Apple's Antitrust Woes & How DoNotPay Uses AI to Help Consumers Fight Back

I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to richon Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. This week, I'll take you to the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference to learn about the latest assistive technologies for the disability community. Plus, I'll talk to Jason Rhodes,

a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's going to tell you everything you need to know about the total solar eclipse happening on April eighth, and later Joshua Browder, CEO of Do Not Pay, will join us. He'll tell us about the products they build to save people time and money. This was a very interesting week in the tech world. Apple is being sued by the US Department of Justice Anti Trust Division along with attorney's

general from several states. If so is all filed in my home state of New Jersey. They're accusing Apple of monopolizing the US markets for smartphones in violation of Section two of the Sherman Act. They say that Apple has used its control over its iOS app distribution and also APIs that it runs on its iPhone to suppress technologies that threatn the iPhone monopoly. They focus on five key areas super apps, cloud gaming, cross messaging platforms, cross platform messaging,

smart watches, and digital wallets. They say by impeding these innovations, Apple allegedly makes its own products worse and even sacrifice profits to maintain its monopoly and its ability to extract fees from developers. They say this has reduced consumer choice, it's raised prices, decreased quality, and stifled innovation in the smartphone industry here in the United States. When I started covering smartphones, there were many many brands now we are

down to just about three Apple, Samsung, and Google. So let's break some of this down because there's a lot here. I read through all eighty eight pages of the complaint and let me just bring out some of the most interesting nuggets. So in twenty ten, then CEO Seeve Jobs was really concerned about how easy it was to switch from iPhone to android, and he said they would force developers to use its payment system to lock them in,

both users and developers. Then they had Apple executives discuss discussing strategies to further lock customers into our ecosystem and make Apple's ecosystem even more sticky. No one can argue against that, it is very sticky. They say Apple deliberately made cross platform messaging a worse experience with a lack of encryption between iPhones and androids. This also locked in users.

Even in an interview, CEO Tim Cook said, I remember this When Wall Street Journals Joanna Stern asked about this. He said, by your mom and iPhone, that was his answer.

But they say Apple also compromises its best interests when it benefits financially, such as allowing Google to be the default search engine because they pay Apple so much, and survey show eighty eight percent of US teenagers expect to buy an iPhone next, which really goes to show just how powerful Apple is with this key demographic of the next generation of buyers, many of whom would never give

up their iPhone. It's really interesting to see how this lawsuit paints Apple as a company is conniving and calculated in its rules surrounding the iPhone. Now, let's go through some of those five different places where they have contended that Apple is being really, really not so nice. Number one, the app store. All apps must be vetted and play by Apple's rules, which always seem to favor the company. Super apps is where they take issue with. Super apps

are very popular over in Asia. It's one app that does a lot of things. So you might make a phone call through that app, you might chat with someone through that app, you might use it as a payment app, you might play games on that app. Some of the examples are we Chat and Line. The US really doesn't have anything like that because it's been held back in many ways by the app store. Now the second area cloud streaming games. This has long been a source of

contention on the iPhone and the iPad. Apple doesn't like the idea of this because in app developers, once they have a app that a lot of people are using, a gaming app, they could just do whatever they want inside that app. Now here's the thing. Apple has changed its rules on this. On January twenty fifth of this year, they release new guidelines that will allow some level of this. So that may not be a big part of this case. I think one of the biggest sources of contention in

this case is really going to be messaging. We have talked about the whole green bubble versus blue bubble situation many many times. Apple does not allow any messaging apps besides its own access to your text messages on the iPhone, which means even if a better app came along, which there are many that could, you can't use it. Sure you can use WhatsApp, and you could use Telegram, but they're very limited in what they can do because they

can't actually replace your text messaging app. You have to use I Message, and by the way, I Message works really well with iPhone to iPhone. But guess what happens when you try to message someone that's on an Android. Everything falls apart. Now on Android there is something called RCS, and this is a standard that supports big videos, big pictures, full resolution. Apple has so far refused to put those

standards on the iPhone. Later this year, they will do that, but we don't know how they're going to do that. And I think that a large part of this issue is the fact that Apple could have made an Android app for I Message a long time ago and made this whole thing kind of not so apparent. But now they're going to be forced to defend themselves in why they have refused to make cross messaging easy across two huge types of phones out here, Android and iPhone. Now

smart watches. I thought this was interesting because you don't really think of the smart watch as a sticky part of Apple's web, but it really is. iPhone users are really loyal to their Apple Watch, and when it comes to third party smart watches, they just don't have the same functionality. I don't ever recommend a third party smart watch for the iPhone because it just doesn't work the

same way. You can't get your eye messages on there, and Apple doesn't allow things like easy persistent Bluetooth communications to that third party watch. What does that mean? It means that if you turn off Bluetooth on your iPhone, your Apple Watch or your your third party watch is going to stop working. And that's not very nice. And people don't realize that that's a thing, and of course what do they do. They default to the Apple Watch.

So that's going to be an interesting one. Now. It used to be that Google's app smart watches would work with the iPhone. It's been a long time since that's been the case. The other final area here is digital wallets. So we love Tap to pay. It's been amazing, it's been incredible. But did you know that Apple makes zero point one five percent of any every credit card transaction

you tap to pay using Apple Wallet. That's fifty cents on a one hundred dollars purchase, which might not seem like a lot, but according to the lawsuit, two hundred billion dollars flowed through Apple's Tap to Pay on the iPhone in just twenty twenty two, and that's growing in a big way. And by the way, Samsung and Google do not charge for this functionality. And guess what, no other payment app is allowed to utilize the NFC chip on the iPhone for Tap to pay purchases to work.

