2025’s hottest tech gifts without overpaying, Android finally AirDrops iPhone, auto-clip every grocery coupon (149, Nov 22, 2025)

I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to richon tech dot tv and hit contact. All right, we're doing things a little different this week. All the music you hear is requested from you. So this song Lovely Day by Bill Withers is from Heidi. She dedicates it

to her family and friends. Great song, fun way to start the show. All Right. Guests this week Nathan Burrow, you know him from Wirecutter. He's going to share the best tested tech gifts this season, and smart ways to save and later in the show this is a huge growth area AI in healthcare. Doctor Adam Oskowitz, co founder of Doctronic, is going to talk about how AI can help patients and doctors alike. Well, I hope you're having

a fantastic day. This is I always call it the slide into the holidays, but specifically this week is the slide right into Thanksgiving, which I think is one of the best holidays because it brings everyone together. Everyone were my wife and I were shopping for a Thanksgiving dinner and the shelves were already sort of like you know, pick through and not just some things were sold out.

We couldn't find the mini marshmallows we wanted. But my point was, as I was driving home, I said, whose idea was it to have every person in America have the same exact meal on a single day. I mean, that takes a lot to do that, and so I never really thought about that in the past, But yeah, we're all making the same meal. So personally, I always look forward to the stuffing my mom's recipe, and then

the candied sweet potatoes, which is also my mom's recipe. Ironically, we were thinking about this all the recipes because my wife, you know, she has this fond memory of eating pumpkin pie that her grandma made. And when you ask your family, like where did you get the recipe? Nine times out of ten it was on the label of the food back in the day, and they just sort of changed it as things went along. So it's like, oh yeah, my secret family recipe for my pumpkin pie was on

the can of Libby's. It's like my sausage stuffing was from Jimmy Dean. But that's how it happened back in the day. I mean, there was no Internet. People were not Either had to pass a recipe to a friend, or you passed it down in the family members, or you probably just found it on the label of the favorite food that you bought. Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving this week. I could not believe this happened. I just couldn't believe it. Google somehow figured out a way to make its Android phones,

specifically the Pixel ten series, work with Apple's air Drop. Now, if you remember in the past companies that have tried to make things work with Apple, when Apple specifically blocks this from working, Apple somehow makes a little change that

keeps this from continuing in the future. Now, they haven't done that yet with this air Drop situation, but it could be a matter of time or Apple could finally say, you know what, with all the pressure and regulations against us at this point, especially over in Europe, maybe we should just let this happen. So what Apple, what Google did is they basic looked at air drop and they said, okay, how do we make the pixel work with air drop? How do we make Android work with air drop? They

did not hack anything. They just looked into the way the system works, and then they just took their quick Share, which is their version of you know, if you have an Android phone, quick Share is your version of air Drop. And so what they did was they just looked at it and they said, all right, how can we make quick share work with air drop? And they did it. They coded it with some very smart people, and they

didn't just hack this together. These are people that tested this to make sure it is secure, to make sure it is safe, to make sure there is no workaround involved here. They just somehow made the pixels show up on the iPhones and vice versa. So now if you have a Pixel ten series you can go and air drop photos and videos from that device to an Apple device. And that's not just the iPhone, that's any Apple device

that supports air drop and vice versa. So if you have an iPhone and you've got a Pixel friend, you can now swap photos with them very easily. Google says all of the transfers are device to device. They are not routed through any server or cloud storage. Nothing is logged, no extra data is collected beyond the transfer. Now, this is available on the Pixel ten series at launch, and they want to make this available to all Android phones. But try it as I might, I could not get

it to work on the Samsung. Even downloading their little helper app you gotta download did not work. But this is great for the holidays. I know Pixel ten still a very small amount of people that have that device, but if this could get shared to all Android devices over the next couple of months, that would be game changing. Now it's really up to Apple. Are they going to stop this? I think if they did, they would have to have a really good reason. We remember what they

did with Beeper. They tried to make I Message available on Android and Apple said, uh uh, no way, and they changed everything so that program would not work anymore. Now. Apple could do this easily because all they have to do is write something into the code that says verre not sharing to an Apple device. It's not gonna work. But will they do that? I think it would be downright evil for them to do that. I don't think

it would be right for them to do that. Clearly, this system can work between devices and for people like myself that are always mixing devices and using different things, it really is game changing. And by the way, just in general holiday parties, Hey, you took that picture on your pixel because you've got a great camera. Can you share it to me?

permanent thing or something to that effect. The other big news this week, Roadblocks is now requiring facial basically facial age checks, so they're using AI to figure out the age of users, and then they put them into a category under nine, nine to twelve, thirteen to fifteen, sixteen to seventeen, eighteen to twenty or twenty one plus. Now,

if your kid plays Roadblocks, your grandkids. There's been some issues on Roadblocks with inappropriate chats, inappropriate content, and this happens pretty regularly, and Roadblocks knows this, but of course they don't want to be regulated, just like every other tech company out there, so they try to put these things in place before the regulations, before the regulators kind of figure stuff out and say, oh, hold on, maybe kids shouldn't be playing this game that's just unchecked for

hours of every day. And parents, they know Roadblocks, but they don't really know what their kids are doing. They just hear the noises, They hear the kids yelling, screaming, playing with their friends. So what's going to happen? And this has already started to roll out, although it's not required here in the US until January. But your kid, if they're playing Roadblocks, they've probably already seen a message that says, hey, verify your age using a selfie, and

so what it does. They're using this third party company called Persona, which a lot of these digital IDs use. But your kid holds their iPad up to their face,

it takes a video selfie. They turn left right to kind of verify and make sure it's a live person, and then it uses the facial identification to figure out how old the kid is or the user, and then they put them in a group nine to twelve, like I said, thirteen to fifteen, sixteen to seventeen, and then kids are only allowed to chat with other users in their similar age groups. Now, kids under nine chat by default is turned off unless a parent turns it back

on after the age check. So that's interesting. And if your kid plays these games, you know that chat is a huge part of video games and kids don't want this, by the way, at all. I think for parents it's a good thing because you don't want your kids. If your kid is nine, they don't need to be chatting with someone that's eighteen or twenty one. Now there is a way to have them chat with their verified friends or family members that might be older. You can do that,

but the chat is monitored by AI. They do have filtering for kids under thirteen. But I'll be honest, my kid was telling me all the stuff that he's seen in Roadblock's chat, and you know, not all of it's good.

