My thoughts on the S twenty focus issues GIF versus Jeff might finally be solved. Netflix breaks down and reveals what people are actually watching. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on on Rich Damiro And this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. Plus I answer the questions that you send me. My name is Rich Damiro. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Joining me is trustee producer Meghan, who is so glad she didn't swap her iPhone for the Samsung Galaxy S twenty just yet.
No, I almost did.
You were like ready to pull the trigger on that one, weren't you.
That is a funny, funny joke.
Now, Meghan is one hundred percent iPhone. In fact, she judges anyone who does not have an iPhone.
That's not true. Little just a little judgment.
If you went out on a date with someone and they pulled out not just an android phone, no, an Android with a crack screen. What would you do? Oh? Like, I imagine all your friends have iPhones.
Imagine all your friends have iPhones too.
Actually they all do so except my brother okay, but yeah, most of the other everyone. I do have a friend that doesn't and it's you know, and I don't judge.
Do you think it's an l a thing.
I think it's definitely. It's a it's a pressure thing. It's a simplicity thing. Yeah, it's a you know. But there are people who like Android and there's no problem with it. Yeah.
I don't have any anything really against it. I don't think I would like not date someone just because they have an Android, but it would be so mean.
But like, just imagine texting them would be kind of because you know, I messages, I message and you're like, uh, I mean, I guess you could use Telegram, which is what we use here at the tech.
For Oh, that's true. I'll be like, hey, I know this is date number one, but do you mind if we text on Telegram and then.
You can easily block them, which would be you know, because it's so easy to block people.
Oh okay, true.
Let's uh, let's start with the speaking of Samsung. Let's talk with the sam Let's talk about the Galaxy S twenty. I've been using this phone for about a week. Remember last podcast, I said that I put my sim card in the phone. Yeah, well my SIM card is out and it's back in my iPhone.
As you could not you couldn't do the Samsung Life I.
Okay, number one, Okay, notwithstand. I'll get into like the issues with the phone first or I guess second. But the first thing is everything in my life had to change, everything from the just the way I get stuff from my computer or to the phone, from the phone to the computer. I message, which was like I wanted to text two friends and know we're on this little group I message, and I couldn't text them because I was like, oh, I don't want to start a new group with them
that's now going to show up in green. So that was a problem. The earphones, Like I just switched to the Samsung Galaxy Buds, but then when I used my computer, I switched back to the AirPods because I wanted I didn't want to have to pair up something again. Apple watched I already mentioned that, Like, so okay, they're not lazy, but they're thing there. I understand why people stay in their lane because you have all this stuff set up
and you don't want to change. And yes, you could change, and you can swap everything out, but a it's very costly. Like for my watch, for instance, I was sitting there going, what am I going to do for a watch? Because I use my Apple Watch and that required me. I was at cost going I'm like, well, maybe I buy this Samsung Galaxy Watch, or maybe I get a Fitbit. And again I gave away my last fitbit to a friend, so I should have kept it because maybe that would
have made life easier. But anyway, I see all these little things. Then I was trying to research different programs to use because now the programs I used on my iPhone just aren't available on the androids. A lot of little things, and I see how people get. I know, they call it like lock in, but it's real and it doesn't make you lazy or bad or not trying to try something new. It's just you know what works and you kind of stick to it.
Yeah.
Now, with that all said, I love the Samsung Galaxy S twenty Ultra a lot. There are so many things to love about this device. The software is fast, it's smooth, the screen is just unbelievable. I bought this little case for it from Spegan, which is now my favorite case. By the way, I bought it from my iPhone as well. Oh cool, it's arriving today. It's called the Spegan Ultra Hybrid S. It's a nice case and it's super simple.
It's only like fifteen bucks on Amazon. But it has a kickstand, so I was able to watch movies on the plane. Yeah, it's so cool. So you just set your phone up, Like, why doesn't every case have this? Yeah, so I just watched movies on the plane on with my phone like sitting up like you know, on its side. Okay,
other things. Everything about it is really amazing, everything like the quality of the software, the speed, the just you know, unlocking is a little bit tougher than the iPhone with a face ID, right because you have to use your fingerprint or you can set up their version of face ID,
but it doesn't work as well. Okay, you know some of the software isn't available, but I love what you can do on Android, so I kind of get over that because I love having like shortcuts on my screen, and I love having the universal search box for Google right at the bottom of my screen. I love having my Samsung Pay which works with any basically anywhere, even if they don't take Apple pay or Google Pay. It still works.
Really.
It emulates the magnetic strip on a credit card. Oh so kind of it kind of I don't know what you call emanates it out from your phone, like if you just hold it near they're like, oh, sorry, you don't take Apple Play. You're like, watch this and it works.
Yeah, that's not what you think.
