, they
(12:05):
sort of handle the interaction between the website and the
actual you know, taking the payment and all that stuff
and actually you know, making sure that seat is available
or you know, with working with all these expedias and
stuff on the back end to make sure that everything
runs smoothly. Well, they basically went ahead and said, you
know what, we're no longer servicing Aeroflot, which is the
UH I guess it's the state airline of Russia. That's
(12:28):
actually the airline that I flew to Russia at one point.
And so they said, we're no longer funding or not
funding it, but we're no longer powering their back end.
So that makes them unable to sell seats on their planes.
So again it's just all these tentacles that we have
in the world where everything is so far intertwined that
(12:49):
it's really it's really tough to be an isolated nation.
And I mean, you know, the only other nation I
can think of in the world that is very ice
like this is North Korea, and Russia is getting right
up there with them with all these sanctions. I mean,
you can't travel in there out, you can't you know,
you can't buy stuff you couldn't use. They actually disabled
(13:12):
Apple Pay for a lot of people. So I saw
a tweet on Twitter. I guess that's where you'd see
a tweet. I saw a tweet on Twitter where there
was like long lines of people trying to get into
the subway in Russia because they couldn't use their tap
to pay, and so it was just you know, in
Google Pay, I'm sure is affected too. It's just it's
just pretty wild and far reaching. Just how much, you know,
(13:33):
we rely on these systems that are sort of global
and international, and when something goes wrong here and the
wrong is being this invasion, that's when all these companies
can can jump in and say, hey, you know, we're
gonna stop, We're gonna stop servicing you, and that in
some ways is really really going to affect your day
to day life there in Russia. So anyway, thoughts are
(13:56):
with everyone that is affected by this, whether you're here,
whether you're there, innocent people that are just you know,
kind of bystanders in this whole thing. But let's hope
for a resolution on that very soon, and a peaceful
one at that, if that's even possible at this point.
All right, let's get to the first question of the podcast.
(14:17):
Brenda says, thanks for always showing a variety of things.
My sister just got an S twenty two Ultra and
can't seem to figure out how to turn off text
messaging previews. We looked and looked and can't seem to
find that feature on this phone. Hope you can help.
Thanks in advance, sent for my iPhone. Oh interesting, okay,
so Brenda, Oh that's funny. Brenda has an iPhone and
her sister got the S twenty two Ultra. And the
(14:39):
way that the iPhone works is you're by default, your
messages are private until you do face ID, and once
you do face ID, it unlocks your phone, but it
also reveals your notification. So typically it would say something
like I message if your phone is locked on a notification,
(15:00):
but then if your phone is you know, if the
lock is undone with your face, it would then reveal
the contents of the message. So that's sort of like,
I think that's a fault on Apple. You can turn
that off, you can make it so that your messages
are private no matter what. I'm always a little suspect
when I see that on someone's phone. I'm like, what's
you hiding over there? Huh, why do you need those
to be so private all the time? But it's I understand.
(15:21):
I mean, it's a privacy thing. So if you want
to stay private, absolutely you should. They do have a
similar feature on the S twenty two Ultra because when
I get a phone. When I was testing the S
twenty two Ultra, I go through every single setting on
that phone because I want to see exactly what's going on,
what's new, what's different, what my options are. And on
(15:44):
the Samsung there are just so many options. And this
is one of the things that really strikes me about
Android versus iPhone is that iPhone has a lot of options,
but they're kind of like they're all kind of you know,
it's what Apple wants you to do. You know, you
get your choice of a couple of little things, but
you can't truly, truly like change the fabric of the
whole phone, whereas on Android you could really just make
it all your own. And so one of the things
(16:06):
you can do is turn off those previews. And the
way you do it is you go to settings and
then you go to lock screen and notifications. So I
noticed this on the Samsung a couple of generations ago,
where they switched it from showing the actual notification to
just showing an icon of the notification, which bugs me.
I don't want to just see that I have an icon.
I want to see the actual notification. That's part of it.
(16:28):
It's like triaging my messages or my notifications is seeing
like what is what's what am I getting pinged about?