So let's say something came along where you could switch to a tap to pay app that said, hey, we're going to give you one percent cash back on all of your tap to pay purchases. You couldn't even switch to that. You couldn't even use it. And yes, you could use different credit cards and different debit cards, but that's not the same as Apple, at this very high level taking a cut of every single transaction just for the beauty of guarding that NFC chip on the phone.

So there's no doubt that Apple has built something really magical in the iPhone, something that's truly changed so many of the ways that we do things from music to content creation, fitness to photos. But could this all be cheaper and easier and more innovative for the end consumer? What if everything was built on widely accepted standards. Could

switching to the next best thing be easier? No, A lot of people stick with the iPhone because it works, it's simple, and everything they have is sort of intertwined with this. By the way, before we had to break, Apple told mac Rumors it will vigorously defend itself. They set at Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people's privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users.

The lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people's technology. Now we all know what's been happening over in the EU where

they have taken a very heavy hand in Apple. Just earlier this month, Apple has had to change the entire operating system to accommodate several new rules over in the EU, including when you first turn on that iPhone, it's going to ask you which browser do you want to use as your default? And also people can sideload apps or that means they can put an app on their iPhone that doesn't come from Apple's own app store, and they can pay for things using different in app purchase methods,

not just the one that Apple runs. And by the way, that new USB sport that's on the bottom of the iPhone, we have the EU to thank for that too, because if they didn't require that change over in the EU for all devices to have a standardized USB sport, we would still be dealing with lightning, the one odd cable

in all of this. Now, I do believe Apple has built a protected, a protected system that is protected average consumers from viruses, malware, confusing payment structures, and many general headaches. Think a Windows computer back in the day, with all kinds of viruses and malware and pop ups and things that people didn't really understand. That's what the iPhone would

be like. Now. Android is very much open and we don't see a lot of those problems, even though there more are some more issues on the Android than there are on the iPhone. But are we paying an unknown price for all of this carefully guarded innovation from Apple. We don't know, But I guess we will see what happens with this lawsuit, and it will be very interesting to see what, if anything, Apple is forced to change.

I know that I'd be very happy if we had cross messaging that worked extremely well across both iPhone and Android, and I'm sure a lot of other people would like that too. More choice for consumers. I think anyone would appreciate that. All right, coming up, we are going to have some more of your questions. Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me Paul. Welcome back to rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you go to the website rich on tech dot tv, you might notice it looks a little bit different. I was working on it over the past week or so, trying to make it simpler, trying to make it easier for you to find the things that you want to find when you go to the website. So right at the top, while I'm doing the radio show, you'll find

links to everything I mentioned. So just click the top link and it should say radio show links and the date, and so that'll be right at the top. When I'm live rich on tech dot TV. You've got the newsletter. You can watch my latest TV segments. Yes, I'm a reporter at KTLA in Los Angeles. You can watch what I do there. Then you've got the back catalog of

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keep track of everything that I do. All right, Tammy wrote in this morning, Hey, rich while chatting with my dog sitter on Facebook Messenger, I got a window blocking me from replying. It says the way you access your chat history is changing. It gives me three options, create a six digit pin number, store this on my device, or use Google. After searching, I found an announcement from Meta. But of course I still need guidance. Can you explain? I chose Google, but then it continued with a window

stating that Facebook wants access to my Google account. And I had all these options, It's just got more confusing and scary. As I continued, I would appreciate any guidance. A loyal listener, Sincerely, Tammy. So, Tammy, I've been getting a lot of emails and a lot of questions about this. So this is Facebook rolling out end to end encryption

on Messenger by default. What does that mean. This means that your chats are super super private on Facebook Messenger and it used to be an optional thing, but now they're rolling it out as the default. And so what happens is once they roll out this end to end encryption, once you turn it on, nobody can access your messages, not even Facebook. So they are end to end encrypted.

And the reason you have to pick that pin is because the only way you can unlock those messages if you move to a different device or if you sort of restarted or formatted your phone is they would need that pin number to unlock the encryption key so that you have access to your own messages. So, as you noticed, you've got a couple of different options. Create a six digit pin only store on this device or use Google. So that six digit pin I think is going to be the best way to do it. And so you

just have to remember that pin number. So if you're using a password manager, write that six digit pin number in your password manager and don't use something like your data birth because that's way too easily guessable. By someone. But the six digit pin is going to do is that's going to unlock your messages if you move to a different device, and so if you get a new iPhone or if you switch to Android at some point,

you can get your same message history list. The reason why they can't just store it on the cloud and restore it to your phone is because everything is encrypted, so it will be stored somewhere, but you need that pin to unlock that storage. Now, the store on this device only means that if you ever lose your iPhone or format it or erase it, everything is gone. They no one can restore your history. And then the Google

option is going to use your Google account. Now, the reason you got all those scary messages about the Google access is because it's just using your Google account. I'm not sure if it's going to store everything in Google Cloud. It probably is inside Google Drive, so that's why it wants the access to your Google So it's not that scary, but I think the six digit pin is probably the best way to go about it. Meta has talked about the rolling out and for some time now, but this

is going to let you do a couple things. You're going to be able to edit your messages fro up to fifteen minutes after you send them. You're going to get higher quality media when you send them, and you're also going to have disappearing messages. You can also control your read receipts, so you can decide if you want others to see when you've read their messages, and photos and videos are going to be easier to access. There's all kinds of stuff, but you have to set up

that recovery method. When your chat is upgraded, it is rolling out. So if you see this option, I think the best option is to choose a six digit number and that way you can unlock your pins when you need or unlock your messages when you need them. So eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Thanks for the email. Appreciate it. By the way, Amazon, I don't even need to really talk about this, but I'll just mention it.

Amazon is having a big Spring sale right now. I think that these Amazon sales are a little bit overrated at this point. I think was great when it first started, but now it's kind of fizzled out. But does that mean that you can't get deals? No, so this is deals on seasonal items, spring fashion, outdoor furniture, law and garden essentials, cleaning and organizing products, and also Amazon devices.

