Android Phones Might Be Worse in 2020

Why next year's Android phones might be a bust. You can now sell your home directly to Zillow. iPhone gets some features parents will appreciate, plus the app that turns your iPhone into an iPod Classic, and of course your tech questions answered.

What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro.

This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about, and I answer all of the questions, well, some of the questions that you send me.

Joining me is producer Megan Welcome. How are you?

I'm good. How are you.

Getting ready for the holidays? That's for sure? Lots of prep?

Yeah, are you still prepping somewhat?

We uh, you know, we're still aiding Santa with the list, so okay, keeping things, keep adding things on little by little.

I was in the stores.

I was at the mall yesterday actually, and I still will say, as much of a tech person i am, I believe that going to a store is still better because it's easier. You see, Like I was in the Amazon store, which is ironic because you could just go on Amazon. But I was in the Amazon Store and just found that, like while I was checking out, there's like five things around the checkout that would be perfect as gifts. Yeah, and it's stuff that this is. I've

The stuff you see them.

Where do you buy your toys for your kids online.

Well, Santa buys them, but we gifts, we buy, we buy a couple of things. Yeah, and I think a lot of them we we kind of you know, just go off Amazon. And I think it's just kind of I don't know. This is the first year that Toys Russ is gone, so or maybe it was gone last year. I can't remember, but either way, it's it's it's a thing. So I think Target is kind of going to benefit from that. And well for sure because they do have toy sections. Yeah, and I noticed that the Target toy

I will find your email.

I will go through it and if I think I'm interested, I will definitely get in touch and I'm already doing that.

So exciting.

It is exciting.

Let's talk about the first story of the day. Better password protections in Chrome. So Chrome has had this feature since I guess the beginning of the year, called password check Up.

It was an extension that when you typed.

A password in it would check your password against a list of known passwords that are compromised, which sounds kind of weird, like I don't really want anyone checking my password against anything, because they have to take my password and send it across some sort of list that seems inherently insecure.

But this is Google.

I've met the Chrome team that does the security stuff. They're very smart. Believe me, I do trust them, but I think this is odd. But now they're taking that little service called password Checkup, which was an extension, and they're building it into Chrome. So now Chrome will warn you if your user name or password has been compromised in a data breach, and it will tell you, hey, change this password. Most of my passwords are pretty good, you know, like other people. I've been known to reuse

So Chrome should be telling us.

Like today it says it's gradually rolling out, So if you're signed Intochrome, you can turn it off if you don't like it under Sync and Google Services, under Chrome Settings you can change it.

I think for ninety nine percent of people, they're not going to change it.

If my password is not good.

There are ways, there are other uh you know, if you use like last Pass or Dashlane, they will scan your passwords and do the same thing. Oh, I guess it's a it's a known thing, all right, Megan, you're up.

First question, Okay, first question comes from Amy. Hi, mister Demiro. I've been watching Katley Morning News since they began, and I was a teenager back then.

Lol.

I'm curious of your thoughts on which iPhone to get my daughter, who's twelve for Christmas. She currently has a six plus. But do we know which of the new phones is the sturdiest, the eleven or the pro? Which would you choose for your child? She is very responsible and earns all A's very good.

Well, good for her, But here's my thing. How old is she? Twelve? Okay, so twelve is probably the age I think I got.

My first phone, but it was a flip phone.

Yeah, well that.

Was a different time, so I was like two years ago.

I was two years ago. Yeah, I think iPhones were out two years ago.

So this is something I struggle with. I think a lot of parents struggle with. And A, it's awesome that you're getting her the newest phone, but bottom line is she doesn't need anything more than the iPhone eleven.

Yeah, she does not need the.

Pro unless she's a budding YouTube star and she needs like all those pro features, which, when you really think about the Pro features, the only differential between the iPhone eleven and the Pro Max or the Pro rather is you get a telephoto lens, which means when you zoom in it's gonna theoretically look better. You still get the wide angle on the eleven. And the other thing is you get slightly better battery life and you get a better screen.

So that's it.

Those are not enough for a twelve year old to go over into the Pro.