So that's cool. Now I'm describing a lot of things that are available just on Android, but the physical like the size of the phone. I'm fine with the feel of the phone just everything. Like the quality of the device is very high. Now with that said, let me get to the biggest problem I found with this phone because I went to the New York Toy Fair in New York City and I shot my entire story on the video camera on this device.
I can't believe you did that.
And I had my simcard in here for my texts and everything. So I was doing everything on this phone, making calls, receiving calls, everything, setting my alarm at night. I was a little bit concerned because it's been a long time since I use bedtime on the iPhone, and it's super simple to set my alarm. I just scroll a little dial to the time I want to wake up, it gently arises me to wake This was a little different because it's like, okay, now I'm setting a real alarm.
I don't know if it's going to go off. So I tested a bunch of times. Anyway, all those things, one thing, Okay, my biggest issue with the Samsung is when I get a notification on the screen. So here's a notification, Megan said, Okay, sales is over where we're doing the podcast, you said to me, and there's a little reply thing I can hit right here, right well.
On the iPhone, when you hit that reply or touch the notification, it immediately brings you into that app from the lock screen because it's looked at your face or your fingerprint is on there, your thumb is on the fingerprint reader, and now it just brings you right in there. On Android, that doesn't happen on this device, and so you have to kind of tap it once and then it's really complicated to explain, but you have to tap
it once and then it says use biometrics. Okay, so I put my face and now it says swiped it open, and I swiped open, and it still didn't bring me in there. So my point is I can much faster reply much faster to notifications on the iPhone for some reason, and it's a little thing, but over the day, when you're doing one hundred and fifty notifications that you're replying to, it all adds up to a lot.
Right.
Other than that, I think that the Android platform is totally fine now when it comes to content creation. Here's what I noticed, and a lot of other reviewers are noticing this as well, But I noticed my phone was not focusing. And I've noticed that some of the pictures in general on the Samsung device are soft, which means when you take a picture, it just looks kind of weird. You're like, wait, was that in focus? And especially when you're doing video, if you put the video camera up
to something, it's just not in focus. So when I was doing all my interviews and everything for the Toy Fair, I kept having to manually tap the screen to focus. Now on iPhone that feature is available, I rarely, if ever, have to use it.
It like auto focuses on what you're what you're focusing.
On, even when you move your phone like quickly, and on the Samsung I did not notice that at all. It's really bad.
Like did you notice that last year with the Samsung.
No, I've never noticed that. In fact, I specifically remember when I used to have a Samsung device and this guy I was on a shoot out in like Virginia. He was like, why do you use Samsung? And I was like, oh, because it's so much better than the iPhone And he's like really, And I'm like, well, take a look at this, and I showed him my hand and I put my phone, my Samsung, in front of it and showed him how quickly it focused. And I was like, and look how clear that is and how
focused it is. Now I move it somewhere else, and he's like, oh wow, that's great. And I was like, now, look at the iPhone. It didn't focus as fast. iPhones come a long way since then, Samsung this one. I feel like they took a step back.
So then there must be a glitch.
There might be a glitch. According to the Verge, there is going to be a software update to improve the camera, but they would not acknowledge any specific problem. And here's the thing. My idea is that they have had this device in production now, like in development now for a year. Let's say, you don't have a device in production for a year and nobody notices this weird little glitch until you give it to people and all of a sudden
it's like, oh, we'll fix that. Rarely happens. Yeah, you can't just fix something like nobody noticed this, nobody used the video camera.
It's the same with sorry, but the foldable screen last year, like everyone was like peeling the screen off.
So sometimes Samsung can't catch break. So at this point I cannot recommend the Samsung S twenty Ultra. I don't know if this problem is on the other two, the two leading up to the phone, the S twenty and the S twenty plus, but the Ultra, I will say it's kind of a deal breaker. Like I said, I had my simcard in this device, and I found myself being like I can't wait to get back to the iPhone now. Hopefully they fix this. But it's not just me that's seeing this. All the reviewers are saying the
same thing, right, and it's clearly an issue. And I don't know how they're going to spin this or try to figure this out. But if I bought this phone for fourteen hundred dollars and I saw the way it was focusing at that toy fair.
That's insane.
I'd be really angry. And by the end of the toy fair, I ended up using my iPhone to to shoot a couple more videos and I was like, Okay, I'm not crazy. This thing is amazingly clear and focused on everything.
So I need the new iPhone anyway.
So there you have it. That's my spiel. I will have my Yeah. That's that's it for now. So cool.
Okay. So this first message comes from Jeanette. She said, I just wanted to tell you what an honor it was to meet you in person at the Bourbank Airport. You were so nice, just like you are on TV. Kat A five is the only news I watched. Thank you for keeping us informed. We learned so much from you. Sorry you missed your meeting and SF have a nice day.