Of course, Prime members get the best deals. The reason I tell you this is because I always keep a list of all this stuff in my cart that I sort of have my eye on with Amazon that I want to buy. So my point is look at your cart and see if anything that you have in there that you actually want that you've saved, is going to be on sale right now. It's going through March twenty five. All right, Coming up, we're going to go to the

seasun Assistive Technology Conference. You are listening to rich on Tech.

vision community, deaf and harded, hearing learning disabilities. I mean, it really is a broad range and we don't focus in any one area.

snooze time that you have set up. You want to turn it off, you pull the tap twice and it shuts down. It lasts up to ten days with only an hour and a half charge. The vibration patterns are very very strong, and not only will the flashing light will come out, and it will also indicate with a lead light color whether you're getting a phone call, whether you're getting in a text, whether the door bill is ringing, or your alarm is about to go.

body to find potitionallds. So it's also orienting people towards the light and also helping people stay in line while crossing the street because veering off is also a sometimes a challenge for people.

my iPhone. And I'm hoping that it's possible to do that.

there's not much more. Now since you heard me talk about this, I use this often with my mom across the country, and when she's having a problem, she just says, okay, I'm ready to connect, and you know, we have it set up where she has the ability to give me a new password every time, just for privacy reasons and that. But you can set it up where you have full access of your computer anytime you want.

you don't have to really think about much. I think Team Viewer is going to be the easiest.

capacity up to two terabytes, up to four terabytes. Yeah, I'm not really finding something over that. Yeah, even for these yeah, five terabytes seems to be the max right now. Off the top of my head, I think a good you know, this is obviously getting into the prosumer sort of market because most consumers are not carrying around a five terabyte drive, or if they are, that's the highest they're carrying around. So I have to do a little bit more research and see if there's something out there

that's better than this. But I think the five terabyte is probably going to be widely available for most consumers. But that doesn't mean that there's not something higher out there that's going to be more expensive, or something that is from more of a professional brand. So we've got an AB show coming up in Las Vegas, and I'm sure we will see some drives there that have a

higher capacity that are not powered. But right now, everything that I'm seeing in just a quick quick scan here of some of these brands looks like that five terrorbyte drive is the limit. But that doesn't mean it's not out there. It could be the other brand. Check one more OWC. They usually have other world computing. They usually have a lot of SSD drives and things like that. So let me just see here portable drives. I'm just curious. Now you've got me curious. Let's see portable drive. They've

got a bunch. Let's see Envoy. Nope, what's their max here? All right?

See she's talking about your phone and your computer. Bobo says, only I would would take that from this song lyrics, Yes, only me. Everything in my life goes back to technology. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'm telling you go back to the song and listen to what she just said. It's uh, it's the same. It's literally technology. We can't be friends.

Ariana Grande website rich on Tech. See okay, Bobo's listening again. Here we go. See she's talking about blue bubbles versus green bubbles. I knew it. She's smart. Website richon Tech dot TV. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter rich on Tech newsletter looked up on the website. In it this week, I talk about the eighty eight page anti trust lawsuit against Apple from the US government. I read the entire thing, Yes, I did, and I picked out the most interesting parts and I wrote about it

in this week's newsletter. So if you're interested in what the government's case is against Apple, sign up for the newsletter. Read it for free enjoy. Let's go to Sarah in Ventura, California. Sorry you're on with Rich.

couple of ways of doing it. So if you're running a Samsung or a Pixel, just press and hold on the app and you should see a little eye for information right, So if you tap and press that, you will see a whole bunch of things you can do. And on Samsung, specifically, in the lower right hand corner, it says force stop. So if you ever have an app that is acting up, you can force stop it and that means it's gonna close out that app for real.

kind of like a pro tip here. If you're ever having trouble with an app things are just not working, you can go in and clear out the storage that that app is using. It's the data and the cash, and that will also restart an app to its factory fresh format. So sometimes even if you reinstall an app from Google Play, it may just like pick up where

it left off. So if you want to completely get rid of everything that app is storing on your phone, all the cookies, all the data, anything that it may remember about you, you can go in and clear the storage. So let me show you how you do that same kind of thing. Just take any old app on your phone, press and hold on it. You should see a little eye in the upper right hand corner of that app. You tap that, that will bring you into what's called the app info. This is kind of behind the scenes

of the app. It shows you your privacy information, how much mobile data it's used, how much battery it's used, how much storage it's using. But then go ahead and tap under where it says storage. You tap storage and now it tells you. So, for instance, my Facebook is using four hundred and sixty eight megabytes of app it's got. The app is four hundred and sixty eight megabytes, the data on my phone is three hundred and fifty nine megabytes, the cash is four hundred and fifteen megabytes, for a

total of one point two four gigabytes. So if I press clear data and clear cash down to the bottom of my screen, that will reset the Facebook app to factory default, which means the next time I open that app, it's going to ask me to log in and I'm going to have to go through that whole flow again. So you can do that with Google Play, and I will do that right now and see what happens. So let's go through the storage and I'm just going to clear the data, clear the cash, and now let's see

what happens. When I open up Google Play, it's looking for updates fresh and it's scanning the apps for any issues. And I just noticed that. Yeah, so now it's just found all my new downloads, so that's probably what you want to do. That's what I'd recommend doing, ERA and seeing if that helps. It sounds like you've got something just kind of stuck or hung on that phone. Uh. The other thing you could do before you do all that is just restart your devices and hopefully that helps out.

Thanks for the call today from Ventura, California. Let's go to Frank in Ontario, California. Frank, you're on with Rich.

