A new iPhone at a price that can't be beat. A new phone to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S twenty TikTok, get some controls your kids will not like. Plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on?
I'm Rich Dumiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. Plus it's the place where I answer the questions that you send me. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Joining me is producer Megan, who has not left the house in five weeks.
What's up?
It has it been five weeks?
I don't know, it's been a long time.
Well today, okay, so the day we're recording this, it's officially been four weeks since the Mayor of Los Angeles did that stay at home order. So well it's been I think that was only sixteenth, so it's been about four weeks.
Yeah, And I mean I've left house a bunch. Have you left the house?
Yeah, just to like go to the market. But I haven't, like this week, I haven't left the house where I go on walks every day. Does that count as leaving the house?
Ah, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, that that helps. I mean I feel like my entire neighborhood is walking. Have you noticed that that? Oh yeah, everyone is walking. It's like the only thing you can do.
The one thing I have noticed is in my neighborhood people think that if they're running, they don't have to wear a mask. Like every runner I see no mask, and I'm always like, yeah, no, I don't like most people, Oh you haven't, Oh I don't.
I don't wear them on walks either. I only wear them, like the only the only thing you're supposed to do is wear them when you go to the grocery, to a store, to a business.
Really, every like everyone I see out walking, they're all wearing masks.
Well yeah, a lot of people are doing that.
I mean it's not required at this point, so I mean I will do it if it's required, but until then, I will not do that. Yeah, because I just a I don't. I think it'd be really tricky.
To run with a mask. But yeah, I see, I see kind of half in half.
It's you know, it's I think it depends on also your personal comfort level with what's going on.
Yeah. No, I've just had runners like zoom by me and they like, no mask, and I'm like, come on, like, you can't do that, you know, I like that.
So I don't know. I guess I'm in that you don't do that. No, I do do that, Like I'm.
I'm wow, one of those.
Yeah, but I don't really understand because like there's no requirement for the masks outside, so I.
Just like in the grocery sure, yeah.
Yeah, the only my parents make me wear a mask or like you have to wear a mask outside, well, if you're going to be like if you're walking and there's like other people around, Like that's what I thought.
I don't know, No, I haven't heard that.
I know at businesses, like it is required at businesses, so that's the only only place I know it's required.
I do think that's going to change. I probably.
I think it's going to changed to outside in general in the next you know, probably in the next couple of weeks, if they decide to do that. I don't know, but I did go to the grocery store yesterday at Trader Joe's, and I will tell you it used to be really fun to go to the grocery store, and now it is the worst experience because it's depressing.
It's sad.
People are acting like everyone has you know, these crazy like it Like you said, when people like are jogging past you, you just assume like, oh, I'm gonna get something like that's the way everyone's acting now, And I get it.
You have to be prepared and kind of on guard.
But at the grocery store it's like people are just really being weird. So and then you have to go into the grocery store and you have to walk like a certain way.
So anyway, it was not fun yesterday.
And then I got yelled at the at the cashier because I wasn't standing in the red box that I was supposed to be standing in.
That also happened to be at home depot. So I'm going to.
Start looking at all floor markings when I check out from now on because I'm getting checked a lot. Well, let's talk about the big story of the week besides coronavirus. And this was very smart for Apple to do this at this time. It's been a long time rumor, it's finally happening. The iPhone S is a real iPhone and the price could not be better. Three hundred and ninety nine dollars, which just blows everyone else out of the water because you cannot get a phone for three hundred
and ninety nine dollars new. You also can't get a phone of iPhone quality for three hundred and ninety nine dollars. So the fact that Apple is doing this is brilliant. They could have sold this phone for four ninety nine and people would have been happy with that.
Three ninety nine is really amazing.
Now, with that said, I'm not saying that Apple is doing us a favor by coming out with this phone, because it's a design that's been around for years. This is the iPhone eight with new insides, so they already had the outside. The screen is old news. There's nothing new about the screen, the touch id that's on it. It's got the home button that's not new. So basically,
they didn't have to invent anything for this phone. They just took parts from other devices and just popped it into this phone and they can sell it at a pretty good price.
The only thing.
That could be new or similar to I mean, or kind of modified or they had to work on is the camera, because it's not the same camera that's in the iPhone eleven. It's not the old camera. It's kind of a mix of those things. So this is a four point seven inch HD screen. It's got touch ID like I said, which means there is a home button and there's I don't think it has face ID obviously,
because that would be totally different. But the cool thing is, Megan, that this has the top of the line A thirteen chip, which is the same chip you get in the iPhone eleven, so you're not sacrificing any speed on this.