She's like a photographer then maybe, but.

Even that it's like you're you're still getting the same camera. I mean, except for the telephoto. A lot of times people think that you're not getting the wide angle with the eleven. You are, Oh, you're just not getting the zoom. And it's not as if you can't zoom in your phone. You can, it's just not gonna be as clear like high zooms. So I think go for the eleven. And you're asking.

What the best like what she say? What was the word she used.

The most sturdiest?

So I mean neither.

You know, if she's an eleven, she's a twelve year old kid, She's gonna drop it a thousand times. I would recommend a case, and I think she needs a good case, like not just like an.

Apple case, like screen protector.

Screen protector. So we like tech armor, well I do. I like tech Armor as a screen protector, and for a case, I would go the Spec Presidio Grip or some sort of Spec Grip. Tech twenty one is also really good. Anything that is rated for a drop protection of like ten feet or more. You can't just get one of those cases that are you know, the nice case that looks great that just kind of protects it from scratches. You want something that protects from drops, yes, and yeah, your case does not do.

That, like an Amazon case for ten dollars.

But the case I have that I really like too is called smartish. I think it's called like Kung Fu grip, and so it's really grippy on the sides, which is really nice.

And it also has a lip.

So if you look at your case and you notice that it comes up over the phone, that means that it's gonna better protect your phone in the event of a drop. So yours has a little bit of a lip, but it's not it's not one that's rated for drop, I can tell.

So good question.

All right, Okay, so we talked about this in last week's podcast. And remember I told you about the trip to Maui that Qualcom brought everyone off minus me, and so I was a little bitter.

Obviously you couldn't take the time off.

But I also mentioned something about that trip, and I said something about everyone was super excited about all the things that Qualcom was introducing at this event. But I said, it's interesting because it's kind of tough to sift through the hype of being in Maui for free and report, quote unquote reporting about all the stuff and actually kind of giving some good analysis of what Qualcom is doing. And they launched their new chip there, which is the

Amadeo.

Wait, oh yeah, I'm Amadeo.

Okay, I think So.

Leave it to good old Ron, who I've I've read his stuff many times. He gets real and he has a great article and here's what the headline is, the Snapdragon eight six y five will make phones worse in twenty twenty. So leave it to him to actually give us some real analysis over this issue. Of everyone that went to this event was.

Just raw rah rah rah rah rah raw Qualcomm.

Everyone was talking it up.

Everyone that went, okay free right now. Ron, it did not seem like he went, but he followed the news. Or maybe he did go and maybe he paid his own way.

I'm not sure.

But here's what his thesis is of his article. This is the first time so Qualcomm is so hot for five G that's like the big next kind of next frontier for smartphones. Right, and we've heard a lot about it. It's going to be the next It means for wireless companies, lots of money. For us, it means speedier connections. But

I you know that.

I don't know if you've ever gotten on a plane lately. You never have a connection, never when you're in.

When you're in your seat.

Yeah, it's crazy. So here's the thesis of his article. He says, it's unusual because this new chip that basically goes in every Android phone for the first time in seven years, does not have a modem on board.

So what does that mean.

The modem is in a separate chip, which it's a bundled modem five G and four G, and the modem is what allows the phone to talk to the network, so you kind of have to have it.

But what he's.

Saying is that because it's a separate chip, a lot of these phones that don't need five G still have it bundled in. Now, basically, Qualcom's forcing it on everyone, And so his idea is that these phones are going to be bigger than they have to be, They're going to use way more energy than they have to They're just going to be sloppier than they need to be because it's a mess. And I think that's an interesting take because and I think this has gotten a little

Now this is his opinion.

Yeah, but he does bring up a phone from the past, which was the HTC Thunderbolt, and it was the first four G phone with a separate modem, and he said it was a disaster. It was hot, it was a slow, it was a buggy mess, and the battery life was terrible. So I think he has a great point here, and I think that he actually brings up a Snapdragon press release.

Snap Dragon is the brand of Qualcomm's chips. He brings up this.

Press release from twenty twelve when the company switched over to single chip solutions and said, typically, the more chips that are involved in building device the more challenging it is.