And so if you go in there, you should be
able to turn it on so you can actually see
or just see it that you have a notification and
not exactly what the contents of that notification is. All right,
moving on, Let's talk Apple, everyone's favorite tech company in
(16:51):
one way or another. Right, So Apple has their first
event of twenty twenty two, and it is called Peak
Performance p E e K. What does that mean? And
it's an ar invite, so they've done that before. But
the event is happening on Tuesday, March eighth, at ten
(17:11):
am Pacific Steve Jobs Theater, probably pre recorded, they already
sent out. So I got an invitation from Apple, but
it's not in person. So there's no way of going
to this thing in person at all. So the reality
is it's probably I would have to guess their final
virtual event. I believe WWDC will hopefully be in person,
(17:36):
but I'm not sure because WWDC happens in June, and
you know, people come from all over the world, about
five thousand people, five thousand developers, and so to get
that many people March April May June, I got a
couple months March April May. It's really about three four
months max, depending on when they do it in June.
(17:56):
So I mean, you could technically probably hold that in person,
and I think it really does help to have those
things in person. I think by then we should be,
you know, clear and clear out of this whole pandemic.
And you know, right now we're sort of we're in
the kind of the the end phase of it, but
hopefully by June we should be in a phase where
people are much more comfortable in a big way. Although
(18:19):
if you go to some concerts and things, people have
been comfortable for a long time. But it just depends
what group you're in, you know, it depends who you're
run with. Let's see so Steve Jobs Theater, first event
of twenty twenty two, again I said there will be
no one in person. In fact, all these you know,
these things are all recorded. But so peak performance, what
does that mean? Pee K? Of course, we've been waiting
(18:41):
for two major things from Apple at this point, in
twenty twenty two and in twenty twenty one. In twenty
twenty we've been waiting for the VR headset and we've
also been waiting for the Apple Car. And so those
are the two things that we need to figure out.
What's going on with them? Are they gonna come out
with these things? And so I don't know. Is a
(19:05):
peak a peak at the car? Is it a peak
at the Virtual Reality headset? Does it mean peak eyes?
I don't know. But what we can't expect to see
here is a next generation of the iPhone se, the
iPhone SE three, which may have five G probably will
of revamped iPad Air and some sort of Mac with
the Apple Silicon Chip updated M two. So yeah, if
(19:31):
you're yawning right now, I understand this event has never
been Apple's most exciting event. It just never has. And
so it's just, you know, we'll see I mean, look,
it's Apple. There's always something in there. There's always some
sort of nugget that's really interesting. But if it's these
three gadgets and nothing else, no car peak, no VR,
(19:52):
it's not gonna be the most exciting thing. But then again,
you know that's that's the reality of this stuff. So,
I mean, Apple is very much. It's so interesting with
the whole idea of where everyone's waiting for this car
and waiting for this VR headset. But Apple takes their
time with things, and so it could just be a
while before we see those things or before they're ready
(20:12):
to divulge even a snake peak of those All right,
let's get to the next question of the podcast. Adrian says, Hey, Rich,
I enjoy your report, your tech reports and podcasts. What's
the best app block for a Samsung phone? Wow, lots
(20:33):
of Samsung questions. I know why. It's because I did
my Samsung S twenty two Ultra review the other day.
A security app to keep people from accessing things like
Facebook contacts, financial apps, or other apps that have personal information.
I have the Galaxy S twenty one to five G.
Thanks for your recommendations in advance. Well, I had a
feeling that the Samsung has this built in because Samsung
(20:54):
has this security system called Knox. And I remember, you
know the fact that there's like some sort of secure
folder that is, you know, that is available on there,
and so I dove into the settings on the Samsung
and sure enough, there it is. It's under Settings Biometrics
and Security and then Secure Folder. Now I did not
(21:16):
play enough with the secure folder to completely figure out
how it works, but it looks like you can just
drop apps in there and then when you want to
use them, it will require your fingerprint or some sort
of biometrics to unlock that. You can also put little
pictures in there, you can put notes in there, whatever
you want basically, so it's kind of just a simple lock.
It's a secondary lock for your apps. So you know
(21:38):
you've got the standard lock that unlocks your phone, that
gives people access to everything. This is sort of a
secondary lock that will secure anything that you want on
your phone and on the iPhone, they have this with
a lot of not that there's a secure folder you
can put things in, but many of the apps that
might have personal data will ask you if you want
(22:00):
to do a secondary face ID or fingerprint. Not so
much these days anymore because a lot of those phones
are faced out, but a face ID to truly unlock
the app one more time. So kind of think of
your banking app, like, even though your phone's unlocked, you
open up your banking app, it doesn't just go into
your accounts. You got to do a secondary authentication. So
again settings, biometrics, and security, secure folder. Check it out,
(22:22):
set it up, and get on with life. All right,
Let's talk Amazon. This came as a huge surprise to me.
