Disney gets the tech treatment

Elon Musk joins Twitter's board; Google Maps improvements; a photo backup app gets better; Amazon increases streaming music prices; Spectrum introduces a "free" internet plan for low income households; Apple's WWDC 2022 will be online again; tech tips from my recent Disneyland visit.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

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yet another streaming service raises prices. Another Apple event will
be online only. Tips from my Disneyland adventure plus your
tech questions Answered? What's going on on Richidimiro And this
is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
also the place where I answer the questions you send me.

(00:32):
I'm the tech reporter at Channel five KTLA in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the show. Welcome.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
If you are watching on Facebook Live, thanks for tuning
me in. I mentioned I went to Disneyland?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Was it last week?

Speaker 1 (00:49):
So I will give you a couple of my takeaways
from Disneyland later in the show. You typically I do
that at the beginning of the show, kind of my
personal whatever you know, I don't know what you call it,
my personal twist on things or spin, I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
But I'll do that at the end of this show,
or maybe not the end, but just somewhere somewhere in
the middle of the show. Let me talk about what
I've been testing out this Let's see, we've got two
phones here, so I'm gonna have a story on KTLA
next week. But I'll show you the phones here this week.
So this is the iPhone S I've got in my

(01:24):
hand here, and I was I didn't really know what
to expect. I kind of it took me a bit
to open this one up because I just kind of,
you know, was not that interested in it. I mean,
it's a four hundred and twenty nine dollars phone, and
it's very basic.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
The main appeal is that it's cheap and it has
this fingerprint reader still on it. But after using this
phone for a little bit, I mean, realistically, to get
this iPhone S, you know, it has to be a
real you know, it's a budget play, which is fine,
but you know, and it has the best thing about
it is that it has the latest processor from Apple.

(02:02):
But compared to the iPhone thirteen Pro, which has like
a better screen, this thing just seems so antiquated, and
so I've been playing with it a little bit. It's
just got one lens on the back too, which is
also really kind of retro and old school. Overall, it's fine.
It's just very simple. So if you need like a
very simple iPhone, the beauty of this is that it

(02:22):
comes with all the iPhone accessories, plus it has that.
Really it's got a good camera, it's just a very
basic camera because it only has that one lens. So
four hundred and twenty nine dollars for the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Se Then you've got this.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
This is the Samsung what's this called. This is the
A fifty three to five G So this is about
the same price. This is about four hundred and fifty dollars.
And the big difference here is that look at the
cameras on the back. There's a whole bunch of cameras
on the backside, so you've got not just a macro camera,
but an ultra wide camera and a standard camera. And

(02:59):
this is the screen. So the screen is a lot
lot bigger. The screen on the small iPhone, I think
it's like something like under five inches. This one is
like six and a half inches, and so it just
feels much more modern. But it really depends what you want.
I'm not telling folks whether they should go with an
iPhone or Samsung.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I feel like so.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Many people have already made a decision in that aspect
of their lives, So I'm not trying to get you
to switch over. I'm just telling you that you definitely
get more for your money when it comes to the Samsung.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
For sure, it's probably not going.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
To be as fast of a device as the iPhone,
but it's it's quite like a really nice device for
the price that you're paying. So for four hundred and
fifty dollars, and actually I wouldn't even pay the four
to fifty. I would wait until some kind of discount
happens on this phone because already, if you trade in
any phone, even when with a crack screen, you can
get one hundred dollars off. That brings this phone down

(03:51):
to three hundred and fifty dollars. And this is a
great little phone. I mean I was playing with it,
and I'm sitting here like taking pictures with it, and
we went out and about and it's just like, it's
amazing what you can get for like I'm going to
say four hundred bucks these days.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
So that's the phone.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
We've got the Samsung A fifty three five G and
the iPhone SE and again they both work on five
G networks as well. I'm gonna have my full comparison
next week on KTLA. This podcast is not like a
tease for KTLA. I really that's One of my pet
peeves is when people think that because you're listening to
this podcast, you watch every single story I do on KTLA.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I don't assume that at all.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think that people are very compartmentalized on what they do. Yeah,
there's some crossovers. Sometimes you might catch a story other times,
but I don't expect you to see everything. But of
course I'll post all that on my social media, so
you'll have that.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
All right, let's get to the first story of the day.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
I'm not gonna spend a whole bunch of time on this,
but Elon Musk is joining the board of directors at Twitter,
and so why is this important. I don't really think
Twitter is a big part of most people's lives unless
you're in the news business, the entertainment business. They have
the least amount of followers or users, I should say,
out of any of the social networks. So when you

(05:03):
look at something like Facebook, I mean you're talking over
a billion users. When you look at something like Instagram,
I think, I don't know how many they have, but
they have a lot and people are on there. I mean,
it's a popular, growing service. When you look at something
like Twitter, it's not really that popular. I think in
this CNBC article they just had two hundred and seventeen million.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Daily active users. That is not very much.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
So Elon Musk, you know, he's kind of like a
kind of a love hate relationship with Twitter. You know,
he's kind of this outspoken, over not oversized, like size wise,
but like what's the word when he's just kind of
he's just a big, big you.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
He's a larger than life individual, and not just because
of his money. It's just the guy is just very
outspoken for being a CEO of a company. You know,
a lot of CEOs just kind of like to sit back,
not really say much, do kind of like the press.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
But Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Likes to really get his hands dirty and just kind
of get in there, whether it's controversial, whether it's not.
He just likes to be out there. And so, you know,
some people like that, some people don't. But he has
joined Twitter's board of directors by buying a nine point
two percent stake in the company, which I don't know
how much that cost him, but it probably cost.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Him a lot.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
I think he paid all cash for it, which is
just totally wild. But the Twitter stock went up as well,
which you know, I'm not going to get into stock
numbers and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
This is a consumer show.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
But Elon Musk has about eighty million followers on the platform.
But why does Twitter want him? I mean, I don't
know if they want him. Actually they probably don't, but
they're saying they do, and they said. The new CEO
of Twitter, Prague Argowall, said that he is.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Looking forward to.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Helping Twitter from Elon Musk make significant improvements in the
coming months, whatever those improvements are. And one of the
big things that has been talked about on Twitter for
so long now is this idea of an edit button.
I will tell you why I don't think it's a
good idea and why I think Twitter has shied away
from it. It's because, Okay, so let's say you tweet
something I love pizza.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
You get a whole.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Bunch of people to retweet it and like it, and
then all of a sudden, you change the tweet, you
edit it to say I hate pizza. Uh, And then
all of a sudden, that follows through to all the
different people that are that are you know that like.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
That tweet and retweeted it.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
So there's an there's an obvious issue there, and I
don't know how Twitter gets around that. What do they
do check every single tweet that you change? There's just
no way they can do that. So we'll see what
happens with Elon Musk joining the board of Twitter, see
if anything changes, see if more people join. I will say,
as much as I don't like Twitter for the reach
of Twitter, it does reach the right people in my business.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So I don't have a lot of followers on Twitter,
but the.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Followers I do have are a lot of the tech
people that also have a lot of followers, and it's
kind of this network. So that's what I do like
about Twitter is for professionals like myself, I can tweet
something and it can rise up and because the right
people see that tweet. And I also really like the
fact that Twitter is almost the best platform agnostic social