To conserve battery.

Okay, so he's kind of putting Qualcomm's own words against them.

Six years later, seven years later, eight.

Years later, the chip that's the chip, I don't know if that's the exact one that looks very big. Oh the little time Okay, Oh yeah, see that's what I'm talking about. All these people on Instagram are shown off.

The ship's tag ad here in Mallie. Yeah, the Qualcum snap Dragon Summit.

Anyway, So I interesting.

I think it's a great article to read ours Technico dot Com. We'll see what happens this year. But I will say this, all the five G phones, from what I've seen, I've I've tested only the one from Sprint, but from what I've seen, everyone is agreeing that they're just not there yet.

The networks are not there yet. So five G lots of hype, not a lot of delivery just yet.

Megan, all right, Okay, So this next question comes from Pat and he asks is honey dot com safe to use?

Now?

I was confused because I googled, like honey dot com. This is like a honeywebsite. Is he talking about the chrome extension?

He's talking about the Chrome extension. Okay, yeah, Honey dot com.

Is not I think the website to make Honey like.

The National Honeyboard. Yeah, that's why, so join Honey dot com. This is a Chrome extension that does all the automatic coupon codes and all that good stuff. They were just purchased by PayPal for something like four billion dollars. So clearly PayPal SyES a lot of potential in this, but their potential might be more seen in how they can monetize users of this gadget or this software, and not necessarily how much it benefits those users.

So I've downloaded Honey in the past.

I will say I don't use it. I have found that it's just not as good as some of the other stuff out there. And you've heard me talk about some other ones. So what am I going to recommend? Megan?

Oh oh?

Shoot starts with the w oh yeah wiki by by, So I like wiki by. I find that they have the best coupon codes that work many many times. And the other one that I would check out is a brand new one from slick Deals, and slick Deals I find is not as automatic as wikiby, but it searches all of slick Deals, which is this great crowdsource website for deals.

And it does unearth a lot of stuff.

A little bit more it does automatically apply the coupon codes to check out, but I find sometimes you may have to go into like their offers and see what other people are posting about. Okay, but those are the two that I recommend Honey for all the hype. Just I feel like, here's what I think Honey did right

But realistically, what I like about.

Wikibi is it's much more crowd generated, and I feel like that's what gives it better codes. Because when you use a code, Megan that you find somewhere. Let's say someone mails you a code to your house, you type it in wiki by notices that and they say, oh, we're gonna use that code for the next person, and the next person gets that code automatically if it doesn't work for them. Let's say it was a unique code just for Megan, it takes it out of the running.

Yeah, you have to like sign in.

It's not good. So that's why I like wiki by and slick deals.

Check those out, all right, Meghan, If you're selling your house anytime soon, you can now.

Sell it direct to Zillow. Oh, which is just amazing.

And this is kind of the next frontier of buying or buying in or selling a home is probably the biggest financial thing that anyone does in their lifetime. Yeah, and it is complicated. It's a lot of steps, there's a lot of people involved, there's a lot of fees involved, there's a lot of third party transactions, all kinds of stuff that you have to do, and usually you have someone to walk you through it, like you're broker or

So they're getting rid of like real estate agents.

Well they're not doing that because Zillo still makes a majority of their money based on referrals, which is, you know, you go on Zilo to see how much your house is worth and you end up getting a real estate agent or referral. So I don't think they're doing away with them, but they are. They are definitely streamlining the process in a way that may or may not take off.

We don't know if this is going to work right. They've started it.

La is their latest market and San Diego. They have it in twenty two other markets which they've been doing this. But LA is the nation's second largest housing market and it's also the biggest market where they've tried this in Phoenix. There's a lot of transactions. LA is very unique because the homes are way more expensive than these other markets, and it's also trickier, Like it's very unique to like find a home in LA. It's not just like kind

So here's how it works.

You go on Zilo and you request a fair market value offer on your home, and you get that within forty eight hours. You answer some questions about your house, like when the last time you painted it, well, you know, what's this? That whatever, And it'll give you an offer in about forty eight hours. Then you can decide if you want to take that offer and continue and move forward, or you.

