Too many streaming devices. Hackers can use lasers to talk to your smart devices. T Mobile unveils a fifteen dollars plan a hidden camera finder, getting the best deals on airfare, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro. This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the stuff that I think you should know about
happening in the tech world. It's also where I answer the questions that you send me, whether it's through Facebook, email, website, carrier, pigeon, however you get them to me, we answer them here. Welcome to the show. Producer Megan, Hey, how's it going. It is going well, well, somewhat well. So you know,
I always tell Megan this. So we do this thing for We tape our segment for the stations that we're on KTLA in Los Angeles, but we're also on a bunch of other stations, and so we always tape our stuff for the next day and we do it live as well. So some of the stations run a tape, some of them do it live. But anyway, all the time I always say to her, Ever, since having kids, I'm always like, we should just tape this today, even
if it's two days early. Yeah, because you never know what's gonna happen tonight when I go home, Like the kids could be sick. I'm not in tomorrow anyway, So last night turn out to be me. So I actually was cleaning out. I was taking down the Halloween decorations, and I blew off the front yard with like a you know, an air blower, and I knew I should have worn the eyeglass stuff or whatever because there's so
much dust from all the fires and everything. So just all this stuff was blown up all over the place, and my kid was there and I'm like, oh, watch your eyes. Well, well, of course, so what happens? I get something in my eye? So last night I spent probably three hours going to the doctor. You know, I was literally running water over my eye for forty five minutes, trying to get it out of the mirror, you know, in the mirror whatever. Long story short, it was just
like a scratch on the lower part of my eye. Okay, thank god not the cornea, because he's like, if this was a cornea, you'd be really hurting. But basically, I think I got something in there and like tried to rub it out of my eye, but I scratch you know.
Anyway, did you go to the like an ear.
Yeah, like no, no, no, like an emergency care, you know, like a little okay. So so that was you know, twenty five dollars thankfully, and then these eye drops they prescribe me, you're like fifty five dollars. Yeah, what this is insane? So long story short. I could have been fine with my eyewear, you know, like if I would have just put on the stupid glasses I normally wear, yeah, I would have been fine. And of course now it costs you have all people.
I feel like, you know, wouldn't feel like really good about that.
I usually am. And usually it's like, look, anytime you ever do stuff with the with the eyewear protection, you're always like, give me a break. Yeah, nothing's gonna happen, right until it does, and then it's like you wish she did. Yeah, So all that time and energy wasted last night, the pizza, like all we had dinner ready, like all this stuff we had to like you know,
so anyway, it's one of those things lesson learned. Just do what you're supposed to do when you're doing something, like if there's a step to take, like where eye protection whatever, Just do it. Yeah, it'll save you the house helmet Yeah, where.
The helmets in the seatbelt? Please?
All good advice. If you're listening for the first time, I do want to say, welcome to you. If you heard me on the Leo Laporte radio show or maybe on his podcast, welcome to this show. You're going to soon find out that it's much more unpolished than Leo's show. Yeah.
Well yeah, but we try. We're a podcast, we're not radio.
But it's fun.
We don't have commercials though, I mean we have little tiny ones.
But do we even have commerce? I don't know if we do. We have like intros, we have like the intro, I don't know. Yeah, but all right, let's start with this because I've been watching the Have you been watching any of the Apple TV plus stuff? No? Okay, so I have.
Yeah, I know you're you're into it.
It's the first time I've ever been waiting for a new episode of a show. Wow, which is so crazy.
I've heard this time ever.
In a long time, I mean probably in like a decade. Well, with Netflix, they give you everything all at once, right, and I'm beginning to realize that I'm not sure that's the right way to do it, because it has gotten me in the app kind of checking the app. I've been watching The Morning Show on Apple TV plus Jennifer Anderson, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell. It's not the best show in the world, but a I'm in that business, so I
find it fascinating and it's just fun. And I don't watch a lot of TV, so for me, it's actually quite interesting. And you know, I was up in Petaluma over the weekend, so I had a lot of time. So I watched three episodes of a show in one weekend, which is more TV than I can tell you I've watched in a long time. But I tell you this because Apple TV Plus I'm getting for free because I bought an iPhone, and a lot of other people are getting it for free. But we're soon gonna have some
decisions to make. According to a new survey by TV Time and UTAIQ, beyond the Big Three, they're saying seventy percent of those asked feel there will be too many streaming services to choose from. I kind of agree it's overwhelming. Right, So you've got HBO, Max coming up. You've got Disney Plus coming up, and Apple TV Plus just launched in addition to that. What else do you have? Well, you've
got what else? Netflix, Ulu, all these random little ones, you know, like the food Boos of the world, like all these like you.
Know, I don't know any of these, like off the grid smaller streaming services. I know they're out there.
They're specialized. Like if you're into soccer, I think Fubu is like a big soccer one or Fubo. Okay, So if you're into British stuff, I think there's one that's for British stuff, you know, like that kind of thing.
CBS has CBS All Access. Yeah, you can't watch CBS like show, like an old show or whatever without that.