That is Jeannette, Jeanette, Well, thank you, Jeanette. This is a funny thing about being on TV is that you're always being watched and judged silently no matter where you are. And I tell my kids this all the time because people come up to me all the time, like literally every day every day, no matter even in New York at the Toy Fair. Yeah, I was coming out of the men's restroom and some guys like, we're jeh on tech,
what's up? And it's like, now, if I can't if I was walking around with like a sour look on my face and kind of like angry or treating people really rude, it'd be awkward. Yeah, And I don't think you should be doing that in general, But being on TV, it's like people are watching you, and well, I feel like I am who I am most of the time. Like I'm not really a different person on TV. Right, That's very clear because it's just like I am who I am.
That's good.
But at the same time, it's like an instances like this we were I was in probably one of the most frustrated moments of my life where I was trying to get up to San Francisco for a meeting with Samsung. Yeah, and we didn't make it. Our flight was totally delayed, and I could have been, like, you know, very angry and visibly because I was with my photographer and I could have been being rude to the people on the
podium at Southwest. I could have been really mad. Yeah, and you know what, I wasn't and this woman saw me at my worst and here's what she said.
You weren't bad, So anyway I would have been so frustrated.
It is frustrating. Anyway. It's a weird thing when you're on television to I always say this for every person that comes up to you and says hello or says something or asks for a picture, there's fifty more people in that room, probably one other that like also also that don't say anything, right, but they do tell their friends and they're like, oh, I saw Rich and oh
my god, what a jerk. He was at the register at Ralph's, you know, yeah, at the grocery store here, or oh, seems like a nice guy, had a smile on his face, he was with his kids, you know, his wife. Whatever.
Yeah, No, I think that's important. You don't want to be a jerk.
No, I try not to be. Well, thank you, um Nest camera outage. This is kind of a big deal because a lot of people use Nest cameras, including myself, to keep an eye on their home, and this just kind of goes to show what could potentially happen when we rely on these cameras to secure our homes. These cameras are cloud connected. They do a lot of the lifting heavy lifting in the cloud. They record everything in
the cloud. And on Monday, February twenty fourth, from eleven to fifty five am until four to twenty Wonder where they got that number Pacific time? Noah, Wait what these stopped working? So you had a blackout period for cameras across the nation that we're using Nest for four plus hours, four hours twenty five minutes. Imagine that.
That's insane.
Now, not only the cameras not work, they also didn't record anything to the cloud during that time, so you had, in effect a total blackout of these cameras for four plus hours.
That's infuriating.
Now, they gave me five bucks as a refund. I didn't notice this on my own camera because I wasn't like looking at the time. But if something happened at your house during that time, I would be so angry. Let's say you got a break in during that time. Now you have no video the whole point of having that cameras. I'm sure there was.
Wait, so how did that happen?
They said it was a update to their server caused a connectivity issue. I mean, but that's a big deal. And as we rely on these cloud things more and more. Here's what my thought is. Imagine you're a hacker. Yeah, you do the biggest hack where you hack the Nest servers. You get them to black out for twelve hours, and now it's a free for all across the nation.
Yeah. Or like if someone heard that there was a blackout, they could just find a house that has a Nest camera. I'd be like, oo, exactly near no one, Well, no one, we'll know because what if people don't trace of me?
They tweet when when something like this happens, no cameras are down. Oh, now they search. Maybe someone has a search on their Twitter for a safe search that says Nest down, and they just wait for a whole bunch of those tweets and then they go strike.
Could they just be saying it's a server thing, that they were updating the server.
I think it probably. I mean, that's kind of a catch all for like we made a mistake.
If I was a security company, I don't, I mean, you don't know, lie, But like I feel like they wouldn't want to say, you know, we were hacked.
No, I don't. I don't think in this instance they were, but maybe they were. You never know. I mean usually they come out and say something big picture and then maybe they narrow it down later in a security.
Block, updating or hacked server.
Yeah, exactly.
All right. This next question comes from Erica, and if you want Rich to answer your tech questions, just go to his web site rich on tech dot tv and hit the contact button. Erica asks, can you please tell me what the best anti virus software is?
Ooh interesting? I get this question so much. People are obsessed with antivirus software. And here's my thought on it. I think that you should have it number one. If you have Windows ten, it's kind of built in. It's called Windows Defender, and that's Microsoft's built in virus protection. So I would say, make sure that's up to date, make sure you haven't disabled that, make sure you haven't gotten rid of that. Now after that, I feel like a lot of these antivirus softwares are very spammy and
they kind of bogged down your system. Like let's just say the big company out there that you know, I'm not going to mention the name, but there's a big company that everyone knows is synonymous with anti virus.
Okay.