Can just say no way.

Now, if you take the offer, it doesn't immediately sell your house. You still have to talk to a person that comes to your house, inspects it, and says, okay, well, you know you got to do this and that to fix this up. So here's the thing that I think people might have an issue with. Normally, when you let's say you're buying my house, you send your inspector, he inspects the house, he says it needs fifty thousand dollars worth of repairs. You come to me and you say, hey,

Worth of repairs.

They will say we're just gonna take that off your offer, and they handle the repairs. They handle everything, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like there's a big negotiation there where I can say, like, come on, because it's it's transactional. They're dealing in big transactions here.

Yeah, lots of houses, So could.

You do this just to see how much they think your house is worth? Like could I like, I don't know, like if you might not want to sell, but you might want to just know how much your house is worth because it changes all the time.

Yeah, And Zillow and Redfinn do that already. You can go on there and they give you an estimate. They're not very accurate. So I think that having this person come out to your house and kind of look at it would give you But I don't I think there's probably I mean, yes, some people do that and just see and be like I never mind. But it's probably a little bit more work than like for the average person to just like casually see.

But yes, people will do that.

Yeah.

Cool, And anyway, I find it as a tech person who has seen the inner that kind of change all businesses. Some of these larger, more human touch businesses are really tough to change. Buying a book online through Amazon versus Barnes and Noble, super easy. You know the title of the book, you type it in. It comes to your house. Buying a house is a little bit different or selling a house.

Or leasing an apartment. Like some apartments just don't come up on like Zilo and you have to actually like explore a neighborhood.

And wow, that's a whole nother that's a whole other issue. That's that's more west side rentals kind of having a big handle on the market and also brokers and stuff.

Like when I was in New York City, I couldn't believe that you can't find a rental online. There's no such thing.

It's a mess.

It's a person that you have to call and they have your rental and it's a whole big mess.

It was the worst.

Well, you have to pay like a broker fee or something.

Yeah, you have to pay like a I think it was like a month of your rental to this person that helps you find a place. Now, if all the information was just online, you know, those people would all be out of a job.

But I don't want to do that.

Yeah, but it's it's kind of some businesses have not changed very much because of the Internet.

All right, Megan, you're up.

Okay. This next question comes from Patricia wondering what your thoughts are regarding purchasing through Rakotin. Oh, what is rat.

It's really weird and I've seen really weird. It's just a weird name, right, Yeah, it's strange.

So let's see there's a there's a they have a little pronunciation thing on the website because it's so is that how.

You say it? Is that? No idea Rakotin? Because I had to look this up to see what the deal with Rakotin is? Is how you say it? Let's see, so raccoon long as.

The short of it is is that it used to be called Ebates rack rack tin.

Here, here's the.

Pronunciation racketin racketin, racketin racketin racketin so like rack, Like you know, something's on a rack racketin So I guess that's a Now, this is a Japanese company and it used to be called Ebates, and Ebates is one of these things that like you sign up, all your transactions go through them, so you go to like, instead of going to Macy's dot com, you go to Ebates dot com.

It's all the same stuff.

Sometimes you get more back at places than others.

But a lot of people do this.

They you know, they do all their shopping through here, so they get like one percent.

Pack the thing. Okay, here's how it works.

The store with the kind of larger price differential, So somewhere like a Macy's. If you see a shirt at Macy's it says MSRP eighty dollars, that shirt may sell for fifteen dollars at the end of the day with all the discounts that they offer. Wow, something like Amazon, you're not going to find a lot of discounts. Like whatever it sells for it sells for same thing with Walmart. So when you shop at those places, you're gonna get a tiny percentage because they're margin is a lot smaller.

Yeah, it's totally safe, and it's it's to me it's a little bit of a rigamarole. Yeah, that word.

So like sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not.

Yeah, it's kind of like a lot of workamarole.

It's kind of a it's like a Southern thing. I think I learned it down there. It's like it's kind of like a lot of work for little return. And to me, it just seems like it's just a little bit too much.

Work for me.