So this what's interesting about this whole facial ID verification is that my kid has already asked me if he can somehow cheat the system because his friend already cheated the system somehow he got in eighteen, And now my kid wants to be eighteen because if he gets his real age, which is younger than that, he's not gonna be able to chat with his friend. But I'm not gonna let my kid break this rule so that he can chat with eighteen and twenty year olds.

going to be rolling out. You don't have to do it just yet. I would say maybe wait a little bit, let's let this settle in. It's only been a couple of days where Roadblocks has done this in the US. You have until January to do it, so maybe wait just a couple of weeks to see how this works out. All right? Coming up, we are going to talk about the worst passwords of twenty twenty five. I've got the top worst password right here. It's pretty bad. It's pretty

easy to figure out. Plus, we've got the details on that major outage this week, that cloud Flare outage. We're going to talk about that. We've got the gadget of the week. Of course, your emails just overflowing my inbox and your calls at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Thanks so much for joining me this weekend. More rich on Tech on its way right after this. The website for the show is richon tech dot tv, so you

can go there. This is episode one. If you want links to anything I mentioned, maybe you want to sign up for the podcast, the newsletter, whatever it is. It is all there linked up and everything I mentioned, including our guests. You can find links to all of it right there. Let's go to Raymond in the San Fernando Valley. You're on with Rich Hi.

this slowing down? This guy in front of me does like a pit maneuver on another car because he was so angry at this other driver on the freeway, and so every driver behind him had to slow down and go around this this wild whatever was happening on the freeway. And this guy gets out of his car and he just like wants to start with this truck driver. It's like, dude, what is happening here, what is going on? Anyway? I captured it on my cash camp because it's just like,

what is happening? I was the first car behind them anyway. So here here's what you want to look for. Number one, you know the resolution of the camera. Most of these cameras are ten eighty P. If you want to go four K. That's going to allow you to get things like license plates more clearly, or identifying characteristics when you are, you know, out and about. So TENAD may not cut it. You may get something. You may capture some video you try to zoom in you're like, oh, I can't see

that license plate. So that's number one. Number two the field of view. Wider field of view means that you're going to see more in the video that you're capturing, So anywhere from one hundred and forty to one hundred and seventy degrees that's going to be good. Make sure that you get either low light or low light night vision or low light cameras not if that's not advertised on the camera that you're getting, it probably doesn't have that, so at night you're not going to see as well.

That's number That's the next one. The other feature that you really want is called loop recording. So this means that the camera is just going to continuously record most of the time to a micro SD card. If you get one of these cameras that has a cellular connection, that's going to be slightly better just because if the camera was stolen or your car was stolen, you might be able to still capture some of that video because

it was uploaded to the cloud. But that's going to be a lot more expensive, and those cameras that have not taken off in a huge way just because of the cost. I think. The other thing is a G sensor that means that you're a if it's bumped while it's parked, the camera will automatically trigger a recording, and so that is going to be a great way to capture if something happens to in a parking lot when

you're not in the car or something like that. Now, as for brands, this is tricky because I'll be honest, the camera that I love ring made and they're no longer making it, or they're no longer selling it, whatever they're doing. But didn't really work out. But that one was great because I had the cellular built in it records front and back, and it was just such an easy camera to install. But it's just I don't know

why they're not doing that anyway. So the brands that come up in reviews over and over that people like are Vofo. I know it's a funny name, but these sell a lot on Amazon. For some reason. People really like them because I guess the combination of price and what you get is really good. So Vofo. The next one that people really seem to like is Van True. And I've seen all these brands out and about at cs, so you know, they're all like they've been in the

kind of the marketplace for a long time. But Van True is another one, and I'm trying to see how much theirs goes for on Amazon. So Van True right now, everything is on Black Friday specials. They've got one anywhere from ninety nine dollars up to two hundred and sixty five. And that ninety nine dollars one, you know's got great reviews, got a lot of buyers, so that one might not

be bad at all to get. That's the Van True E one pro four K. Look at that night vision so mentions everything I just said Garman obviously tried in True Brand in this space and then next space. They are out of the UK. They are very popular as well, so you can find them. Let me see if they're on Amazon next space. Sure enough they are on Oh are they?

the streets driving. But it's good for if you're ever in an accident, or you just need some reassurance that if something happens to your car, you've got a license plate there. Good question, Raymond, Thanks so much for that. Let's see can we oh one minute? Okay, let's see here. What can I do in one minute?

size and it just crashed all their servers. So a lot of these companies that relied on cloud Flare, they were seeing error messages, and in turn, we were seeing error messages trying to access the Internet on Tuesday. It was not a security issue. It was not cybersecurity related. It was not a hack. Cloud Flare wants us to

know that. But the bigger issue here is that because so much of the Internet is controlled by these major cloud companies, when they go down, we feel the effects in a much bigger way than we ever did before. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll tell you about the worst passwords of twenty twenty five plus more year calls right here. We'll get to the phone lines in just a moment, but first let's do

the gadget of the week. I thought this was interesting. The mill. This is a high tech food recycling device for your kitchen. It's being developed by Matt Rogers, the creator of the Nest thermostat, which we love, and now he wants to sort of reinvent how we handle food waste.