Some of them have just straight up USBC, some of them have Thunderbolt, some of them have HDMI, and some have displayporters. So you have to go and identify what kind of icon is on your computer and what kind of port that is, and that will help you understand what kind of monitor you can connect. Now you can also see how many screens your specific Mac can support. So some can only do one screen at a time,

some can do multiple screens at the same time. Again, by identifying your Mac model, you will be able to see where you stand with that, and then you need to have the right cable to connect. If you don't have the right cable, you might need an adapter if your monitor, say, doesn't support DisplayPort or something like that. So once everything's figured out and you know what you're working with. Then you can decide what kind of dock you need, and what kind of cables you need, and

of course what kind of monitor you need. Obviously, the easiest way is probably going to be a Thunderbolt with a DisplayPort or sorry, a Thunderbolt and HDMI is going to be the easiest because those are the most straightforward. But you can also look at some of these different docks. The brands that you want to look at are Kensington and also Belkan and also Anchor, and they are called a dock basically where you plug your computer into the dock and then you can plug the monitor into that

dock as well. So that's probably gonna be the easiest, and I'm looking at Wirecutter. Some of these docks can be quite expensive. The cheapest one they recommend is a Monoprice Thunderbolt three dual DisplayPort docking station one hundred and fourteen dollars from Amazon. So it really depends. Sometimes you can connect your computer just directly, and sometimes you might need a special cable or you might need a special

type of monitor that can connect to that computer. But I will link up this little help page on the website rich on tech dot TV going to the show notes and you will see how to identify your Mac and how to identify what you're working with. Again, HDMI probably the most straightforward because every monitor has HDMI, and if your computer has HDMI, it's very simple. It's like connecting a TV. All right, eighty to eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one

zero one. Coming up this hour, we are going to talk to Jason Rhodes. He is a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's gonna tell us what we need to know about this total solar eclipse happening on April eighth. Are you excited. It's a little bit of a bummer for California, he'll explain, but in many parts of the US you will be able to see this. My name is rich Dmuro. You are listening to rich

on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. YouTube is introducing new tools for disclosing AI generated content. So if you are on YouTube or you upload to YouTube, this affects you. AI is obviously having a huge impact on content creation.

People are making a lot of photos with it, and videos is the next big thing, and so of course YouTube wants to have something in place to understand when you are watching something that is AI generated. So first off, now in creator studio, this is when folks upload stuff to YouTube, they will be asked to take a questionnaire and they will have to disclose when their videos contain realistic content that could be mistaken for real people, real places, scenes,

or events. Now they don't have to disclose when it's clearly an unrealistic event like in animation special effects, or when they use AI to write their scripts any sort of like planning like scripts, captions, or whatever. Labels will appear in the expanded description for most videos, while more sensitive topics will have a prominent label on the video itself, so right when you fire up that video, it will say, hey,

this has this contains AI. Now, if creators don't say that their stuff contains AI and YouTube scans it and finds out that it does, there may be labels that are applied to that automatically, or they may be demonetized, so they won't be able to make money on the views on these things if they don't disclose it. Now, this obviously is not very cut and dry. There is going to be a lot of AI generated content that is not identified that YouTube can identify, and that's going

to be a very tricky area. But for creators who are trying to stay within the rules, this is the new rule that they must abide by if they want to stay in good standing with YouTube. But as we know, our world is going to become a very interesting place with AI already. I mean, you thought the green screen was tricky. I mean green screen is nothing. You know, you can replace the background. We thought that was cool when you zoomed and you're sitting at home and it

looks like you're in a palace or whatever. No, green screen is nothing compared to what AI will be able to create in the next let's call it a year to two. Right now, it's just at the very beginning, but people are going to be creating entire cartoons, entire realistic looking short films, instagram reels, tiktoks, whatever it is, it's AI. They will type in something on a website and AI will do the rest. So we have to be very aware of this, and especially with the election,

especially with news. I mean literally, remember when we saw that video of the Alaska Airlines the door that popped out. We didn't know if that was real or not. You're sitting there like, is this real? Am I being punked? Right now? Half the stuff you see on YouTube and TikTok, you wonder is this real? Is it fake? Is it somehow altered? And yes, people who are playing by the rules big you know, mister beasts of the world, they will play by the rules and they will label their videos.

But for every one of them, there's one hundred other people who are just uploading trash that are not playing by the rules because they don't care. And guess who. It's up to us, the humans that watch this stuff, to sit there with a critical eye and say, hmm, is this real? Is this fake? And it takes a while for us to figure that out sometimes. I mean, look,

what just happened with this whole Caate Middleton thing. I mean, it's just wild that, you know, we're in there looking at pictures and analyzing them, and then she's walking down the street and we're analyzing that, and then of course the real story comes out. What was really happening and of course it's very heartbreaking. But again, anything we see, or do, or experience in this world, unless we are there for ourselves, it's going to get a whole lot trick. Here,

let's go to David in Los Angeles. David, welcome to the show.

what happens every day. It's like I can't do anything on my car until I drive down halfway down the street. But this will help you at least get your directions when Why did.

in twenty seventeen, so only seven years ago. But the next total solar eclipse in the United States is about twenty years in the future, in twenty forty four.

the sun. Corona is Latin for crown. This is the outer layer of the Sun that extends much further than the surface of the Sun. But it's not nearly as bright as the surface of the Sun, and so to study it and see it, we need to be able to block out the Sun, and so we can do that with a solar eclipse, or scientists have developed instruments called corona graphs that allow us to block the Sun and see that corona or atmosphere of the Sun. However, when we do that, it's not something that you can

go outside and stand there with your special eclipse classes and see this happen. So that's what excites me as a scientist, but as a human, I've seen only one solar eclipse, but it was really an amazing, sort of life changing experience to watch the sun go dark and fuel night happen all of a sudden, listen to the animals go silent because they're a bit confused, and just see this sort of twilight sky. That's just an amazing and moving experience.

there's still enough light to damage your eyes. And it's only when the Moon is completely covering the Sun in that total eclipse, which just happens for a few minutes, that you can take those glasses off and just be in the moment and experience this eclipse.