But Amazon, you know, this is the thing I was
I was really thinking about this with Amazon and also
with Google. Compared to Apple and even Facebook, I mean
basically anyone compared to Apple. Apple does things, and I
(22:45):
mentioned this earlier, they do things very slow, very methodic,
very well thought out, and they don't kind of shut
down a lot of stuff fast now when it comes
to even if it's not working, like even like things
like paying remember their little social network, their music social network,
like it takes them a while and they don't make
a big deal. They just kind of like sunset it,
(23:06):
you know, and you just kind of never hear about
it again. But they do. I mean a lot of
their stuff has a long I mean, look at the
iPod Touch. That thing is like still still being sold
in stores after all these years, and it's like really
not being developed. But it's just they have it if
you want it. So again, when you look at Amazon
and you look at Google, and you look at Facebook
(23:27):
and these companies, they just throw anything at the wall
and see what sticks, and if it doesn't, they move
on and they just kind of cancel it. Now with
that in mind, Amazon, according to Reuter's, is shutting down
sixty eight retail stores, including sixty six of them here
in the US. Now, these are not Amazon Fresh stores.
These are not there just walk out stores. They're Amazon
(23:49):
Books stores. They're four Star stores and also any pop
up shops they might have at the mall or in
other places. Most of the time they're at the mall.
In fact, most a lot of these stores are at malls.
So clearly, if they're shutting these things down, many of
them have not been around that long. I mean, you're
talking just a handful of years. That is not a
(24:10):
good sign. So you're telling me that Amazon, the world's
smartest online retailer, cannot figure out a way to have
a harmonious relationship between an online store and an in
person store. That's unbelievable to me. Now, every time I've
been into one of these stores, ninety nine percent of
(24:31):
the people are returning stuff, and I think that that's
probably where it's at. So to staff these stores, even
though Amazon has a lot of data about their customers, like,
for instance, the four Star stores and even the bookstores,
what they did was they sold a lot of products
that were top sellers in those areas. But here's the thing.
Most people that are Amazon shoppers are so used to
(24:54):
shopping online for Amazon stuff that they don't want to
go into a store. And so, yes, they were brought
into the store when they needed to return something or
when they were in a mall and they happen to
see it and they said, all right, let me stop
in here. But were these destinations probably not. Were they
even a big hit on people's radar when they went
(25:16):
to the mall, probably not. Now, personally, I could not
go to any mall without stopping one of these. I
love the Amazon stores. I thought they were so cool.
I love the fact that I knew the prices in
them were really good and just the same that I
was going to pay on the website you as a
prime member. And so I think it's kind of confusing
(25:37):
that they're getting rid of these now. There may be
some more things at work here. There may be some
union labor issues there, maybe some pay issues, like who knows.
I mean, it seems like Amazon is always pursuing efficiency,
and I think that these stores, just by nature of
having a brick and mortar store, they're just not very efficient.
(25:57):
There's just a lot of waste, in know, in human workers.
And I'm not knocking human workers. Obviously they're fantastic, but
I'm saying I'm saying waste the in the When you
look at an online website, it's just like running twenty
four to seven on a server. It's so efficient. When
you look at a store, you've got to have someone
to clean it. You've got to have someone to do
(26:18):
loss prevention. You've got to have someone to organize it.
Stock the shelves, you know, put things out, put things back.
I mean, it's a whole thing. I mean there's just
a lot of manpower or people power that you need
to run a store. And Amazon is like, wait a second,
it's costing us all this money to run this thing
when we can run our website and make even more sales,
and okay, let's close them. So what are they going
(26:40):
to concentrate on now. They're going to concentrate on their
physical stores, including Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and a lot
of the whole food stores are now being converted into
the just walk out technology. I know, they just opened
the first one in Washington, d C. They converted it
or they I don't know if it was new or converted,
but that's happening and I've heard that they're going to
(27:02):
do that to more stores as well. So the writing
is on the wall. Amazon wants to be fully automated.