And there's been a lot of companies. When I've gone to these trade shows, I've seen a lot of basically smart garbage cans that do this, but nobody's really gotten it right just yet, because people are just so used to not doing anything with their food scraps except throwing

them out. Now, unless you are someone who's composting them yourself, or you have a little compost or whatever, but this is kind of an appliance for your home called Mill and their entire startup, which has raised a ton of money, is focusing on turning these kitchen scraps that you collect into lightweight, odor free food grounds, just like you know coffee grounds. So the device dries and grinds food waste overnight, which can shrink forty pounds of scraps into eight pounds

of dry material. And I love this idea because my trash can is always so filled with just stuff that you know, it's just it breaks down. Why should it be thrown out? And these little grounds could be stored for months, They could be mixed into soil used in your gardens or mill has a service where they will collect them for reuse. And the goal is not just to sell people this gadget. It's also to reduce garbage truck weight, lower collection costs, cut down diesel use, all

that good stuff for the environment. And these engineers are treating this as people don't want food scraps in their home. Who wants to have garbage sitting in their home? Who wants to have stinky food sitting their home? So the whole thing, the whole point of this device is how do we eliminate any friction between people wanting this? And there's one more side of this that's you know, it's going to keep people from adopting it, and that's the price.

It's a thousand bucks for this trash can. So that's a lot for a trash can. Now, if you've gotten one of those simple human trash cans, those are expensive too, Don't get me wrong, They're like two hundred dollars. So I am very intrigued by this device. It's you can rent it for thirty five dollars monthly. They say tens of thousands of homes are already using them, and the device is simple. If you can eat it, you can put it in the mill. And they believe that this

might be as common in homes as dishwashers. You know, those weren't in homes where now they're in every home practically. But anyway, I thought this was really cool. I did test a device that's similar a couple of years ago called Loami lm I, and this was a device that would would that sat on your countertop. It was also kind of expensive. Let's see how much this one is now they're up to loam me three. Let's see two

hundred and ninety nine dollars. That's three hundred and fifty dollars off, and you have to pay per year for a subscription. But that was a little bit more complicated because it was smaller, but it was on your countertop, so it's a little bit different. This, I think seems like a little bit of a better idea because it's just kind of a trash can. It's like a smart trash can. You throw your stuff in, you just let

it do its thing. Let's go to David and Costa Mesa. David, you're on with Rich, Good morning, sir.

trade in whatever, because you're going with your carrier. So I would always say the Apple Store is a great place to buy it because those folks know a lot. They know the ins and outs of the phone and all of the deals from across the carriers.

seamless to the new device, which is really cool. Now they do add some new things on the new device, like some new apps and stuff. If you haven't updated to iOS twenty six, you'll find some new things there and new options. But I think overall you're going to find when was the last time you updated your iPhone to a new one?

giving you more money for your phone. But what they do is they kind of spread it out over the next two or three years just because they want you to stick with them. So my advice on that angle is that if you're if you're happy with your carrier and you know you're paying a premium for your phone. You know you're paying one hundred dollars a month for your Verizon Unlimited plan or your AT and T versus

something like a visible or a mint. If you're happy with that and you're fine with that, take the discount. If you're going to stick with them for the next two or three years because you're almost putting losing money if you're not doing that now, Yes, it will lock you into that carrier and that expensive plan, But if you're gonna do that anyway, why not? That's my theory

on that. So don't be scared to take the If they say, hey, we can give you a new iPhone for eleven hundred dollars off if you stick with Verizon or whatever, AIGHTE and T or T Mobile for the next two to three years, you know, I say, why not? If you're happy with your service, you're not going to switch. Why not do that anyway? David, good question there in Costa Mesa. I know a lot of people are gonna be upgrading this season. Apple is doing their Apple never

puts stuff on sale. Ever, you'll never find a sale in Apple products through Apple. Third parties will do that. But what Apple does maybe twice a year Black Friday and then Back to School. They will typically do a bonus with purchase. So right now you can get up to a two hundred and fifty dollars gift card with your purchase of a device. So iPhone, if you buy

an iPhone. Interesting, it's only on the sixteens, so iPhone sixteen or sixteen E. They'll get up to a seventy five dollars gift card, I Pad a to one hundred dollars gift card, Mac up to two hundred and fifty dollars gift card, Apple Watch up to a fifty dollars gift card. That's pretty good if you buy a series eleven and then AirPods TV. But here's the thing. If you're buying one of these gadgets, like if you're buying like the AirPods or the AirPods Max, you don't even

need to go through Apple. What Amazon does? They look at the price, the difference in what Apple's giving you. So let's say the Apple Watch series eleven. Apple's giving you a fifty dollars gift card that typically costs four hundred dollars. What does Amazon do? I can guarantee you right now, if I go to Amazon's website and I look up Apple Watch Series eleven, I guarantee you they're selling it for three forty nine out the door. Let's see, Uh, okay, well,

little wrong, they're selling it for three seventy nine. But maybe the sales haven't started. But my point is what Amazon typically does is they monitor all the other deals out there and they just kind of match them with their pricing. Eight to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one. We'll take more of your calls next and I will tell you the top password of twenty twenty five. It's

a bad one. Plus, I've got the trends in younger users, older users, and how you can protect yourself by doing the right thing with your passwords right here on rich on Tech. Let's go to Erica in Corona, Erica. You're on with rich.

look in the Apple Intelligence suggestions, so show an app. Okay, So I think what it's doing is it's let's see if there's a way to turn this off. I'm not sure. I see that swipe options, ask before privacy. Oh there it is messages right there. You can turn it off in settings apps Mail, and then follow up suggestions, you can turn it off there. So if you go if you don't want these things, if they're really bugging you, Erica,

you can just turn them off in the settings. And if you're on Gmail and you're seeing these same nudges, it's called nudges. So if you go into Gmail, and you go into settings and just search nudges. You'll see it says suggest emails to reply to, suggest emails to follow up on Erica if they don't bug you, nobody's scanning your mail, nobody's looking at your mail. This is just an AI feed mature that Apple has built in to help you stay on top of emails that you

might have forgotten about. Great question today, Thanks so much for the call. All Right, America's top password of twenty twenty five is drum roll please. I'm just seeing how fast Adam can do this. Adam is in for Bobo. There we go.

users are more likely used names. Most popular names include Veronica, Maria, and Susannah. So if those are in your password right now, as you hear me saying this, you got to change your password. Globally, one, two, three, four, five six remains the most common password now. There is an increase in special characters this year, but most are still pretty weak patterns like password with instead of an A, it would be an AT sign or instead of a W, or a zero sorry instead of an O, it'd be a zero.