(08:15):
media platform out there because it almost operates the same
way on iOS and Android. A lot of these social
media networks are vastly different on android and iOS, and
it's really really annoying, besays bsays Shout Out from the Philippines, Awesome.
One day, I'd like to do a meet up with
my followers and just meet them in all these different

(08:37):
cool places.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
All right, first question of the show.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Victoria says, I keep receiving texts about selling my home.
Some of them say type stop to opt out. Do
you think that's safe, Victoria, This is a great question,
and here is the answer. The answer is it is
only safe to opt out of, whether it's text or emails,
if it is a legitimate sender. So if you are

(09:01):
getting this from say a Redfin or a Zillow or
a you know, even even a local realtor that you
might have looked at an open house and they started
texting you and now you're getting those texts from them,
those are all examples of a legitimate business that you
can safely type the word stop and those texts will stop.

(09:21):
They will take you off of that list. Uh, in
a business that I would not do this too. Is
a text that you've you don't really understand where it's
coming from. The return phone number is not very good.
It just seems spammy or weird. Just go ahead and
delete that text because they're they're by by clicking a
link inside that text or by replying to that text,

(09:44):
you are actually confirming to those spam spammers that that
phone number is good.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
And when you do that, guess what's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
You're gonna get a whole lot more spam texts. So again,
if it's a Macy's Home Depot, any of these companies
that you do business with that you have signed up
for a lot of times nowadays, you have to give
your phone number as part of like a sign up
process or whatever. You know, if you give that phone number,
a lot of these companies text you because text is

(10:14):
so universal and it's really sticky. So when you get
those texts, you know, it's easy to get a hold
of you because you're gonna look at your texts. And
so people love text messaging because it's kind of a
really good way to get a hold of people. But
you don't have to be beholden too these companies don't
feel bad. Go ahead, type stop and get rid of
the Home Depot text, Get rid of the Walmart text.

(10:34):
Whoever's texting you if you don't need them, if they're
not sending you coupons on a regular basis, get rid
of them because it's just making you spend more money.
So when it comes to these companies that do not
have a legitimate track record. Don't even do anything to
these texts, just delete them. You can try blocking them,
but honestly, these people are not texting from the same

(10:54):
numbers anyway, so you know it's not worth it to
go ahead and block these people. Blocking really only works
for someone that you know or a legitimate business. But
legitimate businesses are going to take you off the list
when you type stop. So I am really you have
no idea with my emails. I unsubscribe to everything. I

(11:15):
mean literally, even companies that I like, even companies I
do business with, unless they are sending me discounts.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's my delineation.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
If you are not sending me a discount in that email,
if you're just like advertising a new product, a new service,
reminding me about something, then you're gone because I just
want those coupon codes.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
I want those promo codes. I want those discount codes.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
That's how you get me to stay on your email
list if you keep sending me those codes. Otherwise I'm
just gonna say please, I'll see you later.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Great question, Victoria.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
All right, next story on the list for today, Apple's
Worldwide Developers Conference is.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Going to be online only once again.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
You know, I think the pandemic sort of quote unquote
ended a little bit too soon for Apple to kind
of switch gears. This is happening in June. This happens
from let's see June sixth through June tenth. And this
is a very big event. This is the third year.
Now for those of you on the Facebook Live, I'm
holding up four fingers.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
This is the third year that Apple is doing this
in a virtual way. So the first year was let's see,
it was twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty no,
oh gosh, hold on, now, I got to remember when
the pandemic started. Was it twenty twenty or twenty twenty,
I've got it all wrong. I think it was yeah,
three years, so probably March twenty twenty was when the

(12:43):
first when the pandemic first started, So that would be
twenty twenty in June, then twenty twenty one in June,
then twenty twenty two in June. So yeah, So this
is an event where I would say about five thousand
people fly in from all over the world. All these developers,
all these people that make apps for the iPhone will

(13:03):
fly in, and they fly in and they learn more
about what they can do with iPhone software, and so
for us the consumers out there, we get to see
the next version of iOS, We get to see the
next version of iPad.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Os, mac os, watch os, and tvOS.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, they have one, two, three, four, five operating systems
at this point. So it's kind of fun because you
get to see what, let's say, in this case, iOS
sixteen is going to do, and watch OS, I don't
know what they're up to eight or something like that,
or I guess it'd be nine. So we get to
see all these different things, so it's kind of fun.
Sometimes we get hardware. Most of the time we don't.

(13:43):
You never know, they could throw something in there. But
this year they are going to do a little bit
of a live portion and this is kind of cool.
They're going to host a special day for developers and
students at Apple Park on June sixth, so they can
watch the keynote and the State of the Union videos
along with the online community. Space will be limited, and
details about how to apply will be provided on the

(14:04):
Apple Developer site and app soon. So for sure I
would apply to that if you want to go. I mean,
they're going to select a few people, but it's you
might as well be in it to win it, right,
And then they also have this Students around the world
are invited to create a swift Swift Playgrounds app project
on a topic of their choice and you can submit
it through April twenty fifth, not very much time, but

(14:27):
it's the Swift Student Challenge website. So if you know
a student that's coding already, get them to start this,
get them to enter this Swift Student Challenge, because you
never know.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
I mean I interviewed a kid. I call him a kid.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I mean he's a young man a couple weeks ago
up in San Francisco who was one of these students
that they selected for this challenge a couple of years ago,
and now he's a very successful developer. He came up
with an app that we featured on KTLA and I
have no doubt that kid is going to be a
millionaire by the time he is thirty years old, because

(15:00):
he's only like twenty something and he just graduated college.
But his app was like downloaded by so many people.
Let's see, it was called Locket Camera, so let's see
if it's been acquired yet. It's like basically a little
tiny I mean, look at this seventy three thousand ratings.
It was like downloaded by millions of people around the
world instantly, and he made it for his girlfriend. It's

(15:22):
a little tiny widget that you put on your home
screen on your iPhone and friends and family can send
pictures to it. So instead of opening up your phone,
logging in or looking at Facebook or Instagram, you just
literally have this little picture right on your home screen
that your loved one sent to you or your friend.
And it's kind of a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea. So anyway,

(15:43):
I have no doubt that that will be acquired or
he will be what they call aqua hired, like acquire
like he he's an aquahirer, like basically a company like
Instagram will buy his app, but they'll also get him
in the process. So A get a couple questions on
the live stream. I know it's really tough for me
to reply. The comments just kind of go really fast

