Thoughts on the new AirPods, pro, details on the new streaming service HBO Max, free grocery delivery with Amazon, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro. 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. Joining me is producer Megan What is up?
Pay? Hey?
Hey, you got your new intro. It has been in southern California. It has just been the wildest ride that I have ever experienced in this state. Yeah, every day there's a new fire destruction, we have the threat of earthquakes. It is fires, fires plural every day across the state. Yeah, so I ended up. So what happens when there's fires?
And by the way, thoughts and prayers for anyone is associated with this or affected by it, including you know, I've got family members that were right in the line of fire and so, believe me, this is very personal because it's real. Like if you're not living in that area, sometimes you're just like, well, that doesn't.
Really affect My uncle was evacuated yesterday and his family, Yeah, from Thousand Oaks, right.
I mean that fire was crazy. That was so close to houses, and it's really it's it's just amazing how they fight these things, and it's sad the destruction that it leaves in its path and how much it costs too, let's not forget about that. And the people, I mean, the people have to do this. Like we're sitting here in the newsroom, you know, seeing it happen. There are people out on the front lines that this is like really really and.
You actually were on somewhat of a front line.
Yeah, not too well, so so real real quick. I was driving to work on Monday morning, and usually what happens when there's fires is our stuff is preempted, at least here in Los Angeles. We do syndicate out and sometimes we are on those other places, but it's everything just thrown up in right. Yeah, So Monday, I'm driving to work and I'm like, you know what, I'm not just gonna like sit around on Monday morning. I want
to do something. And so I just said, send me a crew and I'll just report from this fire that was in West LA. Because it was so crazy that it was like so.
Closely angle too, because you were like right on sunset and the four or five and you could you could see the fire in the distance, and then there's like the four or five Freeway, which is a major, you know, the most major freeway huge in LA. Right, So that was just absolutely wild.
So I thought that angle alone was pretty interesting. I knew the area pretty well because I'd lived there for many years. My wife's family lives over there. So it's
so funny. I won't go totally into it, you know, but the the funniest part of that whole situation was that I got I think more phone calls and texts from friends and random people saying it was good to see you out there, and like, people forget that I did start out as like a regular reporter before I did tech news, and I love tech and I'm not going back to that, but I it's like it's just it's like riding a bike, you know, it comes back to you and it is there is something really interesting
about being out there because I love to talk to people and I love to just tell stories and to help people too. Yeah, and so just hearing how people woke up and what happened and what was going on was really interesting. And I was nowhere near the real like what oura will send you. Yeah, I'll get a little I'll just keep getting a little bit closer. That's actually kind of But one thing I did have a chance to really take a deep dive into this week
are the new AirPods Pro. This was a surprise announcement by Apple, and I was able to get my hands on a pair from Apple, and I've been using them for the past couple of days, and I will tell you they did a fantastic job. And don't just chalk this up to me being an Apple fanboy, because as you know, I'm not, but I will give credit where credit is due. And I love the original AirPods no matter what. I've tried a lot of headphones. I get it.
Were they the best headphones in the world? No? But did they work really well and kind of serve like a really good purpose Like I'll never forget. I had mine since day one. Took me a little bit to get my wife on board, but I finally said, look, we're going to the grove. We're gonna buy these things. And she had no idea. She just knew she heard me talking about them, and so we ended up getting them.
And the moment that she questioned it is when we got to the checkout, you know, they just check you out like wherever you are in the store. Yeah, and the guys like, you know, it was like one hundred and seventy eight dollars whatever it was with tax. She's like, wait, you start one hundred and seventy eight dollars And I was like, yeah, let's use them every day at the gym.
Defensive but yes, yes, but it's one of these They're going to use it every day, are.
Going to use it, and you're not just gonna use it, You're gonna love it. So AirPods Pro builds upon the air pods, they don't replace them. They have a new design. They have active noise cancelation built in, which means they actually listen using a microphone and create a signal that cancels out outside noise. Then they also have something called transparency mode, so you can switch between the two modes. Either you block out everything or you can hear stuff
in your music and other people around you. So if you're kind of like in the office setting, maybe sometimes you want to focus. Other times you want to be able to hear your call.
I listen in on what people are talking about.
You can use that feature on the iPhone too. What's that? What is that called the listening? Remember we did that little video where you can turn your your iPhone into like a little spider I talk.
But like, yeah, you could like like listen. I don't know, but yes, I.