Let's see. Experts warn that week and you've reused passwords fuel about eighty percent of data breaches. Nord Pass says password habits have improved not really much over the years, despite years of education, people like me yelling into microphones for years saying please use a strong password. Now we have these pass keys, but people aren't really using those as much because they're they feel like they don't really know how they work. I really, I mean I use them.

I've set them up for a couple of my websites, but since I still have to do two factor authentication, I'm like, how's that any easier than just use my password manager? So here are the safety tips. Strong unique password for every account that you have. Use a password manager. Bitwarden is completely free. You can use that or use one that you find that you like. I don't care if it's one password, I don't care if it's Google passwords. You can even use Apple passwords, even though I do

not like things that don't work across all platforms. Try using Apple passwords. If you switch to an Android phone, not going to happen. So all your passwords are going to be locked up into Apple. You got to figure out how to get them into Google, which you can. You can export them, but it's kind of a pain. Dash Lane also a very good password manager. Just pick

one and start using it. And I know it's scary to start using these password managers, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually really fun because you feel more secure. So today, go through download one of these things. Sign up. The main thing to know about the password manager on your phone is you have to go into the settings and make sure that you choose just that password manager on your device, whether it's iPhone or Android, and on your computer download the extension for

your browser. But once you set that up, your password manager basically springs into action when you tap in the password field on any device that you're working on, and it'll say, do you want us to suggest a strong password, yes,

and then it saves it in the password manager. The next time you go to that app and you go to log in, it remembers the website, so it kind of pairs them together on the back end, and next time you go to that website, it says, oh, do you want us to put this password in that you made for this past this website? And it's pretty easy. Yes. Does it take a little bit longer sometimes? Absolutely, That's

the whole point. Once you three four five six, you reuse those passwords everywhere hacker gets access to one, they're going to use it across all different websites. Eight to eight, rich one O one eight eight seven four two four one zero one More of you coming up next this hour, We've got Nathan Burrow, senior deals editor at Wirecutter. He's going to talk about the holiday shopping season, some of

the best tested gifts and ways to save. Let's see here, got a question here from email from Phil Can you recommend the most senior friendly way to help a senior scan documents then archive or send them to others. I've tried explaining scanning with the iPhone notes app and Genius Scan. Both can be confusing. The biggest challenge seems to be attaching the scan file afterwards. Any recommendations for a simple

point and shoot scan method, Phil, Yes, Phil. If the phone is updated to iOS twenty six, you can use the new Preview app that is for viewing PDFs, editing PDFs, and scanning PDFs. It makes it so easy. Open the Preview app, tap the big scan documents button, and then once you scan, there's a little share icon. It's that square with the arrow pointing out of it. Just tap that and then choose who you want your recipient to be. You can choose your email, your messaging, whatever you want.

That's really it. I mean, there's a million ways to do this on the iPhone, but they've built in the simplest way, and that's that new Preview app. So if you ever need to fill out a PDF, or sign a PDF, or scan a PDF or view a PDF, it's all in that app. Let's go to Jeff and Newport Beach. What's up, Jeff? Hey, that's gone, it's going well.

be it. I'm wondering if that's it. Okay. What I would do is, here's what I would do, just to see if you can get this to stop. But I would go into the settings on your iPhone and you have to go into settings, app Apps and then music, okay, and then in there you're gonna see an option for library. It says add playlist songs and then add favorite songs. So maybe try toggling those off and see if that if the problem still happens, and then you can toggle

them back on if it doesn't. The other thing you can do is click that sync library, maybe turn that off and then turn it back on, like turn it off, restart your phone, turn it back on, and see if that helps. I'm just I don't see anything specifically dealing with the same songs inside the playlist, which, yeah, it's kind of that's a that's a tricky one. I know. I do know that when I make a playlist, it

will say do you want the same song? If you drag it in twice, it will it will give you an option of do you want the same song in there twice or not? But otherwise that's a that's a tricky one, Jeff, I think you're gonna have to to look around in those settings. I don't I don't have an immediate answer for you if that doesn't work, you know, you can go to the Apple store and ask them make an appointment. See what they say. It could just be yeah, it just sounds like there's something going on

there that I it. Yeah, that's weird. That's a weird one. Thanks for the call. Appreciate it. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I will continue to investigate that because I'm curious now. Uh, I told you this on my newsletter. I thought this was so cool. We talked about this last week, the Amazon autobi thing. So this is the feature on Amazon where if you go to an item on your phone, you tap that little rufus

Ai icon you say, set a price alert. You can have Amazon automatically place the order for you when the product reaches the price that you want. So it's almost like price line, like name your own price. But obviously, you know Amazon prices change all the time, and if you're not sitting at your computer looking at that item when the price changes, you may not know. So they have this price alert feature, which now you may be saying, why would Amazon do this, why would they give people

this ability? Well, it's going to convert more sales. That's the bottom line. So long story short, I put this power strip. I wanted the super Danny power strip. It's got like a million outlets and all this stuff on it. And I put that in my price alert, and I said, you know what, this thing's twenty five dollars. Let me see if you can get it to me for twenty and so I set my price alert for under twenty dollars.

I woke up this morning and lo and behold, I got an email from Amazon saying your order has been placed. Sure item was under twenty dollars. It fell to nineteen ninety nine, so we automatically placed your order. And I was like, wait what. It took me a second to remember that I placed this autobi alert. But pretty cool. So if you want to try this yourself, you have to do it on the Amazon app on your mobile device.