But I really strongly recommend that if you're going to be where you can see the eclipse, to get those glasses, because it'll allow you to experience the full grandeur and splendor of the eclipse.

When there's an eclipse, we can look at the atmosphere of the Sun, and that's a really exciting thing that we're not able to do otherwise.

us to see the planets around those stars. And we call those planets exoplanets. So it's going to be an instrument that creates an artificial eclipse to allow us to study planets outside of our Solar system.

the universe works. And there's a lot of knock on effects from the understanding of the universe that allow us to live better, fuller lives. And I'll give you one example. I talked earlier about Einstein's theory of relativity, and the first proof of that theory was using an eclipse. But Einstein's theory of relativity is what allows GPS to work.

It allows us to use our smartphone to navigate. And so when Einstein was coming up with that theory, he of course had no vision for the future that it was going to use.

and then it's got the date for this weekend. So that's where you can find the links. And people often email me and they say, hey, did you post this on the links? Yes, everything is on the show links. You'll be very surprised just how good I am with the show notes. They are very, very thorough. And by the way, I wanted to circle back to Diana and Torrance. She wanted some remote desktop software to access her MacBook Pro remotely talked about Team Viewer, which is free, or

of course go to my PC, which is paid. But I was consulting with my tech brother and I said, hey, is there a you know, a better thing than some of these things that we were talking about. And he also recommended an open source alternative is rust desk are U s T d E s K. And I love any open source alternative software that's just you know, free and let's see, well, hold on, let me see if

this is free. This may not be free. Hold on, Yeah, self hosting is free, so you kind of, you know, you may need to know a little bit if you want to self host this. But it's nice to have options out there. And by the way, the other website that I like if you ever looking for something like let's say you know an app right and you want to find something that's similar to that app. The website I like for finding that software is called alternative two dot net alternative to dot net. So let's say you

like Evernoe. You can type in evernote and then it will show you all the alternatives to that program. It's a really nice way of finding apps that are similar to what you already know. But maybe you're looking for something better or with different functionality, or that's free, or that's cross platform, and that's always a good way to do it. One of the things I did not mention when I was talking about the whole case against Apple, and you've heard me say this on this show many

many times now. I love Apple. I think they have done incredible things. They have really really just kind of pushed the envelope in a lot of ways with what our phones can do and how we do things. But I also do take issue with some of the ways that they do things. And if you've listened to this show, you know that I have a major issue with the fact that they do not allow I Message on Android. Apple should have come out with the I Message for

Android app years ago. It would have solved a lot of these problems, because that is the main point of contention among most people now downloading third party apps and all that stuff. Sure you can argue that, you know, techy people like myself have a problem with that in some of the ways that the iPhone operating system works and some of the access you get to some of

the features and the hardware. Yes, I understand all that, but I think for the average person, all they want to do is just send a video to an Android friend and have it work, or an Android friend send a video to an iPhone friend and have that work, or to see typing indicators. And again, these are things that have standards that almost every other company, I should say every company in the world abides by except for Apple.

And yes, they will later this year supposedly give us some of those standards with RCS built into the iPhone, but we don't know how they're going to implement it, and I'm sure there still will be some level of distinction between I message and Android. You know, your friends will probably still show up as a green bubble, even though your picture will be high resolution, which will be great.

But I mentioned anytime I talk about Apple apps. You know Apple, when you download the iPhone, they've got all the apps that they want on there. You know, they've got a music app, they've got a notepad app, they've got calendar, email, everything. Guess what, I don't use any of those apps. I don't use any of them because using any of those apps gets you deeper into the Apple ecosystem. Now, if you're only going to use Apple for the rest of your life, sure it works great,

it's fine. But I want to have options, so I always look for what I call cross platform third party apps. So, for instance, my notes app, I use Evernoe because it works everywhere, and it works the same everywhere whereas if I use Apple Notes, it's a great app, it only works on Apple devices. Try using that anywhere else. I just can't recommend it because of that reason. So again, I think that a lot of these things we're seeing

with Apple are things that maybe need to change. I know there's a lot of opinions on either side, but at the end of the day, I think there's no denying that Apple has done incredible things. But it's just the method to their madness that some people take issue with. Let's go to Seraphene in Studio City. You are on with Rich. Welcome, Hi Rich.

I keep losing all the cords and all the little you know, chargers and all that kind of stuff, and I just wanted to bring my my my pro into tech support and saying, put some stronger speakers in, like you can put in you know, more memory or.

of like, you know, closed up inside. So what did they tell you? You can't replace these speakers?

at this app called Have you looked at this boom too? Okay, well, I think you should try this because it is a audio enhancement app, so it gives you control over It looks like some of the frequencies as well, so you might be able to boost the frequencies that you're having trouble hearing and that might help you. So I would definitely try this out. It looks like it's a free trial. Let's see how much this is, so.

one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you how Google can help you identify a song by singing it. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about something. So I watched the Taylor Swift on Disney Plus last weekend and I'm not kidding. I think my wife fell in love

with me all over again. I just saw her melt She's like you do, and I was like yeah, And then of course I played it up a little bit. Let's watch it again sometime, but it was, you know, I gotta give her credit. I mean the girl was on there for like three hours plus, singing her heart out. It was amazing anyway, So if you haven't watched that, it's on Disney Plus. I did wait until it was for free on Disney Plus. I didn't see in the movies. I didn't pay the twenty dollars as a no, no, no,

I'm wait. I pay for all these streaming services. I am not paying an extra nickel. If you see my kids come up to me, they're like, Dad, can we watch that movie? I'm like, is it free? Because I pay for everything. In no way am I paying an extra nickel for any streaming service.

little Google search bar. So just tap the microphone and you can literally see where it says down at the bottom and says search a song. So you tap that and now you can just play sing or hum a song. So you can literally just speak the words to a song. All right, So now we got bad blood, Baby got bad blood. Look what you there? It is Taylor Swift nineteen eighty nine bad Blood eight percent. Match. That's how bad I am at singing eight percent. But pretty cool? Huh.