Remember that, and uh, the only thing that is kind of a bummer. Well, let me just go through the other things on the you got hey Siri, which is actually really cool, by the way, I forgot how awesome that feature is because I don't really use it on my iPhone as much. But when you just have the headphones in, you can start to do everything like play music and call people and stuff all wirelessly. Pretty darn col announced messages. So I was at the gym yesterdayd
a little gym test with these sounded great. When I put these things in and I pressed the noise transfer canceling, it was I've never had a workout like that where you're just immersed in your music and you don't hear anything. I feel like Jim should not play music. Yeah, what's the point. Everyone has their own music. I don't less they like music.
DJ DJ and Jay, Well it's not a thing.
Yeah, I don't think that's the thing if you have a class, I get yeah on the treadmill, Like I don't need your music playing with my music. So anyway, so those canceled that out. That was really cool. The other thing that it did is it it announces your messages. So I got a couple of texts while I was working out, and normally that would kind of fumble you up and you kind of look at your phone and distract you. It just read them right to me.
Which is so the regular AirPods don't do that.
I think they may now the new ones. I think the new ones do. Okay. There's there's the original AirPods, there's the air pods like two or whatever, and then there's now AirPods pro got it, Okay, So I think the two, the ones with Hay Siri, the original, second, original ones, those do that. I think I'm pretty sure they do. And then they also have this thing called the ear tip fit test, so you put them in your ear and you're always wondering are these in right?
Are they seated in too much? Are they not in enough? It will use like some kind of weird algorithm and it'll play a little song in your head and tell you if it's fitted right, which's also really cool. So if you're not using the right there's three different sides of silicone earbuds. If you're not using those or tips, I should say, it'll say, like you know, switch to a different size.
Oh interesting, Wait, so it comes with three different sizes.
Yeah, so small, medium, large, medium, fits ninety nine percent of people. Okay, two hundred and fifty dollars, which I know sounds expensive, but let me give you the price breakdown. The normal air pods are one fifty nine. If you want them with a wireless case, they're two hundred. So these being two fifty is really only fifty dollars more because they come with a wireless charging case. Right, So do you get them? Do you upgrade? Do you get
them if you want the noise cancelation feature? Yes, no brainer. For me traveling a lot, I don't have to pack my giant headphones anymore. That's gonna be awesome. I think that for someone like me who hates the way that ear pods or earbuds kind of seal out your ear, I think these are perfect. They they work really well. You mean the look, no, no, no, the way it feels you feel like you're underwater. It's like, I don't know, it just feels really weird. Things that steal out, like
AirPods don't seal out your ears. AirPods pro do.
Got it. See, I don't know if I like that personally.
I don't like that either, But these are fine. I have no problem with them.
Yeah.
And then the only other thing that's kind of weird is I don't like it used to be a tap to like change songs and stuff. This is you have to squeeze the stem on the side, which is just a little bit complicated and not as easy as tapping. So there's the air pods review. If you have questions for me, you can find me on Twitter at rich Dmurrol. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about air pods pro Megan, let's go with the ones.
First question of the day comes from Brenda. I love this question because I feel like we haven't talked about next door. But anyways, Brenda says she got a letter in the mail about a neighborhood site that you can join, and it's called nextdoor neighbor dot com. Okay, and I can't hear myself.
Okay, I don't know why oh sorry, start from me, all right.
So our first question comes from Brenda, and it's about nextdoor next Door, the website. She asks, Hi, Rich, I got a letter in the mail about a neighborhood site that you can join, and it's called nextdoor dot com, and I was wondering if you'd heard anything about this type of website and if it's worth signing into.
So I have heard of Nextdoor. I've done stories on them. We actually interviewed I think I don't know if it was the founder or the CMO or someone. So I was on it for a while. I totally deleted my account, not just deleted the app. I actually deleted my account, and I'll tell you why. I I'm not sure of the value of nextdoor. Now, maybe it depends on your neighborhood. But in my neighborhood, it was a lot of suspicion, a lot of accusations, a lot of stuff that I
didn't necessarily want to get involved in. It wasn't, hey, neighbor, here's what we're doing. We're having a block party. And I'm sure there's some of that on there. But what I saw, the alerts that I was getting and the stuff that I saw was generally trashy, negative, negative, didn't need and it didn't help me with the way I live in my neighborhood. Now. I am sure there are
some amazing communities on Nextdoor. I'm just telling you my experience and why I deleted the app, and why I don't recommend the app to people because I don't feel like they're delivering on the mission that they set out to do, which is amazing if you think about it. Connect neighbors in your neighborhood great, But to be honest, the way I've connected with my neighbors is face to face. I know my neighbor's next door, I know them across the street. I've got their phone numbers. I borrowed my
neighbor's chairs. The other day, my neighbor two neighbors in a week, asked me if they can access video for my cameras at my house because things happened in the neighborhood and they wanted to see the camera footage. Oh interesting, which is so crazy. I mean, this is the world we live in now, So I don't recommend next door.
If you want something that is telling you about actual crime in your neighborhood, I do love Citizen, and it's scary and it's scary to see what's happening in your neighborhood. But I think Citizen is killing it when it comes to actual, accurate, accurate information.
Yeah, next door. I actually got a job through next door. I like got a pet sitting job like a year ago. Like my mom knew someone who posted like I need someone to watch my dogs for a weekend, and then she like sent her my phone number and then I whatever. So yes, there are some benefits. And then also I've seen a lot of strange like fighting between neighbors about like well well that's you know, that's a racist thing or what you know, and it gets it goes in a negative direction.
It gets very it gets very negative, very fast. Yeah, I just I don't want to be a part of that. So so anyway, that's your answer about nextdoor, And yes, I've gotten a lot of letters in my mailbox where people I think what happens is you like when someone signs up in your neighborhood, you have the option to send out like a bunch of letters to other people in your neighborhood, like the next door does it on there on your behalf Oh, so I just throw them in the trash.
There's also a Twitter that makes fun of a lot of crazy.
I am subscribed to Funny. It's so funny, best of Nextdoor. I think it's called all right, let's talk about HBO Max. There is a new streaming service every single day at this point, and HBO or it seems that way, HBO Max is the newest one. And I'm a little sad that I was not invited to the unveiling Megan, which was in Burbank, California, at the Warner Brothers lot. Excuse me, hello, that's really mean. Yeah, so it is. HBO Max actually
sounds really good. But how many streaming services can we possibly have and keep manage of and sign up for it? I don't know, it's crazy, but let me give you the quick of it. So it launches in May of twenty twenty, so you've still got a while before you can actually subscribe to this. It's going to be available to customers for fifteen bucks a month, and they think they're going to have fifty million subscribers by the end
of twenty so within five years. So at launch at and T, which owns all these properties, is going to offer HBO Max to the ten million HBO subscribers on HBO distribution platforms and nodittional charts. What does that mean? I have no idea. Somehow, if you have AT and T you might get HBO Max. HBO now direct build users who subscribe through HBO noow dot com will also have access to HBO Max. That's also confused. What does
that mean? Yeah? AT and T customers on premium video, mobile and broadband services will get HBO Max at no additional charts. So who has to pay for this? Sounds like everyone gets it for free?
Yeah, I'm confused, so confused.
You know who loses in this whole thing? They say, we're in active discussions with our distributors, which is the cable companies who lose out in this whole which I have no That's fine with me because cable companies have done nothing nice in twenty five years, so it's fine they can lose out right, but I'm not crying for them.
So here's what you get, HBO Max ten thousand hours of premium content, including stuff from Warner Brothers, New Line, DC, CNN, TNT, TBS, True TV, Turner classics Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Crunchy Roll, Rooster Teeth, Looney Tunes, and more. Okay, so it's gonna have a bunch of original programming. Let's see House of the Dragon, a new original program, ten episodes straight to series order, Game of Thrones prequel. You watch Game of Thrones, right,
so immediately all those people are gonna want this. Okay, South Park is going to be on there. Rick and Morty, the OC Do you ever watch that?
I watched a couple of seasons, yes.
Aquatine, do you Yeah, of course, Looney Tunes, Hannah Barbera, eighteen hundred films, including The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Gremlins, Lego, every DC film from the last decade, Aquaman, Joker, every Batman and super Man movie from the last forty years.
So they're really trying to compete. It sounds like with Disney.
Plus and Netflix.
But what's confusing to me is just that there's HBO go. Yeah, this is it's and so I feel like they almost have to like rebrand get rid of HBO go yeah, just exactly.
But then okay, like this is HBO, HBO Max. Okay, so here's HBO. Oh is the channel. HBO go is the mobile version of people for people who subscribe to the channel. Yes, that's what I HBO now is. For people who only subscribe to the mobile version of HBO, they don't have a channel on because they don't have cable. HBO Max is now this new streaming service. So it's really convoluted. But all you need to know fifteen bucks
a month. Definitely some compelling stuff, but it sounds like a lot of people are going to get it for free if they have some sort of AT and T products.