Just search for an item, any item, and once you have an item on your screen, just tap that little rufous icon in the lower right hand corner. It looks like AI, that little sparkly AI thing, and then just say to rufus, set a price alert, and that will give you options to get just a price alert, or there's an option to actually have Amazon auto buy the item for you. So it worked. It did exactly what

I wanted it to. And I don't know. I'm a believer now because there's so many things I'm watching the price on on Amazon. I'll buy it. I just would like the price to be a little bit better. If it goes on sale for fifty dollars less, I'd like to buy it at that price. And it also gives you the historic pricing so you can better set your price. Eight to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight

seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about the new service that makes it so that you can clip all those digital grocery coupons in your grocery store app automatically. That's really cool. Plus your calls eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two one zero one. Back to the phone lines, go to Richard in Malibu. You're on with rich Hetty.

your phone completely. It's just turning off that immediate connection that you have right now, and certain devices may turn it back on, and certain Wi Fi networks may toggle it back on when it comes into contact with those. So the reason for that is because Apple realize that people will turn off their Wi Fi or turn off their Bluetooth and forget to turn it back on. So they have some provisions in place for the phone to smartly reactivate it when it thinks it should do that.

And that may be when let's just say, let's say you get to work in the morning and you hate your WiFi at work, and so you go on the right you swipe down and you tap the little WiFi to turn it off at work well. Then when you get home you love your WiFi, your phone recognizes that you got home, and it magically turns that Wi Fi back on and connects to your home network because it realized that when you turned it off, you probably just wanted it off for a certain amount of time. Now,

this can cause some issues. It can also cause some confusion. If you want to really turn off the Wi Fi and the Bluetooth on your iPhone until you turn it back on, you have to go into settings, and that's how you can turn it off completely. And that means your phone, the Wi Fi and Bluetooth on your phone is not in a dormant state. It is an off state. And so if you go into settings and you go to Wi Fi right now because I just tapped it off,

in the control center says not connected. But then there's a toggle switch and if I tap that toggle switch, it will turn off my WiFi indefinitely until I turn it back on again. Same thing with Bluetooth. You can turn it off for you know, indefinite amounts of time. Now, once you do that, invariably, you will forget to turn it back On's that's why Apple came up with the other system. And by the way, the Android side of things is the same way, and so that's just more

for ease of use. Most of the time people are forgetting that they're turning these off turning them on, and so you're most of the time just toggling off that connection for a period of time before your phone decides to turn it back on. And that's why you're seeing that. Richard, great question. Thanks for the call today. Do you appreciate it. Let's see here, let's do we have time to go to another one. We'll see Mitch in Littleton. You're on with rich Mitch, you're on.

and by the way, I'm sorry for your loss. But it's going to say their email address or their account number, or their their Apple I D is going to say, hey, can you put in their password to unlo this computer. It's not going to unlock their data, but it's just going to allow you to kind of take control of that computer. That's called activation lock, and so if you don't have their password, you're not gonna be able to get past that when you format this computer and reset it.

Now you can request from Apple help with that and if you show them a death certificate or a reason there's I don't know what the exact it's generally it's a death certificate. So if you have that for these people, you can send that to Apple and they will help you remove that activation lock as long as you can prove a couple of things. I've never gone through this process, so I can't tell you exactly how tough or how

easy it is. But if you have this computer, you've got the information, I would say it's in your best interest to contact Apple and just say, hey, here's the situation. Can I get this activation lock removed? They will remove that, and then once they have it removed, you can go through and set up that computer as new and then use it, but you will not have access to their information. If you want access their information, then it would take

a much larger request to Apple. That typically requires a core order or some sort of legal documentation to get that done, and I'm not even sure that's a guarantee for the rest of you. Please set up what's called a legacy contact access key. You can do it on Apple, you can do it on Facebook, you can do it on Google. It basically allows someone to access your account in the in the When You If You Die, basically eighty eight rich one oh one. We're going to talk

Black Friday deals. Coming up next, We've got Nathan Burrow, senior deals editor at Wirecutter. He's going to talk about the holiday shopping season, some of the best tested gifts. It's only been a couple of days. I know Amazon started on the twentieth, so it's you know, once they start, it's like you got to be in it.

for the year. It's like, it's just no matter what if you're a website or a product or service, you're going to be putting your stuff on sale this week. But how do you know if it's a good deal or not one?

A lot of major retailers that are not included among those results, and so it is to your benefit to go and to either do a more refined search than just the product name that includes the name of the retailer that you're trying to get information on that will generally actually produce a result, or just go to the retailer directly to verify.

those are always like Apple stuff. What's the deal with discounts on that?

over the web. What can you give us a little insight into kind of like what makes Wirecutter different and what we should look forward to trust, Like, there's so much advertorial out there now where literally people will send me a website that is one hundred percent set up just to sell them a product, and they're saying, hey, Rich, what do you think about this review? Like that's not a review, it's literally just an ad yep.

of pre Christmas sales. Like my team, the deal's team at Wirecutter is part of the editorial team, and we hold ourselves to really strict standards. Nothing makes the Deals page that doesn't qualify with our pretty strict rubric for the things that need to go up so d during an event like this, we're really only posting the best of the best, deal wise, and it's also on stuff that has been expert vetted and recommended, and so.

they're not even testing the items. They're literally just looking at the number of reviews on Amazon and just coming up with a list based on that. Can you do you believe that's true?

like assessing the long term reliability of products. But but it's certainly, you know, very small compared to all of the different sort of uh you know, data points that we bring into the picture when we review something.

you clip those digital grocery store coupons. That's really cool. Plus, if you're a teacher, you can get free chatch ebt and more of your questions at eight a eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one website, richon tech dot TV. Back after this, Wayne is on the line.

whether that's whatever it is. And make sure WhatsApp if you use that specifically, go into there and make sure that that stuff is backed up. Then once you have everything backed up and your phone is one hundred percent you know, in the cloud or somehow on a computer, whatever, then you open up the box for the new phone. You go through the settings and it will just flow you through. It'll say Hey, welcome to this phone. Are you transferring from another device? And is it a one

plus device? And you go through that, you tap yes, your phones. You will put them side by side wirelessly. They will transfer all of the data from the old phone to the new phone, and that process will take you know, maybe fifteen minutes, whatever it is. And then once all the data is downloaded to your new phone, it will say, okay, you can turn off your old phone whatever, and then it will then finish the process of downloading all of the apps to your new device,

making sure all the settings are the same. But the main thing to do is not bother these phones once this process starts, because if you bother these phones in the middle of the process, something's going to go wrong and not everything's going to transfer over. So that's the main thing. But if you're going one plus to one plus, you're going to iPhone to iPhone, you're going pixel to pixel, you're going Samsung to Samsung. It is so easy these days to migrate from one phone to another. You can

do it so quickly and with almost no fuss. Now, some apps, when you get to your new phone, they'll they'll ask you to log in again. But your Google account, and all these main things that you change on the old device will still be there now. That also brings its own set of issues when you go to your new phone. Anything that was weird on your old phone, any little settings that you change that you forgot about, those are all going to be changed on your new device.