So crazy, isn't it. Oh, Amazon Prime Now a lot of people get that for free with Prime, so it's fine. But anyway, it's getting kind of crazy. So let's just see some of the things. In the survey. Forty two percent less than half said they intended to add a new streaming service for household viewing, which will probably be HBO Max or Disney Plus. And that's the thing. Disney Plus and HBO Max are both like very lucrative or not appealing, I should say, like, there's a lot of good stuff on them.
It covers a lot of yeah, surface area of shows.
Like if I'm understanding Disney Plus, right, they have all the movies basically that he's ever come out with.
So I ABC content.
Yeah, so I get all the Pixar movies, Like my kids can just watch like all the Pixar movies forever forever. Wow, And that's pretty wild for seven bucks a month.
No, I love it, it's very it's amazing.
Eighty eight percent of participants said they were aware of the November twelfth launch of Disney Plus. Who's not. They've been advertising everywhere, so clearly, let's see. The other thing that helped with Apple TV plus is when Jennifer Aniston joined Instagram. Oh yeah, and she broke a record, earning one million followers in forty five minutes. And she has seventeen point five million followers.
She broke Instagram.
Yeah, as we say, still got it. Yeah, I mean that's pretty amazing for her.
She is a force for sure.
The service that most people don't know about is called QB qeb QB.
How do you expel it?
I don't know Quibi okay, And this is this has a lot of money behind it, Quebe, I don't know, has a lot of money behind it. Only five percent of people are aware of it. It's the one that's being started by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. You know, she was the former eBay person, like.
She was, And I know Katzenberg.
Is he's big. He does something used DreamWorks SKG. Yeah, yeah, Bielberg Disney.
And then like left and them like made like Shrek or something.
That's all that's right, SKG DreamWorks SKG Yeah. Yeah, And he was the k in SKG Spielberg Katzenberg Geff. And I'm guessing is the last one, uh huh no, because well he did music, I think.
Okay.
Anyway, Jason Blum Bloom and Steven Spielberg they're they're they're going to be part of the shows too. Anyway. This Kibi thing is like supposedly for short term short form content. Oh, I've heard of this, so it's that's gonna be a big one too. So yeah, we'll see.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm on overload with all these things. Every month I get my credit card bill and I look at this all these little charges and it's like Netflix sixteen bucks, it's too little to be concerned about. Yeah, it's it's a lot for like, oh wait, when you add them all up, you're kind of like, am I really getting the use of this?
I know?
And then at and T TV, I always talk about I pay fifty a month for that, but I get HBO plus every cable channel. So it's kind of like, well, HBO, if I got it on its own, be fifteen you HBO go Yeah all that HBO.
Yeah, got it? And HBO Max is confusing. I think we talked about it.
Last Yeah, but it's it's going to be good to Yeah, a lot of stuff. Yeah, all right. Our first question Megan.
Okay, our first question comes from Kim, and she's asking about outdoor wireless security cameras. She's looking for an outdoor security wireless camera that alerts me and is inexpensive. There's a lot of.
There's a lot of outdoor wireless cameras, but she wants she said, what was her requirement.
Like cheap and inexpensive.
Yeah, I mean who doesn't want that, right? I mean, oh, hold on, I'd like to pay a lot of money for our camera.
Some people I feel like want like really great quality cameras. You know, Okay, I'm just saying, like Devil's advocate, there are people, Oh yeah, especially in this city.
Yeah, well I think I would recommend this. So Amazon bought a company called Blink Eli and K and I think we saw them at CES. Were you with me at CES when we saw this company? Yeah?
I don't remember them.
But well their thing is that their little battery or their little camera lasts for two years on a battery, and it's and the best part is there's no installation. It comes to like a magnetic mount. You screw that magnetic mount to your outside wall and then you just the camera is magnetic pops on there. So you can install this thing easily yourself. It's called the Blink XT two indoor outdoor smart security camera. And the other thing
is cloud storage is included. So she's talking cheap. Did I even tell you the price?
No?
Ninety dollars? Oh wow, that's for the camera, and you don't have to pay for cloud storage. So the way the cloud storage works, this company is now owned by Amazon. They bought them. The way the cloud storage works is it gives you I think fourteen days of rolling storage. So and they only do clips. This is not the kind of camera that's going to record twenty four to seven. If you want that, you're talking more expensive, right, You've got to get a nest or something like that. A
lot of people have these R lowcams. Those are good, but they're gonna cost you more. They kind of work the same way where they take clips, I believe. But you can also I think you can look in a live stream of this camera, but it's going to eat up the battery. That's how you get that two years of battery life. It only starts recording when it senses motion.
Okay.
And this company blink because I interviewed I think it was the CEO or the founder someone from the company a CS and I was like, dude, how are you getting two years of battery life? And I said, that's literally why Amazon bought us, because they built the technology into these microchips that just they take a trickle of energy versus you know, hogging up a ton of you know.
So they it senses movement, so like what if it's like windy.