But if it works for you, it's absolutely fine. But it's a totally legit company and they're they're it's a Japanese company that's pretty big, and now they just I guess they bought Ebates or they had ebaits and now they're just using that name to make it one thing across the world.

Okay, I like e Baits, though maybe it's eBay.

They don't want to like maybe I think, yeah, maybe that or just Ebates. Yeah, Ebates was pretty big and now it's just gone.

All right, So, uh, let's talk about Apple.

If you have an iPhone, they have a new version of iOS again, iOS thirteen point three. And I'm just telling you this because there is a new version, are new features that are good for parents. There are now support for communication limits in screen time. And what this means is that during screen time you can allow communication, well, you can set where you can restrict communication to only

Everyone's so addicted.

They really are, Like you had this tiny little age, and it's kind of sad. Like my kid just got into Minecraft and he's five, oh no, and he's obsessed playing Minecraft. And when he's not playing Minecraft on the iPad, he's watching Minecraft on TV. Yeah, it's just absolutely insane. So that's the future I just wanted to tell you about when it comes to the iPhone. So if you have a kid, check it out iOS thirteen point three under the screen time you can now restrict communication.

This is a good question. This is from Carlow hi Rich. With the last update by Apple, all my personal photos in my Mac have changed from jpeg to IMG h e C. How can I convert all my photos back to jpeg. I'm unable to share any of my photos now because of the change I.

Would be now. I just don't think that all his photos he or she?

Uh, Carlo Okay, I.

Just don't know if the photos changed. I don't see Apple changing all your photos.

It's new photos.

That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking we've.

Changed to AHTIC only when you airdrop.

No, it usually it changes it to jpeg when you airdrop to keep to keep it compatible.

But here's what's going on Apple.

In their latest iPhone they changed a default setting so in an effort to Jpeg is great, it's been around forever. It's not very good when it comes to image formats compared to what we have now, which is hi C and HIC is a smaller file and better quality. Oh and so that's why Apple wants to use it, and so they have switched on the iPhone, and it's been around on the iPhone for a couple of years, but it wasn't a default, and now with the new iPhone,

Believe it does change it to a JPEG.

So it's like it's very confusing because sometimes it works just fine. Yeah, but other times I was like trying to upload a picture like Twitter and it was like, no.

Can't take it, And I was like, wait what.

So I don't think that iPhoto changed all of your old pictures to HIC. I think you're looking at What probably happened is when he got the new iphot, he probably looked at a few pictures at the beginning of his timeline and was like, wait, what's this new achiic and maybe didn't look back to the beginning. Now I could be wrong on that. I don't use iPhoto on the computer or photos as it's called now, but I think that's what they did. Okay, So a couple things here.

But you can air drop HIC to another person.

Yeah, if they have an iPhone that supports it. So if you go to try to do it, you know, it just depends where you're sending stuff. So if you're sending it to your computer, uh, that's where you kind of get into some problems. Like I was trying to upload a picture to WordPress and HIC and it was like, no, dice, right, we don't word press. Ye, But it depends how the website is configured, because it seems like I feel like on my personal website it does work.

I don't know. Anyway, it's very confusing. So you can change the format, or.

What I do is I downloaded a little app called I Amazing HIC Converter. I M A Z I n g HIC Converter. I'm not sure if it costs money or not, but it was in the app Store and I use it. You just drag and drop an HIC onto it and it will transform it into a JPEG super easy.

That's kind of a one off thing.

So if you're just like for me, when I'm uploading pictures to the webs, I will just drop them in there and then I'll upload them. And I'm keeping my stuff in HGIC because I feel like it's a better format because it's not as universal right now, but it's more efficient and I like when things change and I like when things move ahead. JPEG's been around forever. Clearly someone came up with this to be better, and I'm

Yeah, well I don't think that'll happen.

Hopefully not all right, Pixel owners, if you have a pixel which I'm assuming that's one of you.

Not many people do, but it's still it's still.

Look, the Pixel is not a widely popular phone, but people that have it really do like it, and they like it because it is smart. It's smart, and it's one hundred percent Google. And when you use this thing, you realize just how smart a phone can be.