So if you change something it's a little wonky on your old device, it might be wonky on your new device. That's why I prefer setting up a device as new. But I get that not everyone wants to do that because it takes longer. You gotta download everything manually, You got to go through all your settings, you gotta log into all your accounts. But there is something nice about setting up a phone. I call it from scratch or a clean install, as we used to say with computers.

So there is something to say for that. But I understand most people don't do that. I'm a weirdo. I do that, and when I tried, I'll be house. I tried. I said, this is so easy. But I tried doing the iPhone to iPhone thing and nothing came over on my iPhone for some reason, when I switched it to the seventeen last time, I don't know what happened in the middle of the transfer, but nothing. It was like half apps were downloaded. It was a kind of a pain.

But that's not going to happen to you, Wayne, I can guarantee it. So really, all you need to do is open up that new phone next to the old phone, make sure it's charged up, and then just go through the process. It will ask you if you want to transfer everything from your old phone. You can use a cable too. You can plug a cable from your old phone into the new phone. Sometimes that's faster, but quite honestly,

the wireless works really well nowadays. And then once you get that new phone, just go through and kind of what I do is I open up all my apps and just see if they're logged in, see if they're there, and just make sure everything's working the way I like it. Good question, Wayne, Good upgrade. The one plus thirteen is last year's device, but they just come out with the fifteen. But actually the camera is a little bit better on the thirteen.

or two at the top and that's it. So this, uh, this extension or app or whatever you want to call it, it's called save wise, Get savewise dot com. They just came out with a new feature that will automatically clip all of those grocery store coupons at the same time inside the app. So it's a free service inside the browser. Extension supports more than three thousand stores, including Kroger, Safeway, Albertson's, Von's.

If you're in southern California, Ralphs is not That's the first one I tried, of course, and I email the developer. I said, hey, it doesn't work on Ralph's. He's like, oh, that's the one store we're still working on. So they're working on Ralphs. But you log into your you basically log into your store account on your computer and then the little extension pops up and it says, hey, do you want us to clip all these coupons for you? And you say yeah, and it goes through like I

had on I think it was Vonn's I did. It was like five hundred and seventy two coupons. It took about two minutes, but it does it all automatically and you just watch it goes ting ding ding ding ding ding, and then all your coupons are clips. So and then when you go to the store you can just buy the stuff that you want, and anything that has a coupon that's digital, it will grab that coupon and apply

it much better than the manual way. And so Android this app, if you download this save wise app, which does a lot more than just this. It's kind of an all in one kind of shopping thing. But if you download the app, they've got iOS and browser extensions and then Android is coming soon. So if you want to this out, it's called get savewise dot com slash Grocery and I'll put the link on my on my

richon tech dot TV. It's a really cool thing because I love I like those digital coupons because they can't save you a lot of money, but no one clips them. No one does. No one can be bothered. And the grocery stores know that. That's why they put a million of them in there. So you get bored, you you scroll through, you go, Okay, I'm not looking through all these products. No way. If you're a teacher, you can get free chat GPT for teachers through twenty twenty seven.

I know the irony of teachers using chat GBT. Apparently they're some of the best customers. So if you're a teacher, it's free for verified USK through twelve teachers through June twenty twenty seven. Chat GPT for teachers. I'm not sure. If there's a website, I'll put the way. I'll put the link for the website on my rich on tech dot TV in the show notes. This is episode one back after this. Okay, so you got iPhone twelve, you've heard that if it's still working, I don't look. I

talk about upgrading and getting new stuff. But if what you have works, do not pay a dime to get it upgraded. Now, I do like when people save up for the next thing. I do say that, like, if you you know the iPhone twelve. You're talking, You're gonna

get probably another year out of it right now. Let's see, hold on, you have a twelve Okay, so right now, the way I go is iOS twenty six supports the iPhone eleven and up, which means iOS twenty seven will probably support the iPhone twelve and up, which means you still have a good two solid years before you might, you know, have to get a new one because iOS twenty eight is probably not going to support your phone. So you've got like a good two years of this

phone if it's still working for you. With that said, the call recording is a feature that was built into iOS twenty six, So if you've updated your phone you should have that. Have you updated your phone to iOS twenty six?

you can have the call recording. It is a feature that is software based in the latest iOS, and once you update your phone, when you are on a call, you will see what looks like a You basically have to tap there's like three dots on your screen, and then you tap that and then it'll say call recording, and you tap that and both people in that call are going to hear that tone that says this call is being recorded. And that's it. And you can save

those calls. You can see the transcripts of them. All of your calls that are recorded are inside the notes app. So that's it. Now, let's see. I'm trying to see if there's a way to I don't think you can record every call by the fall. I don't think that's a let me see, is that an option. I don't know if that's an option. So you're gonna update your phone just to do this or what?

but like you could try it with them. But if you get like a scam call and they try to say like, hey, we need your credit card number, whatever it is you know, you get sometimes these calls get through if you tap that call recording, they hang up as soon as they hear that. Every single time. It is so wild. So it's like my little, my little hack for getting rid of these calls that you don't

want to talk to. And then sometimes when I'm calling a company, if I want to take notes or something, and I don't want to take notes, I'll just record the call and once they hear that, then that's basically the call is being recorded. As long as they stay on the line, they're theoretically, I guess okay with that. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what the legal aspect of that is, but that seems to be the way it works. All right, Candace, thanks for the call today,

Appreciate it. All right, have a great day. Let's see here. Let's go to Hugh in San Diego. Hugh, you're on with Rich.

where are you coming up with this stuff? Anyway? So you got to take all that stuff with a grain of salt. But what I would do is go into your let's see if this is the right one device care Okay, so there is, uh, let's see here. I'm trying to find out a way to we can kind of clean up this device. I what do you think is happening? Because you you can't so okay, you can't tap the phone icon in the lower left hand corner. But if you go into your app drawer, can you activate it that way?