I mean I did not realize that that was built into Google Search. So again, go just tap the microphone on the Android home screen or go into the Google app. Let's see if I go into the Google app on iPhone and I tap the same thing. So go into the Google app on the iPhone, tap the microphone, and then it says search a song, and you can play singer hum a song. That is so cool, Bobo, where's the applause? Okay? Crickets? Okay, all right, let's go to Uh.

I think Andrew has heard enough. Andrew and Ventura, you're on with Rich.

I've blocked YouTube on more devices in my house than you can imagine, and somehow he finds YouTube on these devices. I mean he got a flip phone the other day and found YouTube on it. I don't know how he does it, but he will figure it out.

for something really specific, like a part number one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, it'll show up, for just a second, all kinds of other random emails that don't have anywhere near that, or a specific word like antisocial established minitarianism I can't even pronounce, but it'll show up all kinds of stuff that doesn't have that, you know what.

I can't find that same email. So it seems like there's a disconnect between sort of like the immediate response that it thinks, almost like the spotlight response that it thinks you want, versus the actual searching in the email. So I don't have an answer for that one. But I find that myself as well. So I usually end up just instead of pressing the search and pressing enter, I will just literally start typing and wait for the first search to come up, and then I'll just not

complete that search and I'll just click that link. Now, a couple of things, Andrew, because I just want to help you know, if someone's listening and they're looking for a purchase history, and you're right, they did change that, which is kind of annoying, I will admit, because there's no all time. They've got date range of thirty days, ninety days this year or last year, which defeats the whole purpose of looking for an app that you downloaded,

you know, a couple of years ago. I don't know why they made that change, but they did give more options on searching for stuff, whether it's free or paid, the type, whether it's apps in app purchases, subscriptions, But I did like the old way. Just type in the name and it comes up no matter when you bought it. But if you want there's two little things I will I will mention. Number one, there's a great Apple website called report Aproblem dot app com. Report a problem dot

Apple dot com. Did you know that you can get a refund for an app or a movie or a piece of music or anything that you purchase through the app Store if you're having an issue with it, you can request a refund and nine times out of ten you will get that refund. And it's definitely a good website to know, and it's pretty much it seems like it's an automated system, although they say that they look

at these things manually. But go to report aproblem dot apple dot com and while you're in there, you can also search and see a list of everything that you've purchased over the years. And it doesn't seem like there is any any limit on you know, you can just continue that infinite scroll. That's the first thing. The second thing is the email address. So for me, you can find the email address that Apple sends you things from, and it's usually no underscore reply at email dot Apple

dot com. So what I would do is, if you want to keep track of all the things you're buying on the Apple app Store, just find the latest thing that you bought on there, and then you can type that email address and make a search filter. And so you can make that search filter and then tag everything that you purchase from Apple with you know, a label that says like Apple purchases, or you can just save that search and you could easily get back to it.

So those are some of the ways that I find to kind of organize the Apple situation, because I will be honest, when you get that charge on your card, every single one of them says Apple, and I'm like, wait a second, two nine ninety nine, thirty seven ninety nine, what were these four? And I will tell you two of the biggest if you ever wanted to be a scam artist, honestly, and I'm I can't believe that this

is even a thing. But Amazon and Apple, the two probably biggest billers in the world, they don't give you any indication on your card statement of what you're being billed for. It just says Apple, it just Amazon. So when I see my statement, I have no clue if that was a legitimate charge or not. Now I'm not saying to do that, but like, seriously, someone's gonna get hip to this and they're gonna start charging us random amounts under the term Apple or Amazon because half of

my charge ledger is Apple or Amazon. And I have no idea what those charges are for. Because between myself, my wife, my kids, we're all charging stuff all the time on Apple and Amazon. And it's like, okay, so let me just look here. Do I have any charges from Amazon on here? Okay, let's see Amazon there it is seventy six dollars eighty four cents. No idea what that's for. Let's see Apple, Apple dot com slash bill twelve dollars ninety nine cents, No idea what that's for.

Let's see is keep going Microsoft store thirty nine ninety nine. Now I do know what that's for. I bought my kid a game Apple dot com slash bill thirty seven ninety five. Okay, that's for my cloud storage. I get that, but my point is they don't really give you much indication of what Apple dot com slash bill four dollars ninety nine cents. Now, that's a lot of things build from Apple that I just don't really I can't match those up unless I get a Ledger every month and search.

So anyway, am I done? We solve more time here. Okay, let's go to break. I'll save you my riches rants. Coming up, Gary's asking the best way to uh, let's see what does he say? Best way to dispose of an old laptop computer? Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. I'll answer that and more of your questions coming up right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich

DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. So we don't discuss everything. There'd be no be not enough time in the world to do that, but I do try to hit the

things that I think you should know about. This week very popular on my TV program, I shared travel websites you know spring break is coming up and a lot of people you want to get out of town, want to find a hotel, airbnb, rental car, and so I shared a bunch of websites that are not your Expedias and Kayaks we all know them, but some other websites, including auto slash, which is for car rental deals. I

thought that was pretty cool. Travel Arrow this is a web browser that actually reveals the secret hotel names for price lines express deals. That's kind of cool. I've not used that personally, so I can't vouch. But by the way, I was one of the earliest people to ever use priceline dot com. My wife and I flew to Vegas for twenty dollars and round trip, and we were actually featured in a price Line newspaper ad because of that.

They had like it wasn't just us, there's like one hundred people that use Priceline in the first like week. And of course I was a nerd even back then, and I was like, oh my gosh, you can't believe you could pay twenty bucks and get it. You know, you name your own price for this hotel, you name your own price for a flight, and it's like, wait, what and I used it for many many years for the hotel rooms as well. I loved it, and I don't use it as much anymore, but it's still there.

It's probably not as good as it used to be, but it's still there anyway. Flightsfrom dot Com This is a cool way to discover direct flights from any airport. So if you have a regional airport near you, or you just want to see where you can go from your airport direct, that's a good one. Hichi Hichee. This

is pretty genius. It will take the link from your Airbnb listing, you pop it in there, and it will reverse search it on other sites, so it will see if it's maybe cheaper on verbo or directly booking with that website, so that's kind of cool. This is probably my favorite out of all of them. It's called Wiki Voyage. It's like Wikipedia, but it's a travel guide, so it gives you all the information you need about a destination.

So if you're going to a place like Rome, Italy, you type in Rome and it will give you everything you need to know about Rome. It's almost like those travel books back in the day, but all on one page, and it's like Wikipedia, so it's updated by real people. This one is interesting, nap or nappr. This lets you rent hotel rooms by the hour, four to ten hours. So what could possibly go wrong nappr Now, the idea is that you can rest and recharge on the go.

When I landed in Italy a couple of years ago, you know, we landed at nine am and our hotel room was not ready until three or four pm. So if you're in one of those situations, maybe you want a hotel room just you know, take a nap in the morning or something. And then to go beyond Google Maps, I mentioned oh producer Kim chimed in hourly Hotels, I know what those are used for? Napping, right, and then

Rome Rome to Rio, and then city Mapper. So if you want links to all of these off the beaten path travel sites, just go to Rich on tech dot TV, scroll all the way down and it says as seen on TV handy travel websites. Let's see Gary writes in Hey, Rich, good show today, what is the best way to dispose

of an old laptop computer? Gary, Gary, I'm glad that you're not just gonna throw this thing in the trash, which I'm sure some people do, because there are a lot of parts in there that should be properly recycled a couple of ways. Number One, you should look into donating it to an organization if you can. In the LA area, there's a place called the Laptop Elf Project. Even though this computer seems old and crusty, they may be able to turn it into a chromebook that will

still work for someone in need. So definitely check out the Laptop Elf Project or another organization in your area. Just look up donate laptop nonprofit and you know or refurbished laptop. Second way is Staples or Best Buy both except electronics for recycling Staples, I've done this very very easy. It is free. You can recycle items there. They take a whole bunch of stuff, almost everything. A couple of things they don't take, but they take a lot of stuff,

including a lot of batteries too, even alkaline batteries. Now that's new. So I did a story about recycling batteries, and you know, I'll be honest. I used to maybe toss them in the trash once in a while until I learned how bad that was, and I started saving my batteries and then recycling them, and it makes a big difference. You know, it's just one of these things. It's a little bit annoying to have this big, giant bag of batteries, but believe me, it's a smart thing

to do for the environment. A couple of things you can't recycle at Staples air conditioners, appliances, light bulbs, large servers, medical devices, smoke detectors, televisions, vaporizers. What's that. I'm just I got this old vaporizer I don't need anymore, got a new one. Just bringing this back for you. Bobo's turning off the lights, he's closing the door. He's done.

He's done with my jokes for the day. Best Buy also recycles electronics, and you go to the website before you do this just to make sure they take what you want. But usually it says you can three items per day, and if it's a monitor, it's usually a fee of thirty dollars. Not in California. You can look at up your individual state to see what their rules are. The other place. The other thing you can do this

is kind of cool. Best Buy has these mail in recycling boxes, so if you just have like a bunch of cables, and you don't really live near a store, you can go on the best buy website order this box. They've got a medium box or a large box twenty three dollars or thirty dollars, and they send you this box and you just put all your old recycling stuff in their cables and things like that. You just dump it all in there and then ship it to them and they will recycle it. And then the other one

is Gizmo Go. Gizmo Go, and I did a web a story with this place. But you can sell your device and so you can put in even an old laptop, tablet, smartwatch. You can see how much they will give you for that item. So, for instance, let's say you have an old let's just say you have an Apple Watch Series four. They'll give you forty bucks for that. That's not bad. And let's see if it's GPS and cellular. Let's see if it's good and good condition. Is the Apple ID

signed out? Yes, give you fifteen bucks for that old watch. So even things you might not know gizmogo dot com all linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. All right, coming up, we're going to talk to Joshua Browder, CEO of Do Not Pay. You are listening to rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Joining me now is Joshua Browder. He is the founder and CEO of

a website called do Not Pay. So when he moved to the U, you moved to the US from the UK, he got a bunch of parking tickets and couldn't pay for them, and he wanted to figure out how to use technology to automate the appeal process, and that's what started this product, Do Not Pay. Joshua, Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me so explain to me this parking ticket situation. You got a couple of tickets and you said, Okay, there's got to be a better way to automate this.

And it's like wait what So if you just are blindly paying your medical bills like without asking, it's that could be wasting a lot of money. How about this robo revenge feature?

Let's get it through some of the stories I think you should know about before we get to the feedback segment. First off, ethical hackers have figured out a vulnerability in those hotel room locks. They figured out a way to open millions of hotel room locks easily. They're made by a company named Dorma Kaba and they're used in many hotels around the world. They figured out how to make special key cards that can open any door. All they have to do is get one key card from the hotel,

even an old one. They use the device to read that information off the card, and then they write it onto two new cards. When they tap those cards on the lock, the first one changes something in the locks data, the second one opens the door. And this entire process only takes a few seconds now. The researchers told the company they found the problem in twenty twenty two. They've been working on updating. But as you can imagine, these are used in millions of hotel rooms around the world.

