Open AI changes the world once again, this time with AI generated video, the first major malware for the iPhone.
What you need to know.
Samsung promises a big update for its latest S twenty four phones. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on rich dmiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that technology should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone lines triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one, triple eight, rich one oh one.
Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to Richontech dot cog TV hit contact. Keep in mind I can't respond to everyone personally, but I will do my best. Guests this week, we've got Bob O'Donnell, president, founder and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. He's going to explain what aipcs are all about. And I'm very excited to talk to Bob because he actually used to host pretty much a version of this show back in the day.
So I'm gonna talk to him about that.
Advisorator columnist Jared Newman is going to talk to talk about what to do if you're out of iCloud storage, you see that dreaded message and you don't know what to do.
Well.
Today, I figured i'd tell you a story about technology, but really it's a story about perseverance because this all started at my work. You know, I work as a TV reporter at a tech tech reporter at a TV station, and uh, you know, people come up to me all the time and say, hey, Rich do you have a second for a question? All the time, and of course
I say, yes, what do you need? And it inevitably is some very complicated situation on their phone or computer or iPad or at home that is not easily answered in a minute or two.
But it's fine. I don't mind.
I love talking to people about this stuff, as I do here on the show. So they come up they say, hey, my computer. I've got this old computer. I want to like kind of freshen it up, clean it out, and make it new it again. I said, oh, that's easy. We kind of computer macro pc. Oh it's a mac oh super easy. We could just reformat it'll be back up and running a couple of minutes. He's like, oh great, I have it right here. Oh okay, let me have it. So he brings it to my desk and I start
looking at this computer. It's kind of old, it's aging, it's it's kind of slow, it's got old software on it, and it's very clear that this thing just needs a total reinstallation of the operating system. So I said, all right, leave it here, can you can you leave it at my desk for a couple minutes and I'll I'm doing other stuff, but let me try to work on it.
Well. To connect this thing to the.
Internet at my work was very complicated because we have a kind of secured Wi Fi and it's not very easy to do that when you're trying to form out a machine and get it up and running. It's easier to have either Wi Fi at home or some sort of Ethernet connection. Plus it's fat, you know, it's much faster. So I start trying to do this at my work with the work connection. It keeps failing, and so I'm like,
all right, let me try a hotspot. So I hook it up to my cell phone and I hotspot it connection is a little bit better, but everything I'm trying to do is still failing. And it's trying to connect to some server. But the computer's really old and the software is really old. So I feel like Apple's shut down whatever server it's trying to connect to. So I said to the guy, look, do you mind if I just bring this thing home and I will figure it out at home and I will work on it.
Oh.
Absolutely, It's got a whole bag, puts all the stuff in it, all the you know, cables and things, and bring it.
Bring this thing home.
So I get it home, and you know, it's one of these days where I got home kind of early from work. I would gonna work on it that afternoon, so I want to go to the gym, kind of do some.
Other stuff whatever.
I start working on this thing, and you know, I just go down a rabbit hole of trying to figure this thing out. Nothing is working. So I get the good internet connection. I find a way to connect. First thing I had to do. This thing doesn't have USBC, so I had to like find a way to connect my ethernet to this even though all I had was USBC. So I had to find like an adapter, which I ended up finding in my old you know, gadget closet whatever.
So I figured that out.
But I'm sitting here and now now time is starting to go by, right like I'm kind of getting a little bit annoyed at the fact that I'm spending so much time and nothing I'm doing is working. And next thing you know, I'm trying to get into like terminal on this computer. I'm trying to like format things. I'm trying to make a USB boot drive, all this stuff that I've done a million times in the past, but
nothing seems to work. And I keep going and going and going, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, this should be so easy. But at this point, I'm so invested. I can't go back to this guy at my work as the tech guy. I'd be like, oh, sorry, I wasn't able to figure this out, Like could you imagine, Like I can't have that word spreading around KTLA or anywhere else.
And so I am determined. So I finally, I'm not kidding.
I spent three hours in the afternoon and I thought at one point I got it up and running. I text the guy I'm like, hey, look at this splash screen. It was showing like the installation working. I was like, see, all I needed was better Internet. And sure enough, right at the end of that installation, it's like error failed. Right at the end, ninety nine percent, that last one percent failed. I'm like, You've got to be kidding me right now. So I am just trying to figure out
any way to get this thing to work. And you know, as you spend more time on something, you're getting a little bit more like quick and hasty and like things aren't working. And I've downloaded like all the software to my computer. Nothing's working. I shelve it. I'm like, you know what, I got to take a break. I gotta take a breath. I sholve the computer. I put it in my room. I, you know, just leave it there. Like a week or two goes by. I see this
guy at work, He's like, hey, Ranch, any update. I'm like, it's going, it's going, it's going, But really nothing was happening. So finally I have a breakthrough. I'm at home and I realized what I needed. So with the way mac os works, you can't download a current version of the software or an old version of the software on a new machine, you have to use an old machine that
used to be able to run that software. And all of a sudden, I'm going through like my drawers and I find a laptop, a Mac laptop that I forgot I had, because I forgot I had it because the battery is is shot so it doesn't hold a charge. And so usually I hand my computers down to a family member, but this one I just threw in a drawer because I'm like, oh, I don't really know what to do with this thing, because nobody else could use it. Well, I plug it in, it gets up and running. I
look at the version of the software. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I think this is gonna work. And so I download this program called disk Drill, and it's like a really easy program to help you make these bootable drives. I download it and I'm starting to download the software and everything is working. I'm like, You've got to be kidding me, Like this is actually working.
Like I'm sitting there smiling to myself. I am working on a ten year old computer with another ten year old computer next to me, with my current computer there, so I have like a whole like factory of MacBooks sitting in front of me, and it's working. It is working. So I get this little drive made. And by the way, since these computers are so old, everything that should take five or ten minutes really takes like twenty to thirty minutes.
But finally I am getting some progress. This drive that I need, it's like a USB drive is it's what's called a bootable drive. So when you plug it into the new computer, it looks at that it says, ooh, I can use this to boot up, and I can use this to actually install this operating system and run. And so I get this little drive made. And by the way, I had to have a USB drive that was USBC on one side and USB on the other side, and so I had that because I test stuff and
I happen to have that lane around the house. So that was like, that was just incredible to have I get the software on this thing.
I plug it into the computer.
Immediately the computer went from having a question mark on the screen to an Apple logo and it was starting to install. And I didn't even have to do anything. It just started like it knew. It was like magical. As soon as I plugged this piece, and it was like out of a movie. And I'm sitting there like high fiving myself, laughing that this is like actually a thing. And I'm more just sitting there thinking that this is my reputation on the line more than anything. I'm like, oh, yeah,
I'm gonna figure this out. I get the software. It installs, the computer opens up, it turns on. It is a fresh, clean installation of mac os High Sierra, which by the way, came out I don't know how many years ago. But it's on there and it's working. And I'm like, okay, and I finally get this thing to work. I plug it all in, I turn it on. I set up his littleccount and it is perfect. It is pristine. His old computer that I couldn't figure out for two weeks
finally worked. I looked back in the email that I originally sent him, saying, oh, I think I got it. It was sixteen days ago. This guy waited sixteen days thinking oh, this is not going to work. Why do I tell you this story, Well, I said it was a story of perseverance. So you can apply this to anything in your life, whether it is tech, whether it is your job, whether it's sports, maybe your marriage, I
don't know. Whatever you need, just keep going. And I'm so proud that I figured this out, something that I've done many, many times. But more so than that, it is exciting to have this up and running for this person again and deliver them this computer. And man, I feel good. I feel good. But here is the bottom line.
I say this story because people come up to me, as you know, the person who knows about technology, thinking I have all the answers, and you call me on this show and you think I have all the answers. Tech people don't have all the answers immediately. But the difference between me and other people out there and other tech people is that we know how to find the answers.
Like any person that is a sort of an expert in their field, they may not have all the answers off the top of their head, but they know where to find that answer. If a doctor comes up against something, and I'm not comparing myself to a doctor, believe me, but if a doctor comes up against something that is challenging them, they will figure out. They will consult with their colleagues and figure out a solution that they think is best someone fixes cars, they come up against the
problem that they can't figure out. They'll consult with other people. You probably consult with other people at your work, asking hey, how do I solve this problem?
That is what it's all about. That is it. That is the story. I feel good.
I'm excited I can deliver this guy's computer back and I learned a lesson. Not only is disc drill an excellent program to have around, but I'm also gonna keep a bootable USB drive for every version of Mac os at the ready from now on.
That's what I'm gonna do, all right.
Coming up on the show, I hope you enjoyed that because I really got kick. My My wife and family were like every day when they come home, they get a little update about this computer, Like Dad, that computer is still sitting there in the office. I'm like, I know, I'll figure it out, all right. Coming up, more of your call or your calls eight A eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling like I accomplished stuff. Let's accomplish some more. My name is Rich d'miro and you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If you want a link to something I mentioned, you can find it right at the top there.
It is highlighted in red.
Let's go to cam in Los Angeles.
Cam you're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, I love you on KTLA and just wanted to say thank you for your information all the time. And my question is I'm looking for some resources actually hopefully this is a quick question for someone to perform an investigation on the dark web to find maybe some uh information pertaining to somebody maybe putting information out there
that's false. And I've been doing a lot of research on my own and I'm kind of limited in my understanding of, you know, the complete realm of technology, and was wondering if you had a resource of some investigative either law firm or investigative company that can it would recommend, that would be able to perform that type of investigation.
Well, I have one person that comes to mind that I've interviewed actually several times for KTLA and thanks for the kind words on that. And so I can recommend a website that you can contact. Her name is Haley Kaplan. What is privacy dot com? And there's dashes between, so what dash is dash? Privacy dot com? And Hailey works with a lot of high profile individuals for reputation management.
And you know basically what you're saying, She's not a lawyer, and I can't really recommend a legal route to go, but that's that's a route to go that can at least, you know, get you in.
The right direction.