(16:06):
in front of me. So I am going to eventually
try to do a show where I answer questions live
as well. So I haven't figured out exactly the cadence
on that, but please understand if you're watching on the
live stream. That that is My goal is to make
this an interactive process, because really what this show is
all about is answering your questions. So right now, what

(16:27):
I do is I select the best questions that I
get all week, and I answer those on the live stream,
the ones that I think appeal to the most people,
the questions that I think will resonate with the most people,
the things that people are wondering about the most. Right, So,
I don't really answer like the really kind of small
questions like how come my printer drivers not working? You know,

(16:47):
like that like you got to figure that out, you
know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to answer stuff
that has a much broader appeal that you all can
kind of have a takeaway from.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
With that said, let's get to the next question. All right,
good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
I'm a longtime KTLA viewer of yours and enjoy when
you sub in for Leo Laporte.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
We also we had a notice.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
On our doorknob that Frontier Fiber is coming to our neighborhood.
I'm a relatively satisfied Spectrum customer, but it does peak
my curiosity your thoughts. Maybe a topic for your podcast. Sorry,
we don't have AT and T Fiber in our area,
Thanks Allen. I think the AT and T fiber is
a reference to the fact that they are a sponsor

(17:31):
of the KTLA segment, and they have been for a
long time. But that doesn't really affect my answer here
because I feel like what internet service provider you have
largely depends on where you live. I mean, many people
don't have a choice of more than one maybe two.
So okay, so you're you're a relatively satisfied spectrum customer

(17:52):
and Frontier Fiber is coming. So here's the big difference
between fiber and cable Internet or any other Internet that
you get. When you get a fiber Internet connection, typically
the upload and the download speed are the same.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
And what does that mean.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
That means that not only will your download speeds be fast,
but if you're uploading stuff to the network, that's going
to be fast as well. That's really basically the only
advantage that I see to this situation. But there is
one other advantage to a new company coming into town,
and that is a better deal. So I can guarantee
you that Frontier will likely be offering a very nice

(18:33):
sign up deal. Maybe in the neighborhood of fifty bucks
for your service. If you've been a Spectrum customer for
a long time, they're probably charging you closer to eighty dollars.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
A month, depending on the plan you're on, of course,
But the.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Reality is, yeah, I would switch check it out. I mean,
you say you're relatively satisfied. You know you can always
go back, right, I mean, it's not like they cut
the line to your house and you can never get
it reinstalled. So if it's a faster speed for a
cheaper price, you might as well test it out.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
I know that some people have their problems with Spectrum,
obviously as a tech reporter, people are emailing me when
they're complaining about stuff. But you know, there's millions of
other people, or hundreds of thousands of other people that
don't have any problem. But I do get a fair
amount of complaints about Frontier. I probably get a fair
amount about Spectrum, but maybe not as much.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
But you know, here's the deal. It's your home internet.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Like as anyone like, oh my gosh, this is the
best home internet I've ever had in my life. No,
it's just kind of like running water. It's not like
when you move from house to house, you feel like
one water tastes better than the other.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Maybe you do. I don't know, I haven't really noticed, but.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, I would definitely check it out see what they offer.
And I think that's the main thing is that the
price that Fiber that Frontier is going to offer you
is probably going to be good, but it's probably going
to be better than what you're paying. The good news
is as a consumer, now you have you are armed
with that price, so you can go to Spectrum and say, hey, look,
Fiber's given me five hundred, five hundred for fifty bucks

(20:01):
a month. Right now, I'm paying seventy dollars for four
hundred four hundred down, and I think Spectrum is like
thirty five up on the four hundred, so it's it's
going to be significantly faster on the up. Most people
don't really upload a ton of stuff to the network.
I do because I'm working with video all the time,
but most people just need that fast download speed, and
quite honestly, for stuff like Netflix and all the streaming services,

(20:24):
you literally need like the slowest Internet connection ever it
still works just fine. So if you're having problems with
your Internet, it's mostly like your signal and your latency
and your WiFi is not very good. It's not that
your actual internet speed is not very good. All right,
Well this nicely segues into my next story. Charter Communications.
They are the owners of Spectrum. I swear I didn't

(20:47):
plan this, but this is just how the cookie crumbled
with the stories this week. So they now have what's
called Spectrum Internet one hundred. And this is really important.
So this is this is a high speed, low cost
internet service. So you get one hundred megabit download speeds
for just thirty dollars a month. That includes a modem

(21:07):
Wi Fi and oh I like this self installation is
included at no charge.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Oh thank you.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
I can install my own internet for at no charge.
Now if you charge me for that, I would really
have a problem. But remember back in the day, they
would come to your house and install it for free.
I don't know, maybe they don't do that anymore. It's
been a while since I got internet installed. But it's
just funny. It says self installation at no additional charge,
like we are privileged to get that? Like I don't

(21:33):
think so okay, So here's the deal. You can get
this now for thirty dollars a month. This is only
available to low income households, but you can also qualify
for what this government. The government has what's called the
Affordable Connectivity Program and that gives you a thirty dollars
monthly credit. So effectively you can have internet for free indefinitely.

(21:55):
So right now, the government they came up with this
program during the pandemic. It was called the Emergency Broadband
Benefits because all the kids were at home and people
are working from home and they needed internet and the
government wanted to make sure everyone had it, even if
you know, you didn't have enough money to buy it,
and so that's fine. But then they realized after this, like,
well we should probably have a program like this that
that runs indefinitely, and so they approve this and this

(22:18):
is what it's called. It's called Affordable Connectivity Program. So
if you know someone that's on SNAP, Medicaid, public Housing
Assistance Lifeline, WICK, is a you know on a tribe
tribal land, is on the school lunch program, had a pelgrant,
all these things will all of these things will will

(22:39):
approve you for this and you can basically get this
for free. So that's what you need to do is
just first go to the website FCC dot gov slash
ACP and then you can contact Spectrum and see what
the deal is to make sure you're eligible. But basically
you can get internet for free for thirty dollars a
month credit.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Okay, so oh, let's get.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
To another question. Sorry, I was on something else. All right,
let's see. Hi, Rich, I realize you are extremely busy.
I'm hoping you can please recommend an app that I
can use to remove duplicate photos on my Apple devices
I have over don't fall off your chair forty four
thousand pictures. I am almost seventy years old and I
really need to remove so many photos. And I trust

(23:28):
your opinion. We watch you on KTLA. Thank you in advance.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Robert.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Well, Robert, I did not fall off my chair, so
I'm okay. And you know, forty four thousand photos that.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Is a lot.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Actually, I'm not even sure I have that many. I
think I have like thirty thousand. But you know, you're
seventy years old, so you're a little bit older than me,
so you've had some more time to.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Collect these pictures. But here's what I would say.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Number one, whenever you are trying to get rid of
duplicate photos. Number one, This is what I do on
a daily basis. At the end of the night, at
the end of the day, I will just go ahead
and just kind of thumb through my Google Photos collection
and I will just kind of prune my collection, right,
like I'll delete things. You know, I'll look at multiple

(24:14):
photos and I'll say, Okay, I don't need that one.
I don't need that one, and I'll delete those. I'll
especially sort by video because those take up a lot
of space in my account, And so I will go
through and delete some videos that I know I don't need,
like if I just shot something. But the reality is
this should be an ongoing process. And yes, there are
some apps that can help, but there is not one

(24:36):
main app that I can recommend that will do this
all for you magically and pick all the best pictures.
So the app, though, that I do recommend is called Gemini.
And so this is an app that is Gemini. It's
called Gemini Gallery Cleaner, Gemini Photos. And so you can
use this on your iPhone. I don't think they have

(24:56):
an Android version. Did you say you have an iPhone?
I'm not really sure. Oh yeah, on my Apple devices.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
So now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
You just have to be really careful when you're deleting
pictures in bulk with an app like this, because you
may delete something that goes away forever. Most of the time,
when you're deleting pictures on the iPhone, they go into
a recently deleted folder and so you can get back
those pictures. But if you're deleting five ten thousand pictures,
it's gonna be really tough to go through all those
pictures and you're recently deleted and get back the ones

(25:27):
that you need.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
So just be aware of that.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
And you know, if you want to clean up your
photos with an app like this, it will do a
good job. It will look for screenshots, similar photos, all
kinds of stuff. And I believe it is free to try,
and then let's see how much it costs regularly. So,
by the way, and what I do with every app
is that you just go to the app Store and

(25:52):
scroll all the way down until it says in app purchases,
and this will give you an idea of how much
a quote.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Unquote free app actually costs.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
So this app is free, but yearly access is twenty dollars.
Monthly access is five dollars and you can get unlimited
access for about thirty five dollars, so that I guess
means it works forever. By the way, this is one
of the companies that is based in Ukraine. So this

(26:19):
made by Macpaul, which is one of my favorite software developers.
They also may clean my MacX. It's a great clean
up app for your device, your Mac or your PC.
I think it's called clean my Pc for the PC one.
But they are based in Ukraine, so thinking to them,
and if you're buying this app from them, you're actually

(26:40):
supporting them as well, which is kind of nice, but
good question. Just be careful, make sure that you've got
a backup if you can before you do anything like this.
But it removes blurry photos, similar photos.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
And also screenshots. All right. Well, I hate to be the.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Bearer of bad news, but Amazon is is raising prices
on its music unlimited plans. Now, this is a little
confusing because Amazon has several different types of music. If
you are a Prime subscriber, you get a whole bunch
of music included in Amazon Prime. Now it's about two

(27:18):
million songs that you can play for free without ads
and you may never even realize that you're not getting
the whole collection until you ask alex A to play
a specific song and she says, oh, sorry, that's not
included in your collection for free, and then maybe she
tries to upsell you to the Amazon Music Unlimited. So

(27:39):
Amazon Music Unlimited is a paid service, and this will
give you access to all of the songs in the catalog,
very much like a Spotify or a YouTube Music or
an Apple Music.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Now, up until now, this was two dollars less than Spotify,
Apple Music, and YouTube Music, and that's that's what drew
a lot of people to it. So, uh, even just
because it was two dollars less a month, and so
it was, it was seven ninety nine a month versus
Spotify's entry level is nine ninety nine a month. So

(28:12):
a lot of people are like, look, I have an Echo.
I've got you know, a fire TV. It integrates nicely
with my device and it saves me two dollars a month.
That's twenty four dollars a year. So hey, over five years,
that's over one hundred bucks. And so yeah, over over
four years, that's one hundred dollars. So again, you know
people like this, but now the price is going from

(28:33):
eight dollars a month to nine dollars a month for
Prime subscribers, and so the savings is not as big.
So now you're only saving a dollar a month.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
And Spotify, I will say.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Is probably a superior experience to the Amazon Music. Amazon
Music is pretty basic but it works. But you know,
now you're only saving a dollar a month. So I
feel like a lot of people are probably gonna move
over to Spotify because of this. Now, you know, saving
two dollars a month versus a dollar. Look, it's it's all,
it's you know, it's it depends on what you're what
you feel like that's worth to you. Right, if you

(29:06):
feel like a buck a month is a good deal
to save then, which it is over time, sure, stay
stick with it. But again this is for their Prime Unlimited.
Now they also to make things even more confusing, they
have a single device plan and this single device plan
goes from four dollars a month to five dollars a month.
And what that does is, let's say you just have

(29:27):
an Echo speaker. One Echo speaker, you can get unlimited
music on that speaker for five dollars a month. So
let's say you're not using Amazon Music on your phone,
in your car, on any other device. You just want
that one echo speaker, like maybe in your office to
have music. You could pay five bucks a month, And
that's actually a pretty good deal because why pay for
all these other devices if you don't really need it.

(29:48):
So again, Amazon Music Unlimited price increase starting on May fifth.
If you're just using the free level of Amazon Prime
Music on your devices and you don't pay anything except
for Amazon Prime, that will not change.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
That's still free.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It's just sometimes you might run into a situation where
it does not include the music that you want to hear.
Ada says on Facebook, what do you think about the
new T mobile Internet service? I think it's great if
it's available in your area and it's fast.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
We talked about this on the podcast a couple of
weeks ago. I tested the Verizon Home Internet and it's
fantastic if you have the signals at your house.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Absolutely. You put this little box.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
By your window, it pulls in a wireless signal and
it broadcasts it out to your entire house over a
Wi Fi.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
It's basically like a giant.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Hotspot for your entire house, and for T Mobile it's
like fifty bucks a month. For Verizon it's anywhere from
twenty five to like eighty bucks a month. But yeah,
if you have that available in your home. Absolutely where
I live, I don't have it available. I tried testing
it in my house. I do not have the right signal,
and at my office I did and up in Sevenrancisco,

(31:00):
I brought it to a hotel room.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
It was amazing.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
I mean, it's so cool that you can have a
five G signal that powers the Internet in your entire house.
So definitely, that's another way you could save money on
your Internet is those are significantly cheaper than the wired
internet most of the time. The problem with the wired
internet from these cable companies is that the price goes up.
So mine started at a certain price.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
It just keeps creeping up and the deals get less
and less.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Although I still will tell you make sure you call
every single time your price goes up, and you've got
to You've got to wheel and deal with these people.
You've got to talk to them. You've got to and
do your research, see what your other options are, and
be willing to switch. So, for instance, mine went up
to eighty bucks a month, and I called in and
I said, hey, look I can get this for you know,

(31:45):
a better deal. And they you know, I didn't really
want to switch, and so they said, look, we can
give you ten bucks off for the next year, and
I said, perfect, seventy bucks a month sounds good. I'm
getting a really good speed. And you know, I didn't
have to switch services, but I was willing to switch.
If I had to, I would switched back to my
old service that I had instead of my new service.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
All right, let's see, Alexis Oh, I almost said the
other word, Hey, Rich, I need your help.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
My phone was recently stolen, along with a few important items.
I have the iPhone ten s and this person turned
my phone off. Is there an alternative way to locate
my phone? I did try track my phone through other
family members' devices. If you could help me, you don't
know what that would mean to me. I look forward
to hearing from you, Alexis. Okay, So a couple of things.
If you lose your phone number one. I wrote about

(32:33):
this in my book one hundred and one iPhone Tips
and Tricks. I wrote that you want to make sure
that find my for your iPhone is turned on and
properly set up before you lose your phone, because it's
not the time to set it up once you lose
your phone. If it's not properly set up, your phone's
gonna be gone.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Now. I don't know what these people do with the phones.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
They probably chop them up for parts, because there's not
really much you can do with a phone that's been
activated on a different account. But what I want you
to do is go into the Find My app on
your iPhone and just go through the settings there and
just make sure that everything is set up properly. And
that way, before you lose your phone, you can make

(33:15):
sure that you have these things set up. There's a
couple of little options in there, and so just make
sure that you've looked through those options and they're properly
set up. Now, with the latest iOS fifteen, even when
your phone is turned off, it still reserves a little
bit of power. And this is pretty sneaky, it's actually
pretty smart on Apple's part, but it still reserves a
little bit of power that will power find my phone.

(33:39):
So even if the bad people turn off your phone,
it can still use the network to ping Apple servers
and say and give a location of that phone. Now,
this may not always work depending on what the bad
people do to your phone, but they could put it
in a Faraday cage and you know, next thing, you know,
nothing comes in or out, no signals.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Phone would not be able to see where it is.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
But I would definitely make sure you're going to find
my and just make sure that your your your lost
settings are set up before I wish. Uh, I should
actually refer to my book because I have it in there.
I have this tip in there, and it's you know,
it's uh, it's you know, it's a very important thing
to do because you want to make sure that everything

(34:23):
is set up before you lose this stuff.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
I've got to look at my book. Oh gosh, I
have so many things.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
But anyway, the main question that Apple is going to
ask you is if you want your phone to like,
you know, basically use the battery even though it's off,
reserve a little bit of battery, and also it'll it'll
you can display a message. Just to just go in
there and make sure that everything is turned on and
properly done. That's the main thing you want to do now,

(34:51):
if you lose your phone, Alexis, it was pretty smart
of you to use someone else's phone to look for yours.
So if you go to find my on someone else's phone,
they will. It has a little link at the bottom
that says, hey, are you someone else that needs to
find your phone? You can click that link and then
it will basically just bring you to a website to
log in with your iCloud password and then try to

(35:13):
locate your phone.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
If you're on and so.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Number one, you can always go to iCloud dot com
slashed iCloud dot com slash find. So yeah, iCloud dot
com slash find from any website and you can find
your phone that way. This happened to me the other day.
If you have Android, you can actually just go ahead
and ask Google where's my phone, and so it will

(35:37):
just it will show you. I had to do this
the other day I lost a phone, And you can
just say to Google where's my phone, and it will
show you on a map where your phone is. And
so that's really cool. And then you can also ring
your phone or you can recover your phone. You can
do that from any just literally type that into Google.
Where's my phone? Now, if you want to go to

(35:59):
the eggs exact website. It's actually Google dot com slash
Android slash find and so that will show you all
your different devices on a map as well. So you know,
these are little things that I try to talk about,
is that you know in advance, so that you can
figure this stuff out and you're not kind of searching
the internet looking for all this stuff. You kind of

(36:20):
have a heads up as to you know, how you
can do this stuff before it actually happens to you.
Hopefully it doesn't happen to you, Hopefully no one's out there.
Typically when people lose their phone, it's you know, it's
either left behind.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
I guess people are still stealing iPhones and androids and
not really sure why, but because once they're activated, it's
really tough to to do anything with that device. So
if you're thinking of stealing someone's phone, not a very
good idea.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
There's not much you can do for it.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
I mean, you could probably take the screen and the
you know whatever, take the parts inside.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
And am I giving you ideas now what to do
with stolen phones? I hope not.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
But you know, if you were to do that, I
guess that's what you would do but I I personally
try to remain on the up and up in my life,
and so I'm not stealing phones on.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
A regular basis.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
All right, let's get to some new features on Google Maps.
So Google Maps just in time for your spring break
road trips. Gas prices in California actually went down a
little tiny bit.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
There's still about six bucks.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
But they're down just like ten cents for the week
or something like that. So that's a nice thing, right,
Gotta look on the bright side, folks. But okay, a
couple of new features in Google Maps. Number one, instead
of just showing you that there's a toll road in
Google Maps, it will now tell you how much that
toll road will cost you. So this is really handy.

(37:41):
You might be saying, rich, give me a break. If
I'm driving an Orange County, I know exactly how much.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
The toll road is. Well, let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
As someone who travels frequently, sometimes I'll see a toll
road and I'll be like, ah, how much is it?
And they like never even tell you anymore, just says
pay your toll three days later. Like I went across
the Golden Gate Bridge the other day and they don't
even tell you how much the toll is, and there's
I'll tell you that story in a second, but so
this will now show you the estimated toll price before
you actually start navigating. Now, personally, I avoid toll roads

(38:12):
at all costs. I grew up in New Jersey. Toll
roads are a way of life there. I think they're silly.
The roads there are not any better than anywhere else
in the US, and they're collecting tons of money from
people on a daily basis. Not really sure where that
money's going, but it's definitely not going back into the roads,
so you know, and they're expensive. You know, you drive
a New Jersey, you're gonna pay a toll. So I personally,

(38:35):
on my Google Maps have the little toggle selected that
says avoid toll roads, and so that way I don't
have to ever even come up to these tolls. Because
there's the other thing that they do where a lot
of these toll roads now you can't pay someone at
a booth. I like to just pay and be done
with it, because if you've ever rented a car with
one of these little toll transponders on it, I've gotten

(38:55):
my bill and it's absolutely, absolutely, just ridiculous. It's like
a twelve to twenty five dollars charge just to use
that little transponder every day. And I'm like, okay, that's
that's just not acceptable. That's way the convenience does not
outweigh the cost of how ridiculously expensive it is.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
So I always.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Try to pay for the toll at the time of
the toll if I need to take a toll road.
I was up in San Francisco the other day a
couple of weeks ago, and you know, I was coming back.
I guess you can go one way over the Golden
Gate without paying the toll. When you come back, you
have to pay the toll. And so I'm, you know,
navigating on my maps, and it's like it'll take you

(39:34):
two hours.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
And I'm literally fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Across the bridge, and I go to navigate back and
it's like, it'll take you two hours and fifteen minutes
to get back to San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
And I said, what the traffic is that bad?

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Two hours and fifteen minutes, And I realized that I
still had the toggle on my Google Maps that said
avoid tolls, and so it was routing me around the
Golden Gate Bridge somehow, and whatever route that would take
you without tolls, and so I I was like, oh
my gosh, I'm not spending. So in that case, yes,
I broke down and I paid the toll, But it

(40:06):
was one of these situate because it was a ten
minute drive. In this case, it was one of these
tolls where there are no humans anymore. It's only one
of those license plate readers, and then you have to
remember in a couple of.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Days to pay.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Now, it was a little bit better than what I
experienced in Orange County once, where it's like, oh, pay
in five days or whatever, and you forget and next
thing you know, you get this giant bill and it's
like a two hundred dollars fine along with the fee
of like two dollars for the toll and so and
then you have to call them and they bring down
the fee and all this stuff. But anyway, this one
was a lot easier. They sent you a bill on

(40:40):
the mail and you pay that bill when you get
it. It was like nine dollars and five cents. What was
my point of all this? My point is that I
do try to avoid these things, but sometimes I like
to pay them.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Oh yeah, if you.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Want to download an app that's pretty handy for using
toll roads. It's called uproadp up Road, Uproad, up Road
Toll toll app and I featured this yeah, uproad. So
it's a pay as you go toll app. It recognizes
a lot of the tolls in the US on a.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Lot of the roads.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
You put your credit card or Venmo or however you
want to pay, and when you go through the toll,
your phone somehow figures it out and it pays the toll.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
And it's really pretty slick.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
But you do have to pay a little premium on
top of the toll price, but in that case it's
not as wild as the price you would pay if
you're in a rental car. It's like, I think fifteen percent,
depending on a plan. They have a bunch of different plans.
But anyway, just again, this show is all about giving
you information, giving you options, helping you understand what's out
there in life, and this is just one of those things.

(41:45):
Uproad Toll app is just one more option. Oh, i'd
even finish what Google is gonna do with maps. So
in addition to the toll estimates are also going to
show traffic lights and stop signs and that's something that
Apple Maps has had for a long time, which my
kids in the car whenever they see that, they're like,
Apple Maps is so much better a show stop signs

(42:06):
than traffic lights. I'm like, that makes it better, Like
come on, I mean, it does look prettier for.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Sure than than Google Maps. Google Maps looks like.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I will never forget the So I switched to Android
because of Google Maps. This is a very old story,
but I will never forget back in the day, and
you know, some of you may remember this, some of
you may not. Back in the day, when the iPhone
first came out, it did not have turn by turn navigation.
It had turn by turn directions built into the app.

(42:35):
It did not have turn by turn navigation, so it
had Google Maps built in. But it was the Droid
Bionic smartphone from Verizon that was the first to have
turn by turn navigation maps in your car. It came
with this fancy little holder, and that caused me to
wait in line outside the Verizon store, purchased that Droid

(42:56):
Bionic and switched to Android because I thought it was
a superior system because it had those turn by turn directions.
And so we take for granted now that turn by
turn is available on every phone in five thousand different apps.
But my point of that story is that the maps
today on Google pretty much look the same as they

(43:17):
did back in the day. I'm sure they have changed.
Don't get mad at me for saying that if you
work at Google, but yes, they've improved and the information,
all the stuff is so much better. But at their core,
they kind of have the same look and feel that
they did back in that.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Day, which is still pretty great.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I love Google Maps, but Apple Maps definitely has a
superior looking map. I think that when it actually comes
to using the maps, it's a different story. I'm not
going to get into that. My preferred is Google Maps.
Let's just put it that way. One more thing you'll
be able to do is navigate from your Apple Watch
on Google Maps, which is really nice. You don't need
to actually open up the Google Maps on your phone

(43:56):
before you navigate on your Apple Watch. You'll just be
able to use the mapping app on your Apple Watch directly,
which is kind of a big deal. I'm still waiting
Apple for the ability to just go ahead and set
a default mapping app. That is my biggest pet peeve
of the iPhone that they've gone defaults on mail, they've
gone defaults on the browser.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Which doesn't really default most of the time.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
But the maps is still a sore point because you
cannot have a default mapping app on the iPhone right now? Okay,
Jeffrey says, hello, Rich, I have an older computer that
uses Windows a operating system. Is it still okay and
safe to use? I have researched it and found mixed answers, best.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Regards, Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Uh, Jeffrey, I did a little research myself, and there's
something called end of life when it comes to Windows.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
The end of life.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
So Windows, Windows eight point Windows eight, Well, okay, so
it's Windows eight definitely end a life happened. Then they
came up with Windows eight point one and Windows eight
point one.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
You still have a little bit of life left.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
So Windows eight point one started in November thirteenth, twenty thirteen.
The mainstream end date was January ninth, twenty eighteen. That
means they no longer update Windows eight point one at all.
Since then, we've had Windows ten and Windows eleven. There
is no Windows nine because Windows eight. No, it was

(45:28):
Windows ten eight nine.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Get it? Oh?

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Do I have a boom boom, get it Windows ten
eight nine. It's a really dorky joke, but anyway, the
support date, the extended end date for Windows eight point
one is January tenth, twenty twenty three. So you are
good if you update to Windows eight point one. So

(45:53):
right now you said you have Windows eight you need
to get your computer on Windows eight point one and
that will give you just under a year to save
up some money and get a new computer in the
next year so that you can have the latest Windows
and of course have the security. Why do you want
to make sure you mentioned is it okay and safe
to use?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Well, the two biggest.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Things with using older operating systems is security and also compatibility,
so some of the new apps may not run on
the old operating system and the security. Now, this will
be secure until January tenth, twenty twenty three. So Microsoft
is still actively looking for exploits and things like that,
or still I should say, fixing exploits if they're found,

(46:35):
and maybe not bugs so much, but mostly just major exploits.
So they will fix that until January tenth, twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
But I would say start saving your money now.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Costco has some pretty nice all in ones for about
seven hundred bucks. You can get one of those in
January and of next year and think of it.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
As your holiday gift to yourself. All right, let's get
two the next story of the week. How much more
time do we have? All right, We've got a little
bit more.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Okay, So if you're looking for an alternative cloud backup
storage app, one of my favorites now a couple things.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Number One, I.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Use Google Photos for my backup, photos storage or whatever
you want. Yeah, my photos backup. You should have your
photos in two places. You should have it on a
cloud backup, you should have it on a physical backup,
and technically somewhere else, probably on your phone. So if
you don't have your photos in two places, please get

(47:35):
them there. Because I get way too many emails from
people saying, rich, I lost all my photos, and I.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Said, well, at least they were backed up.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
I don't actually say that because that's so mean, because clearly,
if they're emailing me, they were not backed up. So
my other favorite cloud storage, which I think is a
really fantastic deal, is called I Drive Photos, and I
did a story with them. They're out of Calabasas California.
They they basically do a lot of corporate backups, but

(48:02):
then they got into consumer backups, and so they have
this app called I Drive Photos. It's very simple, very basic,
but it gives you unlimited photo storage for ten dollars
a year, ninety nine cents for your first year.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
So if you need a good sort of backup of
your backup, go ahead and do that.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
So what I do is I also have my photos
backed up into Amazon. Because I pay for Amazon Prime.
You get Amazon Photos with unlimited photo.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Storage for free.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
I say photo storage because it does not include video storage.
It includes five gigabytes of video storage, which is you're
going to burn through that in the first second of
uploading stuff. So I don't back up my videos to it.
I back up my photos to Amazon. And the nice
aside to that is that Amazon does a good job
of putting those photos on my alex A devices and

(48:54):
so I can see them as my little backdrop when
I come into the house and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
So anyway, I Drive Photos. I've tested it out.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
It's super fast, it's really good. Why do I tell
you this because it now includes one terabyte of cloud
backup for your computer for the same price, so that
is included now. So if you're backing up your photos
from your phone, you now get one terabyte of cloud
backup for your computer, which should be enough to back
up a standard laptop or computer, or basically as long

(49:22):
as your hard drive is under a terabyte, you can
have it mirror to this cloud backup, which is a
really nice way to secure a computer. And the reason
why you want to back up your computer like this
is because if you ever get into a situation with
malware or ransomware, you would have a nice backup of
your computer that you can tell the ransomware folks. Hopefully

(49:44):
that never happens to you, but you can say like, Okay,
I'm not paying you anything because I'm just going to
format my computer and back reinstall it for my backup
that I have in the cloud.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
So I drive photos.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
You can search by the way, you can search for
pretty much anything I mentioned on KTLA by just searching
like I Drive photos KTLA DeMuro and if you search that,
you'll come up with my story immediately, which we did
July fifth, twenty twenty one. I can't believe it's almost
been a year since we did a story on that, But.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
There you go. I drive photos all right.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Next question from the listeners and viewers, Alan says, a
few months ago you said there was an update to
improve the fingerprint sensor on the pixel Does it work
well now? I was actually about to buy the Pixel
six when you did your story. I definitely needed my
phone to detect my fingerprint. I tried reading some reviews,

(50:38):
but those aren't always reliable. I trust you more than
the general reviews.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
I always looking. I always look forward to hearing from you,
and my entire family watches you every morning. You're the best,
h Alan say, please write more.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
No, I really do appreciate when you say how much
you enjoy watching what I do, because it keeps me going.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I mean, I really I get all the emails, I
get all the tweets, I get the texts, I get
the Instagram messages. So you really do like what I'm doing,
and I do appreciate that, and it's never lost on me.
Does the fingerprint sensor work on the Pixel six? It
is the slowest fingerprint sensor I have tested. Yes it works. Yes,
it has gotten better since I did my review. No,
it's not perfect, but I would still one hundred percent

(51:23):
recommend the Pixel six. It's a great size phone, it's
a great price phone, it's a great camera, it's great software,
and basically the only downside of that device is the
fingerprint sensor is just slightly slower than other fingerprint sensors
on the market. So it's still a great device. It's
just yeah, the fingerprint sensor's gonna be a little bit slower,

(51:44):
but it has improved since they launched this phone, which
I think was October, November, December, January, February, March April,
about six months ago. If you can believe it, I
can't believe it.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
I love the Pixel six. I think it's a fantastic device,
and I'm tempted to switch to Itever every day.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
So well, Pixel six Pro, I should say, But yeah,
Pixel six is excellent, especially for the price, So alan
I say, go ahead and buy it.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
And if you.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Don't like it, well just stop watching me. I'm just kidding,
just kidding. But you know you can return things, you know,
I mean, it's one good thing about buying stuff from
like big retailers is that the return policies are so
good these days. That like, if you buy from an
Amazon or best Buy or basically or Target, it's like

(52:29):
no questions asked. So if you're within I ask every
single time I buy a piece of electronics, I no
matter if I've bought it from that company before, I
always ask them at the at the checkout what is
the return policy on this? A lot of times electronics
have a different return policy than other things in the store.
So whether I'm shopping at Costco, whether I'm shopping at

(52:51):
best Buy or Target or any other place in between,
if I'm buying an electronics device, I always say what
is your return policy to the cashier at check out?

Speaker 2 (53:00):
And I want to hear.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
It even if I'm buying anything actually, like if it's
not like you know, if it's something that I may return,
even if it's an an item of clothing, whatever it is,
I always ask at the point of sale because I
just want to be refreshed so I have it in
my mind fresh, and I know, okay, two weeks, okay,
sixty days, okay, ninety days, okay, one year, and you

(53:21):
just it's just a good idea to always get into
the habit of that, all right. I promised I was
going to talk about my trip to Disneyland.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
So here we go.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
And I said I was gonna be the middle of
the podcast, but it turned out to be the end
of the podcast. Went to Disneyland, I think it was
last week, took a couple days off. I bought the
three day park Copper passes with Genie Plus. And so
you can trust what I'm saying. This was not a freebie.
Disney did not invite me. You could trust me even
when I go somewhere for free, because I still am
just going to tell you how it is. But you

(53:51):
can trust me even more because I paid my hard
earned money for these tickets. It was like thirteen hundred
bucks or something insane. But it was a four day,
four tickets for a three day park hopper with the
Genie Plus. So I got the top of the top,
you know, nothing but the best for my children. Now,
we saved a lot of money for this, and we

(54:12):
also promised them this was their Christmas present. So this
is what I got. And so we went to Disney
and it was fantastic. I mean it really Look. I
know people have a lot of stuff in the media
about Disney, but you know, this is just my experience
at the park, and it was fantastic for the most part.
I will say a lot has changed with the pandemic.

(54:35):
You have to make reservations to get in. You have
to decide what park you want to start at. You
can then switch parks at one PM. I packed, you
know the basics, sunscreen, sanitizer, wipes, a cooling towel which
I didn't use, water bottle, sweatshirt, jacket, and a battery
backup and so you know, if you're coming to California

(54:56):
for Disney, remember layers, layers, layers, those are your friends.
The other thing you want to have is a battery
for your phone. Your phone runs everything now when it
comes to Disney, So if you are bringing, whether it's
an iPhone or an Android, bring a backup battery and
bring when that works really well, you don't. The cheaper

(55:16):
the backup battery is the slower it's charging your phone.
And some of these batteries are so slow that they
will trickle charge your phone and you won't even be
able to get any percentage increase if you're actively using
the phone. So I recommend my charge mag Safe battery pack.
I also like battery packs from Anchor and Mophy. I've
got them all linked up. If you're not on my

(55:38):
if you're not on my newsletter, you can go to
richon tech dot substack dot com. This is my exclusive
email newsletter where I send out occasional emails about things
that really are important. And I linked it up in there.
You can read this whole I've wrote this whole thing out.
It's a whole Disney blog post. It's like six pages long.