Period. That's why people like it.

So the latest Pixel, the Pixel four, was getting a little bit of flack online because people were saying that Samsung was getting updates out faster than the Pixel, and generally Pixel gets its updates before every other.

Phone on the Android world.

Well, I guess this is why Google is doing this new thing called Pixel feature drop, And I think it's an effort to get people away from thinking about Android as only getting security updates. Because people obsess about these security updates on Pixel. They're like, why am I getting my security update? Google does them every month. Other manufacturers have kind of fallen in line with that now, but it puts a lot of pressure on them to do this.

And I tried this out. It's really cool.

You take a picture, just a normal picture, and you go into Google Photos and you say blur and it blurs the background and it's at any time, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, so it gives you more creativity. So that's kind of cool.

It says, whether you took the photo years ago or forgot to turn on portrait mode, you can easily give an artistic look with portrait blur and Google Photos, So that's cool. The next feature is about robo calls. Now, Google Assistant is going to detect robo calls before your

So now they're taking that step further.

You don't have to do that step of actually listening to the call and wasting your time. You can let the system do it and screen it, and it will screen it out automatically. If it's not a robo call, your phone will ring a few moments later with who's calling and why, So it kind of like basically screens your calls for you like a assistant would like a real assistant. So that's one thing. The other thing that they're doing that's kind of cool is they're now recording

Uh, it's I'm assuming. How they get.

Around it is they say this call will be recorded. As long as you say that, yeah, the other person has the option to hang up.

You have to disclose that. Yeah. It's kind of like when you call a company.

To you know, they say this call maybe recorded.

Same thing you're you're not verbally giving your okay to that. But by saying that and you're not hanging up, that means.

Smart that it's okay, okay. This is a funny question from Jason. I think it's funny. Maybe it's not very funny, but he said, I just bought a new Samsung sixty five inch led Q sixty series smart TV from Best Buy, and all my friends tell me that hackers can get into my TV to spy on me. Lol. Anyway to prevent that or what is the best way to secure me and my family from TV hackers? I just think it's funny. All his friends are like, Oh, you're gonna

Yeah, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna be It's not going to happen.

But he seemed to have a good sense of humor. Yeah, did he drop an lol in there?

He dropped he dropped an lol?

Yeah, So I think he's tongue in cheek. Yeah.

I think he's saying, like, rich, really, am I going to be hacked here? And the short answer is probably not. But with that said, we talked about this last week. The FBI out of Oregon had this crazy warning about

But with that said, I'll tell you what you need to do.

Number one, if you're not using the smart TV aspects, turn off the Wi Fi that'll keep your TV off the network. Update your software as much as you can so you know, if Samsung's putting out updates, always update it because usually those software updates are adding new features, but primarily they're there for adding you know, safety. Yeah,

That's also unique. That's it. I think you'll be fine with this TV. Yeah, I would be more concerned.

With a smart TV about all the data they're collecting about you as you watch. That is much more pressing to me than having some random hacker target Joe Schmoe's house because they want to get access to his TV.

I mean for what reason?

Right?

So I would be more concerned about all the apps that you're using and all the data that you're feeding to those apps. Yeah, and that's really what's happening. Craig Ray, all right, So, Megan, we went on this story for a gadget called the Life Door. Yes, and this is a gadget. So I did not know that fire safety professionals or fire experts recommend sleeping with your bedroom door closed.

I never heard that same. Have you ever heard that?

No? Right, okay, no, I didn't know this.

So this firefighter told us that, and I thought that was interesting, and he explained it because it is.

It basically helps the fire stay out of your room, which makes sense. If you're in a hotel room, they say put like towels under the door in case of a fire, which makes sense.

You don't want smoke coming in, so they don't say open the.

Door, open the door and let the fire in.

It just makes sense.

There's a lot of oxygen in your room. A closed door or would keep at least some sort of barrier between you and a fire. Whether how long that barrier lasts, we don't know. But what he's saying is by having it closed, just even if that barrier keeps things better for a minute or two or ten or fifteen, of course it's better, yeah, which just makes sense.

Yeah, keeps more fumes out.