Well if something well that I'm sure they have algorithms built in that. Yeah, that help with that. But I have my nest cam during the holidays like Halloween, when I have my decorations up, it's going crazy. Yeah, it's sending me alerts every ten minutes because the decorations are blown in the wind and it notices those and it goes crazy. Yeah. So but I think that's a good
one to blink XT two indoor outdoor smart cam. You don't hear about this company as much, but I'm sure if you're within Amazon, they probably promote them a lot. But that's easy, right, Yeah, I mean I say, I say, go for it. Oh sorry, Okay, hold on, this is that there is a catch. Okay, So that camera that I just mentioned, that's an add on. You actually have
to buy a starter kit. I remember this little trick. Okay, You've got to buy a starter kit which includes two cameras and it's one eighty Okay, So I think that's part of it is there's like a little hub that you have to use inside your house that helps you. But anyway, still still pretty darn good. Once you buy this, you don't really have to think much about it.
Yeah.
I love that. Speaking of smart home devices, hackers can use lasers to speak to your Amazon Echo or your Google Home. And this was a surprise story at a wired What they did was they aimed laser beams at a whole bunch of devices. You're talking smartphones, the iPhone, the Android phone, Amazon Echo, Google Homes, Facebook Portal, anything that has a microphone on it. They were able to trick it by sending a command over laser and all they did was tune the laser beam so that it
sort of mimicked the frequency of a human voice. And guess what the little microphone thought. It was a human voice.
And it's crazy.
It is crazy. Now Here's the only thing that's kind of good about this is that it didn't work very well from very far. So if you're thinking, you know, you've got your device by a window and they can
hack in, you know, Okay, here's a scenario. You've got a smart door lock, or you've got a garage that has a smart you know, it's connected to your system, and they use this little laser to say, hey, a open the garage and now they can get into your garage from outside the house because you've done you know, you've set that up. So when you have all these smart home devices connected, yes, I have that, not that.
You should say, but like I wouldn't. I don't know I would ever think to connect my garage opener to like ALEXA.
Oh see why not? Like I love it, I personally have not done that. I do have the ability to do it because I like the idea that Amazon could put packages in my garage. I have not done that. Now I do.
So I mentioned this to my mom, like the idea of letting a ups or whatever be able to put a package inside.
She was like, no, really, yeah, I wonder why. I mean, is it the house thing? Like is it just because your house is your house? Like I don't feel comfortable with that either. Yeah, but I don't know why, Like if the guy's going to rob your house because he has access because he's Amazon guy, Like what are you going to do? And you have video of him doing it? You know? Or her could be her?
Yeah, I mean I don't know. I think it's just the idea of having someone be able to get into your house that you don't know. If it's like a male person that you know well and you see them every day, then like maybe it's different. But I don't know. I actually personally wouldn't want someone to be able to even if it's Amazon, and like I can track it down. Like it's like why I would rather.
Avoid it, Yeah, invasion of your privacy. Well, see, for me, it's more technical, like I don't really care about them opening the door perhaps like and slipping the pack the
package in. But like to me, it's like we have an alarm at the house, and so it would be a whole nother thing where like you'd have to disable the alarm and like they can't, so then you have to on the days you're getting a package, which is every day in our house, by the way, literally every day, you'd have to disable the alarm for the personal comming. So it's a whole big thing, right, I think that
would happen for a lot of people. Yeah, but then you would argue, I'm sure you can set it up where when they disable the front door or they unlock it with the electronic clock, it'll disable your alarm. But then who wants to go that far? Now everything's connected.
Yeah, and like what if the one day, like let's say Lindsay leaves her eyepad.
Drag my wife into this, Okay, Well, like.
I'm just saying, anyone, let's say.
You like to make it real personal.
I'm just saying, like, let's say there's an iPad right there by the front door and they just are like, you know what, whatever, and they take it.
Yes, but do you do that? I mean, you work here at our station. Do you just like steal stuff that you see around the station?
No, well, you're a normal person.
I'm just saying, ninety nine point nine percent of people are normal. They're not stealing when they see like they see a laptop on the table, like, oh, you know what, I wasn't going to be a thief today, but I'm just going to steal that laptop because it's right there.
Okay, never mind.
There's a lot of weirdos. But I'm just saying I think that people don't give human beings the benefit of the doubt. Like ninety nine point nine percent of the people you meet are totally normal, average, regular, good people. And I would hope the person knocking on the door with Amazon is. But I agree, you don't know.
No, I think you should definitely test it out. Though.
I'll leave every I'll do it, and I'll leave like a whole bunch of stuff. I'll leave like a bowl of candy like a signer. Okay, it's funny because I leave a tip out for the housekeeping at any hotel I stay at, and I always make a point to write a little note next to it that says thank you, because I don't want them to just think they're stealing, like my five dollars I leave out right right, So I'll write a note next to the laptop that says thanks, and see if they take it.
Yeah, No, that's nice. You should, but you don't say, like housekeeping, this is for you.
No, I just say thank you and they know it's I've never had a problem with that situation. Yeah, And usually they write back a nice note like they love writing back, a little note that says thank you so much. And then they leave extra towels and extra soap and all that stuff, like all this stuff in the bathroom they leave like double which I hate because I'm like, I don't need all this, but they do it.
Yeah, that's nice.