I've had that antivirus before, and I just feel like it's a lot going on for nothing, and so people turn to these other apps that might maybe use less resources on their system. So with all that said, I mean to me, on my Mac, I was recommending Silance, which we did a story with, which I thought was really cool because it was it was sort of immediate and it was just a very cool AI powered But then BlackBerry bought them, and I'm not sure that they
even do personal BlackBerry. Yeah, let's see if they even do Silence anti virus. Let's see if they do it anymore for like consumers. And I thought this was cool because they do it in like real time, so uh, let's see. Yeah, they do have it, Okay, Silance Smart antivirus. So that's the one that I'd still recommend Windows in
Mac compatible okay. And it's what's cool about it is that it's kind of anti virus with a brain, so it looks at what's happening on your computer and if it notices something that's going on that's bad in real time, it'll stop that from happening, which compared to the other way most antivirus works. It has a large definition of stuff, and any file that you bring onto your system, it kind of checks it across that definition and it says, oh, this is one of the bad files. This Silence works
by kind of identifying things in real time that are bad. Okay, so that's kind of cool. Other than that, I would look at something like a vast which I like, and then malware bytes I also like. And again, a lot of these things they start out free and then they want you to be paid. Silence is just totally paid. It's forty nine dollars a year for ten devices. I think that's well worth it. Yeah, so good question. Speaking of security, Firefox continues to kind of push user security.
I don't know how many people are using Firefox these days anymore. Remember what it was kind of a popular way to surf the internet. A lot of people use Chrome nowadays, which has a lot of security built in. But when you're using Chrome, a lot of your data is being siphoned off to Google because it's owned by Google. And why do they want you to use a browsers so that they have more of a knowledge of who
you are and what you're doing. Well, now Firefox is doing this new thing called DNS over HTTPS, and this gets really techy, really nerdy, But the bottom line, when you type in a website into your computer like Yahoo dot com, and most websites are encrypted at this point. So when you go to Yahoo, everything you do on there is now private. Basically most websites. If you look there's a little padlock next to the website. That means that whatever you type into that website no one can
really see because it's encrypted. It means it's kind of enshrouded in secrecy between your computer and the computer on the receiving end. Back in the day, it wasn't, so anything you did was just kind of interceptible by anyone. Right, long story short, when you type in that Yahoo dot com, that first thing you type in your ISP and other people, because of the way it's looked up, can see what
you're typing in. Okay, So even though they can't see what happens once you get to that website, like your bank website, they can see that you went to your bank website. So what Firefox is doing is they are actually starting to do these look ups in a secured way. So when you type in, you know, Yahoo dot com, it needs to convert that into an address like one
nine two dot zero dot nine dot one. It will do that in an encrypted way, which means it's still secret, which means that your internet service provider, the person who brings the internet into your home, will not be able to see a lot of the things that you do on the web. Okay, whereas before they could still collect a whole bunch of data about people and know that they're visiting whatever website, shopping websites, and they can sell that data, they can cross reference it, now they no
longer have. If you're using Firefox, they will basically not really see anything that you're doing. So it's like a little step of security. Yeah, and now, I know a lot of people's minds go to kind of dirty or things with this stuff, but it's not always for that. There's a lot of countries in the world where you're not as free as you are in America. So even looking up something about a dictator or who knows any kind of government stuff may put you in on a
watch list or whatever. Oh interesting, And so again this is all in making life a little bit more private, especially in those moments when you may not realize that someone has access to this data and Internet service providers still have a lot of access to the data and the things that are happening in your home with your internet, and so by kind of closing some of these little holes, it patches some of the privacy leaks out there. And
again this is something that only Firefox is doing. And by the way, I mentioned like kind of the world scope of things, this is only turned on by default in the US. If you're in a different country using Firefox, you have to go into the settings and turn on DNS over https. Megan Cool.
This next question comes from tam Roku versus Firestick question mark, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each and which is better?
Oh, that's a good question. Advantages disadvantages. Okay, So Firestick is Amazon, which means number one, they're pushing a lot of Amazon stuff. So when you log on to a Firestick, it's the whole screen is filled with stuff. Some of it is advertising, a lot of it is kind of like the new shows on Amazon. A lot of it is stuff you've watched before. It's very cluttered, and I feel like it is all over the place when it
comes to the clutter on the screen. And yes, your apps and stuff are on there, but there's just a lot of stuff going on. And I find that for every tile on that screen on my Fire, I am clicking almost zero of them, Like they're not really I don't want, Like whatever they're surfacing, I'm not using. So I'm just going into my Netflix app or I'm going into my YouTube app or whatever. I'm not really looking
at all the other stuff. So if you now on the flip side, if you love Amazon and you love Amazon shows, this is gonna be your best and watching free Amazon stuff, this is gonna be your best way of a conduit to those to those properties on the flip side. Roku and they've always been like this is kind of like the Switzerland, and I've said this before, of streaming. They get your apps on screen. Yes, they're
to advertising, Yes they're pushing their own Roku channel. Yes they're trying to get you to sign up for certain new apps and channels and stuff. But at the end of the day, Roku is kind of like, if I had to describe it, Fire Fire TV is very busy, whereas Roku just kind of sits there and waits for you to do something.
Yeah, it's clean, Yeah, I love Roku and then we have fire TV sticks in our house too.
And it's a difference. Yeah.