The only thing you could do is if you you know, if you don't have a place to bring this, you can reset your whole phone into factory. But that's you know you're talking, that's one hundred percent. You got to change everything. I can't think of a of a setting on a Samsung phone that would do this. But if you want, if you want to send me an email, I can talk to the Samsung folks and see if

they have any idea what this might be. Maybe send me a screenshot as well, So go to the website rich on tech dot tv, or just send it to hello at rich on tech dot tv and maybe I can get it to someone at Samsung that can sort of take a look. That's that's a head scratcher. That is really weird. You just you know, you said, you put your phone into silent mode, you take it out, and everything nothing's working anymore. That's that's a weird one.

Thanks for the call today, appreciate it. Coming up, I've got ten gift ideas, ten gadgets that are on every list this year. I've played with almost all of them. You actually, I think, actually, I think, yeah, almost every single one of these. So we'll talk about that coming up. Plus later we're gonna talk about how AI is affecting the medical field, good and bad. You are listening to Rich on tech, all right, Let's get to the ten

tech gifts on every list this season. There are some things that just span it all right, Like if you're asking what are the hottest gifts this holiday season, Rich, these are them And I have played with almost all of these, so I can vouch for them. Number one, I wonder if I shoot this backwards, is it more interesting? Are they in any Let's see? Do you know what I'm gonna do these backwards? Let's see them backwards. Number ten the four pack of Apple air tags. Everyone loves

an air tag, Everyone loves to track their stuff. This is a great stocking stuffer. For the third year in a Row. Air Tags are a top ten sellar. They're useful, they're cheap. You can put them in everything right now. The price. Oh, I've wrote down all these prices too. Hold on, let me see if I can bring this up real quick. Air Tag okay, So on Google. This is the problem though, as we learned in our interview. So you can go on Google and I'm gonna put

all links to all these things. You can compare prices right now. A four pack of air tags is sixty five bucks almost everywhere, usually ninety nine. And you can go on Google Shopping to compare these prices and you can set a it tracks the price. The problem is it doesn't include Amazon, which is where a lot of people shop. But if you like to shop at other places, it's all there, Best Buy, Walmart, Staples, Target, BJ's. Let's see what else is on here. Verizon, Low's Lows sells

air tags okay. Air Tags number nine or a frame crowd pleaser. This is a digital frame that lets you send photos from your phone to your frame or a friend and family members frame. That is the magic of it. Lots of models to choose from. This is about one hundred and forty dollars on sale. Target's got It Container Store, Home Depot, the Aura Carver Great great gift. Number eight Mediquest three VR Applevision pro way too expensive for most people.

Mediquest three is the VR headset for everyone. It's got a lot of games, it's got good features, and the price right now, it's expense of four ninety nine. They also make a less expensive version as well. Let's see we're okay on number eight, number seven, number seven. Apple Watch series eleven. Yes, everyone wants an Apple Watch that has an iPhone. This is thinner, it's lighter, it's got

the blood pressure trend monitoring, the hypertension alerts. Right now, it's about three hundred and fifty dollars typically four hundred, so that's a great deal. Sony noise canceling headphones the XM fives. Now there is an XM six don't email me, but for the price, the XM fives at two forty eight give you almost everything you need. The only thing you don't get here, let's see here what I wrote

this down, so I actually did my research here. You typically don't get the foldable aspect of the new ones, and you can listen to the new ones while you charge them. But for the price. The XM fives are excellent and every reviewer I know loves these headphones. Number five Kindle paper white. Get the signature edition. It's got better auto adjusting, Light's got wireless charging. It's one hundred and fifty dollars right now, down from one ninety nine. Amazing.

All right on with the list. Wor these in today to the radio station ray band Metas smart glasses just the best, the best smart glasses out there right now. They do everything. They take pictures, they take videos, they answer AI questions. You've got two versions to choose from. The new version is going to be much more expensive than the older version, but they're about the same, really really cool. Number three or a ring four. This is a ring that tracks your health. People love this thing,

you know, doesn't. You can use it on an iPhone, Use it on an Android. Two hundred and forty nine dollars right now starting price. Remember you, I think there is a subscription with this, so just be careful with that. Check it out before you buy it. Number two Apple AirPods Pro three. These are fantastic. I bring them on every flight. I bring them pretty much everywhere they are down to a new low of two hundred and nineteen dollars,

pretty much their first discount ever. Noise cancelation is incredible. They work with the iPhone. They are fantastic. Apple AirPods Pro three and number one on the Gift wish list this year. Nintendo Switch to It was popular last year, still going to be popular this year. Four hundred and forty nine dollars. Go with a bundle. That's where you get the best bang for your buck. Because you're going to buy a game anyway, might as well get included for about the same price. I'll put all these gadgets

on the website rich on tech dot TV. Coming up, AI and medicine. Right here on rich on Tech. You are listening to rich on Tech. This is the show where we talked about the tech stuff I want you to know about. We also answer your questions. Everything's on the website that we've talked about. If you're still trying to write down those ten tech gifts I just shared, that's at rich on Tech dot tv. Show notes are right at the top of the web page, so go there and you can get links to all of those.

I don't know about you, but you know we're using AI for just about everything these days, including health, including wellness, including shopping. But here to talk about health and medical specifically is doctor Adam Oskwitz with UH Doctronic doctor. Thanks for joining me.

with you. It's it's going to ask you questions to try and tease that information, and just like a good doctor, it's going to try and give you personalized information at the end of the conversation. That could be in the form of a problem list or a differential diagnosis and a treatment plan that you can actually act on.

this is really bad? Or how do you kind of work with that idea that you know, we don't know what this stuff is and like how do you know you're putting your symptoms in they're so random sometimes Yeah, I mean I think.

of weirdy? All right, thanks so much for joining me. All right, coming up, we are going to open up the feedback. These are the emails the comments and the questions I get from you. There's no way I can get through them all, but I will do my best. You are listening to rich on tech. I know lots you are looking for those gift gift ideas I mentioned. They are all on the website rich on tech dot TV. Just head there and it should be the top story

episode one. All ten of those products are listed. There should be at least. Okay, let's get to the feedbag. Yep, there they are, Keith writes in thank you for your newsletters and radio show. They help to inform many people about tech issues, including me. I have a book recommendation for you. It's if anyone builds it, everyone dies, why superhuman AI would kill us? All? Okay, that's Keith. I will put that on my reading list along with my book about the End of the World. Thank you for that.