It's an ongoing cycle, oh, Rich, problem happens all the time. So anyway, that's the deal with the laser beams, I guess. And the two takeaways from that story are don't leave your things by the window, and then also maybe these manufacturers will do more voice authentication so it knows it's you, and it has to verify certain things like maybe it asked for a pin. If it's like, hey, drain my bank account, it'll be like, hey, can I have your PIN number before we do that, you know, if it's
the command. And then also maybe they'll build like some sort of shield around the microphone that helps it deflect these laser beams. Sounds so evil, all right, producer Megan, go ahead, Okay.
So I have a question from Tina. She is a She says that she's Tech Challenge, and she asks that she's been trying to figure out if there is any way that she can buy some sort of flash drive to plug into her iPhone seven to get all of the videos and photos off of her phone and onto something safe so that it will all be kept in an attached area. That's basically her question.
What an attached to areas?
She says, keep the info attached to the photos.
Okay, yeah, okay, so she basically wants a backup of her pictures off her iPhone.
Yeah.
Well, I would recommend a few things. I think that and this is a is a huge problem, like people just forget to back up their phone. They think they have an eye cloud. Some of them are, some of them aren't. But I think the main things I would recommend here. Number one, Google Photos. I just just download it and use it if you're if you're if you hate Google, or you don't like Google, get ee Cloud and just make sure your photos are in there. So if your photos are on your iPhone and they're an
eye cloud, I mean that's pretty good. Yeah right. I mean you'd have to have your phone go dead and iCloud go dead for you to be at a loss. Right. Let's see. The other thing is if you're an Amazon Prime member, they have Amazon Prime Photos. You can download that app and you do get unlimited storage of full resolution of your pictures. I don't believe videos, but I know you do of your pictures, so I think you can just download that and it's kind of like the
same thing. Let's see what else. The other thing if you want a physical device, which I think is very tricky to do, but it can be done. But a couple of them that I recommend. The first is a device called eb which we did a story with it. It's kind of a hard drive that's Wi Fi connected. You put it in your house, You download the app on your phone. Every time your phone gets you know, overnight, it will kind of look for all your pictures and
it will back them up. And their engineers are pretty smart. They even made it so that it will go into iCloud and pull your pictures out from there.
Oh wow.
So even if you have pictures not on your phone, they're backed up an iCloud, it'll still back up those. So that's pretty good. Yeah, that's expensive. It's like, I think, one hundred and eighty bucks. So, but it's a one time thing. You know, it should last for a while. The other thing, if you just want something you physically plug into your phone, there's a thing from sand Disc
called i Expand. And again we did a story on this a long time ago, and it's it's just you know, you plug it in and it will run through the backup. I found in my testing with that device that it's not always perfect and it's a lot of work to plug the thing in, let it go through its motions, you got to keep the app open, all that good stuff. So I think one of those more automatic solutions are
probably better. The Google, the Amazon, the iCloud or the EB Right, how do you have your pictures backed up iCloud iCloud? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the best thing. You Uh, Google Photos and I have you lad. I do have iCloud. I have two hundred gigs on there, but I use it mostly for like to back up my computer, so I have my desktop always synks to that, so let's smart. Remember I got burned with my computer last time where
it failed, So now I have that turned on. Where anything I because a lot of times you just throw stuff on your desktop. Do you do that like where you just throw stuff on there, or you have stuff in your downloads folder or you have stuff in your documents folder. All that is sync to iCloud for me, and then I use it for other little things too.
Do you use photos on your computer?
No, I do not. I only use Google Photos for the organization. And I'm desperately waiting for them to do their d duplication feature because I have dumped so many pictures in there that there's like triple kits and quadruple kits.
That sounds like so so necessary.
Yeah, and they just need AI to go through and be like, hey, Rich, you have seven of these pictures, which one do you want to keep? Do you want to keep the biggest one? Do you want to keep the one that's the highest resolution. Do you want to keep the one that you took first or the you know what I mean, because a lot of them are when you when you migrate your accounts and you consolidate, a lot of times you get little thumbnails mixed in.
You get you know, you uploaded a picture to Instagram after you did a filter on it, and now it's in your library forever, and it's really it just bugs me. I just want to cleaned up. Well. T Mobile is really gunning for their merger with Sprint, and it looks like it's probably going to happen. But they did have
a big event with a couple of takeaways. Number One, they are going to launch their five G network nationwide on December sixth, covering two hundred million Americans in more than five thousand cities and towns, including millions in rural America. So that's number one. So if you're been waiting for five G, it's coming fast and furious December sixth from T Mobile. It's not gonna be the entire nation, It's not gonna be everywhere. But it sounds like a pretty
big start. Two hundred million people? How many Americans are in the US.
Isn't it like one hundred and twenty million or something?
I think it's like six hundred how many millions? I think it's seven hundred million Americans? How many Americans? Let's see? Uh what? Oh, never mind, it's wait, what is it? Hold on? This can't be right?
Was that close?
The Census Bureau rejects a population of four hundred and seventeen million and twenty sixty So the last census we had three hundred million. Okay, so that says it covers two hundred million people. Wow, so it's only like it's like a third of the US or two thirds of the US kind of oh wow, that's amazing. All right.
So the two phones you can get five G on from T Mobile are the Samsung Galaxy Note ten plus five G or the one plus seventy Pro five G. McLaren say those ten times fast and it will work with sprints five G and T Mobiles five G. So anyway, there you go five G. Let's see crazy fast speeds. It's going to be fourteen times faster than standard T mobile. Oh, no, fourteen times network capacity than standard T mobile, crazy fast speeds over one hundred megabits per second to ninety percent
of the US population. And wow, that's pretty good. That's amazing. Let's see what else. Okay, they have this other new plan called T mobile Connect and this is going to get all the headlines new prepaid service that's going to be just fifteen dollars a month, which is half of T Mobile's cheapest service. So what's the biggest question you have about that service? Megan about at and t noh T Mobile for fifteen.
Bucks a month, how much data do you get?
That's right? And what do you get to gigabytes of high speed data that's you're going to burn through that on your on the Instagram you're surfing right now. Yeah, that's let's see, for twenty five dollars a month, you have five gigs of data. But still for a lot of people who just want I get a lot of emails from people who have phones for their elderly parents and they say, look, my mom's she did four minutes last year or four minutes last month, like can you
recommend a plan? And they're all kind of expensive unless you go, so anyway, fifteen dollars. No, that's amazing, pretty good for a certain use case, right, not for everyone.
Okay, so this next question comes from Rendee. Didn't I hear about an app or something that helps find you lower car and home insurance?
Oh well, she probably did, maybe for me a long time ago. Were you here when I talked about Gabby?
Doesn't sound for there.
I think it was before your time. But I thought this was a great app, and it's it's called Gabby, and it kind of like they put a little high tech spin when you go to any of those websites. By the way, ninety nine point nine percent of websites that you go to online to compare your car insurance or your home insurance or your renters, they're all bogus.
They're just taking your data.
They're taking your data and they're selling it to the companies that say, hey, we want to get that data and we'll sell you a quote. Yeah. So it's not a it's not very good. And now I think that Gabby. Their difference is that they probably do some of that, but they do work with a bunch of insurers, like I think, in a legit way. So they shop from our network of forty top insurance companies, including Progressive, Kemper, Traveler's, Hippo, Lemonade,
clear Cover, Safec, Mercury Insurance. And so I think that they just seem And the reason why I think they just seem more legit is because it's a tech company more so than like these random quote online dot com kind of things, you know what I mean. And I've done those, believe me. And the problem with doing them is that they just get you get hounded. Don't even ever put your phone number in those things because you will just get calls like you cannot believe. So anyway,
Gabby's really cool. And the other thing I like about what they do, at least when they started, and I think they still do this is that you can log in with your insurance. So if you have like Progressive, and you log in with Gabby, like Gabby will you
create account, you log in with your Progressive account. They go in and crawl your Progressive account to see the coverages that you have, and so they know exactly what you've got going on the cars that you have, and then they use that to pull your quote and compare so and they also know how much you're paying, So I think that's kind of like a step above all
these other random things. If you're not comfortable with logging in, which some people aren't, I totally am, you can upload a pdf of your declarations page from your insurance company and they'll use That might not be as good. But the other thing that Gaby will do is kind of remind you every six months to shop and be like, hey, we found your stuff. You know, we found a lower rate. So for me personally, when I tried this, I did
not find a lower rate. Okay, so my insurance I've had them for a while and I just feel like I have a pretty good rate with them, so I can't seem to get any cheaper. But anyway, that's when I check out gabby dot com. Gabby dot com seems pretty good cool. Have you ever stay in an Airbnb, Megan?
Have I stayed in Airbnb?
Yes? What about a hotel room?
Have I stayed in a hotel room?
No?
I've never stayed in.
Have you ever wondered about a hidden camera in a room that you've stayed in?
Yeah?
Is that like a thing? Like I think most people at this point we see it on the news, think about it.
Our camera's everywhere. Yeah, yeah, I think it's normal to be a little bit paranoid these days.
Yeah, and I agree. I mean I kind of I don't search my hotel room, but you kind of when well, when you see like a little grate, you wonder I do take a look inside the grate, especially in the bathroom. I kind of look just up at the grate in the you know, if there's usually like an air vent or I just kind of I'm always.
Like, what's the air event? Is that where you think it would be?
Yeah, because it's just an easy place to hide it. Oh okay, that's usually where you hear about him when you see it on the news air events. Well, the reason I tell you all this is because there is a new device called the Scout Hidden Camera Finder on a website spyguy dot com. And this guy wanted to create a device that can help people because he sees this on the news all the time, and so he
created the Hidden Camera Finder and the Scout. It's a little device that has kind of like these high powered LED lights plus a little hole in the middle, so if you held it up, it looks like a hole with LED lights around it. And plus a place to hold it. And when you light up those lights, you look through the hole and those lights will reflect on a camera lens. Right, so you kind of look around the room almost like what would it be like looking through not binoculars, but almost like a little.
Yeah, I feel like binoculars. Binoculars one binocular, Yeah, like one like one lens mono.
Monocular, a monocule kind of thing.
Yeah.
And so the reason why this works is because most lenses out there in a camera have an infrared filter and that bounces back the infrared light or the I guess the LED light.
How have we not thought of this? I don't know, but it's so smart.
But it's funny. He says this because when you when we record stuff with the iPhone ten or the iph ten and up, which has this IR blaster for your face ID, it always flickers when you're taking a video of it, because that's it's reacting with a camera that you're taking a picture of somehow. So that's kind of
like what he's talking about. So, long story short, you look around the room with this little thing, and if you see a light flashing back at you, it's like, oh, there's probably a camera there and you can go look. So it's kind of wild. It's one hundred dollars. And the reason why there's other ways of looking for cameras and rooms. I guess a preferred method is using some sort of wireless transmitter that senses if there's a wireless transmission going on. But this works with cameras that might
record to a micro SD card and they're not transmitting anything. Okay, you know. Let's say there was a story with Southwest Airlines where I think we talked about it here where they put the camera in the bathroom and I think my theory was it was a GoPro because they were watching it live on the iPad. Maybe I just shared it on Twitter. I can't remember, but it would catch something like that. Well, I guess that would be transmitting.
So never mind. The point is this kind of this is a low tech way of finding cameras.
So would you buy one?
I personally would not know, Yeah, but you know, would you No? This is kind of think it's it's next level.
I think if you're a spy, well, what if you traveled?
What if you traveled for work three hundred days a year? Oh yeah, like you're in a different hotel room every night.
Yeah, I feel like that makes sense, sure, but I don't so there's you know, no reason.
But I think there's an appeal to this kind of device and it's cool that it's out there. Yeah, and some people may be drawn to it because they're you know, more caution than others. But my thing, I don't know.
I just feel like with an Airbnb, it's like illegal to put cameras in.
The Airbnb, right, I think so.
So, I mean that would be if you're someone who, like for some reason, stays in a lot of airbnbs. I feel like Airbnb over hotel, right, I feel like airbnbs definitely have cameras.
Yeah, I think that the like if I had to think of the law, I think that anytime there's an expectation of privacy, yeah, you know, you would expect like a camera. Now I wonder because I'm not sure about the law on this, because if it's your house that you're renting and you have cameras in the living room and in the dining room, I don't know, is that okay? But not in the bedroom perhaps because there's an expectation of privacy, and in the bathroom because I think there
is something to do with expectation of privacy. When you're in a living room, you don't have as much expectation of privacy as you are in the bedroom, right, right, but you're in a private home. I mean, I think it gets a little complicated.
I mean, these are like good things to talk about, though, I mean Airbnb should Airbnb has some issues right now.
Yeah, but maybe they do have rules for they might.
Be like no cameras. I would, I would.
Assume, but you also want to protect your place if you had.
No No, I totally agree. I yeah, I would never honestly want to rent anything out. I just I don't know.
Yeah, well, let's say it had a camera. Let's say you go on the airbnbing and you get in there and there's a camera in the kitchen and a camera in the living room. Are you okay with that?
No? Because I feel like whoever's renting out this house is literally just I think they're just watching you, Like they just turn their phone on and they're just like seeing what's going on. I think that that's really strange.
But do they have a right to do that because it's their house? Yeah? See, these are it's complete I don't know if you're paying, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, it's a weird thing, right when you start to think.
About it, Well, okay, if it's the same thing, as you know, it's not the same. But getting a hotel room like you.
That I think you're expectation of privacy.
But if you have like a suite like I mean, yeah, it's weird, all right, it is weird.
Uh wait is it my turn? Yeah? I think it is my turn.
You just talked about the.
Camera, Gabby, Oh the camera. Oh, it's your turn. Go ahead.
So this next question comes from Bill. So I know you have written some iPhone books since I use Android, have you ever considered writing one hundred and one Tips for Android? I would be your first customer. Love listening to your podcasts.
Ah, well, thank you, Bill. Here's the thing. I get this question all the time. And yes, my book is one hundred and one iPhone Tips and Tricks, and I get this question all the time. People want to know, rich when are you going to write the Android book? And believe me, I would if I could. And here's
the reasons why I can't. Android is different on every device out there, even if you have a Samsung device, it's different on the Note than it is on the S nine, And it's different on the S ten, And it's different on the S six that some people are still rocking. It's different on the LG phone. It's different on the Pixel phone. It's different on the new Pixel versus the old Pixel. It's tricky with Android because there is not one flavor of Android that runs across all devices.
In fact, even within Android, like if you said, well, Rich, just do it for like Android ten or Android nine. There are features that are left out of manufacturer's phones because every manufacturer has the right to include or not include a feature except for core things like you know you have to have Google play Store on there, right yeah, or you know YouTube or maps pre installed. But after that.
So I don't know how to tackle the whole Android thing. Now, if I didn't have a full time job on a TV station, I only wrote books, Like yes, would I write a book on the Note ten? Of course, I'd love to, And that'd be a great book.
Yeah, I guess, like since you can just personalize the phone so much, it would be What would be interesting would be if like you did your take on like how you run your Android, right.