Got it?
Okay?
Cool? Okay. This next question comes from Christina, and she's trying to get internet access for her mother, who lives in a rural area. She writes, my mother recently moved from El Segundo to an agricultural area in Valley Center. She used to have Spectrum for her internet connection. She doesn't want cable TV, just access to Wi Fi for her cell phone and then using her desktop computer and a smart TV, and she's having She's struggling trying to
find something in the area. There are some satellite services like Viasat that offer internet connection, but their speeds are incredibly low and cost is very high. Is there another way for my mom to get access to the internet. So she lives in Valley.
Center, Well, I think she nailed it with the speeds are really slow and the price is really high on satellite, So just throw that out the window. That's not gonna work. That's only like last ditch effort, like if you can't get Internet any other way. So I'll recommend a few websites. I don't know what's available in her area, but there's got to be something, okay, So I'll recommend a couple websites. Check out high Speed Internet dot Com is one of them.
Type in your zip code and you can see what's available. What area does she say she lives in.
She lives in Valley Center.
Vali Center, California. Okay, I would assumed. So that is uh, let's see nine two eight two nine two eight two. So I just did a quick search on high Speed Internet dot Com and it says that AT and T is there with fiber connection as well as Cox Communications with a three hundred megabit per second connection Mediacom as well, So she's got three solid providers right there now. AT and T is not as fast, but it looks like Cox is going to be the fastest for her, so
check it out. The other one is Allconnect dot com And again I'm gonna put in that same zip code. And these are just ways of comparing what's available in your area. It may surface some stuff that you didn't know. But again they say that same thing at and T Mediacom and the satellite, so they did not get Cox, so I don't know, maybe it's only available in certain areas.
There the other thing I would look at, and this is new and this may actually be the best case scenario for her mom, because it doesn't sound like she needs a whole bunch. But T Mobile just opened up home internet to everyone, and so now you can get a little device that you put outside your window or near your window or whatever and use it for internet
for your whole house. And it's fifty bucks a month for unlimited everything and no annual contracts, no data caps, no hidden fees, no price hikes, and no hardware costs fifty dollars a month. And that might be the easiest way because it's if she has T Mobile where she lives Boom, She's got T Mobile high speed Internet at home right now that's working on T mobiles LTE network.
The idea is that when they get five G, you'll be able to get five G. And that is really my thesis here is that right now we're in a very changing time when it comes to home internet because in a couple of years, when five G comes along in a big way, all this is going to be shaken up. Now the five G providers are owned by a lot of the wired providers, but still it's still going to cause it's going to help. I think there's some help, you know, at least at the beginning. Yeah,
all right, good question. Well this is really cool. Grocery delivery is now a free Prime member perk. So if you remember in the past, Amazon had something called Amazon Fresh, which I was an early subscriber to back in the day, like literally I was like day one subscriber in West LA when I when they launched it, I was a subscriber. I was like, this is so cool. You can get your groceries delivered. But the downside that it was fifteen
dollars a month. I think they gave me a certain amount of months for free, maybe it was three, and so we used it and then we kind of subscribed for a while. Because we thought it was worth it, and then we ended up getting rid of it, and then we ended up starting to use Amazon Prime now, which kind of started to have a lot of groceries for free. So we were like, oh, I see what they're doing here. Well, long story short, now Amazon Fresh
is totally free if you're a Prime member. So now you can get all kinds of groceries delivered to your house from Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods, And it's pretty amazing. We've done this in the past.
I mean the prices. I'm just looking at Amazon Fresh, like, for instance, a bunch of bananas for a dollar.
How many five? Yeah, that's twenty cents of bana, which is basically a Trader Joe's price, or like nineteen cents, but I get I'm banas.
To bring it to me, that's yeah.
So how much are those what or bananas?
Oh? A dollar fifty for a bunch? Yeah? For five order then yeah, please, let's see how long it'll take.
Here's here's the catch. And this sounds too good to be true, because I did. I did some comparison. I looked at what Ralph's is doing, and I looked at some of these other grocery store deliveries, and they're charging a lot. Even Walmart is charging like almost I think it's one hundred bucks a year for their grocery delivery service. But now that Amazon's doing it for free, it's not really free. I mean, you have to be a Prime member, but enough people are that is it's kind of like, okay, well,
here's the catch. The catch is that if you have not tried Fresh in the past, you can't immediately get access to it because they know that everyone's just gonna be like, oh yeah, one in, So you have to sign up on a waiting list. So for me, for instance, when I go to Fresh, it's immediately available.
How do I know? Sorry?
Does it just you go to Amazon dot com slash Fresh. I'm just on the app. Oh you're on the app. Okay, so try to order something and see what it says. So say add to cart and just check out and see if it lets you check out.
Okay, Sorry, so.
You let me know. But that's the only catch. And I actually had to clarify that with Amazon spokespeople because they wrote their press release in a way that says you can request an invitation and we'll let you know when you're able to shop. Now, I think it's to say you have to do that.
Well, it says in like fine print, like add thirty dollars. If thirty dollars of items from Amazon Fresh for free.
To liver, okay, we keep so do that add like twenty five of those things having your cart. I'm curious because, yeah, the minimum for delivery for free is thirty five dollars. Oh, but for access, what Amazon's saying is that you still need to request access if you haven't used it in the past, so you never know anyway. Ok just try to see if that works. Just go on Amazon dot com slash fresh and see if it works.
Love that though, Yeah, Okay. This next question comes from Paula about the iPhone five s I thought I heard a blip about an grade to iOS thirteen and that it's necessary or you may lose ability to use some functions on the phone. Now I can't find anything about it. Did I misunderstand my tech challenge? Sister has one and never updates anything. I don't really kind of confused by this question.
Okay, I was super confused by this question, but I got it about three different times, so it's a thing. Okay, and here's what the thing is.
Okay, what's the thing?
If you still have an iPhone five, which, by the way, when did the iPhone five come out? Let me see, can I guess?
Yeah, you guess two thousand and twelve.
You're that's right. Oh whoa wow, two thousand very good. This is why she's producer Megan twenty twelve. All right, so you're talking, you're rocking a phone that's seven years old. Yeah, which is fine. Hey, god bless you almost eight years. That's amazing. You have gotten you have worked the system, you have gotten your value out of that phone. Yeah.
My dad did the same thing.
So if you have I have an iPhone five, there is a problem on November third, twenty nineteen, if you don't update your iOS to the latest, which is iOS ten point three point four. So iOS ten you're talking two iOS as ago No three. Your GPS your uh, basically, you can't get a GPS location anymore, so you can't get your correct time anymore, which means app store, iCloud, email, and web browsing will not work. So bottom line, if you have an iPhone five, update your software to the latest.
That'll update two which is ten point three point four if you want to figure out how to do that. I was walking someone through this on Instagram yesterday. She was asking me, hey, rich, what's going on with this thing? And I actually have to look it up because in separate from this question, open your settings app, tap General, tap about, Look for the number next to software version. It should be ten point three point four. If there's
a software update, go ahead and do the update. All right, good question, because it's one of those things that I'm sure there's a lot of people that have iPhone fives out there. I you know, I don't, but.
Sorry, I'm I'm still creating my grocery car.
Oh you are okay? Yeah, just put like twenty five so I did. Okay, letting you check out before you check out?
So continue, continue, Let's see watch it like accidentally.
Or that'd be awesome if you just ordered twenty.
Five, Like no, it's like bacon.
Well look at that. It looks like it's available now. Okay, So here's the question. Have you or anyone in your household used Amazon fresh beefore?
So that's what I'm trying to remember. I think I used it for a segment when we ordered flowers that's right.
So that one time, one time got you in, So now you're in. You got groceries awesome. A new bacon, A new app is available from Spotify called Spotify Kids. And this is just brilliant. I think this is such a great idea because my kids are all into music and I've wanted to get them. I've signed them up for Apple Music on their iPads and the problem with that is that I can't control it can request anything.
They can listen to, you know, songs with swear words and you know, just terrible, terrible things, stuff that will corrupt them.
No, we don't want that.
And so now you can have Spotify Kids. It's a full app that is one hundred percent curated and it's for kids three plus. It's hand All the content is there is handpicked by a team of editors and there's stuff from Nickelodeon, Disney, Disney Kids, Universal Pictures, Public Service in Sweden, book Beat. And the only problem with this is that it's only available in Ireland right now. But people, I think they're doing a beta test in Ireland and they're just going to see how the kids react and
if they don't grow horns or anything. Weird. They will launch it in other places.
That's really funny. We'll see how that's really funny.
We'll see what happens with these things. Wait, can you imagine they're like like they just step back from the little experiment, like okay, actually, uh, they just start okay this time all right, guys, let's not bring this to the US.
But I always wonder like with this, it's like what about kids after three? Like why why can't zero?
And they don't need No, you don't need your kid on an iPad zero to three. I mean they are on iPads, but you don't need Megan. They're kids, Like my kids have a kid, I don't they really want them to do anything electronic And like you know, they're still.
The kid's gonna be reading at like eight months.
Yes, oh yeah, your kid's gonna be talking, walking, You're gonna have the growing horns. You go to Ireland and all the kids, it's like a scene out of like Game of Thrones. You're like, okay, let's that's just walk backwards.
What did you do?
It's not bring it anywhere else? Yeah, I can't wait, but uh, anyway, if you live in Ireland, you can do it. If you're on Spotify Premium Family Master account holders, you can download the app and sign up. But I can't wait for that because that will actually probably get
me back over to Spotify. I have YouTube Music right now and Apple Music, which, by the way, has become a perfect combination because I use Apple Music in the home for my sonos, and then I use YouTube Music in the car and sometimes someone's at home playing music and it'll stop the stream in other places because you can only have one thing at once. Oh so it's actually quite normal in this day and age to have two streaming services, like two music streaming services, which sounds crazy.
Craig Cray. This next question comes from Facebook from Danny He This is a this is an important question. He says, Hey, Rich, can you post a picture of the my Shake app? There are too many options and I'm not sure which is the correct one. We did a story about well shake alerts.
Yes, so that he is He is right. There are so many Okay, so there's three apps to know about. Okay, So the number one app that is now publicly available in California that has early warning is called my Shake, and the logo on that app is really weird. It looks like a little star constellation or something. It's really weird, of course, go yeah, okay. So it's called my Shake and that's the official app for California and it's available on the App Store in Google Play. Okay, Now, the
next one is for La County folks. It's called shake Alert LA and that also sends early warnings. Yes, and that's the second apps download. Now, the third app that has not come out yet. The third app is from early Warning Labs dot com. My question is what happens if you have all three on your phone and an earthquake happens, you get alerts from all them? I'm guessing you do, or the Marrier I guess right.
But the alert it's like, okay, so the okay, the one that we were just talking about, the quake alert that's supposed to warn you ten seconds before, well, it could.
Be up to a minute depending on where you are. None of these things, and look, there's not a lot of experience with these apps, so we still don't have a lot of data about how they perform. But the reality is there are at least two apps. If you live in La there's two apps that you can download on your phone right now. That should give you an early warning. Do they work every time? Are they perfect?
We don't know. But the again, the my Shake app is for all of California, and then the shake or La is available for Los Angeles, and then the Early Warning Labs one is going to be available any day now. I have been talking to them and it's just any day, all right, good questions. You really got me on that one, I know, all right. So I love I'm a data nerd.
I love stats, I love figures. And so Adobe does this thing where they analyze the holiday forecasts for spending, like and I just love all the stuff that they talk about. So I'm just going to go through some of that, Okay. So you know, we've got a lot of holiday shopping coming up. Cyber Monday is going to be the biggest online shopping day nine point four billion spent, followed by Black Friday seven point five billion, and then
Thanksgiving four point four billion. The Golden Hours of Retail will be on Cyber Monday from seven to eleven pm Pacific. That will bring in thirty percent of Cyber Monday's revenue. Now, this year, there's only twenty two days between Cyber Monday and Christmas, which is six days less than last year, which means if you're one of those people that scrambles to the last day, you're gonna be scrambling behind this year.
Mcbonnacle.
Is that your mom? Yeah, she scrambles at the end. My mom and I were mom. We went to the mall one time on I think it was Christmas Eve, and it was really bad, like we were stuck in traffic. We were actually really angry at the end at ourselves. All Right, top toys this season something called owl Lee's Bloom Dolls, Candy Locks, Lol, Surprise, OMG, Swag, Fashion Doll and Kindy Kids. So if you want to get on the you know ahead of yeah get now. I did this last year because I bought one of the toys
in there. It turned out to be a major pooper. It was not trendy, and I got it because I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, just the kids. It's like no one bought it, and so did your kids. They thought it was cool. They played for it about one second. It was like this little doll that like kind of gets mad and goes and has like a little conniption.