That's the reality. They want you to go into their
stores walk out. It's got to be a very efficient thing,
just as efficient as the website. So they're concentrating on
Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Amazon Go, which is their convenience
stores again that have that just walk out, and also
(27:23):
the Amazon style. So a bunch of stores in the
LA area are going to be closed, and of course nationwide,
but we've got a bunch here in LA. And so
Amazon's Style was a new clothing store that was going
up at the Americana at Brand. It looks like that's
still going to happen, but again, that is a store
that employs some efficiencies with when it comes to workers
(27:46):
and the way that they do things. And so I
guess they'll test that and if it doesn't work, they'll
cancel that as well. Christina writes, Hey, Rich, I'm a
longtime Android user. Wow, this is all andro today. I'm
looking to upgrade. Which phone do you recommend? I'm open
to switching to iPhone. I'm curious what you have to
say about each product and your overall pick. Kind regards
(28:09):
and blessings, Christina. Christina, you are asking me the million
dollar question. I mean, here's a thing, like you know,
I love the iPhone. I love, love, love the iPhone.
I mean, it's it's like the perfect phone. In fact,
I can't get away from it. I wanted to switch
to the S twenty two Ultra because it was so great,
but there's just so many little things that the iPhone
does and Honestly, it's really about the ecosystem that they've
(28:32):
got you in. And I'm not talking I message like,
that's a big part of it, for sure, but it's
also the Apple Watch, It's the air tags, it's how
it works with the Apple TV, it's how it works
with Apple Fitness, and you know how it works with
you know, I can see where my kid is on
a map. I mean, there's just so many little things
that Apple has over the years built into the phone
that it's not just the iPhone anymore. It's this entire
(28:53):
world that you're entering. Yes, we've heard the ecosystem all
the time, but it's true. I mean, it really is.
It's kind of like a world that you get into
that is not just one thing. It's not just the iPhone.
It is a whole bunch of stuff that all adds
up to a really really unique experience. Now with that said,
(29:14):
I am open to you switching and if your friends
have the iPhone, it's kind of nice because you can
finally get on those group conversations with them and not
be the green bubble. You also get access to a
ton of accessories, the best apps, easy repairs, you can
go to any store. If you need help with your iPhone,
(29:34):
you can ask any random person on the street, a
do you know how to do this? How do I
flip my phone into airplane mode? And any random person
can tell you because they've chances are have an iPhone
here in the US. Now, when it comes to Android,
you have more choices, and so there are many many
different types of phones out there. With Apple there are
two at this point, You've got everything from the Mini
(29:55):
to the Standard, to the Pro to the Promax and
also the iPhone SE and then you've got all the
old models as well. But with the Android, of course,
there's a bunch of different models. The only Android phones
I'd recommend at this point are the Pixel six, the
Pixel six Pro, and the Samsung S twenty two plus
(30:15):
or the S twenty two and then the Ultra. You
didn't say which phone you have, so oh, longtime Android user,
but you didn't say exactly which one you have, and
you know, so those are the phones with the Android
that I'd recommend. But the you know, it just kind
of depends. It depends what you want. Do you want
to customize your phone? Do you want more options? It's
just a different world, and so personally, I love the
(30:38):
operating system and the way it works on Android and
the way I can customize things. But it's the iPhone
has really gotten me so locked into like this world
of apps and things and the way stuff works that
it's really tough for me to switch at this point,
and it's kind of frustrating. Actually, oh, the Apple watched.
I even mentioned that that's a whole nother thing. So
(31:00):
you know, if your friends and family have iPhone, you're curious,
you just want to see what it's all about, what
the hype is, go for it. It's a good time
to switch. The new phones just came out on both sides,
whether it's a pixel you know, they all came out
kind of October November or I guess September October and
now with the SAMSUNGS, so you're you're getting pretty new,
new model phones that are going to last a bunch
(31:21):
of years. So either way, you know, like I said,
it comes down to a personal choice. Do you want
to get jump into that Apple world where you're gonna
start buying a bunch of stuff to accessorize your phone
and accessorize you know, your experience, or do you want
to go Android where you have a bunch more options
and a little bit more flexibility when it comes to
how you personalize your phone and device. It's just it's
just like I said, personal preference. But I'm fine with
(31:43):
you switching if you want. If your family members are
on there and they're really pressuring you, then maybe it's
time to take a look at that. Instagram is shutting down.
It's this doesn't this This is like a story for
the one percent, one percent of people who care. Rahm
is shutting down at standalone IGTV app. I mean, have
(32:03):
you used the IGTV app anytime in the past year.
Absolutely not. I don't think so. So IGTV was this
big push by Instagram. You know, Instagram started as a
pure photo sharing app, and then they added IGTV so
they can get into video or I think I think
they had maybe short videos where you can do like
(32:25):
a sixty second video. Then they did IGTV so you
can have longer form, bigger videos. That were they all
had to be sixteen by nine, which was a whole pain.