And I actually thought about that. Yeah, but and there are some things, and you know, maybe it is my fault for not sitting down and trying to come up with one hundred and one things that actually work across all Androids. Yeah, but I feel like the book would much would be much more oriented towards like apps you can download in ways of customizing your phone. Yeah, because there are a lot of things like I have a system.
When I get an Android phone to test, I sort of go through and like do all these same things, like the way I set up my WiFi and the way I set up this and my homescreen and the things I download. So maybe there's a place for it. I think that the iPhone is just easier to do right now because it does run the same software on iPhone six S until eleven pro. It's like five generations of phones times three phones in each generation, so you're talking like fifteen devices that it works on, you know,
going back five years. So it's anyway. So that's the short answer of it, and the long answer is that yes, I'd love to do it, but I only have so much time in my life, and I also want to make a book that's going to be available to the most amount of people, because it's tough to write a book and it only sells like three hundred copies because that's how many people have the OnePlus, you know, so it's kind of it's tough not to knock on one plus I love them.
Yeah, but again, Oh so you would have to write the book specific to like a Samsung or right.
Oh so that's the tough part.
But I could probably you could do the pixel.
Yeah, but not no one has the pixel that's the problem. No that phone. Okay, just to give you an example, I.
Thought it was like such a popular.
Okay, I'll give you. I'll give you an example. Okay, the pixel last year. Okay, hold on, I'll start the other way. Okay, the iPhone in one quarter sells about fifty million units in one quarter. That's three months a newer iPhone or any iPhone. Let's just say when an Apple, they sell about fifty million iPhones in three months, right, pixel? I think they sold last year two to four million total.
What that's in the US?
Uh, in the world everywhere?
Oh my gosh.
Uh Pixel three. Let's see, let's see how many they sold.
I've noticed a lot of influencers have been like pushing the Pixel. But I'm like, you definitely posted this on an iPhone. If they talk about it in a video like a selfie video on Instagram stories, like, it doesn't look like it's actually been shot.
On an iPhone, really well, they probably do sell it on them. Yeah that's what's uh, isn't that crazy? Yeah?
That is crazy?
So there you go. I think, yeah, two million, that's that's wild. That's okay. So that's why that's the problem right now.
That's the problem.
Sorry, Bill, Okay, So should we speak about the iPhone because a new review is out of the camera in the iPhone and there's this website called doc Soomark DxO Mark, and.
You have your review coming out pretty soon.
Yes, So I a little spoiler alert. We did a iPhone. I took the iPhone eleven Pro Max versus the Pixel four. I took them both out and I did like three different locations five hours, and I just shot a whole bunch of pictures. We're gonna show that on KTLA and I'll save my opinion for maybe the next report or the next podcast. I can tell it now, I guess it doesn't really matter. But DxO Mark came out their
review of the iPhone eleven Pro camera. And before you think that the iPhone eleven Pro Max is the top camera out there, according to them, there's two phones that are better. Oh and those two phones are the Huawei May thirty Pro, which you can't get in America, and the second one is the Shaomi me CC nine Pro Premium, which again not in America.
Is that the one that's like one hundred and twenty no idea megabytes or something.
Oh, one hundred and twenty megapixelsh And then after the iPhone comes the Samsung Galaxy Note ten Plus, and then the Galaxy Yeah, Galaxy Note ten basically after the iPhone. Okay, so anyway, okay, and then the pixel is way far down. It's it's actually number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten eleven. Now, DxO Mark is very controversial. People trash them online. People, some people swear by them. Other people trash them, say that they get paid to do all
these things whatever. But the reality is they do a very thorough job of reviewing the cameras. And so here's the bottom line from the iPhone eleven Max pro eleven. Pro Max matches our top store for video recording video clips with good detail, very wide dynamic range, and smooth stabilization in most circumstances. It's still image results put it among the best thanks to consistently good results from the primary camera, which now has a very capable wide angle
lens with the widest field of view we've seen. Boca Is and Zoom are not quite up with the very best, Big Deal, but those are not top priorities. New iPhone is an easy recommendation for any mobile image creator, especially with those who have already invested in the iOS system. And you know, I'll just go ahead and kind of like tell you my difference. When I'm carrying the iPhone, I feel like I can conquer the world, and I really do. It just feels like it does everything. It's
really good. We shoot with it all the time. Remember we shot we tried to shoot something with a pixel the other day. Yeah, pixel photos are amazing, but it kind of like I've always said, it's a one trick pony. What happened when we tried to shoot a video the other day on the pixel? What happened to that video?
Audio was all messed up like it didn't sink right, which was really strange.
Have we ever had that problem on an iPhone?
No?
Never, No. So we plug a microphone into the pixel, which it accommodates, and we roll our video and you play back the video and guess what, Rich's lips are moving and you're not hearing what I'm saying until a second.
Later, and it sounded really sounded really strange. And that wasn't the MIC's fault. That was like the pixel, like the way it Yeah, so if you.
Only want great pictures and really nothing else matters to you, I do think the pixel is amazing if you want a combination of things like an Apple Watch and you know, not Siri, but like you know, and great apps, yeah, and all this other stuff that comes along, and accessories, like you can walk into any seven eleven in America and buy a case for your iPhone or cable. Yeah, I can't say the same.