So a lot of kids don't want to sleep in their bedroom door closed, including mine. I don't sleep with my bedroom door close. I always we grew up in a house where we always had them all open, So I don't know, it's just weird. Like there were some houses like when I went, you know, sleepovers, the kids would close their door.

And you're like, oh, that's weird. It just depends how you grow up.

Yeah, So this Device to Life door is kind of a ratchet. It has like a ratchet mechanism. You install it on the back of the door and you kind of open the door once to kind of activate it, and then once you do, it has this little microphone inside and it listens for the sound of a smoke alarm and when it hears that very standard sound of a smoke alarm. It goes into action and it snaps the ratchet and it closes the door.

And that's it. It's all to us, very simple.

You can reopen the door, doesn't lock, the door closed, doesn't do anything weird like that. It also has a light on it so you can see kind of where the door is if they're smoking the room. It also makes its own alarm sound. Yeah, so a lot of kids will sleep through smoke alarms, so this is kind of a secondary alarm in their room right to.

Wake them up, to wake them up hopefully.

I did a story back when I was in Louisiana where we tested the idea of kids sleeping through smoke alarms, and I could not believe these kids. Middle of the night, we went, you know, I had to stay up late, you know, we went to this house. We set up cameras and we put the smoke alarm on and the kids slept right through it.

Oh. I couldn't believe it. Could not believe it.

That's interesting that you've done a story on that.

Yeah, I actually need to find my story because it was it is. You know you do that, you I've done hundreds, if not thousands of stories in my career so far. This one I could remember like yesterday because it was something that just etched my head like wow, like.

Freaked you out a little bit. Yeah, so funny. I'm a really hard sleeper, but I don't sleep through smoke alarms.

You you've woken up to a smoke alone?

Oh yeah? So, I mean so our batteries like always die.

But those are like chirps. Though, isn't that.

A chirp you that still wakes me up? That's great?

Then that's good.

Yeah, it's good. That's good.

In the future, I well, I don't know if people don't really wear their Apple watches to sleep, but in the future they'll probably do a thing where your Apple watch will also vibrate.

To wake you up or you fit it.

Yeah, because all this stuff is getting I think that these companies tread a little bit lightly in this area because think about it. Let's say your watch doesn't go off. Next thing, you know, Apple's getting sued because your connection.

I don't know, Yeah, I know you're right, but I'm.

Just thinking that it's anyway, So it's one hundred and thirty dollars, which is very expensive when you think about something that you add to your house, not when you think about in terms of saving a life, but for the average person that's just putting stuff around their house, one hundred and thirty dollars a lot to spend, especially.

If you have three or four doors that you're putting this on.

So I think that's probably its biggest impediment to success right now. But if it is a device that a big company thinks is necessary, like one of these big fire alarm companies or smoke alarm companies, they may buy this company and make these things at a cheaper price. And I always say, like in a corporate atmosphere in buildings, there's always if you look at a door in a corporate system, not this one, but a lot of them,

Totally. Okay, we got one more question, Megan, make it quick.

This is from Josie. How do I delete an individual from a group text that was sent?

Oh? You can't, you can you can't.

I thought we've had this.

We've had this conversation. I think you can leave the conversation. You can't remove someone else.

Oh but okay, I think.

You can leave. Yeah, I think that's it. Go ahead, try it.

Let me just find it.

I looked on my phone to see like a group text, so I have a lot of mixed group text, which like Android and iOS. So number one, Josie, if you're talking iPhone, if there's an Android person on that text at all, you can't do it.

Oh you can do it.

Oh you can't. See I tried it online. It did not work. Oh, interesting, I guess maybe the.

Person was then.

I know, I'm assuming she's iPhone iPhone. Okay, So I tried it with you and Luis. We have a group conversation and it would not let me delete one of you. So maybe you have to be the person that created the group.

I don't know.

Oh, that's probably what it is. That's probably so.

I don't because it just seems like I'm going here, this has six people in it, and yeah, I can't swipe.

See I can't, Okay, So it must be if you created it.

Maybe if you create it, I think there are some caveats to this.