Device, which crazy.
I think it's pretty cool. So black, white, and red. Friday, April seventeenth is the pre order date and it will be in hands on April twenty fourth. It does have wireless charging, by the way, and for that three ninety nine price, it's sixty four gigabytes, so personally I would bump up to the one twenty eight gigs. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've filled up my iPhone at two hundred and fifty six. I am totally filled up. And it's sad to me, Megan, because
I don't want to. I have Google Photos and I can do that thing where it frees up all the space by deleting all the photos off my phone. But it's like really sad to me to do that because I like having all my photos on there, or all the photos I've taken in recent months. But anyway, so this thing is gonna sell bananas. I can't imagine a better selling phone in the next twelve months.
I can't believe the price, Like it's so it's so crazy, Like.
Remember when your father was in the market for a new phone.
And been the phone he should have gone.
Right, this would have been the phone.
This is the phone for so many people that don't necessarily need the best, and even not saying it's the best, this is really I will say, there's almost nothing on this device that I can fall apple for now I'm saying all that without having it in hand yet, so I don't know. Maybe when I get this thing, I'm like, oh, this screen is terrible or it's not as fast as I think because they use some sort of old memory.
But the fact that it's got the best processor on it and a pretty good camera and at this price, I can't really imagine a better deal.
So I'm impressed.
At what what's the camera comparable to?
Well, we don't know because they just kind of mixed. They said they they just mixed a whole bunch of camera technology, so it sounds like it's old and new. So we don't know yet until we actually take pictures with it how good it is or how bad it is compared to the iPhone eleven.
But I think it's going to be just fine, to be honest.
If you're spending four hundred bucks on a phone and you're getting all this stuff, I think the camera is going to be just fine.
Yeah, yeah, cool, that's you.
Okay, So our first question can you hear that sound when I did that?
Yeah? I heard it. Yeah. Our first question comes from f Eff. I read your article on Zoom Alternatives. Why didn't you mention go to meeting dot com? I used WebEx, but it's hard to use when others are not comfortable on their computer. I needed a service. I could just send a link to participate, no codes or software. Right, go to meeting dot com.
Good question and the reason I did not put go to meeting in my roundup. I got a lot of angry emails from folks when I did that. Do you remember the story we did on the Zoom alternatives?
We did that, yeah last week?
Yeah, it was last week, so yeah, lots of em That was a very popular story, by the way, but the emails I got were so angry. People are like, well, how came you to include this? And how can you include that?
Number one?
I said seven alternatives or six alternati. I didn't say every alternative I can't make.
We also didn't say the best ever like that.
I didn't say, you know, but now, And these are the things that I don't get to talk about on TV because I'm on for like, you know, a minute thirty. I can't necessarily explain every reasoning behind every story. But what I do is behind the scenes, I put a lot of effort and research and prep into my segments so that when you see them on TV, they are the information that I think you need to know, kind
of like this podcast. And the reality is I did go through a whole bunch of alternatives, and I pared them down to what I thought was a good mix of alternatives for the people watching. And let me explain what that means. Yes, go to meeting is a good alternative, but it's not one of the alternatives I want to include, because the number one thing about go to meeting is that there is no free tier.
And that was the Bob Online.
Now maybe you could try it free for seven days. But again, I'm doing a segment that is broadcast across a whole bunch of stations nationwide, and there are people watching that are trusting the information that I'm giving them, and I have to give them information fast, quick and in a simple way.
And I did the research, and so when I.
Looked at go to meeting the problem is I just didn't really see a free solution there. And so of course, now that I'm seeing this, it does say there is a free one.
So now, okay, sorry, I love the honesty.
Okay, so unlimited free online meetings. But I'm curious what. Okay, so here's what they offer for free. And now I'm just seeing this, and this could be new based on coronavirus, right, So they're offering up to three participants for free, up to forty minutes. So again that's not necessarily what I wanted to do. I wanted things that were free for you know, a lot of people, and just the most
universal things that I think I could recommend. So Go to Meetings was not included because mainly it costs money, and that's kind of the main reason. Now I'm not saying it's bad, but again, like you said, I'm just giving people a bunch of options, and that was these were the options that I felt were the best for my segment.
And I did a mix.
You know, we did that one called house Party, which is kind of a fun one. Then we did one yeah, we did Skype, which you know, I did the pros and cons.
Of each, So if you had to pick your favorite and then your least favorite from the ones that we did.
My favorite.
It turns out that Zoom Actually there is a reason why Zoom took off the way it did.