I totally remember, like you posted a video about today.
Yes, yeah, and it totally did not hit. And so I thought I was being cool by like being like, I'm not going to be the parent that's looking for the thing on you know, tickle me Elmo on eBay, the last day before the holidays. Yeah, I remember that. Yes, gaming checklist top video systems and games will include the Nintendo Switch Light, the Sega Genesis, Mini, Pokemon Shield and Sword, Jedi, Fallen Order, Death Stranding, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
And here's the best days for discounts. Black Friday you're gonna see the biggest discounts for appliances up to nine percent off and sporting goods. On December one, mark your calendar. Best deals for toys and computers, toys thirty two percent off. Cyber Monday will see the best deals for televisions. Uh so wait until Cyber Monday for your TV deal. And then after Christmas you'll see the best deals for electron Okay,
what am I even doing here? Yeah? I might as well not do anything another Christmas.
Yeah, like post Christmas gifts.
Well, it is, it really is, because it's when people use their gift cards. That's when I feel like everything goes back up to normal price, so it's like the worst time to use them. Yeah, and the big trend this year will be bops bopsis. Can you guess what that stands for? Bopsis bop boppis bopis uh no, buy online pick up in store. It's all the retailers are really pushing right now.
And so like, I mean, honestly, do these companies buy these spots like to say, like these I have the most trendy year?
No, no, no, no no no, this is all data. Yeah, this is all predictions from data. They Adobe basically looks at receipts that people are using from shopping. They look at all the data coming through their retailers to see what people are buying, right, that makes sense, and then they kind of extrapolate and ply algorithms on and stuff. But the reason why these stores, by the way, love the buy online pick up in store because what do you think a lot of people do they buy something
else while they're there. So like with me, I picked up a I think it was a case or something at the target and my kid, of course I walked out with eight dollars worth of gum and candy just from the little checkout stand where I went to pick up my own So note to parents, do the pickup in the parking lot. Yeah, so you don't have to go into the store.
Yeah, seriously, so kids?
All right, you got one more question here?
Yes, I have one more. This is from Stephanie. I wanted to contact you since I am such a fan of you on KTLA. I have a Google Pixel three XL and I wanted to know what you would recommend as far as wireless pods. And then she goes on to talk about the AirPods, but she doesn't have an Apple phone. What product would you recommend I try as far as wireless pods, slash buds that would work best?
Well, we talked about the AirPods. Yeah, and she has a Pixel three XCEL, so any of these air works? Yeah, any of these. All the earbuds work as long as they're Bluetooth with any device.
Yeah.
What you don't get are all the special features. So with the Apple ones, I probably wouldn't recommend the AirPods Pro because I mean, I guess you could switch between the noise canceling and not without your phone. You can just squeeze the stem there. But you're paying a premium for that. I would probably take a look at the Amazon Echo buds because I did not test these because obviously, you remember we weren't invited and that whole thing.
I was gonna feel like because Amazon.
I should probably get a pair of these to try them out. But I but apparently the reviews I'm seeing people are liking them, and they're one hundred and thirty dollars. I would not buy them at that price. I think that you should wait until they go on sale, which will be over Black Friday Cyber Monday. Amazon. Amazon likes to put their own products at a discount over just randomly. Yeah, So what I would do is actually use the website
Camelcamelcamel dot com. Have you heard of that, Yes, and I would pop in you pop in the URL of these echo buds from the Amazon page and then you just price alert and it will tell you when the price goes down, and that way you can buy them as soon as you see that. Now, the other way to do that is the old fashioned way and just let other people do the work and you can just search every day Amazon Echo buds deals or just bookmarkt Yeah. Oh,
that's another way to do yeah, that's true. Never mind just bookmarket, Yes, book market and check that every day, but we have to check it for other products. Echo buds are only sold on Amazon, so you're right, the bookmark works. But for other products like an Apple Watch, the best one of the best ways of finding deals
is just to search Apple Watch deals. And here's the reason why you can find deals on all these blogger posts because bloggers get a little cut of the transaction when you buy something that they mention, and so it's in their best interest because exactly, and there's like a little there's like a little thing that's sent back, and it's it's a whole big thing, but like you know, basically, so they blog about the deals because people buy those deals and then they get a little cut of it,
and so it works out nicely. So they follow the deals for you. So if you search Apple Watch deals right now on Google and then tap the news section, that's how you'll get the blog posts from reputable blogs. Already, The Verge has Apple Watch iPad early Black Friday deals. Walmart's Black Friday sales just started. Here are all the best deals, and again you can find out what you know the best deals are without doing a lot of work.