And now they're just saying, you know what, never mind,
We're just going to do video on Instagram. That's what
it's called. You can do sixteen by nine. You can
do square, you can do four by three, you can
(32:45):
do horizontal, vertical, whatever you want. It's all gonna work
inside Instagram video. Now. The one major downside to this
is that a lot of people made money on IGTV videos.
There was like, if you're you can have ads in
your videos, and you would make money on those ads.
So that's going away. But on the flip side, right now,
(33:06):
what Instagram's doing this is the reason why you're seeing
so many reels. And I've talked about this because they're
paying creators' money bonuses to make those reels, and so
when you make those reels, you make a little money
on them, and so that's how they're getting so many
people to do those reels, and so that's why you're
seeing so many of them. So you know, look, we're
(33:28):
seeing an evolution. Instagram used to be the absolute top
of the mountain, and now it is TikTok. And now
not for everything just yet, but TikTok is where a
lot a lot of the energy is and a lot
of the momentum, I should say, the momentum is behind TikTok.
It may be younger people right now, but it will
(33:50):
eventually switch and so you know, you might be saying, oh,
why is Instagram have to change so much? Why is
I have to change? But the reality is Instagram needs
to survive. I mean, it's not a given. It is
not a given that this app is going to be. Okay,
it's owned by Facebook or Meta, i should say, and
(34:10):
Facebook itself, yes, is still a behemoth. But again, this
is what's so wild about the tech world. Any app
can come along and suddenly take the reins. And yes,
it's tougher and tougher because of the money that these
other bigger apps have and a lot of times they
swallow the smaller apps, but there is still a chance.
I mean, TikTok's a great example. TikTok came out of
(34:33):
nowhere and it is absolutely dominating. It dominated that short
form video and YouTube had to race to catch up.
Instagram had to race to catch up. Facebook is just
starting with short form. They just introduced reels on Facebook.
So it is one of these things where you see
these these apps come along and they just kind of
(34:54):
sweep everyone off their feet and next thing you know,
everyone's using them, they've all downloaded them. And TikTok is
definitely that app. I find myself using it more and more,
and it's, Uh, it's full of a lot of garbage,
but there's also a lot of really interesting, useful, fun
silly stuff on there, and it's it's definitely something that
(35:16):
is is it keeps making its way into my mix
because it's really easy to like kind of watch when
you have a couple of minutes of downtime. But it's
also like I have a love hate because I'm like, oh,
all these things are so frustrating, Like there's zero production
quality on ninety nine percent of the videos people will
watch anything. There's so much stuff that's like either you know,
fake or like not real or just like I'm like what.
(35:37):
So you gotta be careful when you're when you're watching
any of these you gotta just keep a keep a
critical eye no matter what you're watching. April says, Hey, Rich,
what do you think of the T mobile five G
home Internet? Good or not good? Sent from my iPad? April, Uh,
(35:58):
It's funny you ask, because I'm actually well doing a
story I've already done it. Did some research on this
for my story for KTLA, where I looked at T
Mobile five G Home Internet and Verizon's five G home Internet.
So those are the two that I would compare Team
AT and T. At this point, I do not believe
has A has a five G home Internet offering, at
(36:20):
least not widely available that I know of. So you've
got T Mobile and you've got eighteen Verison. So I
tested the Verizon five G. You think it's called five
G home or something like that, And I'll be honest,
it's pretty phenomenal. It's so easy, it's it's actually one
of those things. And this happens to me. I've been
covering this stuff for a long time, but every so
(36:41):
often a product comes along and it's just brilliant. So
for so many years, and I've moved to so many
places around the US and my job as a reporter,
and what do you do when you move into a
new place. The first thing you do is you call
the cable people. They install your cable, they install your internet,
and you get your water and power hooked up. You
might get your direct TV installed, whatever you do. But
(37:01):
this was the way you did things for so long.
When you moved, you would have to call someone to
come to your place and connect it, and there would
be a date they'd say, Okay, we're coming out next Saturday.
The cable person will be there from ten am until
seven pm. You're like, oh, thanks for the thanks for
the long extended window that they'll arrive at. You know,
whenever you leave your house or want to, that's when
they'll arrive. But you know, the reality is that's the
(37:25):
way it was done for many, many years. And so
when I tried this team a Verizon box that you
just plug in, and so you plug this box in
it you have to do it in your window so
it can get the best signal. You plug it in,
it latches onto the five G signal, which is brand
new by the way, this five GUW signal, which is
like the ultra wideband that Verizon has. T Mobile is
(37:48):
like I think it's called UC but it's these these
five G spectrum that the carriers have gotten a hold
of is so vast that they are now able to
do this. So when you think of cellular connections, all
we have thought about in the past is our smartphone.
It's like this a little tiny connection that's powering this
tiny screen. Sometimes you might hotspot your phone to your
(38:11):
tablet or your laptop, but it was always like a
not like a very long term thing. So the idea
of having five G wireless internet power everything in your
home is just one of those things that you have
to kind of shift your paradigm. You know, it's like, Okay,
well can this really work? And I can say yes.
And so at my house, I personally don't get the
(38:32):
best Verizon signal. So I didn't test the Tea mobile one,
by the way, but you know, they work very similarly.
But I was able to test the Verizon signal at
a hotel in San Francisco and also at KTLA in
the studio, they have a really good five G Verizon signal.
And so here's the bottom line with this. The plans
(38:54):
are cheaper. T Mobile is fifty bucks, no data caps.
Verizon's even cheap, or if you're a customer, it's like
twenty five dollars for one plan or like fifty or seven.
You know, it just depends on if you're a customer
or not, and also the plan that you want. And
I'm telling you for twenty five bucks a month, if
you're a Verizon customer, this is like a no brainer.
If if you get a good five G UW signal
(39:19):
at your house. If you do not get that signal,
I would not recommend this because the speeds you're not
going to be that great. Now, you might not need
the best speeds. I mean, even if you get one
hundred or fifty, you'll be fine with things, like you know,
if you're just watching Netflix or just surfing the web.
But if you're doing things like heavy duty uploads, heavy
duty downloads, that's where it could it could slow down
(39:42):
a little bit. But otherwise this is a great, great
alternative for so many people if you have access to it.
So there's a couple of things. You have to have access.
You have to be in one of the cities that
Verizon allows it or T Mobile. You also have to
be an address that's approved for it. And once you
qualify on those two things, you I think with T
Mobile you don't need to be a customer to get
(40:02):
that fifty dollars rate, but with Verizon you really have
to be a customer to get the best deal. Otherwise
it's just the deal goes downhill pretty fast because the
prices go up. Also, at least with Verizon, they're guaranteeing
the pricing is going to stay the same for two
to three years. Which is kind of cool. I think
it's amazing. In fact, I would probably switch mine at
(40:23):
home if I was able to get that signal that
I wanted here at my house, which I just don't have.
And so it's amazing. You set this thing up and
you can tell your cable company goodbye. You could tell
whatever company you have see you later. And the best
part is if it doesn't work out, Like, there's no contract,
so if it doesn't work out, you unplug it, you
(40:43):
ship it back, and you say, okay, that didn't work out,
and you reconnect your internet from your cable provider. Oh whoops,
we already did a Let's move on to a story. Oh,
speaking of TikTok, TikTok now taking aim at YouTube even
more with longer ten minute video uploads. So not much
more to know about this except you know, TikTok started
(41:05):
out either like fifteen seconds, then they went to like
thirty and sixty, then they went to three minutes. Now
they're going up to well, I guess, okay, so TikTok,
I guess was always sixty seconds. I thought that they
were like fifteen seconds when they first started out, but
maybe they were sixty I don't know, because I wasn't
on TikTok at the very very beginning. But anyway, so
(41:28):
let's just say they were sixty then they tried three minutes,
and now they're doing ten minutes, and that's that's a
significant change because you know, sixty seconds is a challenge
if you're trying to do certain things. You know, if
you're trying to you know, most of the things you
see on TikTok are very very short form, and so
because their short form, people are are forced to sort
(41:49):
of get their point across very quickly, and so they
try all kinds of different things and all different ways
of doing that. And that's why TikTok is very creative,
because creators have to figure out ways of getting there
are points across very fast. But at the same time,
why not have a flexibility to go with longer videos
if you if you have a big following on there
(42:10):
and you want to start doing more, like you know,
more in depth travel videos or more in depth tech
reviews or whatever, it's nice to have this option. So
we'll see. I mean, but this takes aim at YouTube
because you know, YouTube used to be the place where
you would watch longer videos and if you don't have
to go there anymore. You know, it takes away some
of their viewing time. But we'll see, let's not get
(42:30):
ahead of ourselves. I was gonna say so TikTok. One
of the things that TikTok is kind of like very
famous for is their algorithm and what their algorithm does.