It works really well.
And I will say I will talk about another one that I will reveal later in the show that we tested that I actually think is really cool. It's only one on one, but I think that Zoom is the best option for most people.
I don't like the forty men limit.
Have you come up against that in your like, yeah, like a friend's happy hour or something. The first time I came up against it, it was kind of annoying because I thought I could just hop out and my friend could take over and then I could hop back in.
That did not work.
So we did have to disconnect and reconnect, which I thought was a little annoying. But I'm not paying fifteen bucks a month right now.
Do you the least favorite out of the list.
My least favorite?
I think FaceTime is just I never really liked FaceTime and I'm still not.
A fan of it.
It's just it's too annoying.
It's too confusing, it's too like I don't really understand what number I'm calling with people, and it's like too limiting.
I just don't like it, and it's weird when there's multiple people the way Yeah the boxes move like it's distracting and we don't need things to like move around for a video conference. Yeah.
I think what I like about Zoom the most is the format. Like what if folks are watching on Facebook Live right now, the format is is just side by side if you want, if you have two people. I like how it just moves depending on how many people you have. And they also have that view where the person that's talking is like big and then everyone else is small. But I kind of like just keeping everyone in the same size all the time and you see who's talking because they're highlighted.
Yeah, all right, let's move on to the next story. Another phone that launched this week, and.
A long time ago when I did my tech segment, I used to compare every phone that was Android against the iPhone. And now I just don't do that anymore, because, you know what, the reality is not everyone's comparing against the iPhone. Most people are sort of in their bucket of iOS. They're sticking with Apple or they're sticking with Android. I don't really see as many people wanting to switch anymore these days. It used to be always like people would be like, hey, Rich, I get the Samsung and
ditch the iPhone. I don't get that question anymore. I really don't very rarely. So there's a new phone. It's the one plus one plus eight Pro. And I will say this is probably my favorite Android phone of the year.
It's it's a great device.
I think there is one major problem with this device, and it is the edges of the screen are curved, and it makes it not only tough to hold, but really annoying because I'm always touching something on the screen that I don't mean to touch.
And it's a weird.
Yeah, it's a really weird thing that iPhones have never had that problem. And when you use an Android, they always seem to have that problem, and this one has it really bad.
And it's kind of annoying.
Other than that, this is the best phone out there that you can get for Android. I will tell you why. Number one, It's a great size, got a big screen. It's got a really high quality screen one hundred and twenty hurts refresh rate, which means that it is so buttery smooth you will not believe it. It's got a great processor, it's got a ton of memory, ton of ram.
The camera.
Every time I've done a OnePlus story in the past, I always said, well, the camera is just okay. This time the the camera is fantastic. I mean it really, truly is a fantastic camera. I wish the colors popped a little bit more, and especially on the front facing camera, everything looks very washed out. Some people might like that because it makes your skin look better, but I don't know. It's it's one of those things where I just wish
it had better color. It's got wireless charging for the first time, it's got water resistance for the first time on a OnePlus, and the price is pretty amazing. Eight hundred and ninety nine dollars, and I get it. I'm not recommending anyone purchase anything right now during this uncertain time of jobs and work and all this stuff. But for eight hundred and ninety nine dollars if you did have money saved up for a phone, that's a great
price for what you're getting. Because I would compare this phone to the Samsung Galaxy S twenty, which is thirteen hundred and ninety nine dollars, and this phone, I think is a better phone. The only other thing I will say I don't like about it is the haptics on it. So and haptics, Megan, is when your phone vibrates when you touch something on screen.
Do you know what I'm talking out?
The iPhone does it best, The Samsung Galaxy S twenty does it really well. This phone does not do it well at all. And it's really sad to me because it's kind of it's not a deal breaker, but it's just one of those things where like it's very like flimsy feeling, and I'm like, this is a great phone, Why does the haptic feel so flimsy? Otherwise one plus eight pro I think is fantastic. They also launched another phone, the one plus eight and that's six hundred and ninety
nine dollars. I thought that was a great phone, a great little device, but now I can't recommend it with an iPhone at three ninety nine.
Three ninety nine, iPhone will be.
The device that I recommend for the next inforeseeable future for the average person.
I can't really imagine once you review it.
I don't even think I need to review it.
I think that you're like, I know, I've trust that nice.
I mean, it's like, it's like, I just can't imagine a better product for the average person who just wants a good phone, because not only are you getting the iPhone, you're getting iOS, You're getting all the great apps that work along with it, all the accessories that work with iPhone. You're getting things like the Apple Watch and air Uh what is it not Airplay? What's the thing when you send stuff to.