Now, when it comes to the dark Web, this is an area of the Internet that is not necessarily traversed by the average person, nor is it easily searchable by the average person. But there is information on pretty much every single one of us out there on the dark web. And so if you are just looking to see what is out there on you, there's a couple of resources I can mention that you can use to scan kind
of some of these things. And believe me, when you're talking about your personal information on the Internet, it is a game of whack a mole. You can get this removed and it shows up instantly a couple of days later. I use a service called Google Results About You, which I highly recommend. I just signed up my wife this morning, but I highly recommend you go in here and set this up. It is free, and it doesn't remove the data about you from the Internet, but it removes kind
of the links on Google. So if someone's searching for information about you, you know, your name, address, phone number, SoC security number, whatever, that information may still be out there on the websites, but most people are just gonna, you know, casually search Google for that and those links will not show up. So that again is called Google Results about You. If you want to sign up for it, open up the Google app on your phone has to be the Google app. Tap in the upper right hand corner.
You'll see a little icon and then you'll see something that says Results about You. And so to sign up, you basically have to give Google your information, your name, your address, your phone number, your email and then they go out on the web and they scan the web for that information and as they find it, they will send you a notification that says, hey, do you want us to take this off of our Google Search results? And they're not going to take everything down, but they
will take down a lot. I mean I had three taken down just yesterday, So that's one way to do it. Another website that's really handy is called have I Been Pooned? And it's not spelled the way you think it's h a ve I beIN pwned and it looks like pawned, but it's pned dot com. Have I Beenpooned?
Dot com?
And I'll link this up on my website rich on tech dot tv, and you can put your email address in there and it will tell you if your email address is in one of these breaches, and if it is, that means that the password associated with that email address is out there on the web as well. So don't reuse your passwords please. When it comes to scanning your information on the dark web, a lot of these services are paid. Experience has a dark Web scanning option you
can pay for that. It says you can start for free. I have not use that one personally, so I can't vouch for it. Norton also has some dark web monitoring Mozilla. I don't think they monitor the dark web, but they do monitor for data breaches. It's called Mozilla Monitor and you can get a first scan for free. I think
we talked about it on the show last week. And then there is another option through Google One if you have Google One, So if you pay for any subscription service on Google, you have a membership to Google One and they will scan your information on the dark Web.
So it's kind of it's similar to that results about you that I talked about that's available to everyone, but this takes it a little deeper into the dark web and you will get those alerts and you'll be surprised that your social your data, birth, your address, all that stuff is really out there on the dark web where people are selling, buying, trading this stuff on a daily basis. It's pretty wild when you start going down these roads. It's not easy to get this stuff off the Internet,
and it's probably never going to be completely off. But that is what I recommend for some of the free resources and paid resources out there. Good question, just something you got to keep on top of all. Right, coming up on the show, people are already returning their Apple Vision pro why we'll find out plus more.
Of your calls at triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Website rich on Tech dot tv. If you need a link to something I mentioned, I just mentioned a whole bunch of dark web monitoring services. You can get the links for those there, and you can follow me on social media. I am at rich
on Tech. Well, the fourteen day return window for early adopt of Apple's Vision Pro headset is up, and a lot of people took to social media saying they are returning the product.
Why.
They say it feels too isolating when you're wearing it, it's too heavy and uncomfortable, and they haven't found a daily use case for it. A lot of people say maybe they'll buy the next version when it's a little bit more refined, it's lighter, it's cheaper. This is a thirty five hundred dollars device. Add it up with tax and accessories. You're talking four grand for something that you can only use by yourself. And there's not really a
ton of use case scenarios for this just yet. Now, a lot of people probably just bought this to check it out, you know, make some content with it, knowing they'd return it. But it's kind of wild because I've not seen this sort of reaction with an Apple product in a very long time. In fact, I don't know if I could ever remember an Apple product that people were excited about. And in my lifetime, I've seen you know, the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the iPad, you know, very computers.
This is kind of like, we don't know if this is going to be a hit or a miss just yet. But supposedly they sold under two hundred thousand of these things. But the good news is once Apple gets these things back in the in the back stock room, they'll refurbish them and you'll be able to buy it at a discount.
Now I'm curious to see.
I don't think Apple will do this, but it'd be interesting to see if they discount this thing and make it a lesser price that even I was trying to think, like how much would it take for me to buy this thing? Even at fifteen hundred bucks, I don't know, it still feels too expensive. You've got the Mediquest three, which is five hundred bucks, and Mark Zuckerberg in a very rare It's rare that you see a tech CEO do a review of a competitor's product, but that's exactly
what Mark Zuckerberg did this week. He tried out the Vision Pro. He said it was underwhelming compared to his product, the Mediquest three. Now that makes sense, of course he's going to say that, but he says it has The Mediquest three has a wider field of view, it's lighter, it's more comfortable, it supports Xbox games, which the Vision Pro does not, and he thinks that overall, the Quest three is a better device. I think he said something
like period it is the best. He likes the Vision pros eye tracking, he gave it that, but he said they also had that in their Quest Pro and they're going to bring it back. He also said the Quest three has a better immersive content library currently, and he said the Quest three is seven times less. So it's
hard to argue with Mark Zuckerberg. But you also have to remember keep in mind for perspective that Apple is the company that probably took about twenty billion dollars away from the bottom line of Facebook when they changed the way that the iPhone works with the advertising. Facebook was no longer able to track people across the iPhone's apps and services and web browser, and so that took a
lot of money away from Facebook. And so you have to remember, these are not These guys are frenemies, right Mark Zuckerberg. Most of the time, if you look at the phone he's using in a reflection in a mirror or window, it is not an iPhone because he you know, he knows a lot of people are using iPhones that he is his customers. I guess you can call them, you know, Facebook, Instagram users, but he also knows that he'd probably rather have them using a Android. Let's go
to Stephen in Bakersfield. Steven, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Hey Dan, Rich, thanks for making the call.
Doing great. What's up?
My wife and I are going to be doing a pilgrimage walk the Camino Ignaciano in Spain coming up in May. It's about three hundred miles of a hike. Oh wow, and man Resa, Yeah, it's there are some other the Saniago, some other stuff.
Okay, that sounds that sounds like a lot.
It is.
It's going to be a hoot. I'm a bit of an oldish guy. I'm going to be sixty. I have lived in the Apple world, and for the hike itself, I don't know that I want to hump my iPhone all over the place. I don't have an Apple Watch, I don't have comp you know, communication, that kind of thing.
I'm interested in.
Your thoughts on what would maybe be a better product than the iPhone, Maybe an Apple Watch for text and things like that for communication, and also maybe some software. I know that a bunch of years ago there was What's app and some other stuff, But just wanted to pick your brain on both hardware and software for when we do this walk.
So what's your main goal is to stay connected without a lot of like looking at screens or what's your goal when you're walking?
My goal is to stay connected with family back here in the States, and without having to have even that iPhone in my hand all the time, to kind of be a little bit more hands free, and to yeah, not have a huge screen. We will have opportunity in the eve means to dial it down and have access to that, but during most of the day, I'd like to have communication, you know, maybe text.
Things like that.
Well, I think I think an Apple Watch is probably the easiest solution, since you can glance at it and you'll get some metrics that are kind of nice. I don't think that you can leave this thing on GPS all day, because it will it will run out of battery if you do that pretty quickly. But I think that that's probably the easiest way to kind of monitor things in as people are texting you, you could see those come in.
Is this an area that has cellular connectivity or no?
I'm assuming it does the east or the west slope of the Pyrenees Mountains in a Basque region from up in the north around Loyola down almost to Barcelona. Okay, all right, I think it's that pretty good reception.
And I'm trying to see if the emergency SOS feature, which which iPhone do you have?
I have a fourteen pro right now?
Oh okay, so fourteen Pro does have the emergency SOS. Do you anticipate needing that service at all? Like? Are you off the grid that much? Is this like a you're with a group of people, right, We're going to.
Be doing it with a couple of people, and so we're not completely off the grid. And I think we're going to be going through the places where I short answer is, I think we're gonna be on the grid. I don't think that's a problem.
Okay.
Well, the good news is if there was any sort of time when you need it to you know, if they're not a cellular connection, emergency SOS is available in Spain, so that's really nice. So make sure that you have your phone updated to the latest operating system and the iPhone fourteen Pro and the iPhone fifteen models they both have the emergency SOS via satellite.
Are you familiar with that feature? That's a little about Okay, So I.
Have kids that continue that help for me.
Basically, if your phone does not have a cellular or Wi Fi signal, you will see a little satellite signal in the upper right hand corner, and that means as long as you have a clear view of the sky, you will be able to send for emergency help. You'll be able to text effectively text an emergency response person and say you know, hey, we need this or we need that, or send your location or anything like that.
So that'll be nice.
But wou I would recommend I know this is kind of expensive, but I think you know, maybe treat yourself of as a as a reward for doing this with the Apple Watch Ultra, because the battery is going to last a really long time. The screen is nice and big, it's got a nice extra button on there which you can program to do a whole bunch of things. And you know, there's there's a whole bunch of tracking features.
It's got better GPS than the standard Apple Watches, and so I think that's gonna be nice to keep in touch with friends and family back home. And then you kind of have to decide if you want to get a do you have roamings?
What's your cellular plan?
Right now?
I'm kind of at the top end with stuff, and so I have roaming and everything else is connected to a business, so I have I have all the cellular data and unlimited everything you can think of.
At least in the States.
Oh, I was gonna say, okay.
Yeah, yeah, as far as connectivity someplace, FILF. I don't know if your suggestion would be some kind of an international plan at least temporarily, or like I said, I think a thousand years ago when we went to Italy once we did what's app and communication. So I don't know what the best ways to go on.
So I mean, I think, you know, these days, you don't even really need WhatsApp anymore. If you're you know, if you're texting you what I would recommend is turning on what's called Wi Fi calling and texting, And so before you leave the States, turn that on your phone. If you're going to number one, I call your carrier ask if you have any sort of roaming included with your plan. So for instance, the plan that I'm on, I get a day of roaming free. I think I
get like four months. So when I log into my account, it tells me you have fourteen days of roaming for free. And so when I go on a trip international trip for you know, three four days, most of the time I'm covered. So I would call your company and or your carrier and ask them what you've got. The other thing I would recommend is a company named Aralo Ai r Alo and this is a this is a company where you can buy an e SIM for your phone, and that is basically a temporary cell phone plan that
works internationally, and it's very inexpensive. And that's something you can install on your phone. If you don't have roaming, you install it on your phone, and then when you get to the you know, before you take off, you will turn off your your connection with whatever company you have, whether it's AT and TV, Verizon, T Mobile, whatever, and then when you get to the country, you turn on this other connection to this secondary ara lo sim It
sounds a little complicated, but I'll be honest. My mom went to Germany. We did this all over the phone. She figured it out and she had great connection the whole time, and all of her friends that she was with were like, how do you have a connection and I don't. She's like, well, my son's the tech guy, so I mean, of course I figured it out with him, and everyone was like cracking up. But I think you'll be able to text I personally if you you know.