But I didn't create this.

See, that's what I'm saying. It's all and does it let you delete it, delete the person?

Yeah, but I'm not gonna actually do it.

Well, but you can swipe left to do it, okay, And you didn't create that group. See, I'm it's very confusing.

It is confused anyway.

The way you do it, if you can do it, here's how you do it.

If you can go into your message the group message, tap up at the top where it has all the pictures of the people, tap info and then where the person is just swipe right to left on them and if it brings up delete, you can delete it. If not, then there's either an Android person or something else going on that you can't do it. If you're on Android, you can't really do that, And on Android you can do a lot more things like hide the entire alerts

Souh. Yeah.

The group text thing is interesting because I have my family. I have a couple of them that I'm in that like, especially my family, if they get going, it's like NonStop, and it could be really tough because like you're doing something like I'm eating dinner or whatever, and like it's just boom boo boom. Or I've got a group of friends that, like, you know, all of a sudden, they'll just start talking and you're not really involved in the common kine.

It stresses me out a little bit. I'm like, I don't like this right now.

And I never mute the notifications because like it's just too much work. So I end up just like having my watch vibran.

I do do. I like that.

I mute the convo because I'm like, I can't do this right now, and then they'll be like are you there and I'm like, no, well not really.

Yep, in general or in this conversation.

All right, two things before we go, I just want to mention I tried out this smart bulb dimmer which I thought was really cool.

It's called Aurora. It's from Lutron.

If you have Hugh lights in your house, this is a dimmer switch you should check out. It is so easy to install. It literally just goes onto your light switch, you turn the light switch on, You screw this thing down. It stays in place somehow, I don't know how, and next thing you know, you now have a roll a rocker dimmer where you can like or a circular dimmer where you can turn the lights on and off or tap to turn them on off. And it only works with Hugh lights. But if you have Hugh lights in

It is so cool.

Lutron tried to send this to me for probably months, and I kept saying no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to try anything like this. And finally I've read it like three times, it was like, actually, that sounds kind of cool. Try it, and I'm in love with it now, so I love it. That's number one.

Number two.

If you want to transform your iPhone into an iPod Classic, check out an app called Rewound.

It's just fun. It's free. It's just just check it out.

It's called rewound, and it transforms your iPhone into an iPod Classic with that click wheel that you scroll through.

It's just so much fun.

You just if you had, if you had an iPod Classic, you gotta try it out. I should have hashtaged it I posted to my Instagram. I did not hashtag TBT today, Oh missed opportunity. Thursday hashtag missed opportunity.

Yeah you can.

It's fine, all right, Thanks so much for listening. If you have not, thanks to you, by the way, for everyone who has purchased a copy of my book one and one iPhone Tips and Tricks, I'm getting the reviews are starting to trickle in which I love it. If you've bought a copy and you love it. Please leave a review on Amazon that helps other people find it and discover it and also know that it's great and the reviews have been awesome.

Thank you so much. It's just made my day.

It's a number one iPhone guide on Amazon, especially during the holidays. That is pretty amazing. I am doing a lot on Instagram these days, so please if you're not following me there, follow me there.

I am at rich on Tech.

My goal, new goal, Megan, is to post one cool video a day. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that.

Because that's hour. Yeah, every hour.

I didn't say every day. I said every hour of an hour. It's tough to do, but I have been doing it and I just love it. So if you see those videos, like them, comments, share with your friends, all that good stuff. I'm always trying different things on there to see what people like. There's no look, I'm not an expert in any of this stuff, believe me, long way, but I've come a.

Long way, thanks in no small part to you.

No, I mean, we do like all of it.

So, producer Megan, where can people find you?

I am on Twitter at producer Megan.

So easy see that.

So easy.

That's gonna do it for today's show. Can you believe the show is over? I'm gonna go back to wrapping Christmas presents now, Okay.

Me too.

That's about it.

Actually, I'll probably do that right before Christmas.

The website is rich on tech dot tv. If you like this podcast, if you learned anything at all, give it a review in the iTunes. They don't even call it that anymore now, it's just called the podcast app podcast.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.