(55:59):
Believe me, I covered it all. So Genie Plus, let
me explain what that is. This is a paid add on.
I think it's about twenty dollars a ticket, and it
basically includes what's called Lightning Lane. And this is the
new version of fast Pass. Fast Pass used to be
available in the park. Lightning Lane is now all done
through an app. You choose the ride that you want
to go on next, and it basically gives you a

(56:20):
little QR code that you can scan at the ride
entrance to go on. So let's say you do your
first Lightning Lane of the day, it's eight am. It says, okay,
you can go on Splash Mountain at eight thirty am.
You say, okay, fine, I'll do that. It gives you
a little QR code. You go at eight thirty to
nine thirty. You give you like an hour window. You
scan your QR code at the entrance, and you basically
get to bypass the line. The lightning lane might be

(56:42):
a little bit, might be a couple minutes. The most
I think we had to wait was like fifteen minutes
for any ride. If you do Lightning Lane, you can
only do one lightning lane at a time, and you
can only do one lightning lane per ride. So once
you've done the Splash Mountain Lightning Lane, that's it for
the day. You have to go wait in line if
you want to do it again. The Lightning Lane and
Genie Plus or Genie Plus I should say, also includes

(57:05):
unlimited photo downloads from the people that take your pictures around.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
The park, which I thought was really cool.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
So you can go and take a picture with anyone
that's you know, these Disney photo photographers. They scan a
QR code on your phone and your pictures show up
on your phone immediately. You could download them in high
resolution or low resolution. I go for the high resolution
because why not. The other thing to know is that
this is what I didn't like about the park is

(57:31):
that there are a couple rides you actually have to
pay on top of paying on top of paying, and
so you have to pay to do a Lightning Lane
one time for certain of the best rides, and the
ride that I did this on, I broke down and
paid an extra sixty bucks four of us to ride
Radiator Springs. It was fifteen dollars each just to ride
one ride. It was not worth it for my littlest

(57:52):
one because he was terrified of this ride. It was
worth it for me and my wife and my other
kid because we got to go on immediately. It was
still probably a ten minute wait, but it was a
great ride. But it's just I can't believe that we're
at the point at Disney where we're now paying fifteen
dollars on top of a one hundred dollars ticket to
get in just to go on one ride. I mean,
that's pretty pretty unbelievable, but that's where we're at. And

(58:15):
if you have the money, it's amazing because you get
to go in front of everyone else that's waiting for
an hour and a.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Half to go on that ride.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
It's sad for, you know, people that are put in
that position to have to choose to pay for something
that typically you know is included, or you know, kids
ask questions like, oh, why do those people get to
go ahead of me? It's just as someone I just
I don't know, it's just kind of like ichy, but
I did it. I mean, you know, like I said,
we saved up for this trip, so we had the

(58:42):
money to do it. Okay, So what do I not
like about the fact that all the things are now
through your phone at Disney, Well, people are looking at
their phones more than ever now. I mean everyone at
the park is looking down at their phone, and it's
just that's.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Kind of the reality of it.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
The other thing is that you're now jumping around the
park way more than you ever were, because your lightning
lane rides might be in one area and then you
jump to another area of the park for your.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Next lightning lane.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
The other little tip to know about the lightning lane
you can only book one at a time. So as
soon as you scan that lightning lane pass at the
Splash Mountain entrance, go on your app and then you
can choose your next lightning lane. And so if you don't,
you could be pushing those lightning lanes later and later
into the day. But I have to say, if you
have Lightning Lane, you really get to go on all
the top rides pretty quickly and easily without without waiting

(59:31):
almost at all. I mean, I don't think we have
to wait for any of the popular rides. Okay, food
you also have to order pretty much from your phone.
So I went up to a I tell the story,
but I went up to a churo booth in cars
Land and the woman behind the booth was like, no,
you can't order for me. You basically have to order
from the app. So you order from the app, and
this is a pretty slick process as well. They do

(59:52):
accept Apple Pay and Android I'm assuming Android pay or
Google Pay, and you order from your app and and
they give you a window of time to go pick
up your order. And when you get close to the
restaurant that you're picking up your order from, you say
I'm here, You check in kind of like curbside, and
you just it gives you a window, like a window

(01:00:13):
number where.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
To go pick up your food. So I thought that
was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
It's a little different, but I personally love online ordering
of food because I get to customize my food exactly
the way I want, So if my kid doesn't want
mustard on their burger, I can say no mustard, and
it gives you all those modifiers and options on the app.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
I love that. It used to be like you just
have to ask.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Someone, Can I substitute, you know, American cheese for provolone
or whatever. Now the app, you know, it lists out
everything because you're doing it yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
So I do like that aspect of it. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
One hack I realized if you find yourself with a
Disney reservation, you no longer can go to like a
lot of these restaurants if you want to sit down meal,
you have to put a credit card down to get
that reservation, and you have to cancel twenty four hours
in advance if you forget to cancel, like we did
for one of our reservations. I tried something and it worked,
and it's kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Like a little hack, so it may go away at
any time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
But what I did was I changed the reservation to
a date in the future. I modified the reservation instead
of canceling, I modified it to a few days in advance,
and then I canceled it because it no longer was
twenty four hours from now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
It was three days from now, and it worked.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
That may backfire if the reservation you have has no
future reservations that you can find, so just keep in
mind Disney may also get hip to that and cancel
or you know, make it so you can't do that.
But it worked for me for our reservation that we had,
and so that was kind of cool. The other tip
I found is that you can search for a specific
food item in the app. And so there's this thing

(01:01:41):
this like special bagel that's like a garlic bagel or something,
a garlic cheese bagel or something. I didn't end up
getting it because it just didn't work out, but you
can search for these specific food item inside the app
and it will tell you the places that serve that item.
So if you're craving ramen, or if you're craving a bagel,
or if you're craving a milk shake, just search in

(01:02:01):
the app for that food item and it will it
will surface the places that are serving that, which is
really really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
That's about it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
You can read the full blog post go to rich
on tech dot substack dot com, or just go to
rich on tech dot tv my website and you can
find my entire it says Disneyland visit and then I
will give you my my newsletter and sign up for
the newsletter. It's free, uh, and you can, you know,
you get the tips. I'm gonna start doing the newsletter

(01:02:31):
more and more, and so it's kind of like my
little I really like doing the newsletter because it's like
from my brain to your brain, and it's really like
just very different from social media, which has to be
kind of fast and peppy and this and that, and
so it's just an easier way to kind of get things, uh,
get the get the information out there that I think
is really important. Well you know what that sound means.

(01:02:52):
That is going to do it for this episode of
the show. If you would like to submit a question
for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page,
Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big
blue send email button, or go to Richontech dot tv
and hit the email icon. I will stay on with
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so don't hang up just yet. I would love it
if you would rate and review this podcast. Just go

(01:03:13):
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. You can find
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and no matter where you live in the US, you
can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV,
Fire TV, and Roku, and there you can watch all
of my TV segments under the technology section. My name

(01:03:34):
is Rich jamiro Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend an hour plus of
your time today.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
I do appreciate you spending it with me. I will
talk to you real soon.