And I've noticed this after using it for a couple months.
It really latches on to It knows exactly how long
you're watching videos for, and so if you're watching a
(42:53):
video to the end or even loop that video, it
really registers a real deep kind of like check mark
in its algorithm. And so next thing you know, you
are going to start seeing those types of videos over
and over and over. And so for me, there's a
couple of videos that i'd see, especially the iPhone tip videos.
(43:14):
Like you you start watching one of those, next thing,
you know, your entire feed is a lot of those.
You know, it just depends what you're into because it's
very customized for you. But I've noticed that that TikTok
really latches on and so if you if you watched
a video and now you're kind of like like I
was doing, like a healthy trader Joe's Trader Joe's meals,
(43:35):
and so you know those will be in my in
my feed. But let's say that I get bored of
those healthy Trader Joe's meals because they just don't appealch
to me anymore. I figure this out today. You can
press and hold on a video and it will give
you the option to say not interested, and so you
can press that and now you can get rid of
that sort of type of video on your feed. Next question,
(44:01):
Paul says, Hey, Rich, I have a one plus seventy
Android phone. Wow, another Android. Do you know if anyway
I can permanently save the voicemails on that phone? My
dad just passed away, sorry to hear that, and I
have seven of his voicemails and don't want to lose
them to the automatic deletion. After a certain period of time,
I have to go in and play each one and
resave it. I'm not really at the point where I
could even listen to my dad's voice right now, so
(44:23):
it's kind of tough. My fears if I forget to
retrieve them for a couple of days, they will get deleted.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you, Rich. Well, Paul,
First off, I am so sorry if you're a loss,
I can't imagine and it's even tough for me to
like think about your situation right now. So that's that.
(44:44):
But with this said, I have actually gotten this question before,
and it's a very common thing, and it actually makes
me really sad to even think of this situation because
I do have voicemails for my parents on my voicemail,
and my voicemail isn't even set up it anymore. These
these are voicemails that have been lingering for a long time.
But here are my suggestions. Number one, I believe the
(45:06):
one plus seventy. I'm not sure if it has a
headphone jack, but you can no matter what, if it
has a headphone jack. You can get a cable, a
three point five millimeter cable on both ends, plug one
end into your phone, plug the other end into a computer,
and then open up something like you know, Windows Record
(45:28):
or any sort of recording program you know, or on
a Mac you can open up quick Time and record
and record play the voicemails from your phone while your
phone is plugged in and record them to the computer,
and you know, you can ask a friend to help
you with that, and just you know, try to figure
out how you can do that and just save those
voicemails as MP three's. And again we're talking the Android
(45:51):
here on iPhone. I believe you can download these as
a voice memo. Android. I don't think gives you that option.
But now the other way and okay, now, if you
don't have a headphone jack on that phone, which I'm
not sure it is, if it's on there or not,
you'll you're gonna need a USB C to three point
five millimeter connector that should be in the box with
the OnePlus they included them for a very long time.
(46:14):
I don't know if they include those anymore. But if
you can find your box and you can find that
little connector, it's just a little tiny dongle I guess,
for lack of a better term, that has a three
point five millimeter on one side. That's kind of an
input and then yeah, an input, is it an input? Yeah?
And then it has a a three point or a
(46:36):
USB C on the other side. I guess it's a
female connector is what they call it, on the on
the one side, and then USB C on the other side.
So that's what I would do. That's gonna give you
the cleanest audio. The other thing you can do is
if you just want to make sure that you've got
these things saved. I know you said it's tough to
hear your dad's voice, so maybe have a friend do this.
(46:58):
But you can have your phone, just place it next
to another phone, open up the recorder on that phone,
press record, and then play these these voicemails and they're
going to be better than nothing. I mean, the audio
quality is going to be pretty darn good when you
do it that way, as long as you're in a
quiet room, so at least you have something. Obviously, the
cord the corded way of connecting these would be a
(47:22):
lot cleaner of a connection. But anyway, thanks for the question.
That is a good one and something that you know
is just uh, something that sadly we don't want to
have to do it, but it is. It is good
to be able to do that, all right. Waimo. The
self driving unit of of you know, Google's alphabet I
(47:43):
guess start out as Google self driving car is now
able to charge for rides up in San Francisco. So
this is a an autonomous car that's driving by itself
that now has the ability to charge people for rides.