And so let's see after we did this, so Apple Watch, I'll tell you what the Walmart deal is for twenty nine for the series four GPS and cellular Apple Watch, which is one hundred dollars off. That's that's awesome. Save one hundred dollars four twenty nine. I thought it was four ninety nine when it came out. Yeah, anyway, but there you go. It's a pretty good deal, right, and you didn't do much, all right, I guess. Well, let's see, I've got a couple of things before we end the show.
I'll just do I'll do them quickly. Some sad news, Sony is shutting down place station View, So if you had their streaming service called PlayStation View, it's going away on January thirtieth, twenty twenty. My old producer Vanessa was actually a subscriber to that. Oh really, So I think she's gonna be really sad because people had PlayStation View like her actually really liked it. But apparently they didn't have enough subscribers to make it worth it, so they're
shutting that down. If you have an Apple Music student subscription for four ninety nine a month, or you know, a student that does you now get Apple TV Plus for free. So that's cool. So tell your student don't sign up for Apple TV Plus to watch Dickinson, they can just get it for free.
Or the Morning Show.
Or The Morning Show. Well, I feel like Dickinson is better because it's like Hilly Steinfeld, right, doesn't she appeal to the young kids?
Yeah? True, true.
And then finally, Serious XM is coming to Google Assistant. And this is something I've been waiting for, but I wish it would come to CarPlay. But it's coming to Google Assistant, which is cool. So if you have a subscription to Serious XM, you'll soon be able to say, h, Google, play the Beatles channel on Sirius XM and your phone will play it without or your your you know, your
Google Assistant on your phone. Well it's saying Google Nest smart speakers and display, so maybe not the phones just yet, but you can just ask your Nest to play Serious XM, which is great. They've had this, They've had that capability on Alexa for a while, so I'm glad it's coming to Google Assistant.
You have Serious.
Yeah, I do, and I don't, so I actually use that with so nos as well. I mean, I like Sirious. I think Serious is great for discovering music, really yeah, because they're they're doing all the work. When you listen to a playlist on Apple Music or on any any playlist, it takes a lot of work to sit through a song that you have. No, you don't understand the basis of why that song's playing, right, because it's just in a playlist. You don't know if it's Halsey's newest song.
You don't know if it's an old song that they just threw in there. You don't know that anything. But when you listen to something like Sirius and like The Highway or the you know, Hits one, the DJs are telling you a little bit about the song before the intro, so you're getting that perspective on that song, and they're saying like, hey, you love Brett Young, here's the latest from Brett Young, and you know, oh, okay, of course I'm gonna sit through this and not change a channel
because he just told me what this song is all about. Right, Okay, here's an upcoming new artist that used to write songs for Christina Aguilera. Now she's on her own and now you're gonna be like hits one, any of them and it hits one is like their main got it. But I'm just saying like in general, you get some perspective, and that's why DJ's you know, I've always loved radio and I love streaming, but like the radio just gives you a little bit more, you know, because you're getting
that basis. Yeah, So anyway, that's coming soon. It's rolling out over the next week, so try it out. And that's gonna do it for the show. Speaking of radio, I am gonna be filling in for Leo Laporte on the weekend of November second and third. So November second
and third. If you have a question for me, call me at eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo between the hours of eleven am and two pm Pacific, or you can listen on KFI AM six forty just actually you can just say, h SERI listen play KFI AM six forty on your iPhone and you can just listen that way too. So I'm excited to be filling in for Leo.
I'm going to do.
Yeah, it's so easy, right, You'll be listening all three hours. Yeah, and then of course take notes My book is called one hundred and one iPhone Tips and Tricks Unlocked, the useful, time saving and fun features in iOS thirteens available on kindle and paperback on Amazon right now. That will make a great gift. And Meghan and I have been experimenting with some of these tips that are in the book
or associated iOS tips, and you guys love them. So if you like this stuff that I'm posting to Instagram and Facebook, you'll love the whole book because it's just filled with stuff like that. Megan, where can people get in touch with you?
I'm on Twitter at producer Megan.
All Right and I'm on Instagram at richon Tech, Facebook dot com tech. We have had a great time. How do you think the show went, Megan?
I think it was wonderful.
I think so too. That's going to do it for the show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.