When I go overseas, I use something called Telegram, And what I like about Telegram is that it works no matter what connection I have, whether I have Internet, whether I have Wi Fi, whether I have cellular, whether the person on the other end is on an iPhone or an Android. So I really like that program. WhatsApp is also very good. It just depends. It's like a matter of preference. So if you have if you want to
log in with that. You can also use Facebook Messa if you have that installed, but it really comes down to what the people on the other end have. So those are the things that I'd recommend, uh, Steven, But it sounds like an epic trick.
I think you're gonna have a great time.
It's very much easier to stay connected internationally than it ever has been. Eight A eight rich one O one. Thanks for the call. Eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll tell you what open eye open ai is doing now, and it's AI video. It is incredible. More show right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Everyone in the tech world this week is talking about what open ai is doing now, and what they're doing now is AI video.
It is called Sora s o r A.
This is a new AI system that generates really realistic looking video from text.
Videos can be up.
To a minute long and they really have impressive detail, lighting, texture, shot composition. It looks like something Pixar made. It looks like something a film a director would make. I mean, it's really quite impressive. They showed a bunch of different videos. I highly recommend you to take a look at these things. Snow one of them was a couple walking through a snowy Tokyo landscape. That was awesome. Let's see what else did they have. They had a little monster next to
a candle. Looked like something Pixar would make. And let's see what was the other one? A virtual zoo tour. I saw a like a car driving through a city, but they had they changed it into like twenty five different ways. It's really quite impressive. So what is the deal with this? Can you get your hands on it? No, this is right now. Just research that they are showing off and it is very very impressive. So if you
have a chance, I'll put it. I'll put the link on the website rich on tech dot tv in the show notes. But it's OpenAI dot com slash sora s O r A. And when you see the video that this is generating, you will realize that everything is going to change once again. Just like chat GBT changed AI for the average person, this is now going to change video forever. You've heard of deep fakes, you've heard of AI generated text and images. This is video and it
looks incredibly realistic. Now, the one thing that they're not saying is how long it takes to generate these videos. They're up to a minute long. And I saw one person describe it as it takes maybe the time it would take to get a burrito, not you know.
I don't know.
I forgot what the other thing was. But anyway, it's it's long, but it's not that long. And of course this will only get better. But the fact that you can now type in something like this person says a young man in his twenties sitting on a piece of cloud in the sky reading a book, And yeah, that's what it looks like.
This was an.
Animated scene featuring a close up of a short, fluffy monster kneeling beside a melting red candle. The art style is three D and realistic, with a focus on lighting and texture. Now, one of the videos I saw was a it was a person in bed. It's not always right. They do show some examples of where it gets things really wrong. And you know you've seen those AI photos where like the hand is off or the teeth are off. They show some videos where things are off and it's creepy.
It's like we are I'm not kidding. We are heading into a really weird time. Open Ai, Sora sr. Let's go to Mark in San Diego. Mark, you're on with Rich?
Yeah, hey Rich, uh, great show.
Thanks.
I am having trouble getting to my email after I after I did an update on my Windows seven. It's an old Windows seven operating system on a on a PC, a desktop, okay, And so I go to open it and all I get is just a you know, the outlook little letter. It just keeps cycling, looks like it's going to open, open, open, open, It just never does. Now I can get to my emails on my phone, but I can't get to it on my my desktop.
Okay, So I think what you need to do is reset your Outlook. It sounds like something got a little a little messed up in there, So can you I'm trying to think of the way the best way to do this. Can you get into a like your settings on that computer? Like do you get any sort of menu at all on Outlook or does it just kind of just spinny kind of thing the whole time?
Well it comes up, I can probably get to the three dots in the upper right course.
Okay, okay, so if you can get to the three dots in the upper right hand corner, I would look for an option to reset outlook. It might be under something like Advanced Options. But that's kind of like what you need to do. It sounds like this thing got stalled or something got corrupted during the What did you upgrade to?
Is it like it was just.
The latest before the end of the support from Windows seven? It was it was like at the very end of December, okay, before the first of January twenty twenty four, they had one apparently one last update that I did, and it was it was legit. I always check to make sure that it's directly from Microsoft, and it just it updated. And then it seems like right after that I had the problem and again I can get to it on my phone.
Yeah. Yeah, So your email is fine.
It just sounds like you've got It's just it sounds like something got a little bit a little bit messed up in transit there. So in your email, what type of email do you use? Like, is it a Gmail or it's.
A hot mail it's an old hotmail account.
Okay, So it's probably hopefully if you can see them on your phone, then your emails are safe. I don't think, because there could be you know, if you reset this app and something, you know, the emails get deleted or everything gets deleted.
There could be a world where those emails are gone.
But it sounds like this is if you're if you're accessing these on the web, then it's probably not downloading the emails to your computer. They're just it's just looking at it through IMAP.
So I yeah, quick question, just quick question.
Now if I have too many emails on that, because I've got quite a few, I don't know, like a lot, But would would that be a problem.
I don't think. I mean, well, it depends or your emails.
Sending and receiving they are on my phone, okay, then then there's no problem with like your storage. I would check your storage limit on UH on hotmail in general? Do you go to outlook dot com.
To check that?
I did not, because I just don't know how to do it, but I can probably figure it out.
Well, how do you check your email? Do you check it by going to hotmail dot com or Outlook dot com?
Outlook on my on my cell phone.
Okay, Yeah, So I would go on oh, the Outlook app. Yeah, okay, so I would. I would go from a What I would is go on your desktop computer, go to go to outlook dot com sign in check to make sure your storage is okay. I don't think that's what's happening here because your phone is working. But I would go and reset the Outlook app on Windows. So go into
the menu, look for something that says to reset. Might be under like Advanced Options or something like that, but it sounds like there's something that's a little corrupt there. But that's what I would do, And once you get that done, you should be able to I'd say, to uninstall the whole app and reinstall it.
That might be your best case scenario.
But I'm not sure that you can do that on a Windows PC because Outlook is part of the system. But if you can do that, if all us fails, you can try to uninstall it and reinstall it there. So thanks for the call, mark and hopefully you get that figured out. Coming up coming up on the show in the next hour, we're gonna have Bob O'Donnell, president and founder at Technolysis Research. He's going to tell you
what you need to know about AIPCS. Plus I'm gonna tell you about a new feature in Google Photos that I am just loving. Plus more of your questions at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
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 website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. If you need a link to something I mentioned, you'll see a big red banner at the top of the website. Tap there and you will get the links in real time to.
What I talk about.
And you can find me on Instagram. I am at rich on Tech. Typically I tell you what I posted this week. Let's see what I posted to Instagram. Oh, actually, some fun stuff. If you live in the LA area or maybe any state that had these, do you remember something called Thomas Guides. These were like maps that you would this was before Google Maps, and you would flip through
these pages to find things on these maps. And so I posted I was going through my phone and I forgot that I recorded this video and it was basically someone was showing me these Google maps, sorry, these Thomas Guide maps that I remember, but I forgot about and so I guess a lot of people forgot about them or remembered them. So that's kind of, you know, going a little bit viral, which is surprising because it's just so silly. Then I was down in Baldwin Park, California,
site of the first In and Out Burger. If you don't live in California, you know In and Out Burger is a huge part of California and probably maybe like the West Coast, but especially LA. It's a quality food at a great price, and the people are always friendly, and it's clean and it's nice. And so I was in Baldwin Park for a story and they have like a little museum of the original In and Out Burger and it was so cool. So I stopped and I recorded some video and I posted that to my Instagram.
And then oh, I did a story on this VO flight training. So they're now using virtual reality to train helicopter pilots and so instead of this giant expensive flight simulator, they use VR, which is more realistic, it's cheaper. And I got into this thing and I was actually I will be honest. I was actually a little bit apprehensive.
I said to the guy before we started it, I said, look if this gets too realistic, because they started me out on a helicopter on top of a building in downtown LA, and I was gonna fly off the building. And I was like, if this gets too realistic, can I just like rip this headset off. He's like, yeah, you'll be fine. It really was realistic. And then last night, I guess there's a lot of burgers this week, we went to something called Burger King whopper World. This was
like a pop up. I don't know these companies do this stuff, but it's just you know, it's like a promotion. I guess Burger King's doing some sort of promotion where you build your own whopper and then someone's gonna win like a million dollars. And so last night they had like a little party. We went to it with the kids. It was a lot of fun. We ate a whopper and it was great. You could put some random toppings on it. But they had one thing that was cool.
They had this like tablet where you can type in the toppings for your whopper, which could be anything you wanted, and they were using AI to generate an image of the Whopper with those toppings. So if you put like gummy bears or sprinkles or chocolate chip cookies, it would make an image of the Whopper with that. And then they printed it out on a T shirt. And so I almost wore my my Burger King T shirt today, but I'm gonna This is in Santa Monica at the Pier,
so it's happening this weekend in Los Angeles. Anyway, Google Maps or sorry, Google Photos, is getting a new feature. It showed up on my phone last night, which means it may show up on your phone any day now. Google Photos, of course, is my favorite photo app, and they now have a feature called stacks. This is something I have been waiting for forever because I take a bunch of pictures. So if someone says, hey, take you know, a picture or whatever, I'm taking pictures of the kids.
I just snapped that picture like a thousand times, because you know, the storage is cheap and you want to make sure you get the shot. But the problem is when you go through your your photos, there's like so many in a row, and it becomes very stressful because you don't want to pick out the best one, because you've got to zoom into everyone's face, make sure it looks all. You know, which one they're smiling, which one
their eyes are open. And so now photo stacks will group similar photos taken together and it will put the best one at the top and it will pick It'll say the best pick or something like that. And so you can, of course see all the other photos. But if you're scrolling through your pictures, instead of seeing seventy
photos or fifteen photos, you'll see one photo. It'll have a little icon that looks like a photo stack, and it'll pick the best one, put that on the top, and then you can tap in and see all.
The other photos if you want to choose a different one.
Anyway, it's rolling out now iOS and Android, Google Photos photo stacks, So now when you see it on your phone, you will be.
Prepped for it.
Let's let's go to Victor in Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places in California.
Victory, you're on with right, Rich, Thanks for taking my call? Yeah quickly, so look we're our email comes through earthlink dot net.
Yeah, I just met the guy who started Earthlink sky Dayton.
He was in.
I literally I said to him, I said, dude, the guy looked like he was young. I said, how old are you a kid when you started this? He's like yeah, he's like twenty something. So I mean, anyway, the guy, he's he's a pilot. He did the VR. He's one of the investors in that VR stuff. Anyway, I remember Earthlink when he started it. But go ahead, I'm glad.
So anyways, Windows ten Mail, we configured it so we're getting Earthlink emails through Windows ten Mail. Everything's working out great, and we're happy. Microsoft is starting to most what's the right word they're rattling sabers. Yeah, got to shut down Windows ten mail. A couple of questions that we have never downloaded Outlook. We've never really needed it. So now we're going to have to Outlook to get Windows in email Earthlink dot Net on Outlook. Is that going to work?
You know?
Yeah, it will work.
So what you're talking about is, you know, so Microsoft used to have what's called the mail app inside Windows and now they're transitioning everyone over to Outlook. And that's you know, it's more of a branded program. It's it's kind of streamlined things, makes it easier because all they have to do is make one program instead of two,
so you don't have to switch just yet. It's going to happen sometime in twenty twenty four towards the end, so there will probably be an option for people to upgrade early to Outlook if you want to, you know, do it early. You can download it and install it and get it all going. But they're not going to force people to do it until towards the end of the year, so you still have time. But yes, Outlook,
I know. It's the thing that's confusing about Outlook is that it's a program, but it's also kind of an email in itself. People have Outlook for work, they have Microsoft Email, and they think that it's only for Microsoft email, But the Outlook program will check email from a variety of email providers, whether that's Google, Gmail, whether that's Yahoo, whether it is Earthlink, whether it is your work email,
whatever it is. Outlook is just an email program that can handle different email addresses, and so no matter what email address you have, you will be able to use it on Outlook within reason. Obviously, there may be some that are not supported, but if you're on Outlook, you could just go into your file and it will say account information and it will say add account, and so you will just add your account by email address. If it recognizes that Earthlink settings, it will automatically do it
all for you. You just put in your username and your password and it will figure everything else out. If it can't figure those out, then just google Earthlink email settings, server settings and it will give you the options of how to type that in and format it. I would use imap over pop three and in general it should automatically figure this stuff out. And this goes by the way for a lot of email apps, whether using Gmail, you can check other email services on these apps. They
are an all in one app. It's really confusing because people know Outlook as email and a program, but it does check other email addresses as well, so no problems there. Victor and Santa Barbara, thanks for the call today. Do appreciate it. Phone number is eighty to eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Uh.
Speaking of the iPhone, there is a new malware going around for the iPhone called gold PICKACS, and apparently this steals your photos, your text messages. It even tries to get your banking info. The good news is this is not completely widespread right now. This is mostly happening to folks in Vietnam and Thailand, but of course because this is now out in the wild, that could change. We
could see it here in the States. The main thing is that this is not going to happen to you if you are using your phone as the average person.
So the way that they install.
This is through an MDM profile, and you may get this for work. It's a MDM stands for Mobile Device Management. This is kind of like a if your work wants to monitor your phone or have certain restrictions on it, they would download this profile to your phone. But that's for very specific use cases, you know, so if your company requires that, talk to your IT folks. But if you're doing this on your own or you're downloading an app outside the app store, your phone is jailbroken. That's
when you are at risk. So if you're just using your iPhone the way that you typically use it, which is turning it on, taking pictures, downloading apps from the app store, you're going to be okay. But we still need to understand that this is possible on the iPhone at this point, it's possible on the Android. Does it happened very often?
No.
This is why Apple has fought really hard to keep the app store and this closed ecosystem because they want to keep this safe. And yes, we've heard of tools that can crack into the iPhone, we've heard of exploits that can take advantage of text messages, but most of the time, average people are pretty safe when using an iPhone, even on Android, very very safe, and in fact, Android added a feature called Android Safe Browsing that you can
actually turn this on. They added something called Live Threat Detection and it's an upgrade. I didn't even know this was available, so I looked at my phone into the settings and sure enough, it's there. So this is what Google is doing to try to keep you safe from some of those links you get and text messages, the phishing links, and all of these different ways people are trying to attack us at this point, malware and phishing links.
So if you want to check this out, go into your settings on your iPhone, Settings and Privacy, more Security, and then look under androids Safe Browsing and there's something called Live Threat Protection. You can turn that on for an extra layer of security on your Android. Of course, I'll link it up on the website. Richon Tech dot tv eight to eight rich one O one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro 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. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech. Thanks for following me there be ready for anything. Rich on Tech dot tv is the website for the show. We'll get to your calls in just a second.
Here.
Coming up on the show, we've got Bob O'Donnell, president and founder at TECHnalysis Research. He's going to talk about aipcs and explain what they are all about. New Windows computers even have an AI key on them. But first Samsung has said yes, we are going to fix some of the issues on the S twenty four series. Now my review, I said that the S twenty four Samsung
Galaxy S twenty four Ultra is nearly perfect. This thing is incredible, but I did notice some issues with the camera, especially in low light and moving shots, and you know a little bit of lag here and there. And this is odd for Samsung to come out and say, yes, we're doing a software update, but I think there was enough feedback that they feel it is necessary to do that. So two things they talked about this week that they're
going to address. Number one is a vividness setting. Some people were saying that the screen on the S twenty four Ultra is not as vivid as the S twenty three or previous models. I disagree with that. I think the screen is absolutely incredible. I don't know why people are saying that. Maybe they I don't know, but they are going to have a new adjustment for vividness. And then the camera, they said they're going to upgrade the zoom,
the portrait mode, low light photography, and video. That's pretty much the whole camera. So I said that this thing needed a camera update. I think that this is an incredible device and it's one that I was using for weeks. I did end up switching back to wait for this software update, but it is. It is still one of my favorite devices of twenty twenty four. So anyway, if you bought an S twenty four Ultra and you're thinking, huh, I thought my camera was better going to be better
than this? It will get better software update is a schedule to start rolling out on February twenty second, but with Samsung those things take a.
Bit, so you may not get it on that day.
So I would just look for it, you know, end of February March something like that.
Let's go to Mark in Woodland Hills. Mark your own with Rich.
Hi.
Rich.
I'm you know, I like to I'm retired, guys. I get to read a lot I love compared to religion, history, political science stuff by a bit of an autodi deck. So often I'll pick a lot of different things. I'll pull the icon down to my desktop so that I can view it later, you know.
You know I had to look up autodidact by the way.
Wow, I'm just I'm just into research and just information for its own sake.
I'm going to define it for in case, you know, some people don't know. But it's a self taught person. Did you know that, Bobo? Yeah, see Bobo shaking and said I didn't know that. Okay, keep going.
That's what you get for going to college. You never want to stop. But what I do is I've been pulling these icons off of a website, you know, pulling it down near the the address bar, that little symbol, and then I'll click it later and I'll go through whatever information they have for me and and then move on. Unfortunately, for months now, almost a year, I've tried to delete two of these icons and they just won't leave. And I don't want, you know, I have so many nuanced
information and whatnot on my computer. The last thing I want to do is a factory reset. Right, yeah, so these to Twitter. I'm not even a I'm not a twitiot, but I but I do occasionally find myself going to something there that's preferred. So these two Twitter icons will not delete. I've tried everything. It just won't come off, you know, sort of doing a reset, which I really would loath they have to do. I was hoping you could give me a suggestion on that.
Okay, So just to understand, so you've dragged these these URL links to your taskbar. Is this on Windows?
No, it's to the desktop itself. I keep almost everything on the desktop, okay, yeah, I'm doing folders and files and stuff like that.
And so you drag these to the desktop and you can't just right click and say delete.
No, sir, they will not leave.
Oh wow, Okay, Yeah, it's just the.
Most bizarre thing I've ever seen. You know, I've got to go through thousands of these every year.
I mean literally, what if you drag them to the to the trash.
That doesn't work?
They know, sir, it won't. It won't either, you know, the rubbish span I call it. It basically will not. You can drag it, but it won't do a bloody thing, or just sit there and it reac no way whatsoever.
Well, I am sure there is some way to get rid of these. Those are the two methods that I know. The only other thing I can think of are these with your web browser? Like these are from your web browser that you're.
Using, Yes, Firefox, almost exasively. I have a whole bunch of browsers actually down below the Brave you know, Tusk and stuff like that. But I just an opera for instance. But most of the time I'm using Firefox.
Okay, so there's probably I'm looking at a I'm looking at a website that says there is some sort of folder that we'll have this in there, Like are using Windows eleven.
I believe I am.
You know, well, so this is saying and this is just a quick you know shortcut, kind of shortcut keeps reappearing, and it says that they're in a folder on your desktop. It says, see user's public desktop or this pc C user's public public desktop. I'm just gonna take me too long to try to navigate there on my computer. But I would try to look there. And if it said, Okay, I'm looking at my users, and I'm looking at my public and.
Let's see desktop.
I don't see my desktop, so I don't see it in there, users desktop, public desktop. I don't see a public desktop online. Interesting, But I would look in there. Oh, here we go, desktop? Is it in here? So I would look on there and see if you can find it in there and delete them from that folder.
Okay, I guess you'll be placing that online.
Yeah, I'll put that link online so you can see. But the other thing I would do is have you tried clearing like your history on Firefox, like clearing everything? Yeah, and that doesn't work either. I think this may work. It looks like it looks like this. This may work for you, So I would look for this. I'll put this link on the website. Rich on tech dot tv in the show notes. But I want to hear if this works, because this is a this is a tricky one.
I'll just I'll blame put Okay.
We could just we can just blame people for everything. But I think that's uh, that's that's a new one. Wow, how did Okay? This reminds me of the story I told at the beginning of the show. It's like, you gotta you gotta figure out you gotta just keep trying to figure out how to get this thing gone from the computer. All right, thanks for the call, appreciate the call. Today, let's see how long do we have? Thirty oh, thirty seconds? Okay, well,
I can't do that. I will tease our next guest then, Bob O'Donnell, president, founder and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. He's gonna explain what aipcs are all about. And Bob used to host a version of this show, or a very similar one, so I'm curious to talk to him about that. 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. Joining me now is Bob O'Donnell a person that I often see out and about at the various tech events that I attend, whether it's Apple or Samsung or something in between. He's the president, founder, and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
Bob, thanks so much for joining me today.
Hey Rich, Thanks happy to be there.
So let's start with a little bit of your history. So you actually hosted a show It may even be like a version of this show back in the day.
Explain did I did.
I'm an og tech talk show host. So yeah, from ninety seven to two thousand and seven, I ran a show called O'Donnell on Computers, and then it became O'Donnell on Technology because of course the world expanded, and I actually took over from Leo Laporte, who was one of the original OGOG radio hosts. Leo does, of course, This Week in Tech and Gina Smith also had a radio show and I would fill in for them occasionally that
I took over for Leo's show. He was on for about a year and a half and I ran it for over ten in an ABC affiliate up in San Francisco. It was a lot of fun, so it's so much fun to come back on the radio.
Yeah, and so what were people asking from ninety seven to two thousand and seven, because I, you know, I just got a question about you know, URL's shortcuts not being able to delete on the desktop on Windows? Will Earthlink work with my email? What kind of questions? Were people just asking the same stuff they were?
I'm telling you, it's it's crazy that, you know, a lot of the issues are very similar still. I mean, thank god the technology has gotten a little bit easier to use, but it's also gotten more complex. It can do more, so there's more things to kind of tear apart. But you know, a lot of it would be those kinds of things. And you know how many times have you told people, well you might want to reboot?
Yeah, I told you that. I had to say, you know, like restart out look. You know, like it's just little things that And it's funny because a lot of times it is very simple. And I get a lot of emails from people that you know, are asking for help, and sometimes if it's something that's very simple, I might wait a date respond and then I'll respond and say is this still happening? And nine times out of ten it's not right?
Yeah, No, exactly, but you know what, people need to be kind of walked through it. And one of the challenges I think that we have with tech these days is there's not enough contextual explanations. Even if people are the type that read owner's mantles and one have you, you just don't get enough of sort of the context
around it and the principles involved. And one of the one of the things I always used to like to try and do, and I'm sure you do as well, is you kind of explain the principles involved, like teaching them how to fish, not just to get one fish, but what are the principal boles involved with doing something, And that's how you work through some of these problems. And as people start to learn those principles, they can start doing some more of that troubleshooting on their own.
Yeah, that that is typically what I'll try to do, is say, here's here's the steps that I would take to because I'm not there with their computer or their phone exactly, here's the steps I would take to try to figure out what's going on. Like first off, you know, restart, delete, whatever. Okay, So it's good to know that even in what was that twenty years ago, thirty years ago. It's all it's
all the same stuff. It's just newer technology and different technology. Indeed, so you're you're talking about aipcs today is what's an AIPC?
What does that mean?
Well, it's a great question, Britch. And you know, here's the thing. You're going to hear a lot about aipcs over the next year to two years, in particular from all the big PC vendors, from the big chip companies like Intel and am D and Nvidio and Pulcom and what have you. I mean, look, at the end of the day, you know, AIPC very simply is a PC that has some special sauce in it that allows it
to run certain AI applications a little faster. And so most people are focused on this notion of adding a new type of a chip called an NPU or neural processing unit, and an NPU is a different type of accelerator than a GPU, being you know, GPU's graphics processing unit. So NPU kind of marks the beginning of the AIPC era, and AMD actually was first to market. They had a chip last year, the seventy forty, the rise in seventy forty that had it now they have an updated version
of the eighty forty. Intel just came out with their media link that's the Ultra Core Ultra CPU. And then Qualcomm has already announced that they will have a chip it'll be coming out toward the middle of the year that will have an NPU as well. And of course, by the way, smartphones all have NPUs, they're just smaller and not quite as powerful as the ones we're going to start to see in PCs. So then what we're
going to see basically is just as we saw. GPUs Initially were a element that you you know, had to be done separately. Eventually, then GPUs were built into every single uh CPU and main chip inside a PC, and if you wanted to, you could add a dedicated one, like if you're a gamer, of course, you buy a
fancy GPU. So what's going to happen early on with NPUs is initially only a few systems will have them, and then over time every system will have it, and eventually I think we'll see dedicated npush to to accelerate things. And so basically, long win answer to a short question, sorry, but it's it's that addition of the NPU that sort of turns it into an AIPC. Then it becomes a question of degree, and we can get into that in a second.
Well I'm curious, So you know, if people are already saying, well, I'm already using Chat, GPT or Microsoft Copilot or you know, Claude or any of these other AI tools out there, I don't. I don't think I have an MPU on my computer or you know this AI chip? Do I need this?
Like? Why do I need this?
Oh?
It's a great question, and initially it is very confusing because most of the AI stuff that we are doing now Chat, GPT, if you started to use the Office Copilot with Microsoft and all these other capabilities, Dolly and all of these AI based things, they're all being done in the cloud. The idea with an AIPC is that some of that processing can happen locally on the device.
The benefits down the road, in particular being things like privacy, things like security because you're doing it all within your own device, and also speed because you don't have to do round trips back and forth to the cloud every single time that you're doing it. So that's what we're going to start to see happen in the meantime, what we're also going to see is what I call hybrid AI, and that means some of it happens on the PC and some of it happens in the cloud, and again
that will speed up the performance. In theory, it will allow you to do run certain things on just your data. So imagine an example like this. So let's say you're somebody who you know like me, I've written probably a thousand articles over the years. I have this cash of content that I've created, and I would love sort of the chat GPT type tool that actually only derived its new content based on what I did. Now you could
do that with your own photos, et cetera. That's the perfect application for something like an AIPC because you're going to want to have it run locally and you know, and use your own data. Now, to be fair, that doesn't exist quite yet, but we're getting very close and we're going to start to see some of those sorts of applications go out there. So you know, do I need to have an AIPC now to your back to your original question, No, but am I going to start
to see some of these benefits? Yes, eventually you will, and over time there's gonna be more and more of these things.
You know.
It's it's a truism in the PC business that hardware comes before the software, right, So you're gonna get the hardware, and then the software eventually is gonna come along.
So, you know, I actually saw your you're mentioning that with like your you know, you build your own chat GBT kind of thing, like your own chat I guess we should call it a chat bot or chat ai. But in Nvidia did like a demo you can download you know, this app to your computer. And I actually did this with my radio show with chat GBT. So I was taking my transcripts, putting them into a custom chat g ebte and then I could type in and say what did Rich say about this?
And it would actually answer like what I said on the show.
And this is cool, and this is going to be very handy for let's say, right now, let's say you have Google Drive, right, You've got or all these documents on your computer. You know, you've searched for a keyword in those documents, but maybe in the future you might search for like, hey, what's the deal summarize my trip to you know, Amsterdam next week? And it'll give you all the information across like all those different things there. So the bottom line, I've got two minutes here, Bob.
You know we see this aikey on the keyboard on the Windows computer.
Is there gonna be a lot of marketing.
We're going to see surrounding these aipcs and do we need one right away?
There's gonna be a ton of marketing, and it's very confusing because you know, like the Nvidia example we talked about actually uses a GPU and not an NPU, so that is also going to get thrown into it because some of these AI applications, like some of the things Adobe's working on, are also going to use a more powerful GPU. So short answer is you don't need one now, but if you are a future looking person and you
want to be prepared, it's good to get one. The thing to be aware of, don't forget that, as with any other technology, the first version is going to be decent and then later versions, of course, are going to be much better. So you also have to decide do I want to dive in first or do I want to kind of wait a little bit and see what happens. And that's completely up to the individual in terms of they want to be on the cutting edge or they want to kind of wait a little bit.
And just finally, AI in general, how impressed are you with all this stuff we're seeing.
It's it's coming fast and curious.
It's amazing. You know, I've I've been in the tech industry. You know, obviously I age myself with how old my radio show is, but you know, I've been tracking this stuff for a long time and I have never seen anything like the pace of development in AI. It's absolutely incredible, and you know, some of the stuff that's starting to
do is great. I mean, it doesn't do everything everybody thinks, and there is some you know, level of disappointment some people have after a little bit, but the stuff that's being worked on and some of the things are starting to happen. The new video tool that open AI just introduced is amazing. I mean just you know, it's explosive and it's really going to change everything. And that's why aipcs become a really interesting topic.
All right, Bob, what's the best way folks can follow you?
They can I'm on Twitter at babo d tech bo bod E T E C h on LinkedIn It just Babo Donald and the tech analysis Research dot Com. It's kind of hard too.
And that's all right.
We'll find you on Twitter. Thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it, bab o'donald uh eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
More show after this.
Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to Johnny in Hacienda Heights, California. Johnny, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, I was a wondering if you would be able to answer this. It's I len't know about my one password because you did the article on on on the on the joannistin thing where and wondering as you switched back to the regular one password, I mean the regular Apple password.
Oh from one password? Yes, okay, so you want to switch back? Okay, So you're paying for one password or we're using the free version? Is there a free version of.
Yeah? Exactly. So here's the thing.
Here's my recommendation on in general, I like third party software because you are not tied to any one system in particular. So if you want to switch right now, you're saying you want to go to the Apple password manager. I believe they call it Apple Keychain, So you know, that's great if you're using Apple devices, But what if you want to switch to a different device. You know, you want to go to a different browser, or a
different computer, or a different phone, Android, whatever. Now, Apple did come out with an extension for Windows which lets you use iCloud keychain, so that is a nice step in the right direction, but I still don't believe you could use it on Android, which would be a problem if you ever switched Android. But that's why I always like third party independent apps. So on the flip side,
you're saying that one password. You know you like the idea that the Apple keychain is included, right, it's free, it's part of just Apple and all that stuff, and one password. You're gonna have to pay for this to use it, and most of the password managers work that way, where if you want to use it across different devices, you have to pay.
Some are more expensive than others.
So my recommendation is if you are only going to use Apple devices, and you're sticking to the iPhone and the iPad and a Mac computer, go ahead and safari whatever.
It's going to be just fine.
If you are using a combination of devices, then I would think about using a third part password manager. Now there are some password managers I like that are free and do work across various devices. And the first one is called bitwarden. So if you want a free alternative, check out bitwarden, b T war d e N and bitwarden is. They have a free level of service. It's open source, so it's trusted and it's a great little program if you want to just use a free password manager.
The other one is actually Google Password Manager. So what Google did is they started with their password manager working in Chrome, but now they've expanded it where you can actually use it as an auto fill service on the iPhone. And that's that's also free and it's pretty easy to use. That's called Google Password Manager. So those are some options.
Again in general, if you're only using Apple products and you never planned to switch, I like, you know, I don't typically recommend using that, but it's easy, it's.
Build and go ahead.
But if you want to step it up a notch, and go third party and you don't want to pay, then I like Bitwarden or Google Password Manager, but I do think some of these third party password managers, like one password and also dash Lane, they are really good, but they are expensive and especially over time, they do get quite expensive. So great question, Johnny, and ultimately it is up to you what you want to do. Thank
you for the call. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one. Let me a couple things of notes here. Verizon making a big change to its auto pay discount. So all of the cellular carriers have been forcing their customers to use auto pay if they want to get the best rate every month, which I don't like, but we have to do it because it's it's like ten dollars savings a month, that's one hundred and twenty dollars a year.
So typically they required you to be on on a debit card or a bank account because those are cheaper to process than a credit card. Well, now Verizon is taking it up a notch. They're going to require a bank account or their own Verizon Visa card, which I wouldn't recommend getting, but you know that's an option, but if you want to have the biggest discount, which is ten dollars a month on autopay, you will now require
a bank account or the Verizon Visa card. You used to be able to use the debit card and get that discount as well. If you're on Verizon autopay with the debit card, they will continue to honor that discount.
So no changes.
If you're like, wait, Rich, I have my debit card with Verizon because I switched a couple of years ago for my credit card to get this discount, yes, you can still leave that as of right now. We don't know if that'll change in the future. This change for new customers already took effect, so if you are a new customer on Verizon you don't have autopay set up and you go to set it up, you will need to use your bank account to get that big discount.
T Mobile and AT and T have made similar changes, and it's just, you know, it's just one of those things that I don't agree with.
I don't like when companies.
Have access to auto pay, especially on a service that is not a fixed cost Sure, Netflix, Hbo, Max, Disney Plus. I don't mind auto pay on those services. I do mind when it's on things like bills that change, because what do they do. They like to surprise you and they've already taken your money and now it's up to you to figure out how to get around that surprise. Oh my bill is like one hundred bucks extra this month,
Well they're taking out that payment no matter what. And Google has a new feature, talk to a Live rep. This brings basically a great feature they've had on Pixel for a while called hold to Me to all search users. So now when you search for an eight hundred number from a company, you may see an icon that says you can talk to a live representative, and it will give you an option to put in your phone number and they will call you when a representative is ready.
So this works with major airlines, Delta, American Airlines, Verizon, t Mobile, Walmart, Best Buy, Ups, grub Hub, State Harm, State Farm, and Geico. If you call one of those you search for that number on you Google, you might see an option to say, hey, have Google hold on. Be it hold for you and call you when the rep is ready. It's kind of a cool feature, reminds me of get human dot com. You are listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here kicking off another hour of the show for you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know, I was thinking today. I usually take a run before the show and I do a lot of thinking during that time, and I was thinking about you as the listener. So the fact that you are listening to this show, I feel like you are doing something really good for yourself.
You know, we do so many things for other people, right We're always demanding, you know, people are always demanding our time, They're demanding our energy, our efforts, and we have to make our own efforts to do things for us. And so by tuning into this show and listening to me and hearing about this stuff that's going on in the tech world, I think you're doing something pretty smart.
So I do appreciate that.
I always think of you when I'm coming up with the stories I talk about, or the stories I tell, or the news tidbits or the things I post to social media. It is all really to help you take control of all this tech that's in our lives, because there's so much of it. And yeah, we can get in the weeds here, we can get really techy and nerdy. But I think that this show is best for someone who just wants to keep up with this stuff and feel smart and understand it. And so thank you for
tuning in. That's basically all I'm trying to say. Rich on tech dot tv is the website. You can follow me on social media at rich on tech and the phone line for the show is triple eight rich one oh one. That's eighty eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. By the way, if you ever want to come up with a solution to a problem, there's two things you could do. You can either wells three things you could or come up with an idea. You could take a shower, you could go to sleep,
or you can take a run. Those are like the three things that like every single time I do those, it's like, oh wait, I need to write this down because things just come to you.
Let's go to.
Michelle is in mission Viajo. Michelle, you're on with rich I just.
Have a question. I'm one of those non techy persons. Yes, I just bought a car that does not have a ZV player. I'm an avid book on tape kind of girl, And I want to know if there's a product out there that has at least some quality to it that can attach to bluetooth so I can listen to it at home and in my car.
Any suggestions, MM, So you have you have CDs with books on tape?
Yes, and my new car doesn't have a CD player, nor do I have a CD player at home?
Okay, oh, okay, So I would love.
To have it attached somehow like a portable. I've seen them on Amazon, but I don't know if they're any good quality, if they skip in the car, or if there's anything else out there that I hadn't thought of.
Well, I mean, the number one thing I would think that would be easiest is to rip the CD to a file that you can put on your phone, and then you can use the bluetooth from your phone to do that. So that would be one way to do it.
Now.
The audiobook should probably be pretty simple to do that. The only problem with that is that this is, you know, audiobooks usually have a lot of chapters, so it could be a little bit tricky to do that, and then you have to transfer it to your do you have
an iPhone or an Android iPhone. Okay, so there's a there's a really easy app that I like for transferring things to iPhone, which is called Walter w A L t R. But you said you're non techie, so I just don't know if that route is gonna be the easiest for you, because you're gonna you know, you've got to first off, rip the the album. It used to be really easy with iTunes. I don't know if it's that easy anymore. It used to be, you know, you pop your the DV the CD in your computer and
you know rip. The problem is most of us don't even have a CD player anymore, like you said, And does your computer have a CD drive? Yes, oh it does, okay.
And are you on Windows or Mac?
Mac?
Oh you are on Mac? Okay, okay.
Well in that case, I mean, if you do have that, that might actually be a pretty easy thing to do. So what you do is you would rip the the audio book to your computer. And rip means it basically transfers the file from the audio CD to your computer as an MP three. And you know, there's a couple of programs that can do that. I'm trying to think of one that I haven't used this in so long that I gotta I gotta think of one to do.
But once you get that done, you can then use this Walter program to drag and drop onto your iPhone. And that's pretty simple, uh, because it's just a Dragon drop. So that's that's probably the easiest way to do it. I think that that would work better. I'm looking at Amazon at the CD players and I see one, and I'm sure you saw this one on there.
It's the Yeah.
This one's about forty seven bucks, the Ara FUNA, and it says portable CD player with Bluetooth with FM radio. It's rechargeable, and it's got anti shock protection, and it's got an OX cable.
Does your phone have does your car have an OX port?
Yes?
I believe that.
Okay, so I would probably go with that. I mean, the Bluetooth or do.
You think they're good quality?
I mean, I think it's probably fine. I don't think it's gonna I mean, look, you're you're talking forty six dollars here. I would probably try that first because it's going to be the absolute easiest way to do this.
So I would order this from Amazon.
Obviously, you can return it if it doesn't work, but I would order it from Amazon. Put the CD player, put the CD in it. I don't know where you're gonna put this or you're going to keep it like on the seat next to you. Like that's the tricky part. When I was you know, when I was growing Okay, well then you could do that. When I was growing up, I had a CD player in my car. This was before you know they were installed in the car going
back aways. And I use some double stick like velcrow to like velcrow the CD player to the center console, so you can do that. You can vel crow it somewhere. But I think that's.
Well then that way, I use it at home and just plug it into one of my other speakers, like you know, a portable speaker and have it played throughout the house.
Yeah.
And if it's also if it's if it's Bluetooth, you can use it with a Bluetooth speaker as well.
I mean you could.
Look, I would. I would start with this little CD player on Amazon. See what it does. It's got Bluetooth built in that means you don't need any wires. It has a battery built in, which means you don't even have to you know, you charge it at home, you bring it into your car. You've got the CD in there, and now you can just press play connected to the Bluetooth on your car and if it sounds great, if it's if it's good.
Done.
It's a very simple solution to a kind of a complex problem. But if it doesn't sound good, you can return it and then you can go the route where you put this stuff on your phone.
But I think that's a little bit too complicated for right now.
Okay, thank you so much.
I appreciate all right, Michelle, go to the website rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact once you do all this and let me know. I want an update so I can see if this is going to work right. Thanks a lot for the call. Appreciate that. Let's see super Bowl. Hard to believe it was just last weekend. It feels like it was an eternity ago. It was a big, big Super Bowl. We had a lot of fun in my house watching it. We had a couple of people over. I told you I upgraded my TV, so we had a great time.
The TV.
The four K on YouTube TV looked incredible. One hundred and twenty three point four million viewers, across CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision, and NFL plus. This was this was the second most viewed item in history after the moon landing in nineteen sixty nine. How did more people watch that back in nineteen sixty nine? That doesn't make sense, right, but I guess yeah, people were just glued to their TV. Was there one hundred and twenty three million TVs like in
the US back then? That's seems weird. But anyway, last year's Super Bowl was one hundred and fifteen million. One hundred and twenty million who watched on CBS alone, is the largest single audience ever for a network. Oh interesting, So they just revealed how many people were streaming versus CBS. So only about three million on streaming three point five million. Let's see, Kansas City Chiefs have played in and won two of the most watched Super Bowls ever. I know
that's a sore spot for some of you. Call screen er Kim sorry, I know she's a big forty nine Ers fan.
Let's see.
Among the ten most watched super Bowl, CBS now has three of them. Why did people watch this Super Bowl? Why do you think the Chiefs? You know, it was a big deal for them, but also Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift call it the Taylor Swift effect. Look you got yeah, Usher, I mean, look, you got a lot of things going on here. It was a very it was a very safe super Bowl. Let's put it that way. You had a great halftime show with a proven talent, You had two great teams that were, you know, proven
that people love. And you had the third element, which was this whole Travis Kelce Taylor Swift relationship. And also I would argue that they made it easy to watch this year because in years past it's been a little tricky to figure out, like where's it streaming, what's it doing? Like they got it. They got it down this year.
So again new record for the Super Bowl. I know I was watching up until you know the last second of overtime, which is also wild eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You can follow me on the website or on social media. It is at rich on Tech coming up. Amazon forgot to mention something when they said you have to pay three dollars a month to get rid of ads.
They also took something else away.
I'll tell you what they took away, and Voodoo is getting a new name. I'll tell you what that is. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. We've got coming up on the show. Jared Newman of Advisorator. He is a friend of the show, been on many times.
In fact, you crashed his website the first time he was on because you liked what he had to say so much. So he's got some great stuff. He's going to talk about what to do if you are running out of iCloud store bage. He writes a great newsletter. He was telling a story about this the other day, and I think he has some good information to share. Let's talk Roku. Roku now has over eighty million active users.
That is quite a milestone for them. They said that people streamed over one hundred billion hours on Roku in twenty twenty three. On average, each Roku account streamed four point one hours per day in the last quarter. Roku now has more active accounts in the US than the number of subscribers to the sixth biggest traditional cable and satellite TV providers combined. Why is this a big deal? Roku makes money off of ads, and the more people they have that are using Roku, the more data they
have to sell. So we talked about this last week on the show how TV Manufacturers. You know, they look at what you're watching on the TV and they use that data to sell to sell ads against it, and that's exactly what Roku does. And Roku actually takes it a step further. They get a little bit of ad time from some of these streaming properties as well, so they've got a pretty decent business going. But the more
that they you know, you love Roku. Actually it's funny because you know, I told that story about my mom switching from her TV, like her firestick went out and so she had to switch to the Roku that was built into the TV. And I talked to her last week and I said, or this week and I said, hey, Mom, how you know how you like in the system the set up? She goes, I actually like Roku better than fire TV. I said, what she said, Yeah, I hate to say that, but I said, well, why do you
hate to say? I mean, it's not that big of a deal, but why do you like it better? And she said, I don't know. It's just easier. She goes and they have all this content on there for free. She said, so she can I can click news and there's a whole bunch of news stuff I can watch. And I said, that's interesting because the free streaming services
are the fastest growing right now. People like free And so the fact that she can just go in there and fire TV has a free area as well, maybe she didn't find it, but it's interesting that she picked up on that with Roku. So and I have no problem with Roku or fire TV or Apple TV. I will say at this point, I think Apple TV is the only one that's not hijacking the home screen for ads.
And also I don't believe that they sell any.
Any of your data for ads like fireTV does or Roku. And is there another one out there? Oh, Google TV? Yeah, I'm sure Google is, because it's Google.
Uh.
Voodoo is gonna rebrand a get a rebranding as Fandango at Home. So Voodo Voodoo announced this on their social media networks this week. Fandango purchased Voodoo in twenty twenty from Walmart, and so that's pretty much it. That's what's changing. But you will have the option to link your Fandango account if you have one. But not much more to report there except that Voodoo will become Fandango at Home.
Now, a little history on Voodoo.
By the way, I was one of the first people to cover Voodoo when it first launched. So the way Voodoo launched, this was a startup before it was purchased by Walmart and before it was purchased by Fandango, which I believe is owned by NBC Universal. Voodoo was a startup and their little magic sauce was that they would give you this or you'd buy this box.
It was a Voodoo box.
And what they would do is, since internet was really slow back then, they would actually download a portion of the popular movies to the box, so they were sitting on the box.
Now.
I know this seems so weird now because streaming you just get everything on demand, But back in the day, when Internet was really slow and we were just going from dial up connections to DSL and not everyone had a really fast Internet connection. So they would basically look
at what people were watching. So if you know, the new Mission Impossible movie was really popular, they would download the first couple of minutes of that movie in the background, so like overnight, and while you weren't watching anything, they would download a portion of this movie so that when you went to play that movie, it would start really fast. And now, of course this seems so silly because you can access anything you want in the world and it
will start really fast. But back when we didn't have super high speed internet, this made a difference, and so it was it was a really revolutionary idea at the time, but it kind of was an in between technology because
now we don't need that. And of course when Netflix came along, their whole thing was that they figured out a way to start streaming really quickly on any connection speed almost and so that's really what Netflix does very well, is that they have a lot of technologies surrounding fast start of movies. You know, no matter what your connection looks like. Now all of this has become kind of
a moot point because our connections are so fast. But back in the day, these were real challenges because to watch a full movie like it just it was trickier than.
It is today. Now it's obviously very easy.
And Amazon has quietly removed support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmost from their ad supported tier of Prime Video without telling customers. So remember this whole thing where Amazon said, oh, now we're putting commercials in our programming on Prime Video unless you pay an extra three dollars a month for our ad free tier, which is kind of annoying to begin with. Well, now some of these I think it was Ours Technica that figured out that they also took
away this Dolbie Vision and Dolby Atmost support. Why well, it all comes down to money, because when these companies like Amazon put Dolby Vision in Dolby Atmost support on their movie and TV shows, they have to pay a licensing fee. And so by taking this away from their basic free which I call it the free tier, even though people are paying for Amazon Prime, but it is now their free tier of Amazon Prime Video, they that is a lot of people, you know, two hundred million people.
Let's say that now they don't have to pay for this licensing for Dolby Vision and Dolby Autmost. So very sneaky, sneaky, but that's what Amazon did. So if you really like your high quality video and audio, and Dolby Utmost, by the way, is spatial audio. So audio typically when you think about surround sound is kind of like left and right and center. A Dolby Utmost is kind of above you, so it's like the audio that happens above, So you're
losing that channel basically, So sneaky. I don't like when companies do stuff they make a big deal about it and they don't say anything about what they're really doing.
That's what Amazon did. That's the like that.
All right, coming up, Jared Newman is going to talk about how to free up iCloud storage or what to do if you're out of it. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro 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 talking evs. Went
to the Chicago Auto Show last week. Obviously a lot of evs there, But what's happening with EV's in the US registrations In twenty twenty three, Tesla of course dominated, but Rivian and Hyundai catching on. So a lot of people are saying that electric car sales are falling. That's not necessarily true. According to the latest data, ev registrations were up twenty three percent in December and up fifty two percent for the full year. Tesla led the market
with fifty six percent share. They had six hundred and forty two thousand plus registrations, mostly thanks to the Model Y and then Ford edged out GM for second place, but smaller brands like Hyundai and Rivian saw a lot of growth. Hunday fourth with fifty and eleven registrations, driven by the Ionic five to six and the Kona Electric, and Rivian was in fifth place with four percent share they sold. I guess they had forty six thousand registrations.
I'm seeing a lot.
I mean, at least in LA, A lot of the Mercedes electric cars like that is like they are everywhere. And Rivian's going to unveil a new R two, which is their lower cost suv, very soon, so we're going to see that coming up on I think it was March seventh. Joining me now Jared Newman. He is a writer of Advisorator. This is a great newsletter if you are not subscribed highly recked amend you subscribe to it.
Jared, Are you there?
Yeah, thank thanks for having me.
Welcome to the show. How you doing today, I'm doing great? What do you do? What's Tell me?
What Advisorator is all about? What is that newsletter all about?
It's my weekly tech advice newsletter I started at about five years ago, just kind of all the stuff where when I tell my non nerdy friends about the things you can do with technology and they're like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. I was like, well, let me start a newsletter where I can actually tell people all the things they didn't realize they could do or need to know about.
So it is really interesting the stuff that when you cover technology or you're kind of in the thick of it every day like I am and you are. There is so much knowledge that you take for granted that when you're at a party or you're just out with friends and you say something and they're like, wait what, and you're like you didn't know that? And I, you know, not in a judging way, but just in a wait what Like these things that you just take for granted that everyone knows and they don't.
Yeah, some of my some of My most popular newsletters are the ones where I'm not even sure if I should write them because I'm like, wait, does everybody know this already? And I'm just going to be telling people what they already know. And then it turns out the answer is no. So yeah, including you know this thing about iCloud.
Yeah, so explain what happened with the iCloud situation. So you your your newsletter this week says how to handle iCloud storage, and something happened with your wife, so explain.
She sent me.
She forwarded me an email from Apple that said your iCloud storage is full, and was like, do I need to do anything about this? And then I looked at my iCloud storage and it turns out that my iCloud storage was also almost full. So it kind of sneaks up on you.
And so what what did you decide?
I mean, did you just say, okay, let me tap to expand my storage for another couple bucks a month, or what did you decide to do?
No?
And the reason is, you know, the thing that really uses a ton of iCloud storages of course, photos and videos. I already knew that in our case, we were we were using Google Photos primarily as our cloud photo storage. I also use one drive as like another backup, and I keep photos on my computer, so I don't need neither of us need iCloud to handle our photos. So sure enough, when I looked at my wife's phone and looked at my phone, a huge chunk of that storage
was just iCloud photos had been turned on. I don't even remember how it got turned on my end. I might have been testing something something, But yeah, in both cases, it was like three to four of the five complimentary gigabytes you get was being occupied by photos.
But here's the thing, and I'm sure you saw this.
When you went to turn it off, you got that big scary message that says, are you sure you want to turn off and delete all your pictures?
Yes?
Exactly, because you know, to be fair, if you are relying on iCloud photos, or you hadn't thought about photo backups and you're just doing to your point earlier, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of folks that just just assume that their photos are being backed up and aren't really thinking about it too much, and they just assume Apple is handling everything for them, which they very melt very well might be, and so uh yeah, you do kind of need to exercise some caution there and know
what you're doing before you turn that off. But if you if you know that you have another backup solution in place, then it's not really a big deal that you click that button.
Now, a lot of.
People are confused about the photos on your Like if you're using iCloud for your photos, your iPhone is a mirror of the cloud, So if you delete a picture on your phone, it's going to go away in I cloud.
Some people don't realize that.
Yeah, that's true, and it gets into tricky territory because there's that whole thing of is your phone having all of the photos they're in I cloud versus you know, the default is that Apple will delete some photos off of your phone to make room on your phone, but keep them an eyecloud and so but the library, the photos app still shows everything that's in that eCloud. So it leads to some confusion about what's being stored ware and what happens when you actually delete something.