So in the meantime, and I learned this lesson the hard way. Always always always use the extra lock when you are in the room, whether that's the chain lock or the other lock on the door. Because I was sitting in my hotel room in Las Vegas once, and I'm not kidding, I used to not use that little lock chain because I was like, Ah, what's the point, come on, give me a break. And sure enough, someone walked right into my room and they were like, oh,

this is our room. And I was like wait what, Like I literally I thought it was the housekeeping because it was like one of those things where they just kind of like I heard the door opening, but I was like, that's weird. Usually they knock right and sure enough, the door just opens right. You know, I'm sitting right there, and I was like, wait, what's happening here? And it was a couple and as a young couple, and I

was just like, I think you're in my room. They said, Oh, they just give us this room and it was anyway. So just always use that lock no matter what. If your stuff is in the room, right, you want to use that safe because if someone gets into your room when you're not there, always always use the safe and

use that TikTok hack. Put one of your shoes in the safe, so you don't forget your stuff in the safe when you leave the hotel room, because nine times out of ten, you're gonna lock your stuff up in the in the in the safe and then you're gonna walk out of that room and forget about it. Speaking of travel, trippet Pro has a new feature to tell you about disruptions. This is called risk Alerts. This is

for paid trippet Pro users. It will now send you a notification if it's monitoring your airline number and there's a weather event, political unrest, labor actions, technology outages, or airport incidents. They're teaming up with a company called risk Line and so basically they will monitor your flight for any sort of disruption that is not just you know,

a canceled flight or delayed flight. These are like other things that may impact your flight and retro tech making a comeback what are some of those most popular retro tech items. The Nikon Cool Picks point and shoot camera that is seeing a significant increase in demand. So we've seen this whole trend of people trying to disconnect from technology, maybe on Saturday or Sunday or when they're done with work.

Because at first we thought it was so cool that the BlackBerry gave us the ability to have access to our work email twenty four to seven. How cool is this? I could work from anywhere? And now we're seeing it as wait a second, I can work from anywhere. That's

kind of annoying. And when your kid is, you know, trying to play football with you in the front yard, and your watch is buzzing and your phone is ringing, and it's you know, someone at work just asking something nonsensical, and it's just like really, So retro tech is definitely

seeing a comeback. Flip phones all that kind of stuff, but the Nikon cool Picks is number one, flip phones number two, Motorol Eraser and the Samsung flip phones seeing a surge in popularity across social media and e commerce platforms. MP three players including the iPod Nano and even the Sony Walkman. Can you imagine going back to a Sony Walkman at this point with like a tape? I don't know if I could do that. Nintendo DS handheld gaming console has also seen a rise in searches on TikTok

and eBay. Pink is the most color popular color for retro tech devices. I'm guessing Barbie has something to do with that, followed by orange, blue, silver, and black depending on the device, and even typewriter keyboards for the iPad have seen a surge in searches. And you know, look, I get it. It's retro is always fun, right. This is from a website called Music Magpie. Music Magpie talking about the retro devices, and I think they're onto something

because the retro stuff it is fun. It really is, all right, Let's get to some fee bag. Feedbag, of course, is a combination of feedback and the mail bag. Michelle says high tech chief Rich. I know you're not here, it goes. I live in Anaheim since twenty twenty two. Is a caregiver for my ninety four year old mom. I just heard you talk about the seasun Assisted Tech conference. Oh my gosh, I'm near the Marriott. I could have visited. I'm so disappointed you didn't mention it earlier. Well, here's

the deal. So I understand that this show airs locally in Los Angeles, but it's also syndicated across a bunch of radio stations nationwide. So I really have to balance the local audience versus the national audience. So if I'm sitting there doing a calendar segment of everything you could do in the LA area, that's amazing for the LA folks, but not so good if you live in Minnesota or Milwaukee, or Michigan or what's another M state or m City, Mississippi.

You get what I'm talking about. And we're in places that start with more than just them. But so I do think about that stuff, and I will. But yeah, you're right, get it, and I understand there's always that balance there. Jim says. Wow. Now, in addition to the government telling me what kind of car I can drive, they're suing Apple in order to tell me what kind of cell phone I can purchase. What's next, what online shopping service I can use? Watch out Amazon. The only

way that we'll get iPhone is from my cold dead hands. Jim. Okay, we'll just move on. To Valerie. Valerie says, what happened to the search option on your website? Yeah, that has gone right for now, But there are ways of searching. If you search rich on tech and the topic, usually that'll bring you to the TV segment, and if you're on the show wiki, that will bring you to the different things that you can search on there. I'm trying to see if you can search on my substack if

that has a search. My substack does have a search, you can search there as well, So that's another way of doing it. Thanks for the consideration, and let's see here. Neil from Ohio says, just a couple of comments on your TikTok guests. This is from last week. Seems to me a little bit of a crackpot. What he said seems true, But TikTok has put their data about Americans in the hands of Oracle on us soil. Does he have any references? You didn't give them much pushback pushback.

I don't use TikTok, so I don't have anything to gain or lose. But this guy seemed a little off where he's privy to something we all need to be better informed on. Rather than giving Americans a deal on a popular app. Neil from Ohio. Ah, gosh, can we the TikTok stuff? I can talk about that forever, I know. Uh, if you can believe it, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you want to submit your feedback, just go to the website rich on Tech

dot tv. There you can find links to everything I mentioned, the show notes, the TV segments, my newsletter. Please sign up for the newsletter. It is the best way to keep in touch. And I am doing a much better job of putting that thing out every week and the feedback is pretty good on it. You can find me on social media. I am still on Instagram, I'm on x I'm on Facebook at rich on Tech. And next week we're gonna talk to friends of the show, Jefferson

Graham of Photo Walks TV. He's gonna explain the best ways to capture the total solar eclipse with your smartphone. Thank you for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is rich Dmiro. I will talk to you real soon.