Right, the cable might not work, cable might cable might blow up, but you know they're everywhere, but you can get one. Most of them don't work, right seven eleven.
I don't know, I'm not gonna yeah, you know, yeah totally, But it's the cheaper cables. Yeah, they can definitely not work as much. By the way, I just learned a new tip for the Apple Watch. So when I get phone calls on the Apple Watch, you can just place your palm over it and touch the whole face of the watch and it will silence the call, but it will still let it ring anyway. Pro tip for you.
That's cool.
All right, Megan, go ahead, one more question. I think that's all we have time for.
Oh key, what do I want to ask? Okay, so this next question comes from Eddie Love, your podcast and site always filled with amazing info. I am looking to buy a new tablet on Black Friday. I know you recommend iPad, but we are an Android family. We don't own any Apple products. So do you have an Android reckon all tablet?
I do not, and I don't know what to say because I I just the reason I don't recommend the Android tablets because I just don't think they're as good as the you know, yeah, the iPad, right, and the iPad price for three twenty nine, You're getting so much for that money, including a great tablet experience, great accessories, Apple pencil support if you want it, cases, you know, you can get all kinds of cases and keyboard covers
and all kinds of great stuff. So it extends beyond just kind of like the main like, oh, is it a good tablet? You know? And I get it. If you're an Android family, I get it. That's really tough to get a Apple tablet.
If anything, if this person were to get an iPad, I feel like it would slowly make them want to like turn Apple.
Yeah, but I get it if you've bought all your apps and Google Play and you want them to work on the tablet. But anyway, so the only tablet I would truly recommend if you're looking for an Android tablet is probably the Amazon Fire HD ten. They just came out with the new version of it. And the reason why I like the new version, it's one hundred and fifty dollars, by the way, super cheap, and this is
why a lot of people are attracted to them. And by the way, don't buy any Amazon products until have a moratorium on buying anything Amazon untidy Black Friday, because they will go on sale all their products. Their branded products always go on sale. Put them in your shopping cart. Now wait until Black Friday and purchase but this is one hundred and fifty dollars. I would expect this to be one thirty during I'm just going to throw out that prediction.
Did Amazon by Eero?
Yes, so that will put it on sale on sale. They also have the new thing about the Fire HD ten. They just came out with the new version and it has USB C, which is great because we've been waiting for that for a long time. The only other thing to know about the Fire tablet is that it does not have Google Play Store on it, so you can't actually install the apps like that, but it has a lot of apps through the Amazon Store, but it does
run Android. But the only other thing I'd look at is one of the tablets from Samsung and you know, one of their tabs. I think it's like the tab S six or something like that. But maybe look at those.
And if you want a really really an expensive tablet, the Walmart.
Oh yeah, if you want to super super cheap thirdy, yeah, the Walmart on. We did a review of them and it's the on tablet. It's their own brand. Yeah, and they're super cheap. I think they were like sixty five dollars or like ninety dollars really cheap for either like an eight inch or ten inch. I mean it's really really cheap.
But you can like watch shows on.
If you just need to do basic stuff like watch shows. You're not going to do any work on there, but you know, yeah, well that's going to do it for the show.
Oh really?
Yeah? What can you believe it?
No?
How fast did that go? See when you're having.
Fun talking about tech.
When you're having fun, time flies. And that's why this job goes by so fast. Thanks so much for listening. Like you heard earlier, my book is called one and one iPhone Tips and Tricks. It's been fully updated for iOS thirteen. In fact, this is how diligent I am about my book. Yesterday I went home and actually updated a couple of pages on things that have changed with the latest iOS thirteen point two. Apple changed a few things, notably the way you rearrange apps on your home screen.
So I went back and actually changed the whole book and both the ebook and the publisher and the print so that you can be getting that.
You can just do that now.
I do a disclaimer in the front of the book where I say, look, Apple might change things slightly, it still works kind of the same way, like you still figure it out, but I wanted to make sure the word. They actually changed the wording on one It used to say rearrange home screen. Now it says if you do it. Let's see what it says. Now now it says edit home screen. So oh well, if you got the book and you're like, Rich, where's this rearrange home screen? I
can't find it? Well they changed it, so anyway, So that's how diligent I am about my book. It's available for the Kindle as an ebook. You can read it for free if you have Kindel Unlimited, or you can purchase the ebook or the paperback. It makes a great holiday gift. Believe me, the emails I get about this book. Everyone just loves it. That gives it us a gift. It's an easy gift this holiday season. We're on social media. I am at Rich on tech on most places. Megan, how can people find you?
Producer Megan on Twitter?
And she does. She's a prolific tweeter.
Am I no, I'm not.
I do tweet a lot. I am very prolific. Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, please rate and review. It. You can do that on any of the podcasting apps. And if it's your first time listening, please subscribe to the show. Just hit that subscribe button. You'll get a new episode every week when we do them, or whenever we do them, which is mostly every week. Thanks so much for listening. Did you have a fun show, Megan, so much fun.
Thank you. We'll talk to you real soon. Bye bye,