I mean like I don't really use those TVs, but I don't like I don't really like the look of it, Like I think it's it like you said, it's too cluttered.
Yeah, I recently switched to Apple TV, which is when you talk about the least of everything, it's there's nothing on there, right, no ads, there's no nothing. They don't push you to anything. It's just your apps, just like the iPhone.
But it's funny. I had to kind of explain to my dad the other day because I was like, Apple TV and then there's Apple TV. Plus he was like, wait, what that is? And so that's something that's also confusing. But Apple TV is very it's like the cleanest.
Yes, it is the cleanest. It's also the most expensive, right. Roku has a price range for everyone. Fire TV stick you can, you know, give them out like Halloween candy. They're so cheap. Yeah, my choice between those two things, i'd probably I think they're both great. It really depends what you like. My biggest beef with the Fire TV is I can never ever just I just want to see what the top movie rentals are. I can never find that on my Fire TV. And that's what really
pushed me over the edge with the Apple is. I'm just like, if I can't find this, this is I love to just see what the top movies are, and on Fire I just can't find it. It's like it's just it's there somewhere, but it's like it's like top Prime Choice, Top Prime Romantic Choices, top Prime action movies, top Prime TV shows. I'm like, just give me movies that are people are renting and watching.
Yeah, I have a question kind of related to this. We've talked a lot about like how you've changed your like cable situation. What are you doing right now? Because I have an aunt who she's like, all I want to watch is The Bachelor, and but I have direct TV And I was like, well then you should just have Hulu. But then she was like, but you know then we want sports occasionally. So what is your what are you doing again?
So what I'm doing is I can tell you two things. So number One, I don't watch a lot of TV, so I don't need any I've recently canceled my direct TV now which was sixty bucks a month. I do have a device that allows me. It's called Tableau, which allows me to take in an antenna signal. Before I was using the Amazon Fire TV recast Tableau, same thing, except it works across all the different platforms and it's just a little tiny box that you plug your antenna into.
And now you have an app on your TV screen on your Fire or your Apple TV or your Roku that lets you access your local channels over the air, and you can also record them to if you want. Oh wow, it costs five bucks a month if you want the program data for a longer period of time. I don't need that because I just tune in live. So when I was watching like the Grammys Boom, just tune in live.
Right And ABC is an over the channel, So like.
Ninety nine percent of the time, the stuff you want to watch, like the big events are free. Now when it comes to sports, that's where things get tricky. So with me personally, I watch USC football. I would say some of the games are on over the air on ABC seven or something like that, or NBC when it's Notre Dame a lot of times on ESPN, So how do I get ESPN right now? I don't have a solution. I haven't. It was past football season when I got rid of direct TV now, so this next season will
be an issue. I don't know what I'm gonna do, so that's gonna be a part of it. But I would say the other thing you could do. There's a service called low cast, And this is what my mom does. She went from having Direct TV Now for sixty bucks a month to now she pays five dollars a month for low cast, and it's if you don't feel like putting an antenna on your house, you download this app and you donate five dollars a month to them. They have an antenna somewhere and then they stream the pannels
to your TV. Wow. Now the broadcasters don't necessarily like that model because they're not necessarily getting paid for that. So now they don't get paid for antenna either. And the way low cast argues is that, well, we're just an extended antenna signal. Right, We're just taking the antenna signal from a nice rooftop somewhere and just piping it into your TV. Broadcasters like, eh, we don't know if that's you know, allowed, So they're kind of operating in
a gray area. So far, so good. They've been around for a bit. But that's another box, Tableau t t A b l oh t A.
So you just need like one tableau box.
Yeah, and it'll service all your TVs. Now there's a certain amount you can watch from those. I think it's two TVs at once or two channels at once. But yeah, that's that's a way of doing it. And there's also I did when I when I wanted to watch something on a channel that I did not get, I did subscribe to Fubo TV for one day and I just signed up for a free and it got me. I think it was the Grammys or something. It was whatever
whatever I couldn't get on something. I think it was a Grammy pre show maybe, and it was on E and I didn't have E. So I just signed up for a day, got the show, and boom, I was done. Oh maybe it was Super Bowl anyway, good question. Speaking of streaming TV, Netflix is finally finally showing us the most popular TV shows and movies on its Yes, finally,
it's been so long and I get it Netflix. And we've talked about this on the podcast where they'd love to be personalized, and they want to make everything perfect for you. Sometimes I just want to see what is popular across everyone, not just myself. This is kind of like a dating app. It's like, now everyone's dating on these apps, and you're literally picking the person that's the equivalent of you, except either you know, male or female,
or you know whatever you prefer. But it's just like you, except in another human Like, well, I like bagel, so they should like bagels. I like romantic comedies.
They should like love bagels.