So it's really pretty wild to see the progression of this.
It's also allowed to operate twenty four to seven in
(48:05):
various parts of San Francisco, except if it's raining or
if there's heavy fog, which is like every morning in
San Francisco. Maybe not in the city streets so much,
but definitely in the in the mountain areas or I guess,
I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of fog
in San Francisco. I mean, people that live up there
would no better than me of where it actually makes
its way in. But I've you know, I was blown
(48:26):
away by the fog up there. It's so beautiful. But
that's it. So now we have what accounts to an
Uber style service that is autonomous, but you're also you know,
they can charge for us. So that means no tire drivers,
no human drivers, no one you know, drowsy, and it's
just like twenty four to seven. These cars can go.
(48:49):
Maybe they need to be refueled at some point throughout
the day, but that's pretty amazing. Now there is one
little caveat the California State says that they have to
have a safety driver in this vehicle at this point,
still present because they are charging for rides, and that
person can of course take over the steering wheel or
the controls if necessary. But I am sure these cars
(49:12):
have done many, many, many of thousands of miles. I
know they are doing fully autonomous, no driver or no
supervisor in their Phoenix area, where Waimo is also operating.
So it's probably just a matter of time before this
comes to California. But I just figured i'd tell you
that because it's something to keep in mind. I mean, really,
you know, these car services like Uber and Lyft, they've
(49:34):
built they've been built on human drivers. But there will
come a time when there will be a transition, at
least for some of the fleet, not for all of it,
where they will have just cars that just drive you around,
that don't have people and in them no driver. And
it's just one of those things to be aware of.
All right, Lee and Cathy, we enjoy all your tech info.
(49:56):
We are Android owners right now with Pixel threes. We're
having our first grandchild. Oh congratulations. Wondering which phone do
you think is best? We're on Google Fi. They have
the new Samsung S twenty two on sale for eight
ninety nine the Pixel six pro same price. Thanks in advance,
Lee and Kathy yeeha um. And they sent a nice
(50:17):
picture of them with their I don't know if it's
them with their their fish they cow. I don't know,
but Lee and Kathy here's the thing. So I would
totally recommend the Samsung S twenty two except for one reason.
You mentioned your grandchild. Now, I will tell you nearly
every phone that I test has problem with kids and
(50:37):
their movement except for two phones, and that is the
iPhone and that is the Pixel phones. I don't know
what it is, but the iPhone nails it. They seem
to flee, freeze things in mid movement and they just
get it and you get a clear picture. And the
Pixel six does the same thing. The pixels have always
done this, but the Pixel six actually steps it up
(50:58):
a notch. They have something called like I think it's
called face on blur where it's actively looking for like.
They use the example of kids like moving around, and
it will use I believe it uses the wide angle
camera to find a secondary shot of the child's face
not moving. Then it will superimpose that. I know it
sounds weird, but somehow it works and you don't even notice.
(51:19):
I've seen it show up. You can't activate it manually,
but if you're flipping through your pictures in Google Photos,
you'll see that some of them have this little face
on blur icon and you're like, huh, I guess Google
applied some smarts to make sure that this face is
not blurry. So for that reason, and just in general,
I was doing some testing last night with the iPhone
versus the Pixel versus the Samsung, and the Pixel definitely
(51:44):
in the iPhone definitely have a slight advantage over Samsung.
Maybe not even slight, maybe like a really clear advantage
over Samsung when it comes to moving people and getting
a clear shot of those moving people. I mean, I've
got kids, and you know, quite honestly, kids often kind
of direct which phone you need to carry, because you
(52:05):
do not want your pictures of your grandchild to be
all over the place and blurry and smeared looking, because
that's just not good, not good. And so for that
reason I would recommend the Pixel six pro. Go for it,
and I think you are going to enjoy it. Oh
there is that sound, you know what that means? That's
(52:25):
gonna do it for this show. If you would like
to submit a question for me to answer, go to
my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech,
hit the Big Blues send email button, or go to
rich on Tech dot tv hit the email icon. Also,
I would love it if you would rate and review
this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice.
Write a quick line about what you like about this
show to help other people understand why they should listen.
(52:46):
You can find me on social media at rich on
Tech and no matter where you live in the US,
you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple, TV, fireTV,
and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section
and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand.
My name is rich Merril. Thanks so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend an hour
of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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