H Airdrop, I get think of it. You know what I'm saying. You get the whole kit and kaboodle.
You get the whole situation. Okay. Next question comes from Troy hi Rich. Hope You're well, what's your favorite travel size blue tooth speaker?
That's a good question. It's funny.
I half the time I go to a hotel room, I bring a speaker, and half the time I forget to bring my speaker. So I in the times I forget, I just use my phone. But when I do bring a speaker, I always love having a speaker in my hotel room because it's just nice to have that music that sounds a little bit better than coming off your phone speaker. So my favorite is the Ultimate Ears Logitech.
Ultimate Ears is to me the little speaker that I have been bringing around for a while because it's small, it's simple, and it's easy, and they make a whole bunch of different ones. But the one that I've been taking around the most in the past couple of years has been called the Wonder Boom, and it's it's not that expensive.
I think it's like sixty nine bucks. Depending on when you get it's.
Two hundred, it's one hundred dollars, but a lot of times it goes on sale for less.
But the Wonder Boom is a good one.
If you don't want that, and you know, do you really need that great audio quality in your hotel room.
Probably not.
I think you'll be just as well served with the Amazon Basics Bluetooth speaker. And that speaker if you can find it in stock and get it delivered from Amazon, is twenty six dollars and sixty four cents.
Oh wow.
You know, if you don't really care that much, I think this will be just fine. And you know, let me see, now, how do I can I paste a comment? Yeah, I'm gonna put my comment onto the screen. If so, if you're watching on Facebook Live, you should be able to see my comment, but maybe not. Everything's delayed on Facebook. There goes okay, so.
Now I find it.
So So, I mean those are my two picks. I think those are both great. But again, like I'm not an audio file, so I don't I get when I listen to music on a good speaker. Like I was just telling my wife last night because we bought that son No move.
It's a it's a son No speaker, so it's expensive.
It was four hundred bucks and at the time I was like, so I really need this speaker, like it's just for the backyard. But now I have grown to love it because I bring it everywhere. It's like it has a little handle on it, and now I just bring it wherever I am in the house or outside, front yard, backyard. And I guess maybe I bought it at the best time. I bought it before coronavirus, So we have been home so much. I listen to music all the time at home. This thing has been a
godsend because it is amazing and it's the quality. The audio quality is so good. I do actually love it. So maybe I am an audio file.
I don't know.
I think, Oh, you definitely are, no, because once your go to playlist.
Oh, I just found a new one that is key right now, major key. I've got a couple of playlists I love, but one I just found. They just I don't know, maybe they just came out with it on YouTube music. But my new favorite one is called Shiny Happy pick Me Ups and it's the description is bright, brassy, soulful and fun. This eclectic mix is capable of pulling you out from the winter doldrums or your mid afternoon slump.
And what I love about this playlist is it has everything from Sewn Mendes to four non Blondes, fine young Cannibals, the Beg's Queen Portugal, the Man MGMT. So it's a big mix it's like old songs and new songs. And I really love playlists that mix old stuff and new stuff because you just want the new stuff. And I you know, but some of my other playlists, I love PG pop hits. That's good when I've got the kids
in the car. I'm a real big fan of down tempo instrumentals, So if you have serious XM's that is XM chill, which I use for like during the day when I'm kind of just working, I'll listen to that a lot.
I also like country music. I'm a huge.
Country fan, so I do listen to a lot of country stuff. Kickback country is one of my favorites for the afternoon when I'm just kind of hanging out.
What about you, Producer Megan.
Oh my gosh, you have such a like legit list of like playlists. I mean I just listen to a lot of the same stuff on Spotify, Like I follow let's see one of their like new hits playlists, Senate, just like it's just the new songs that came out that week. Yes, but you know, I also.
Just hold on when you listen to new hits, Yeah, like every time you're listening to a song it's new and so to me.
I feel like, ever since I started listening to.
Uh sorry, ever ever since I started listening to the uh like the streaming music, I don't really want new stuff because I'm always listening, Like I'm always hearing.
New stuff, right, No, And that's the thing I have to I like. I mean, I'll like listen to that for a little bit, but then I always go back to like my liked playlist, like all those songs that I've liked in the last like two months, you know, like I just like replay the same stuff over and over again.
Okay, yeah, I do like the like stuff because that's smart too, like the liked songs, because then you always get songs that you liked in the past.
You're like, oh, hey, these are great.
But music is a very personal thing, and I don't know, like I just number one, I just I have music going twenty four to seven in my home. There's yeah sonos always on in every room, So I need to be.
Better about that. I really don't, like, I feel like I should listen to music more than I do. You know, it's for fun.
You need to listen. Wait, so you don't just like listen we'll see.
I don't listen to music all day like you. I'm not like constantly listening to music. And you said you listen like constantly.
All day, like I definitely always on.
Yeah, yeah, I probably listened for like two hours.
It's funny because like whenever I come home and like Lindsay's doing well, now, I don't come home anymore because I'm just always home. But like whenever Lindsay is like sitting there doing something, I'm like, why don't you have music on? Like to me, the first thing I do, like if I'm making breakfast is put on. And I have days too, like on Saturdays and Sundays, I'm mostly acoustic music, so I.
You know I do.
You're very specific.
Yeah, well, I feel like you should change your music depending, Like if you're always listening to the same music on Monday through Sunday or Saturday whatever the whole week, I feel like it doesn't differentiate to me. On Saturday and Sunday morning I usually do or especially Sunday morning. Sunday is coffee house music, so I have to do XM coffee house or I've got coffee house playlists on all of music services I subscribe to several, so I listen, you know, hop.
Between some of them.
But I definitely have to do acoustic music or coffee house style music on at least Sunday, sometimes Saturday, but mostly just Sunday, just to differentiate in my brain, like this is a day, this is a special day, and it's right right, It's a day where your mind needs to relax.
Yeah, I love that.
I know I'm weird.
TikTok has some new parental controls that you'll like as a parent, your kids will hate. And it's called family Pairing, and it allows you to do several things. It allows you to set up screen time management, which your kids are gonna hate, and so you can you can set a time limit for how long your kids can be
on TikTok. Then you have restricted modes. So I told you along time on this a long time ago, on this podcast Megan that I when I started looking at TikTok, there was like swear words in all the videos, like a lot of them had them, And so I thought it was a little surprising, And you said, well, maybe it was customized whatever, and maybe it did do it on my data birth or whatever. And like if I put in that I was thirteen, maybe it wouldn't do that,
but I thought that was kind of annoying. So I'm glad they have a restricted mode so you can set that up for your kids, and then direct messages you can restrict if they can only message their friends and not random people, which is also really smart. It's funny because TikTok says, you know, many many start their creator journey at thirteen, which is like the minimum age for being on all these online platforms.
But you know there's kids on TikTok that are like eight and nine.
But of course TikTok just has to say that so that they sound like they're following the letter of the law. So the thing that you need to know about these new family pairing restrictions or whatever you want to call them settings is that as a parent, you have to have an account and you link your account to your child's account. So what I think is really ironic about these family pairing settings is that to set them up, the parent has to create an account.
And so is this like a growth hack by TikTok just.
To get more accounts because the parent now has to have an account to set up their kids account or to control their kids account.
Yeah, basically they're just doubling their users.
Right, And you know the kids aren't going to tell their parents about this. You know, the parents aren't going to discover it on their own. So realistically, the only way you're gonna find out about it is if you're listening to someone like me tell you about it.
Anyways. You know, kids aren't.
Gonna be like, oh, mom and dad, you need to set up your parent accounts.
You can, you know, so your kids aren't on TikTok.
Oh No, I take again my kids. Every day.
All I hear from my kids is I want to be a YouTuber. I want to be on TikTok? Can I be on Instagram? Can I be on YouTube? It just goes in circles and I'm like no, and then they go, well, dad, you're on them And I'm like, well, I know, but I'm I kind of have to be even though I do love it.
Yeah yeah, yeah. My sister posted something on TikTok yesterday and it has two no, I think it has three million views right now. She's like blowing up on TikTok. Yes, yeah, no, I know same. This is Wait, let me find where she's at right now.
This is that crazy.
She's at three point six million on one video and she's really smart. So she posted something like right after and that video is at one hundred and thirty thousand.
Yees out of here? Okay is can you share her name? Or no?
It's it's special dot k A A y why?
Oh wow, she even comes up in search. She's so popular special k oh. That's definitely not her special dot k A k a a y y okay special k there she is? Yes, so wow, three point six million? What was she doing? Is this her?
She did?
She cut?
She like? So they filmed a movie at my house a while ago, and she basically like took the fact that they filmed something here and like made that a TikTok.
Wait they filmed d at your house.
Yeah, like just like one scene, one.
Part that's crazy.
So it like blew up? I know, isn't that crazy?
That's amazing? I love that movie.
By the way. Now I live with a YouTuber and a TikTok star.
Yes, your brother's a YouTuber, your sister's a TikTok star. That is wild.
I love that blowing up like that and okay, this goes back.
To what I talked about on the podcast.
I feel like I'm very ahead of things when I talk about them on the podcast. Here did I not say on last week's podcast that a lot of people with the stay at home are capitalizing on becoming a new freshly minted YouTube star, right, or you know, a TikTok star?
Rather, I said, yeah, and look at this, Oh.
Yeah, you did? You did?
That's well.
It's interesting too because my brother he hit like forty thousand subscribers last week on YouTube, and then YouTube said to him, Okay, it's going to take you five months to get to fifty thousand, and then this week he's already at forty five thousand, so he's.
Like, wrong, I love it.
This is the time I tell you, if you have an urge to get on one of these platforms, this is there will be newly minted stars because of this stayed home. And the problem is, and maybe your brother noticed this, or maybe he'll notice it in a month when he gets paid for this month's you know, ad rev or whatever. The payments are apparently down because there's so much being done that you know, the payments have not adjusted, like the advertisers aren't necessarily.
I don't know. I just read an article that it's kind of like.
The no, yeah, he's can talk about that. And also they're basically taking ads off of any YouTube video that has a curse word in it. So I mean, he doesn't curse in his videos, but he was like, you know, people who do, they're like gonna lose their ad revenue.
That's the craziest thing about the whole YouTube world is that you are at the mercy of this unknown force at you know, AdWords, I guess that or ads sense whatever they call it, and you never know, like you when you open up that check or you know, you get that report.
You really don't know how much a video.
Is going to make because just because one video made a certain amount does not mean the next video with that same exact viewcount makes that amount.
There's so many.
Variables because the way YouTube system works is it's kind of like an eBay system, where it's supply and demand. So if you have a video that has a lot of views and you're also you happen to get an advertiser that's paying a premium to reach those eyeballs, it's like the perfect thing. But other videos may not get
that same match. So it's fascinating, and that's why a lot of YouTubers branch out into sponsored stuff and all these other things, because you want to keep your money flowing and not just be beholden to just that ad sense revenue. Let's talk about let's see, let's talk about something that's cool. If you are a teacher and you have Verizon Wireless, starting April twenty third, you can get a discount on your service. So Verizon is extending their
same military discount to both nurses and teachers. And I looked at this because my wife is an educator, and we looks like we're eligible for the discount. It's going to be like ten to twenty bucks a month, depending on how much you spend every month on your plan.
Now, the catch is that you kind of have.
To change your plan to one of their newer plans. So my plan that I'm on is not one of their plans anymore, so you.
Have to change your plan now.
I looked and like, whatever plan I switched to offers kind of whatever I have, So I don't think it's gonna be that big of a deal, But I mean to save ten bucks a month, I'm in of course, on my Facebook page, I had a lot of people saying, oh, it's not that much money Samsung make or Verizon makes so much money, and I'm like, okay, well so then even if it's one hundred and twenty bucks a year, that's to me, ten bucks a month is a good amount of money because that pays for a portion of Hulu.
It pays.
I mean to me, I see everything and I've talked about this before. Everything to me is like I call it the Spotify you know thing. It's like, yeah, ten bucks a month is Spotify. So if you're getting ten bucks a month from Verizon for free, now you just paid for Spotify.
So yeah, you have to sign up for this.
On April twenty third is when it's available, so you've got That's when you have to go to the Verizon website look for this whole teacher thing and if you're teacher, I mean, it's free money to me if you have Verizon and I get it.
People are like, well, Metros is cheaper.
I didn't say Metro PCs, did I. I mean, if you want to start playing that game, we can play that game. There's a million things out there that are different I am saying, if you have Verizon and you are a teacher and you want to do one of these plans that are unlimited, you can save money.
I didn't say you have to switch. I didn't debate whether T Mobile has a better network.
You're not sponsored.
No, And yeah. People are like, are you paid to write this stuff? Yes? I am by KTLA.
I'm a tech reporter report in the tech world, So yes, I am paid.
No, Verizon does not pay me to post this stuff.
Oh my gosh, Okay, okay.
This next question comes from Leah. Is Zoom safe from private confidential info being stolen?
Well, I don't think anything online is one hundred percent safe. And there's a little debate about Zoom whether they were encrypted and to end, which is the safest method of transport across the internet, or if everything was being filtered through China and people in China are just watching all of our zooms on their TVs. You know, you can flip through channels and like you're just like, oh, let mean, there's Megan and rich on Zoom. There's a you know,
a board meeting for the Fortune five hundred company. There's the Westlake School District doing their monthly, you know, board meeting.
No, we don't. Look.
As far as we know, Zoom was created to be as encrypted as possible, as private as possible. With that said, it does not mean that one of these videos can't get out. It doesn't mean that someone can't hack into them. It doesn't mean that it can't be cracked. But for all intents and purposes as we know it, yes, Zoom is an okay place to conduct your business, to talk this and that, and there is a level of encryption. Does that mean that nobody in the world could see.
What you're doing.
No, So you have to keep that in mind. And you also have to with anything you get in the world of internet, you have to bank how much you're paying for something compared to what you're getting out of the service. So if you want a super encrypted, secure service because what was the person's name, Liah, because Leah, you're running a bank online and you need to talk to your executive about secret things that you're doing with your bank, you might want to look into paying for
a service that meets your needs. But if you're like me and you're having happy hour with your friends on Thursday night at five o'clock, I really don't care if you see what I'm doing on my happy hour, right
if it happened to get out there. Now, I like to imagine that it's safe and it's secure and people can't pop in and watch, but we do know that, like I mentioned on my podcast, I think last week my five year old was able to tap into someone else's Zoom by just typing in a bunch of random numbers.
I do believe that Zoom has stopped that from happening, because now, if you notice, every Zoom require a password at this point, and so, well, actually I'm looking at this and it doesn't so maybe, yeah, I guess people could just get in on it.
So now don't you like, great, I just showed our Zoom on here, so now people can go up.
Great. Well they'd have to have pretty to see that, but whatever.
But yeah, a lot of the Zooms now, I think, I think for the new anyway, Zoom has done a bunch in recent weeks to kind of fix all the little holes that.
Were in Zoom.
So I might the short, the long answer to your short question is that look like anything else, it's just as secure as we think it is, and it's probably not as secure as we think it is, right, there could be people out there that are working every minute to hack into this stuff, and you have to keep that in mind.
That's my answer.
Yeah, all right, speaking of privacy, Google and Apple, this was a story on KTLA today. Google and Apple are partnering on this system called contact tracing, and this is pretty interesting. Did you understand this story, Megan when you saw it like the you know, when you kind of saw our story and read it all, did you get kind of what they were doing At first?
I was just kind of like what, Yeah, I was kind of confusing. I mean, I get it now.
It is confusing, and yeah, the bottom line, let me explain this the best I can. So, Apple and Google have worked on a system that will work on both iPhones and androids to use the bluetooth in your phone to broadcast a little beacon from your phone. And it's a randomly changing number every couple of minutes, ten to
fifteen minutes. And so when I walked past you, Meghan, when you said, like the person that ran and coughed all over you outside, Yeah, yeah, that probably will not register under this system because you guys were not close enough for a long enough period of time for your phones to say Megan was in this person's presence for
long enough where she could have gotten this disease. So now if you were to sit down next to that person on a park bench for eight minutes and talk to that person maybe, or even if you didn't talk to them, your phones would exchange that little number. And so what happens is, let's say that runner goes off on their merry way, you go off on your life, and next thing you know, that runner gets diagnosed with COVID. They go into the system and say I was diagnosed
with COVID nineteen. Now their number is flagged. All the numbers that they broadcasted during those times were flagged. And your phone goes up to the server and it says, let me just check to see if any of these numbers that Megan's phone came into contact with were flagged. And it goes, oh, shoot, one of them was. And now your phone says to you, Megan, it looks like you might have been exposed to this disease. Doesn't tell you where or when or how, It just says that
you were. And because they're not keeping track of location, they're not keeping track of user identities. They're literally just seeing that that one number that pinged your phone at some point was flagged. And so now you have to go and quarantine yourself or use that information however you want.
But you have to if you're diagnosed with it, you have to go and put that on your account. You have to like download this app and like right, yes.
You have to go put it into the system. And the way they're getting past people being you know, smart about this or I guess I should say silly about this and just putting in you know, oh I was infected and just messing with other people, is that generally, when you get the COVID nineteen test, there will be a QR code on that test that you would scan and that's the only way that you can enter yourself into the system.
That's what they've done in other countries.
And the other thing is that you know, so at the beginning, there will be an app that you have to download for this to work. But eventually, and this is where Apple and Google come in working together, is that they're going to build this into their mobile operating systems. So literally this will be built into iOS and Android. And I'm not sure if it's going to be opt in at.
When that happens.