And this is why I like Google Photos because I know, basically I think of Google Photos as a vacuum. Once the photo gets sucked up into the cloud of Google Photos. It's not going anywhere because I can delete things on my phone. If I'm not deleting them through Google Photos, they're not going to be deleted.
Yeah, it's a different philosophy. Like in my mind, I like that, you know, it's not my camera role. Like my camera roll is whatever happens to it happens, and Google Photos is like this other repository where yeah, everything's on there. And so even if something happens in my phone and my camera roll is obliterated or I delete everything off my camera roll, it's still in Google Photos and it's not actually syncing back and forth that way.
Lets some people prefer it the other way, where it's just that one library that's being managed through the default photo album on the iPhone.
Now, my kids take giant videos on the iPads. They let it roll for like an hour, and I have a two terabyte storage on my iCloud, and I'm not kidding, it's all taken up and I have no idea what's
taking it up except their stuff. And I tell them, I'm like, kids, you got to go through and like delete a couple of these big you know, they'll literally set like the iPad on their windowsill and record outside as like a security quote unquote camera just for fun, and it'll be like a giant, giant file that they'll never delete. So what anyway, what's your takeaway? What's your guidance for iCloud, Like, what do people need to know?
Well, one thing, we you know, we haven't talked about the whole iCloud. This is interesting to me because I learned it in the course of researching as they haven't realized that the iCloud Photos versus iCloud backup. So even if you turn off iCloud Photos, there's still the separate iCloud backup, which is taking everything that's on your phone
and uploading it to the cloud. And if you turn off iCloud photos, every photo that's on your phone still in the camera roll will still be included in that backup. So even if you are using Google Photos and then you take that extra step to turn off iCloud Photos, you're still burning through all your iCloud storage space on a separate backup, and then you have to go in and take another step in say exclude my photos from the back up.
Oh, that's interesting.
This whole rabbit hole you can go down. And there's also the other wrinkle to consider is I message, you know, because I never really thought of it, like you'd want a permanent history of all your messages, but I think a lot of people do, and that ends up eating up a lot of storage just by virtue of all the photos and videos that you're sharing back and forth.
Oh my gosh, see iCloud, the iCloud like messages in the cloud really takes up a lot. Like I think I'm up to like six gigabytes of storage just to my I message, which I don't understand. Why does I message take up so much storage?
Because everybody's sending photos and videos and all that's part of your history that you're that you're backing up there. And you know, I think it didn't used to be the case that we were so used to communicating that way, but that's how we do it now. And so if you if you want to have that full history and you don't want to create offline backups on a macro PC of your uh, you know, your whole iPhoto history then or iPhone history, then you just gonna have to pay the price.
I guess one thing that I always recommend people don't realize, and now it actually Google has got Apple has gotten hip to this, because I'm looking at my recommendations for my iCloud storage and it does say to delete inactive backups. A lot of times. If you upgrade your iPhone, it's keeping the old backup of your old iPhone and your new backup of your new iPhone, which is basically almost like a yeah, so that's interesting.
I don't I don't think I had that, but when I looked on my iPhone, I saw there was, you know, in the iCloud backup section it set iPhone, but then I think it would list other devices that you had also been backing up there. So yeah, it kind of helps to think of like iCloud backup is a backup of the device, just what's on the device, and then iCloud, whether it's messages in iCloud or iCloud photos, is sort of like all the data from all your devices being sucked up into this big repository.
So, Jared, you cover this stuff for a living. Is this confusing?
Yes?
And that's why it's so you know, they make it very easy. It's only a dollar a month to add that whatever it is fifty gigabytes. So you know that's how it starts, right, you say, that's just a dollar a month, Why don't I. I'll just do this and then I don't have to think about it, and now you're in, right, and then it becomes three dollars a month once you need a little more storage. And then you're like, well, I guess I can do Apple one. Since I'm already paying for this, I'll just add this
other stuff. And now they got you and you're you're in the Apple ecosystem forever. So just be mindful of those things, I guess, and know the choices that you have.
And by the way, a dollar a month, there's like over a billion iPhone users in the world, so a dollar a month times let's say just half of them are using iCloud, that's a lot of money. And this is why Apple Services, they call it, is the fastest growing money maker for Apple right now.
Yeah, it reminds me.
You know, over on the Google side, they just boasted I think of having I think the number was one hundred million Google one subscribers. Yeah, and they were boasting about that, and I was like, yeah, well, it's because you turned off unlimited photo storage. So now everybody ran out of space for photos and Gmail and they have to pay. So one way or another, you're going to pay somebody for cloud storage. It's just a matter of deciding who and when and why and where.
If you think about it, it's pretty smart. They've got our they've got our memories locked up. And whoever thought about this. Hey, let's put a camera on the phone. People take more pictures and then we'll get them free for a while and then we'll charge them.
It's pretty brilliant, actually.
Yeah, and we'll make the photo shooting four K at sixty free inch or second with Dulby vision. So all that stuff uses more data than it used to.
Absolutely, all right, Jared, tell folks how they can find you online.
Yeah, if you want to check out my newsletter, it's advisorator dot com. And in fact, if you want to check out the paid version, you can go to advisorator dot com slash rich on tech. I got a little discount for.
You, nice, and I also love your You have another newsletter, cord Cutter Weekly that you keep the big list of streaming deals. I will link that up on the website as well. If you're looking for like free codes and discount codes for all the streaming services. It is a great resource that's always updated, so I'll put that on the website as well.
Jared Newman, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me Rich always pleasure.
All right, Jared Newman of Advisorator. I'll put the link on the website. Rich on tech dot tv coming up. We're going to close out the show in a segment we call feedback. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four for one zero one. I don't know why I just gave out the phone number. We don't have time for anymore calls. I'm just listening to the song.
Here.
It's time for the feedback segment. These are the emails, comments, and questions I get from you, and if you'd like to submit yours, go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact. So many to get through. So let's just start at the top here. Mike says, regarding putting a TV outdoors, we had an extra fifty five inch video that we put out doors. We purchased an excellent waterproof cover from Covers and All. The TV has survived
two So Cal rainy seasons so far. Very heavy duty material that fully encloses the TV a lot cheaper than buying a Sunbright or a custom enclosure, comes in many sizes.
Great show, Mike, Yeah, we're getting a.
Lot of messages about people in southern California putting TVs that are not supposed to be outside outside.
I mean, I guess it could be done again.
I can't fully recommend it, even though I probably won't do it in my backyard. Why not, I've got the TV in my garage, SoC says Rich. I'm not sure why you're pushing evs. The EV, as we know it is dead. The auto companies are losing money by the millions. Ford is cutting way back on EV due to losing tens of millions of dollars each quarter. Toyota and Honda are not even emphasizing EV at all. The EV is just a SoCal thing. Once you go outside SoCal, everyone stays away from EV's.
You know what happened to EV's. It hurts. They just got rid of their EV fleet.
No one wanted to rent them at overseas, they're going back to regular gas cars once they realize they've been drinking the EV kool aid. And once you learn how the lithium ion battery is so toxic to the environment that you wouldn't want anything to do with it. Once you learn about the life cycle of the lithium ion batteries from mining the rare earth material, manufacturing of the batteries and disposal, you're not doing any favor to the environment. Well,
thank you, SoC. I just talk about the news. I don't create the news. So I mean, I'm not at the car companies. I'm not making these cars. I'm not, you know, directing what's happening at the auto shows. But yes, you still have options and it is clearly within your rights to go EV or not go EV. Thanks for the email, Mark says Rich. I love your show, but for God's sake, please make your guests and callers get off those speakers in bluetooth. You have no idea what
it sounds like on my end, especially your guests. Come on now, a tech guest talking on tin cans. Better make them call in on a landline. I have to fast forward through all that gibberish. Mark well Mark. Again, I can't control my guests or the callers, but I do recommend that they connect a certain way. Land lines are very rare these days. I don't know of anyone
that has one. So yeah, we used to say, like, please call in on a landline on a radio show, but that's just not the case anymore, Like people just don't have access to that. Most of the time, it works, though, and I do listen to the show in my car to hear what it sounds like to you, and it sounds pretty good most of the time. Nancy says, we have so many tech issues. I'm ready to go back to pen and paper. Is it possible for someone to mess up technology from their body chemistry? As a child,
my mom bought me a watch it didn't work. When I got married, my new husband bought me an expensive watch that didn't work. Even though my desktop was less than ten feet away, the modem told me it wasn't connected to the Internet. I got the same message from my printer, and that was less than two feet from the modem. I spent eight hours one day trying to attach a file. Am I getting punked?
Here?
I could find it and open it, but after closing it, I couldn't attach it. According to my computer, it either didn't exist or had to be moved.
Later.
It was there I learned my computer had a glitch and it wasn't connected to the internet. Nancy, Nancy, you know what it happened sometimes. Tim says, hey, Rich, I got the fitbit charged six shortly after you reviewed it. Bought it last Wednesday, haven't charged it yet. It is still at twenty seven percent. Thanks for the review and recommendation. I had been deciding about my next fitbit or another smart watch for some time. It is perfect, Tim, Thank you.
Tim. Appreciate that.
Eugene says, I was listening to a recent podcast where you mentioned decluttering and a dumpster. Rather than using a dumpster next time, considered donation thrift stores, Goodwill, et cetera, et cetera. Somehow, I don't think your stuff would be considered scrap. Enjoy all your podcasts, Eugene, absolutely one percent.
I do donate when possible, and believe me, when they get some of the stuff I donate at Goodwill, they're scratching their head because they're like, this is like a brand new tech item and it's just you know, Bobo says, bring it in next time, But yes, I do donate whenever possible. The stuff that we threw out in the dumpster was mostly trash, so and we did donate a lot of stuff from there. Uh okay, that's going to
be it for the feedback segment. If you want to send me your email, just go to rich on tech dot TV hit contact, and I love getting your messages. I'd do my best to reply or read it on the show. I can't get to them all, but I do appreciate you sending them in. If you can believe it, that's going to do it for this episode. You can find links everything I mentioned to richon tech dot TV.
Find me on social media at rich on tech. Next week, I'm going to tell you about the AI reading tool that teachers are using that you can use at home for your kids, and it is incredible. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I appreciate you spending it right here with me.