I like going to Hawaii, so they should like going to Hawaii. I like food at fancy restaurants, so they should like you're literally picking the same person, except because these little apps let you pick every aspect of the person rather than you know, the old days anyway. So Netflix to me is kind of like that. It's like, we only want to show you what we think you'll love because of what you watched before. Well, guess what,
I'm a dynamic person. I may want to watch some random movie like I watched that dumb to All the Boys I loved before whatever.
Oh you did, Yeah it was not very good, started it and then I was like, I'm bored.
Really it was very much sponsored by like Subway. Like remember they kept getting like Subway subs.
In that movie.
Okay, so those kind of things like I don't. I will sample weird things like that every once in a while, Like that Cheer show. People are saying, that's very good and.
Like the old show No cheer.
Oh it's it's about cheerleading. Yeah it's it's the premise is cheerleading, but it's really about like determination and drive and all this stuff. So again I might check that out.
Right.
Okay, so now you can see top ten lists on Netflix, and they're going to show you the top ten most popular series and the top ten films when you click on the movies and TV show tabs not on your home screen, I guess, so you have to go into the tab.
Okay.
And the best part is any show that when you're browsing that's into the top ten, it will have a little top ten batge so you can see, like this is the top ten. And I think that's kind of fun rather than they always put these weird things like trending on Netflix, popular on Netflix. Just show me the top ten, give me the list. I can handle it.
Yeah, I can handle it.
You can't handle the truth.
Honestly, I don't know if I can handle the truth. Okay, this next question comes from Cleveland. Do you know of any dashcams that record overnight without being plugged into the power outlet of your car. I would like to be able to record both facing out and inward if possible. The outward facing would be ideal in the event of any accident while parked or a theft.
Well, I would say that a lot of the dash cams will do this functionality no matter what. So even if a dash cam requires power from your car, uh, just look. Okay, So here's what you look for. Look for a dash can that has an on board battery. And what it does is it will it'll plug into your cigarette lighter and it'll be charging this battery on board, So most of the time it's powered by your car, but when you turn off your car, it will still have enough juice in it to roll camera if your
car is hit. And so that's the other thing you need to look for is a g shock sensor. And all that looks is for a movement, you know, like a boom boom boom like and you can usually set the sensitivity for that. So if you want just you know, if someone runs a car at the you know, Ralph's parking lot, I said Ralphs twice in this podcast, you
know the grocery store parking lot. If someone runs a car into your car, you may not want that to trigger a recording, like you're really gonna go after that person. I would hunt them down. Now you have a new car, do you have that feeling of like there is a moment when have you gotten a ding on it yet?
No?
Okay, but you know there's a time Wait.
That's a lot. I got a tiny, tiny, tiny little ding.
When I was Isn't that the worst feeling?
I like almost cried.
Yeah, it's just you know what's gonna happen when you have a new car, and it's just but it's.
Like, it's the worst.
I've had my car for like three years. And at this point I don't care anymore because my kids will take the door lease. Well I know, but so now do you care less because of that?
No?
I care more because I large you at the end.
Well, yeah, I think they end. Sometimes they don't know, but maybe they won't even notice.
I feel like I feel like they have to understand when a car is going through normal wear and tear. Yeah, it's gonna get dings throughout three years of a lease, right. And I've heard stories from people out of return cars. Sometimes they look over them like with a fine tooth comb. Other times they don't care, right, And so it just kind of depends.
I guess maybe if you're like gonna lease another car from them, Yeah, like.
Exactly, we'll look the other way, don't.
Oh, we will look at the like missing tire.
That's exactly what I was just gonna say. Did we deliver this car with four tires or three? Only three?
You're getting another porche It's fine.
Well look the other right. So the couple of things you want to look for in your camera is a g shock sensor and an onboard battery. With that said, the camera that I like is the Vava camera. Via Va, I don't believe that it records both the front and the back. The other camera to look at is the owl cam, And the other one I tried was called the Pure Cam, and that one was great. Every quord
that has all the things I just talked about. What it did not do is it did not have good software on your iPhone, so it was really poor software, and that's what kept me from using that. We've talked about this on the podcast before Jiff versus GIF. In fact, I think it was this last podcast that we had a whole talk about this pronunciation debate, and now it might be coming to an end thanks to a marketing
stunt by Jeff Peanut Butter. Jeff Peanut Butter came out with two special jars that help you explain to yourself how you should pronounce Jeff versus Giff. Jeff. You know the peanut butter. It's always been pronounced Jeff with a j if. Giff is written g if. A lot of people call it a jiff, but they're saying hard G for GIF and soft G for jiff the peanut butter. Okay, hard G for the graphic, the leaping animated image, soft
jay for the peanut butter. So now you care. It is actually easy to remember, huh.
I know. I Yeah, it is like j I just always called gifts gifts.
Yeah you did, I But it's funny because of the game. The guy who came out with.
Who right you were telling me this last week.
Said, Jeff, I remember this is south by Southwest them. But here's the thing. It stands for, like we said last week, graphics interchange format with graph fixedrookok, I don't want to get through this, but Griff, long story short, the bottles of peanut butter sold out instantly on Amazon. They were selling a two pack, you know, the two bottles a pair for ten bucks, Okay, And I guess people went crazy over these things, and it's kind of fun. I could see why. Yeah, And they put more on
Amazon and those sold out in like one minute. So I do have a pair of bottles coming to me. They're supposed to arrive today. I was hoping they were in time for today's TV hits. I didn't get them in time, so maybe I'll show them off next week. But I like the idea of just having this on my desk so I always remember. I'm like Giff, Jiff. And again, it's a marketing stunt, but it's kind of fun.
I like it. It's cute, all right. This next question comes from Steve. Except for Alert, the location settings on my iPhone apps are set to while I'm using the app. But I also know that once I open an app, it stays open until I close it individually while it is in this state that is open but non current use. Is it still reporting my location?
This is a great question. Yeah, and the short answer is yes, but no. And so here's what's happening on you. He's talking about the iPhone, right, Yeah, So on the iPhone, when you open up an app, when you're using it, your anything goes like it. You know, whatever permissions you've given it, whether it's your location, microphone camera, whatever, it can access those things when it shifts to the background. There are two ways it can.
Be handled, so when you change to another app, you still have it.
Like kind of in your recent apps.
All my apps open all the time.
But you're okay, because the way that the iPhone works is it puts apps to sleep in the background. Now that the time app the time that it takes to go to sleep is could be a potential issue. So some apps like to stay awake in the background so that they can do certain things all the time. So like a music streaming app has gotten special permission from Apple to stay awake in the background because otherwise it
wouldn't be able to stream music. A mapping app has special permission to work in the background so that it can gather your GPS coordinates and give you directions. Now, other apps have firm rules for how long they can stay accessing system resources in the background before Apple says night night, goodbye, see you later. So the longer. The short of it is, if it's not a nefarious app that is trying to do something evil and it's been coded word, if it's not been coded in an evil way,
it will eventually go to sleep. And that's why Apple always says you do not need to close out your recent apps unless they are behaving badly, and then you can go ahead and swipe them closed. Otherwise you're doing just fine. Your apps in the background should not be accessing stuff that they shouldn't be able to access in the foreground.
That answer it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Now with that said, on Android, whole different story system. Our apps can use resources in the background on Android much easier than they can on iOS. That's also the reason why the battery lasts longer on iOS because basically the app that you're using is pretty much the only thing that's happening on your phone at that time, Versus Android, a lot of things could be happening in the background. Now, there's advantages to that on Android, and I'll just go
into one. One example is Google Photos. So on Android, Google Photos can work in the background even if you haven't opened the app to upload all your pictures in the background. With iOS, it only gets that permission when you open up the app, and maybe in the background when you have it on a charger and it has been properly coded to kind of ping the server and say, hey, I've got some pictures here. Can I upload these real quick? And your iPhone says, well, you can't use this all night.
You can't just stay open and transmitting data all night, but we'll give you a couple of minutes to kind of refresh things. That's called background refresh. Okay, it's very complicated, but it's done for a reason. On the iPhone, they've optimized the iPhone in such a heavy way to make the battery last and also make sure that these apps aren't doing things they shouldn't be doing.
Good to know.
Uh, okay, oh shoot, we have a couple of things, all right, I want to get to Okay, this is really interesting. We'll do two more things. Okay, but this is really interesting. This director said that on camera you won't see bad guys in movies using the iPhone because Apple does not allow their products to be portrayed in that light. This is knives out director Ryan Johnson in an interview with Variety. With an interview with Vanity Fair.
Another funny thing. I don't know if I should say this or not, not because it's like Lasiba's or some because it's going to screw me on the next mystery movie that I write, but forget, I'll say it's very interesting. Apple they let you use iPhones and movies, but in the is very pivotal. If you're ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera. So no, every single filmmaker who does a bad guy in their movie it's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me.
Right now, Let's see what Jamie's saying.
Interesting, interesting, interesting revelation. That's again knives out director Ryan Johnson in a YouTube interview for Vanity Fair YouTube video. And what he's saying is that I think here's what he's saying. I'm reading between the lines. He says that you can't really have an iPhone in the hands of a villain on screen because Apple doesn't like that. I think What he is not saying is this is when
Apple is supplying the phones for the production. If you ever watch Modern Family, every device on that show was an Apple device. At the end of the show, it says promotional consideration provided by Apple, because Apple gave those directors a whole bunch of stuff and they were able to use them in their show. Along with that whole bunch of free stuff to use iPad and tablets and you know, imax and all these iPhones in the show. They also had a little line in that that said,
here's how you will not use these products. You're not going to show them doing bad things. You're not going to show people throwing them and crashing them and you know, getting into car accidents using them in the car. You know what I mean. There's a whole bunch of regulations that come along with these free products. But if you and I are doing a music video and we don't ask Apple for free phones or permission, we could do
whatever we want with these phones. So if villain Meghan is on screen crushing you know, a character with her bare hands, you can have an iPhone and make a call after that.
Villain Meghan.
Okay, finally, I just want to mention one more thing, because I've talked about this before with you, and I just think this is super interesting. New York Times did a little informal survey of how expensive it is to eat using food delivery apps, and it is fascinating because I've always had this hypothesis, right, I always call it. I call it the most expensive way to eat. In fact, I would argue that getting food delivery at this point
is almost more expensive than going to a restaurant and eating. Yeah, yeah, because you're paying all these service charges and fees. And what people don't even realize is when you look at the menu on uber eats.
Or Postmates, they like it's the they redo the menu for the app. So it's like five dollars rice is actually now ten dollars rice, so you're paying double exactly. Its insane.
So they looked at grub Hub, door Dash, Postmates, Uber Eats, and the restaurant. So for instance, a six inch turkey breast sub at Subway, if you got two of them, would be twelve dollars and fifty eight cents at the restaurant. Get it through uber eats, it's fourteen dollars and seventy eight cents on the menu. By the way, this doesn't include the extra fees on the menu at Postmates fourteen seventy eight, door Dash fourteen seventy eight, grub Hub eleven
ninety eight. Then you've got your delivery fee anywhere from a dollar ninety nine to three one nine. Then you've got your service fee. A lot of times they'll say, oh, free delivery this, you know on a Tuesday night with this code. Well they don't tell you is that you still pay a service fee yep, and then you pay sales tax, which of course you.
Pay the party thing on Postmates. I always like, when I'm lazy, i might do it, and then I'm like, no, it all adds up to the same thing.
They've created fees so that they can credit you fees.
Yeah, but it's like false advertising. They're like, oh, it's free this, but yeah. Anyways, so the total.
Cost for these two subs if you ate them at the restaurant thirteen dollars twenty one cents, or I guess if you got them at the restaurant, if you pick them up. Total costs and Uber each twenty five dollars, Postmates twenty two dollars, Door Dash nineteen dollars, grub Hub sixteen dollars. Markups range from twenty five percent to ninety one percent. Now here's the thing. When you're ordering Postmates for twenty one fifty two for two subs, for someone
to bring it to your house seems pretty reasonable. You're not really thinking about the fact that it's thirteen bucks if you went and drove there yourself, because all this convenience of this person bringing it to your home. But that's still a markup of sixty three percent.
It's crazy.
A couple other things about this is that Ubers service charges were the most unpredictable. It seemed like grub Hub was kind of the cheapest out of these when it comes to the markup. And the bottom line is that there's not really much you can do about this. If you like these delivery apps, you are paying a premium.
And what I always say, and I've used them, don't like I'm not preaching here, but it's almost like there are nights when I'm sitting there so ready to order one of these apps, one of these food apps, and I'm just like, you know what, let me just go and just make something myself. Like it's actually cheaper for me to go to the grocery store and just buy something that I can make that night.
I was going to Postmates to potle and then I thought, well, maybe they have free delivery, like weirdly, and I went to their site and they had free delivery and it was the same as if I had gone in store. So I use their free delivery service.
Yeah, and that's a lot of these companies right now are experimenting with using Postmates and grub Hub and all these other things. Yeah, but then they're sort of when they get their own thing in place, they're using their own delivery, right, So it's we're in a middle time. But anyway, Yeah, I thought, look up the New York Times article. It's very fascinating. It's kind of eye opening. And by the way, my go to simplest thing ever is just a protein like a salmon or a chicken
or a steak. Buy one of those, and then you get some rice, and then you buy some veggies. My go to is just broccoli and bell pepper.
Are you saying just to like make your own dinner.
Yeah, you make your own bowl and then you put some of that, you put some of that. Karaoke stuff on it. I mean it's so easy. I made them last night, and it's I mean, a whole family of four could eat for like five bucks or ten dollars instead of forty dollars.
You know, it's crazy.
All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. For links to what we talked about, take a look at the show notes. If you have a question for me Megan, tell them how to submit it.
If you want Rich to answer your tech question, go to his website rich on Tech dot tv and hit the contact.
And please rate and review the podcast. It helps other people discover it. All you have to do is go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech, or if you have a friend, just ask them right Yeah. Fit pro SF recently wrote Rich is awesome. I've been
a fan since his days before c net. If you want timely relevant tech news from mobile commuting, computing iPhones, iPads, tablets, et cetera, to apps, Wi Fi, routers and network tips, internet providers, practical Internet security, anything tech including smart spending on your tech. Rich Demiro is your man. Wow. Wah, Now if I can only get.
My your dings right?
Yeah, Well, you can't get it all right. You can find me on Instagram. I am rich on Tech. My name is rich dmiro On, behalf of producer Megan and everyone else that it takes to get this show on the air. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you real soon