But from what I've read online, some outlets were reporting that, like let's say you did pass someone, they would kind of give you like a free thing of like, hey, you know, you did come into contact with this person, and here's your alert, and you'd be like, oh, shoot, I didn't even sign up for that. But I'm not sure I didn't hear that. I listened to the whole conference call with Apple and Google. I did not personally
hear that. I heard that everything was going to be opt in, So I'm not sure if that's one hundred percent correct. But if they did that, it would definitely get more people on board because you'd be like, oh, you know, I'm in this system.
So have they ever worked together like this before.
Not at an application like a developer level like this, at this low level where the operating system talks to the other operating system through Bluetooth, They have never.
Really done that.
That's crazy.
So it is. It is crazy.
But again, and I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, these are two big tech companies that have seen the world stop and they've seen a lot of money stop flown. Apple stores are closed Google. I mean imagine, I imagine this is good for Google in a certain way because people are on their computers more. But overall, it's just not a good thing to have the world stop working, right, And so they are being smart about this as tech companies that want to help kind of get things moving.
But I think there is an interest in these tech companies to say, we need to get this world working again, and we need to get things to a place of normalcy again. And I'm not sure that this program will do that, but it definitely can help nudge us in that direction. And I do think that's why they're doing this, because normally these guys are I would describe as frenemies because Apple doesn't really need Google, but Google kind of needs Apple for you know, all the search terms that
are typed in on iPhones. So and at the end of the day, I'm ready to get back to work in a normal way, and I am ready for some solution to this COVID issue. And if this, if this becomes a part of the solution, that's a good thing. And I think a lot of this comes down to h and my wife and I, like we just talk about this every night, like how is there going to
be a solution this besides a vaccine? And I think a lot of it is coming down to people knowing they have it earlier, or knowing they were exposed earlier, so that they take themselves out of play, and that means they sit home and they're not infecting other people for two weeks, not knowing until they come down.
With a crazy cough or whatever.
Like, if you get a notification, you know, as soon as you've come into contact with someone else that has it, those two weeks could be crucial in helping you not infect a whole bunch of other people at the club, you know what I mean, Megan.
But so like what if you, you know, come into contact with someone and then you get the notification, you just have to like like not go to work for two weeks. I mean things were normal again.
Yeah, like you know, you don't know.
You have to take it with a grain of salt, you know, Like, well you have to sit there, and I think just knowing is better than not. But again, you're just bringing up one of a million kind of questions about this product, right, Like it doesn't so okay, now I can't go to work for two weeks because I got this notification like how long who was?
And if you live in New York City, right, you're gonna get that notification all the time.
It's very complicated.
Again, this is why I say, I think this is just one portion of a plan to recovery. And I think there's gonna be a lot more, like you said, like the masks everywhere, the just the testing, the rapid testing, instant testing, and a body testing.
It's gonna be a lot. All right, let me just give one.
More story real quick before we go, because it is the end of the show. But I do think this is important because everyone has their kids at home and on Google Play. They now have a separate section of Google Play called Teacher Approved. So this is a kids tab with apps that are teacher approved. So if your kids are like mine and they're constantly asking you toload apps this, you never know if these apps are good
or bad for the kids. All these apps now in this section have been scanned by academic experts and teachers and chosen for apps that are good for the kids. So if you're looking to download apps for the kids on Google Play, look for the new kids tab and the teacher approved badge that will help you find apps
that are actually decent for your kids. Mine are playing Minecraft in some other games, but you know, I'm always looking for apps that are better for them, right, So all right, that's going to do it for the podcast, Megan, Can you believe it? It always goes so fast. If you want links to what we talked about, you can take a look at the show notes, but generally I've stopped putting those in there, so you probably won't find anything.
If you have a question for me, you can go to my website rich on Tech dot tv and submit it. There is a email button at the bottom. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech, Megan Working folks, find you.
I'm on Twitter at producer Megan and we.
Would love you to rate this podcast. Go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech, or if you like the information you find in it, just share a link to this podcast or you know on your social media, tell a friend, take a screenshot of your screen, whatever you want to do to get the word out to other folks. Because Megan and I we only get to eat based on how many people listen to this show.
Yeah, and I haven't eaten in a long time.
Okay, and yeah, no.
I'm just kidding. But if we did, if we did, we'd be starving. No, I'm just kidding.
No, no, that's not true.
No, we do have a healthy amount of people that listen to the show. But if you want to make Megan and I feel better, more people is better, right, Thanks so much for listening. My name is rich demiro On behalf of it. Everyone that helps get this show to your ears. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you real soon.
See Yeah,