Andy from Akron, Ohio says, Hey, the woman who deleted the C plus plus DLL, it could be in the recycling bin. I might have missed it if that was already checked. But she just needs to search for recycling bin, open up and hopefully the files are still there and she can restore them. Thank you, Andy and Samuel along the same notes regarding the woman who deleted files. There's a command line program that can look for system missing files and replace them. It's called System file Checker. Just

run SFC slash scan now. Ooh, that's a good one, SFC slash scan now. Jammy and Larry say, hey, Rich, my wife and I emailed you a few times. You've been so helpful. Just wanted to let you know we're really enjoying the deer Abbey format. As usual, we're picking up some great tips. Yes, this is the newsletter I talked about earlier. That's the I call it deer abby It's just basically a Q and a newsletter, kind of

like this show. Gretchen says, I saw your story and I was listening to your podcast like I do every week, and I had to comment. I've had two Chevy Tahoes, both with CarPlay, and I love it. I just read gms getting rid of car play switching to their own system. I really hope they changed their minds, because I'd be devastated to buy another Tahoe without car play. Well, Gretchen, it seems to be happening. Maybe they will change their minds, but I'm not sure. I think we had another email

about car play. Let's see here. Now you know what. I'm just wasting time. I'll just move on. Kim in Los Angeles says that fingerprint lock you talked about is so cool. I used to leave my reading glasses on my gym lock just so I could see the time any numbers. The fingerprint lock is a total game changer. Thanks for sharing it. Yes, that's the Benji lock, Benji lock, fingerprint padlock. It's so cool. Hey, rich my compliments on

the reader's question segment of your newsletter. I always learned something. Your version on the air is also great. I like that you keep a brisk pace with callers and with the interview guests. Especially appreciated is the way you question your guests direct and to the point, without a lot of preamble. Keep up the good work, Mike and carlsbad. Mike, you are on the rich On Tech cheerleader team. Thank you. Uh oh, here we go. I'm wondering why is Tesla picking up car play but GM's dropping it.

People forget on a Windows computer, the only thing standing between someone and every account you've set up with passkeys, Amazon, Google, Banks, email is your four to six digit Windows pin. I see it all the time. People give that pin to roommates, friends or families so they can look something up, not realizing they're giving away access to everything. Passkeys are great when used right, but only if people treat their PIN like a bank code. Once someone has your pin, everything

protected with the pass key is wide open. Mike, thanks for that reminder. I need to check that out on my computer to see if that is the case. But if it is, be careful. Do not give out. Don't give out your pin anywhere. Don't give it out on your phone, your computer. It just unlocks way too much. Mike in Orange County says, I saw your feature on TV about phone cases. I saw your recommendation of the Spegan Super Thin case. I've used them for about fifteen years.

My phones have always survived the occasional drop. I don't need the screen protection since I'm pretty careful as always. Grateful for your advice. Thanks Mike. Yes, I've got the Spegan Ultra Hybrid on my iPhone right now. Love that case. It's like fifteen bucks on Amazon. It is incredible. I'll put a link to it on the website. The other one I really really like is the case Tofy Clear Impact or Impact Clear case Defy Impact Clear. It's got a built in kickstand. It's such a cool case for

your phone. Let's see here. We got a lot of messages about the woman who couldn't access or the man the guy who couldn't access Facebook Messenger. PJ says, in regards to speaking to an AI computer, think way back to the original Star Trek. They talk to their shipboard computers, no keyboards. They also had tablet computers. Our cell phones replicated the look of their communicators. Many other things too. I just keep forgetting to write them to a list.

You are right, what seemed very far off on Star Trek is basically reality. Now, is there anything that happened on Star Trek that they did that we haven't gotten yet? Probably like the body scan. I'm not a huge Star Trek person, but wasn't there like a body scan? Yeah? I know, bemba. Oh we haven't done beam me up? Oh yet? No, we have not done yeah space trial or I guess just teleporting. Yeah, we have not done that.

I can't wait for that. You're gonna look a little bit weird, like a little bit melted gobbledegook, like when your eyes might be droopy by the time he gets to the other place. But hey, you've just traveled the whole world without really doing anything. Uh okay. Francis says, I have Cox Internet and got an email to increase

my speed. In the past, when I had Cox Cable, they'd offer HBO or something for a few months for free, and then if I canceled before the trial ended, my whole package would change and costs more.

love your segments. That is a great, great thing. That is a great point, Francis that if you are on one of these what they call grandfathered in plans and you accept a new plan as a trial, that they say, oh, you can always go back. You know, you can always get rid of it. But they don't tell you that you can't go back to your original plan because it's grandfather.

That's interesting, Gerald says, Hey, a Rich since listening to your show, I can tell you have the skills with a Z to pay the bills with the Z. I don't know what that means, but thank you, Gerald. I will take that as a compliment number one. All right, that is going to do it for this episode of the show. If you can believe it. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv. All of those tech gifts I mentioned are linked up there. Please go and

check them out. Please sign up my newsletter if you haven't already done that. I'm gonna send out a newsletter this week early so that you can get all I'm gonna put. I've got a Now, I was gonna say something that probably wouldn't have sounded right. I've got all of my best holiday shopping tips in one place on the newsletter, So please go to the website. Rich on tech dot tv, sign up with your email, get it for free. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving. Thanks so much for listening.

There are so many ways you can spend your time I appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to Adam in for Bobo who had a baby, congrats, and Kim on phones. My name is Rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon