Google Photos becomes TikTok for your memories

after a fruit apple. They launched a whole bunch of stuff. I know it doesn't seem maybe too significant to you listening, but to me someone who has to go through every one of these products and figure out what's new, what's different, what's unique. So I mean, yeah, they launched new iPhones on the surface, but they launched not just new iPhones,

but four iPhones, two different sizes, so really two. Then they had the Series eight Watch, then they had the Ultra, then they had the se Then they also had the AirPods. Did I miss anything? So that's a lot of stuff to go through. And I've been using some of the products more so than others, but general consensus is pretty solid. Updates, I mean, nothing groundbreaking. It's not like you're, you know, have to rush out and upgrade to one of these devices.

But you know, the way Apple works is when you're in the store and you're you know, kind of ready for an upgrade, it's like, okay, well what does the new one have? And so that's really what it comes down to is what do the new ones have? So when it comes to the iPhone fourteen, you know, minimal use on that. I didn't really need to do much with that because you know, even though it's the phone that most people are gonna buy, it's just it's a

basic iPhone. I mean it's it's a standard iPhone. So this is the phone that people you know, what happens is Apple lures you in with the iPhone fourteen Pro and then you get in there and you're like, wait, it's how much. Oh, I'll just take that one for eight hundred, so instead of paying twelve hundred or you know, the thousand whatever. You know, the bigger one is. But the iPhone fourteen, I mean realistically, you know, it's got the same process or very similar processor as last year.

The camera's you know, slight improvements, so I think, you know, the selfie camera having the new auto focus. I mean, I didn't even realize that it didn't have auto focus in the past. It's not like it's ever really been an issue. So that's fine if you need it. You know. Really, the crash detection and the SOS over satellite are going to be the two new things. I was not able to test the crash detection clearly, SOS satellite I got a demo of at Apple, but I can't really test that.

That doesn't come out until November. Gosh, what I should do is just answer. I got so many questions on my Instagram because I asked people, you know, what do you want to know about these phones? I should just go through those for like the first five minutes of the show and let me just say, you know, if you don't like Apple or you don't care about Apple, I understand that this week is kind of a rough week for you because so much of the news in

the tech world is consumed by Apple. And that's just natural. When you know, when a company comes out with this much stuff, a company of this much prominence, that's just kind of how it is. So yeah, I'm just looking at some of these responses, and a lot of people are saying, you know, is it worth the upgrade from a thirteen to a fourteen? So I think it really

comes down to, you know, what your situation is. You know, if you're just if you're okay with you know, spending a couple hundred bucks when you really look at the way the phone works. You know, Let's say you spend one thousand dollars on the iPhone fourteen pro this year, okay, and then you go to trade it in next year. So I think when I looked at Apple's website, they were given about seven hundred let's just say, seven hundred dollars.

So for the use of that phone for the last year, it was roughly three hundred dollars, I mean plus tax and all that stuff. But I mean, so if you don't mind paying three to four hundred to you know, maybe five hundred dollars depending on how much you get for storage a year for this device that you carry every day and use every day, and want a better camera and you want the latest, you want the greatest. Do you want the emergency stuff? Sure, go ahead, upgrade,

But do you need to upgrade? Probably not. Now, there are specific use case scenarios where if you want the best camera because you're an instagrammer, or you want the best camera because you have a newborn, and you want you know, the best video because you know, want the action cam feature because you've been carrying a go pro around. So yeah, these are all reasons why you might want to go with these new phones. But you know, I'm

not sitting here telling you you have to upgrade. You know, if there was a feature that was groundbreaking on one of these phones, and you know, the craft detection or the SOS emergency might be consider that for safety. But if there is a feature, you know, hardware feature, software feature, you know that was super groundbreaking, then yeah, I'd mention it. But you know, we're getting nice incremental upgrades in the cameras and the hardware is a very similar new processor

in the iPhone fourteen Pro. But the iPhone fourteen thirteen wasn't even that slow towards the end, so it's not like you needed it. In fact, they're using a very similar processor in the iPhone fourteen this year. It's also really confusing for the average person that there's iPhone fourteen is sort of a blanket term for the new phones. But then you also have iPhone fourteen like the regular one, and then the pro. So I'm trying to think of

some of my other thoughts. I mean, you know, my the always on display really really, I think it's just fantastic. It's like it's funny because that's been on the Android phones forever. Of course I love it. I mean, that's that's like a standard thing I've been wanting on the iPhone for so long, just to see the time most of the time. But then they went and they won uped it and they put these widgets on the lock screen, which you know right now they're not that handy. I've

got a calendar widget, which I do love. I think that's the best thing. Ever, then I have a weather and the sun sunset, sunrise. Do I need those other two? Know?

But it's also only like day three, so, I mean since iOS sixteen came out, so once these developers and I'm checking my apps every day right now, and I would suggest you do the same, update your apps every day because they're adding new functionality to these widgets every single day, and so you know there will be widgets on there that I haven't thought of that I would

really like to have on there. And so right now I'm looking, I mean, out of all the apps on my phone, there are literally one two, three, four, five six extra widgets that are not included in the operating system. And I probably have you know, one hundred and fifty two hundred apps on my phone. So that just goes to show you that we're at the just the beginning of what those widgets do. They always on display is really unique in that it looks like your phone is

on all the time. Compared to Android, you could definitely tell when it's always on and when it's on the actual screen. On this half the time I'm looking at it, I'm like, wait, is a phone on? What's going on there? Let's see what else? The search on the homepage, which you get, you know, if you have a iOS sixteen device, that's really cool, even though you know, I just wish it was a little bit better with the search. It's not like real Google search. I mean, it sort of is,

but it's not. I don't know if they're surfacing like Google results as a suggest yeah, says serious suggestions, So those are not really necessarily Google suggestions. But I don't know, maybe they'll get better. Let's see what else do The Digital Dynamic Island, I mean, you could keep it. I don't really need it. It's not I haven't really seen the usefulness of that. And you know, there's still a lot of little things on iPhone that are just kind of,

you know, just kind of been stagnant for us. Is it stagnant just stale for a while, like some of the you know, like just arranging your home screen. You know, it's still this like really really complicated, Like you move one icon, it pushes all the other ones out of the way. Like it's just so odd that in twenty twenty two we can't just like have icons the way we want them on our screen, or little things like you know, do apps stop working in the background after

you know a little bit. Just just stuff like that. So anyway, overall, the camera is good. The action mode I think is really fun. I'll probably use that. The raw mode, the forty eight I'll never use. I don't really need that. I can't think of a reason why i'd need that. And you know, the camera is fine. I think that the camera actually took a little tiny step back in sort of the overall look of your pictures. I think that Apple needs to tweak the algorithm for this.

I don't know, maybe because it's a new lens that they need to kind of tweak things just a little bit because it's the pictures are looking great as usual, but they're not looking as good as I remember with like the older iPhone. So I mean, yes, they're good, but they're I think that Apple will continue to tweak and make things better on this device. So anyway, that's it.

I mean, And one thing I do want to explain because I did get some questions about this, and I was at the Apple store yesterday doing some interviews, and I was really curious because you know, most people buy

the iPhone on some sort of installment plan. It used to be Apple's upgrade plan, but now the carriers have sort of swooped in and taken over with these giant trade in amounts, so like up to one thousand dollars up to eight hundred dollars, you know, if you switch or you change a line whatever, and so the big difference. I was trying to, you know, get this information from the Apple folks. But the main thing is that if

you trade your phone into Apple directly. Right. Let's say you buy the iPhone last year for one thousand bucks, then you go and you trade it into Apple. They will give you the seven hundred dollars towards your new phone immediately. So your new phone, let's say the price tag is a thousand, you're out the door. Costs is three hundred. The way the carriers do it, and this is why they're really dangling one thousand dollars eight hundred dollars no matter what, even if your phone is old, whatever.

What they're doing is they're not really giving you one thousand dollars all at once. They're taking that money and they're dividing it up by anywhere from twenty four months to thirty six months, and so you basically have to stay with them during that time to get the maximum out of that trade and deal, which is sort of a quasi contract. And so it's you know, you're gonna get more money. And if you're sticking with AT and T or Verizon or T Mobile, fine, then it's gonna

work out for you. But if you're not, if you ever want to switch to like one of these low cost carriers or these cheaper you know carriers or a better plan. You're really gonna be stuck because you will have to pay some sort of buyout on that price of the phone. So you know, maybe you're just offsetting

a problem that's gonna happen later. But anyway, lots of thoughts on the iPhone, and you know, it's just one of these things that it's so it it consumes so much of the attention in the tech world, and for good reason. I mean, the iPhone was think about this the other day. It's become so many things in our lives. Like I was thinking of all the things it's just

kind of like taken out. Maybe I mentioned this last week, but it's just you know, it's like if you don't bring your phone with you soon, you're not gonna have your car keys. Like for me, it's my car key, you know, it's my wallet, it's you know, minus my ID and some cash. But it's it's really you know, it's your music player, it's your notepad, it's your gym tracker, it's your activity tracker. It's just everything. And so there is a reason. I mean, it's not just like oh,

the camera on the iPhone. There's so many aspects to what the iPhone does in general. And you know, I think that these competitors out there are trying, but it's really tough to compete with Apple because they've built such a sticky ecosystem. Like for me, for instance, like if I want to switch out of iPhone, it's like, oh, I can't I message my kid. That really sucks. Oh

I lose my air tags. That's not fun. Let's see what else I lose my you know, the best best in class video that I take on here for TV. You know, if I'm ever out on a story anywhere in the world and I shoot a little video with my iPhone, I know that I can run that video on TV because it's gonna look perfect. And so I lose that. You know, I lose all these random little apps that are that are so well designed for the iPhone that these developers have spent their entire lives creating.

And so you know, there is a reason why I lose all the accessories, all the mag safe stuff you know that works so nicely. You go into any store in the world, you could buy a new case for this phone. I mean, really, there are so many considerations, and yeah, go ahead, call me an Apple fanboy. I'm not. I'm really not at all, and I'm not trying to defend myself. But the reality is, you know, I really like Android, but I need to also be served in a way that you know, I get what I need

out of a phone. And so with the pixel for instance, Pixel six pro. Love that phone, but it's just not as powerful as i'd like when it comes to like the video stuff that I need for my job. And you know, so then you say, oh, okay, what about the this S twenty two Ultra great? But it's a giant phone and it never really feels comfortable in my hand and I can't really get used to it, and I don't necessarily need the pen on it, and so it's like it's great, but you know, also the software

is like a little bit stumbly for me. You know, it's good, but it's not like really really good like the iPhone. When you go back to it, you're just like, oh, wow, I could find anything on this phone in like one second. And then I go to Samsung and I'm like, I go to bring up the finder and it's like you know, the search the phone, it's it takes literally a couple seconds to bring up my app that I'm searching for. I mean, that's just not acceptable. And face ID is

also another thing. So anyway, you know, I just try to look at all these things and see what they're worth. And I think that, you know, most people don't use like ninety nine percent of what the iPhone does anyway, so it's all good. Anyway, keep those questions coming. Let's get to the first question of the podcast, which is where is it's here? It is, Oh, look at this? Oh great? More iPhone talk, Michael says, is the extra two hundred dollars for the iPhone pro worth it over

the Plus fourteen? I take photos, but I'm not anywhere close to someone that really values higher quality. So the only difference between the two I think would be the New Island. But your video says it still needs work. So my thought here is that the fourteen plus should be just fine. But I value your suggestion. Thanks in advance, Mike. Mike, I agree. If you do not care about your pictures. Now, I'm not saying you're not gonna get good pictures out

of the fourteen plus. You're gonna get great pictures. Are they gonna be as good in every situation as the fourteen pro. No, but you then again it's you know, is it worth the extra two hundred not if you don't care about that feature. Dynamic island is not worth two hundred dollars always on display. I would make an argument for that because that is one of my favorite features to see the time and the date in my widgets that are you know, coming soon, So that to

me might be worth it. But you know, again, it really comes down to what you want out of your phone. So if you don't really care about your pictures that much, I think you'll be just fine with a fourteen plus. That's coming out, by the way, October seventh. So kind of odd that Apple had three models come out the same day, but they couldn't somehow get the iPhone fourteen plus on the same day, So that's delayed by about I guess a three month three weeks came out in

the sixteenth and then you've got October seventh. That sounds like it's about three weeks. So good question, Mike, And you know, look to each his own. Everyone has different, you know, wants with their phone, and so it just comes down to, like I've always said, it just comes down to what you need out of your device. All right, let's talk about eSIMs, because this is another new thing

on the iPhone. Now. eSIMs have been around for a long time now, nobody has really needed to use them until now because they did away with a physical simcard on the iPhone. So now people are sort of discovering for the first time that wait a second, I don't need a simcard on my phone. That's kind of weird.

And you know, quite honestly, I never used an eSIM until my trip to Rome and I activated an eSIM for international and it was so easy, it was so amazing, and it was the greatest experience, and I was like, wow,

this is really really cool. Now, if you talk to Apple, they've actually secretly, not secretly, but they've they haven't advertised this, but they've been activating eSIMs on all of the iPhones sold at their stores for the past year, you know, without people really knowing that, like, oh you didn't, I didn't notice you pop in a SIM card. But they didn't need to because they've been activating them. Probably has like a beta test, you know, for this big launch,

and so people are already out there using eSIMs. And I think eSIM is is quite amazing actually, because at first I was like, oh, that's kind of annoying, like

you can't just swap SIM cards or whatever. And yeah, there will be some uses where that's that is kind of annoying because you're always so sort of going through the carrier to switch your SIM to a new phone, and so you know, there's just a level of like I gotta I gotta work with either the phones or the carrier or you know, like if you go from let's say you went from and this is where I think Apple kind of did this on purpose. But let's say you do you decide to switch from Android to

iOS and you activate. You know, you had a physical SIM on your Android, and now you go to iOS and it's it's eSIM. Well, guess what, it's gonna be a big barrier to get back to that physical SIM, to go back to an Android. Now androids do support eSIMs, but again it's just one. You know, iPhone. They sort of made the system work really well. But you know, with and I don't know what it's like to go

from eSIM on iPhone to eSIM on Android. You probably have to like contact your carrier, like not the easiest situation. But what I like about the eSIM is that you can literally set up your cellular plan right from your phone. You don't need to go to a store. You know. A picture and I posted it the other day of the the simcard section at Target, and I said, ah, this is going the way of news stands and you know,

mailboxes and postage stamps and magazines and newspapers. It's like stuff that like used to be really important but now is all just digital. And that's kind of like the simcard. You just don't need it. But on the plus side, what I think is cool is that all of these little carriers now have an option to sort of get you in. I mean, you could see a commercial on TV for a really good cell phone plan and switch to it immediately on your phone. That is pretty powerful

and really cool. In fact, I was looking at some you know, plans online and I found this one from US Mobile that I've tested US Mobile in the past. It was really good. They run on like either Verizon or T Mobile, and they are unlimited plans like forty five bucks a month. And I'm like, Okay, that's pretty good, so what's the catch. And not only that, but you can go on their website and they'll give you let's

see what's their offer. It's like, you know, they'll they'll activate your e SIM immediately to give you a test run, just like T mobiles doing as well. So this US mobile, let's see what's what's happening here. Let's see. So free trial ten days with unlimited talk, text and premium data ten days. That's pretty good. So, I mean, that's really cool that you could just do that right from your from your phone and just activate you know, ten days

of free service on the iPhone. You can store eight sims. Two can be active, six can be sort of dormant. And what that means because I know this is kind of odd because it's all new, but let's say you go to Italy all the time and you wanted to keep your Rome SIM cards, you know, with that phone number that only works over there. You can keep it, you know, dormant but not active on your phone, or you can tap it and activate it when you get

over there. So or you can have you know, one SIM for your home number, one SIM for your work number. You know, you can do a lot with that. The other thing that's kind of neat is that no one now is wondering about this the other day. No one can just pop the SIM out of your phone and put it into another phone. So you know, you have this thing called sim swapping or simjacking. So it seems like that's kind of a big hole in the whole

like phone thing. So let's say I take Let's say I was evil and I have a phone that's you know, I can open and unlocked. And let's say I found your phone. Instead of unlocking your phone, I could just literally pop that SIM card into my phone, start doing some password resets with the one time authorization codes, and all those codes would come to my phone because now this, uh, this SIM card is in my phone that I can unlock.

So it kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone that locks, so that AGAINESIM, someone can't take it out. International roaming is gonna be is gonna be very very bumpy road for a lot of people, especially the first year. So some carriers lock the e sims to their network. Yeah, even the SIM so A T and T for instance, as far as I know, their eSIM will be locked.

If you buy that phone on a financing plan, they will lock that eSIM to their network, which means as long as you're paying off that phone, you can't use that phone on another network, which you know, when you go to a go for an international trip, you're gonna be like, oh, let me go activate this cool eSIM that's cheap for my trip to you know, grease, and it's like, oh, no, dice because it's locked. And so you know, as far as I know, I'm not sure if T Mobile does. I don't think for eyes and

locks them. So it's interesting. But the point is, no matter what carrier you have, you're gonna find out if it's locked when you go to get that secondary plan. So that's another thing that people are gonna kind of get tripped up on. But otherwise I think it's a

good thing. I did switch my physical SIM to the eSIM, and I had a little hiccup, so im my advice to you if you're having a hiccup with activating the eSIM from from a physical is in my account, I had something turned on that was like basically account protection where you can't hijack the SIM and take it to a different device. And so once I turned that off, my simcard activated. I don't know if that was it or not, but that was the toggle that I changed,

and everything seemed to work all right. Next question of the show, Dana says, good morning Rich Yesterday I tried sending you an email for my computer. It did not send, and this message keeps coming up on my screen. I later tried sending the same message. It looks like it sent for my phone. I can send emails from my computer to others. This screen keeps coming up. Every minute I've hit the cancel button, it still keeps coming up.

Any suggestions to get rid of that email and message, and she included a little screen shot that says can't connect to the account and her Gmail account Dana, Okay, So, Dana, what I think happened here is that you either change your password for Gmail or you signed out of Gmail on your different devices, and that's what's triggering this message. So my advice just go ahead delete the account completely from your computer. Go into your settings on the mac.

This yeah, this screenshot looks like a Mac and so if you go to Internet accounts, just go ahead and tap on the one that you're using and just delete it, like press the little minus arrow at the bottom of the or the I guess the bottom middle of the screen. In that box, there's a plus sign and a minus sign. You want to hit the minus sign. Hit the minus sign and it will go away, and then you can

just readd the account. So the way that the Gmail accounts work, when you delete them off your computer, you're not deleting your email, so you'll be just fine. But usually if you're having some sort of like login problem like this actually happened to me, and I had, you know, switched phones, and so my out Look account on the new phone was really giving me trouble, like it wouldn't log in even though I kept putting my password in

and my two factor, it just wouldn't like populate. And so finally I just deleted the entire app and account, because I first tried deleting the account still wouldn't work. So I deleted the app. And when you delete the app on the iPhone, it sort of resets the data, and so that was a much easier way to fix it than to try to keep, you know, putting in this code like a thousand times and be like, what's happening here, So sometimes you just have to delete and

start over. It's the oldest fix in the book, but sometimes it is the best fix in the book. Good question, Dana, thanks for emailing in. All right, what else should we talk about? Let's talk about the Amazon Ghost Store. So I keep thinking it sounds like Amazon Ghost that would be very appropriate for Halloween. But one thing that I like to do at my job is get access to things before a lot of other people. And this was

an example of that. Amazon called me up and they said, hey, do you want to take a tour of our new Amazon Ghost store and Wittier And I'm like absolutely. And here's the thing. You know, sometimes I don't really know what the story is, but you just know that some things just need to be covered. And I get it. Amazon has a bunch of fresh stores, you know, the

grocery stores everywhere. But when a company like Amazon is opening up something that's like a new concept like this convenience store, you know, yeah, they have a bunch of locations and other places, not not a bunch, but like twenty seven I think they said, but you know, in Los Angeles, it's new to people. And I primarily cover my tech news from Los Angeles, and so there's a lot of people in LA and so they don't know

what an Amazon Go is. Now. I went into one in New York City and I did a little video on it, like just for social media, and it was still really cool. And so to get access where I can actually go in there and like shoot it with you know, a good camera and have some time and talk to like you know, the people that kind of run the store, that's that's really fun. And so this

is what I did in Whittier. It opened up this week in Whittier, California, which is probably about an hour outside La I'd say, I mean it's probably by by mileage wise, it's probably like twenty miles or twenty five miles, but like by driving it, it took me a solid hour, so it's kind of kind of wild. It kind of took a long time anyway. So Amazon Go is their answer to seven to eleven. But it's got this just walk out technology. Now, I will tell you the just

walk out technology is pretty slick. It really is. It's these cameras in the ceiling that somehow, when you walk in, you become a virtual shopping cart, which is kind of funny. That's the way they described it to me. So when you walk in, they don't use face recognition, but they they basically identify you with enough attributes where it says, okay, this guy that looks like this is shopping cart number seven. And when I walk through the store and pick something up,

it says, okay, I'm shopping cart number seven. Just pick that up. Oh he's holding it. Okay, Now we'll assign that to his virtual car. And then you know, if you put something back, it'll take it off your bill. But if you walk out, that's it. It says, okay, number seven just walked out. What did he finally choose? Okay, let's charge him, and then they charge your Amazon account, your credit card, or you can sign up with your Palm as well with the Amazon one and it will

you know, just charge your credit card too. That way, don't need to be an Amazon Prime member anyway. So this looked like a nice, shiny new kind of seven to eleven, but with this high tech stuff. And they've got a kitchen in there where they're making breakfast stuff and lunch stuff. I tried some avocado toasts. They also have coffee on demand, like it's one of those machines that like grinds the coffee like fresh for you, which I don't think is going to work in this situation

because you know, when you're going into a car. I mean, that's great for when you're in there at like two PM, right you just want a nice fresh coffee, But when you're on your way to work, like you just want to dump coffee from a big pitcher or jar or you know, dispenser into your cup and be on your way. You don't want to wait for this thing to like grind beans and make a cup for you. Like that just not gonna fly. But they have like a beer and wine section. By the way, did you know that

Amazon has their own wine brand? And this is again what I love about going to these things, and like you know, talking to these people that run these things, is that it's called Cursive brand wine and so that's from Amazon. Just kind of cool. I mean it's like eight bucks a bottle. I didn't try any, I didn't I didn't buy any, so I can't tell you how good it is. But I think I should do a segment on it, or not a segment, but I should do a taste test because so many people wrote me

about it. I posted to my Instagram. They're like gonna how was it, how was it? Okay, what else you've got? Let's see what else? So you've got local vendors. So this is what they were kind of like pushing, you know, kind of like making it seem like they're you're, you know, they're one with the community, which you know, maybe they're trying. But they had a bunch of local vendors. So a bunch of like area bakeries made some of the goods,

like in the bread and the beers. Most of it is like the snacks, of course, but you know, like some of the you know, the beers and stuff. California is a big beer and wine so clearly that's pretty easy to source. I mean, you can say that any grocery store sources a lot of local California brands if you look down the beer and wine aisle, because so many wines and beers are made in California. There's also

a place to return your packages. There was also a Blue Rhino propane exchange outside, which was self service, which I had never seen before. I posted that to my social media. Apparently that's the thing. I didn't know that that would be so convenient in my neighborhood because I've been known to drive around to like four or five of those places to before I found one that had propane back in the pandemic days. They also have self service Pinkberry, froio, what else. I mean, it's just cool,

it's nice. I really have grown to love to just walk out technology because it's so easy, it's so fast. It's right most of the time. But I would say out of I would say maybe one item out of every trip is not something that we picked up, and so I would, you know, have to just go into the app and you say I didn't, I didn't pick up that, you know whatever, you know whatever said you got. Actually one story for my wife. She she someone in

the store asked her. She was at an Amazon store and someone asked her to pick something off the shelf for her, and so she did. It was like on a high shelf and my wife could reach it and the other person couldn't. She picked this off the shelf and she gave it to this person. And then we got home and I said, hey, did you buy this whatever? It was some random things? She's like no, She's like, I took that off the shelf for someone else. And I said, ah, that's so funny. That's a little a

little bug in their system. And so I told that to the Amazon people and they were like, yeah, I guess yeah, that would be So now they've got to figure out how you can, you know, be kind to people in their stores and still not get charged for it. Or on the flip side, if you just want free stuff when you go into an Amazon store, you just just ask someone else to grab it for you. Be like, I can't reach that shelf. Can you can you grab that for me? And they're like, Rich, that's on the himself.

What's the problem. And you'd be like, ah, I'm just you know, I'm not feeling it today, all right, So Amazon go, uh kind of a cool idea. I don't think they're going to take over seven to eleven anytime soon. In fact, I will tell you this, as good as the just walk out technology is. Uh. It was installed in the Newark Airport when I was flying out a

couple of months ago. It was like one of those little like you know, like a little Hudson stand or whatever they you know, the little place where you buy waters and stuff. And I thought it was pretty cool, but I guess not other people thought it was cool because it was gone. The next time it went it went back to a regular checkout, and so I asked the woman that was working. I said, what happened to the Amazon just walk out? She goes, ah, no, no, no, And I was like, oh no, no one liked it.

She's like no, It's like, oh interesting. So I don't think it works everywhere, but it definitely is a new way to shop that is pretty unique and pretty efficient. So and in a convenience store, you want to be in out very fast and you don't want to wait in line. So that is kind of cool. We'll see how it works next. Next area othern California to get it is going to be Torrance, California. All right, uh?

Roy Roy with the next question for the show. He says, Hey, Rich, does it hurt the MacBook Pro laptop by turning it off every evening before going to bed? Or should you just close the lid? Thank you, Roy, great question, Roy. I would just close the lid. And I don't know if this is still a thing because most hard drives these days are solid state, So but I will say that I think a lot of issues happen during startup right the startup, and you know, maybe not so much shutdown,

but definitely start up. And so you know, when you're when you're starting up your computer every day, I feel like you're putting it at risk. Now I may be wrong, I may not really. Yeah, that may not be a thing anymore, but I would argue, what's the point of turning it off every day? I mean, I've had my laptop now for Let's see how old this thing is. It's almost time. I'm waiting for the new M two chip on the MacBook Pro sixteen inch, but I don't know if we'll see it, hopefully soon. This is from

twenty nineteen, so this is three years old. So the thing is, like, I've had this computer for three years. I could probably tell you specifically. I might have shut it down twice in three years now. Restarting sure, a couple of times when you install some software updates stuff like that, but like physically saying I'm going to shut

my computer down now, Like I can't tell you. I mean, I think the last time I did it was when I went to Rome and I was out of the house for a week, and so that was a reason to shut it down like completely, because I was like, well, the battery's going to probably drip to death anyway, so you know, drip drain, and when I come back, it's gonna be dead. So I'd rather shut it down properly than have it have to go through that thing, right, So I would say, don't don't shut it off every night. Now.

If you want to shut it off once a month, fine, I mean, if it's a power thing, you know, the computers are pretty good at managing their own power. I don't think it's really gonna be sapping a lot of power when it's in sleep mode. Yeah, some power is gonna be consumed, obviously, but I think I just think

it's better to just leave it on. I know, if you look on Android phones, they've got in the menu you can see sort of the uptime of that phone, and so I know androids are a little more finicky sometimes, especially in the past with how you know, when I was robbing them and stuff like that. But you know, you would you'd pride yourself on how long you could keep that uptime, you know, where you hadn't restarted your phone, and sometimes it would be a challenge. Now with the iPhone,

it's like game over. You don't need to restart that or shut it down ever. I mean, the thing just like works. It just it's like a warhorse. It just goes and goes and goes and goes. So, you know, but the computer, I don't think you need to shut it down. I think you just just keep it going and I think you'll be a okay there, Roy, thanks for the question. I know, Roy send sends me a lot of questions, so I don't get to all of them, but I do try. All right, let's talk about Google Photos.

This is one of my favorite apps. If not, I'm trying to think what is my favorite app? It might be Google Photos. And I have some beef with Google Photos because the number one thing that is really obnoxious about Google Photos is that it does not give you a way to back up your photos. Now, yes, you can argue that Google takeout handles that, but Google takeout

is way too complicated. I'm not gonna sit there and download thirty five files at five fifty terabytes each or whatever the not terabytes, fifty gigabytes each or whatever it is. I tried to do the takeout thing once with my giant, you know, two point five terabyte collection of photos, and there's just no way. I have to spend all day trying to download that, and it's just it's just ridiculous.

So otherwise, I love Google Photos. And I was talking about this actually on my Instagram because someone emailed me. I think it was last week on the show where they said, you know I deleted a picture from or where is it? Do I have that in this show? I might actually have this question in this show. I think I might. Yep, I do. Yeah. So a person basically deleted their iCloud pictures or pictures off their phone.

It deleted from my cloud. And I said, look, this is why I like Google Photos, because it's sort of a one way sync. The photos go up and they stay there. Think about like this giant net right up in the sky, and you throw a ball, it goes through the net and it comes back down. It's going to hit the net on the way down because it's only a one way net, right It like kind of burst through the net on the way up and then it collects it there. That's the way I think of

Google Photos. It's like your pictures go up into the cloud and they don't come back down unless you want

to download them at some point. But The way that iCloud works is everything on your phone is linked like you're when you look through your phone at that iCloud, it's like looking at the cloud, but also on your phone, and it's the delineation between the two can be very tricky for people, especially a novice user who's not really thinking, like, oh, if I delete this picture, it's deleting out of iCloud. Like no, yeah, it's it's deleting it everywhere. So keep

that in mind. Anyway, I don't know what my point was. I'll get to that back the iCloud stuff in a second. But so one of my favorite apps is Google Photos. I just wish they would give me. Here's what I want. I want a hard drive, like a standalone hard drive that I can plug into the wall with Wi Fi and it I just literally scan a QR code on it with my phone. It links it up to my WiFi, It links it up to my Google account, and next thing you know, that is just twenty four seven sinking

my Google Photos account. That's it. Every picture, every video that I upload, it just sinks to that hard drive. I never need to go onto that hard drive ever, unless I wake up one day and Google is gone, and I'm like, oh, glad I have this little hard drive plugged in that's always sinking, because I don't think that's gonna happen. But Google, for some reason, does not give us an easy way to, you know, make sure

we're protected in case something happens to them. And I'll be honest, I'm at risk and I need to, you know, make sure that that's not a thing, because that's really bad. And anyway, so the point is, Google, just please make that if anyone from Google is listening, just just tell your colleagues like hard drive, Wi Fi, plug it in, scan QR code with the Google Photos app, links it up, sinks everything. You can buy them in a terabyte, five terabytes,

ten terabytes, you know whatever. It's like a mini server, but just for Google Photos. And it's just super simple. And you know, I don't think it's going to ruin your Google Photos business. Like I'll still pay the twenty five bucks a month I pay to keep my stuff in there, but I just would I would feel better knowing I had a physical copy of my pictures in

my house. Okay. Anyway, all this to say that they're making memories memories is really like one of the best ways to experience your pictures on the uh on Google Photos, because you know, a lot of times you don't look at your pictures. You know, you're not going to scroll

to a random date and look at your pictures. But it does this thing at the top where it sort of makes a feed of you know, like right now, I've got similar shots, I've got spotlight on my wife, I've got my kids, Cooper, Tino, my niece and nephew, similar shots, cooking shots, recent highlights, and then one year ago, two years ago, three four, five, sixty seven, all the way into sixteen years ago, and then something called in the woods, so you can flip through all these. Now

Google says they are improving this. So number one, apparently you're going to be able to scroll through your photos up and down, which is more like TikTok. So that's why I call it your own personal memories TikTok, which is really cool because you're on TikTok half the day, well some people are, and so why not take the you know, the five six seven minutes each day to

scroll through your Google Photos? Now the one little I know I said only had one problem Google Photos, but I do have another problem when I am looking at a memory on Google Photos. Okay, my options when I bring them up are view day, order photo, hide, and add to album. Where is the delete button? I just need a simple way. When I see a picture in the Memories and I'm like, what the heck kind of picture is this? Just delete it. I just want to

be able to delete that right from the memory. I don't want to have to like go to that day and look at all those pictures from that day. I just want to be able to delete that picture. So please, please, Google, just add a delete button to the memories when you're looking at a photo on a memory. Okay, what else are they gonna do? They're gonna do more of those cinematic photos, which kind of bring your pictures to life in a three D effect. I personally despise as a

really strong word. I personally really don't like those pictures. I think they look weird and creepy. But I'm reading the blog here and Google says three D cinematic photos have quickly become one of our most saved visual effects since they launched in twenty two. I really can't believe that. Okay, but soon they say, Uh, they're gonna do full cinematic memories that transform multiple still photos into an end to end cinematic experience taking you back to that moment in time.

There's also gonna be music. Okay, that could be kind of fun. Uh. They're also doing more styles in the uh when you make like a collage of your pictures, so that's kind of cool. Uh, and more stylistic pictures in general, like sometimes if you notice some of the pictures have like a style to them, they'll do that as well. What else, what's there other things they're doing. Let's see, I should have highlighted this stuff. I didn't. Now now you just hear me reading a blog post.

How much fun is that? Uh? Okay? Anyway, so that's it. So I don't see where where the scrolling up and down came from. I thought I thought that was on this blog post, but I don't see it. Hmm interesting, oh uh weird? Okay, Well, I don't know. I thought I saw that on this blog post and I I let me see. Yeah, I don't even see the word down at all. Huh. Okay, Well, I don't know if I made that up, but I'm still calling it a

TikTok for your memories. Okay, it's still it's still a TikTok for your memories, even if they don't let you scroll up and down. But I thought I could have sworn someone said that you can do that, like one of the blogs that wrote about this. But I guess that's what I get for not double checking before I talked about that. Anyway, Uh, Google Photos memories, if you haven't looked at them, it's the strip of pictures at

the top of your Google Photos collection. And if you're not using Google Photos, you know, I'm not gonna tell you what you have to use. But it's it's really phenomenal to me. Like I can search for anything in my photo collection and find it in about less than a minute. I mean most of the time, it's like one or you know, five seconds. I mean, it's uncanny

how good the search is. It's like a Google search, but for your personal photo collection and especially even like photo like people that are in videos, like old videos that you digitize, you can go through and like find like your grandfather, your great grandfather or a relative and like see them, like it will identify them in those videos. So even if you're at like a family party and you you know, you you got a video digitized from like your fourth birthday party, and you know Aunt Edna

was there. You can see her in that video, like you know. It's just it's such a magical thing that I just can't speak highly enough of it. So Google, really really nice job. But please do the suggestions. I asked. That's that's what I need. All right, let's talk about what this person was was referring to. Let's see here, where is it? Okay? No, no oh? Jim said, Hey, Rich, I hope you can help. I offloaded all my photos to iCloud, then proceeded to delete them from my iPhone seven.

I know, I know now they're gone from my iCloud accounts or any way I can recover these priceless picks. Thank you, Jim. So not really, Jim, because it's there. Here's the thing. A couple ways to look for these. Number One, I would look in your recently deleted album So if you go into photos albums and then recently deleted because you deleted them, they should be in there. I don't know, maybe they went away out of there, but that that would be the first place I look.

And you might be pleasantly surprised that they're still in there because they're supposed to stay in there for about I think thirty to forty days, So definitely check there. Go into your photos app, open up the albums, and then scroll all the way to the bottom, and in iOS sixteen, the recently deleted folder is now password protected, so you'll have to use face ID or some other

authorization to get into that folder. For good reason. You know, you might have deleted something that you don't want other people to see. Alternatively, maybe you made a backup of your phone to your computer. You might be one of those people that still plugs their computer or their phone into their computer to make a full backup. So if you have that, you can restore your phone using that backup.

But that would only work if you backed up your phone before you before you wiped it, and then you had and you didn't do a new backup since, so that's a little trickier. But yes, the lesson learned here is that again the option that you want to use in on the iPhone is under iCloud under photo Library, and it's called Optimize iPhone Storage or something to that effect. You want to turn that on, because downloading keep originals means that your phone storage is going to fill up.

No matter how much iCloud you have. You might be chasing iCloud storage saying Rich, I'm I have a terabyte of iCloud storage, and my iPhone keeps running out of storage. Well, that's because you don't have this optimized photo or phone storage turned on. And what optimized phone storage does is instead of keeping every picture from your iCloud account on your phone physically, it keeps representations of them, little thumbnails of them, and if you ever need one, it just

downloads it on the fly from the cloud. So in this case, you can really have unlimited storage on your iPhone because your iPhone is really just mirroring what's in the cloud, and the cloud could be potentially unlimited storage. I mean, yes, you're limited by how much Apple will give you its storage, but the thing is you can really have more on your phone than the storage. And a lot of people just they put their hands up, they don't get it, they don't really understand. But your

phone is sort of a window into iCloud. And that's what I don't like about it, because it's way too like one to one that's why like third party cloud services that, like I said, Google Photos, one Edrive, I really don't care, Amazon Photos, Iedrive, whatever you want to use, you know, just use something that's more cloud based than just linked iCloud is just too complicated. It's gotten way too complicated for the average person to use it. And it's just I don't know. Okay, let's talk about some

thing else. Sorry you lost those pictures. I really hope you didn't. That's really hope you didn't. Okay. iOS sixteen couple of tips and tricks since it's brand new. So I just talked about the recently deleted photos folder that has been around forever or I don't know, it's been around for a while. But now iOS sixteen has added a recently deleted folder to messages, and so you can you know, you may not realize that your messages when

you're deleting them are still on your phone. So now if you go into messages and you tap edit in the upper left hand corner, there is an option for recently deleted and I can look in here, and I've got all kinds of messages in here. Wow, And so you can see your recently deleted messages and you can delete them all or you can recover them all and they go away after about anywhere from thirty to forty days.

And so if you're looking for something that you deleted again, just open up your messages upper left hand corner, tap edit and then it says show recently deleted. That is new and iOS sixteen, So if you're not running iOS sixteen, you're gonna have to run that to get that new feature. Another new feature that a lot of people are liking is haptic typing, and this is again new and iOS sixteen. And so if you want your phone to sort of vibrate a little bit when you press the keyboard keys,

you can turn this on. This has been an Android feature forever and it's just coming to iPhone now, and it's in iOS sixteen, so it will work on various older phones. But it just uses the same thing when you know, when you feel like some sort of vibration from your phone, same thing, except now it's for the keyboard. And so if we go into settings, okay, let me see exactly where this is settings, and we go into

sound and haptics. It's not under the keyboard. You would think it's the keyboard settings, but no, it sounds and haptics, which is under notifications, and then you scroll up it says keyboard feedback and you have sound haptic or both. And so back in the day when the iPhone first came out, I thought that the clickity click sound on the iPhone keyboard was so cool. I mean, it was so The keyboard on the iPhone was just so great.

And I don't know if you remember this, but the keys when you press them, they used to get bigger. It was almost like one of those old school typewriters where the letter would like come up. I don't know what you call it, like a rotary typewriter. I have no idea, but it's like the letter was like a big I don't know, like it was like hit the paper. It would like come up. It was like but it would like it would you know, it was like every letter was on like some sort of little metal rod

that would like pop up and hit the paper. And so when you first had the iPhone, that's what it reminded me of. The keyboard. The letter used to look like that, like it was like a It almost looked like an old school, you know, keyboard on a typewriter that you know, you'd press and it would like come up bigger, and then it would go back down and it would make that cool clickety clackity sound. And now my phone's always on silence, so I never hear the

clickity clackity. But I do like having the feedback, the haptic feedback. So turn it on if you want to try it out and see what it's all about. You can always turn it off if you don't like it. But it is kind of fun. I think it's it's good and it's bad. You might be so used to typing without it, it might make you a slower typer, or you might end up loving it. So try it out. It's good to have options, right, Okay, let's see, I think we skipped a couple questions here. Oh, Bobby says rich.

What's your thoughts? Have you had a chance to review the Aura ring? What features can you use if you don't sign up for the membership? Oh? Good question, Bobby. So I did get an or a ring for my wife for my birthday, and so I you know, I told her, I said, look, don't buy me tackle come on, like I I will get tech that I need, like I don't need you to buy me tech, like I will choose the tech that I need like you you

you concentrat. She's a very good gift giver, but I, you know, I kind of seek out the tech that I want and I'll get it. And so it's, you know, she heard me talking about the ore ring and how I wanted it, and so she just went out and got it, which is fine. It's a really cool thing. It's a it's a three hundred dollars ring and it looks like a regular ring, but it has a it has like a whole bunch of sensors inside. So let's see, can I tell you what sensors it has? So it

has activity and fitness tracking, it's got sleep tracking. It's got activity tracking. I think I said that, it's got audio meditations. Oh the other it's got temperature sensing, it's got oxygen. I mean, it's got a lot of sensors on. I wish I could find like a oh okay, here's it's got oh yeah, yeah, oxygen sensing, twenty four to seven heart rate trends, and so really they're big thing

is this thing called like your readiness score. And so it kind of looks at your whole body like everything that it's measuring, and it comes up with a score of when you wake up. It's like how ready are you to take on the day. And so in the three days I wore it before I realized I got too small of a size. That readiness score really was interesting because the two days I got like a ninety something, but another day I got like a seventy or eighty, and I could definitely tell my mood and energy was

not as good on that day. So I never really thought about the correlation between having a rough day the day before and how you feel the next day, right like if you went to the gym, or you did a big workout, or you didn't get much sleep or all the above combined or jet lag or alcohol or anything. And so this ring is sort of more kind of a holistic approach. It's not as much as like the Apple Watch, where it's like I want to track a workout right now and see my heart rate and see

my you know whatever. This is more of like a whole body kind of experience, like you want to see how are you doing as a as an individual? Rich DeMuro and so, you know, I thought it was pretty cool. So I'm still not sold on whether I'm gonna keep it. I think my time is ticking down on my return window, but it is. It is really interesting. I think that it's it's kind of a little redundant with having an

Apple Watch. That kind of annoys me. But I also like the fact that it's I don't need an Apple Watch, but I kind of love my Apple Watch. So I don't know. So we'll see. So the answer your question, I don't have a I don't have a decision just yet on the Aura ring, but and when it comes to the the membership, right, so I need to I need to see. I know it's six dollars a month,

so let's see. What does the membership do? Detailed sleep analysis, twenty four to seven heart rate tracking, third party apps, integration, temperature monitoring, blood oxygen so interesting. Without membership, you cannot access the Aura API, but you can still download your data through the web. Uh yeek, that's not good. That's see. That's kind of weird. They don't even put like a you know, the membership fee on their like homepage like it's a little bit anyway, So interesting, Can I use

my Aura without a membership. Oh wow. The Gen two ring does not require membership, but Gen three does. You'll have limited functionality, so yeah, you do. You do kind of need the membership, which is six bucks a month. It's kind of a lot to just know you're already paying for this thing, and I gotta pay forever. So anyway,

good question. I will have a full review. I'm gonna, you know, get the new size in hopefully soon, and then I will I will, you know, Once I do that, I'll figure it out and put it on TV and all that good stuff. All right, good question? All right? Do I have anything else to talk about that I didn't mention the Kindle? Did I mention the Kindle? New Kindle and Kindle Kids? So what do you need to know about the new Kindle? Not much. If you need a new Kindle, you go on the website, you buy it.

Kindles last forever for the most part, so it's not like people are buying these things. But the one nice thing is that the standard Kindle, the basic bottom of the line, bottom of the line entry level, I should say, that's a nicer way of saying it right now has USBC charging, So that's a win. Finally, one less cable to carry around. My Kindle still has the micro USB, so that's the one cable when I travel I need to carry still is micro USB, lightning and USBC. I

can't wait for the day when it's all USBC. That is going to be such a great day. So the new Kindle ninety nine ninety nine. My advice, never ever, ever pay full price for a Amazon device. They go on sale quite regularly. Amazon is more in the data business and the added sales business of selling you books on this thing. So do not pay full price for an Amazon product. Wait for it to go on sale. You can use an app like Honey to track the price.

You can use something like Camel Camel Camel, but just set a price alert when that price drops, that's when you buy it, or buy it during the holidays, buy it during Prime Day, buy it during a sale. Do not pay full price for Amazon products. It's just not worth it. They go on sale regularly. Let's see, so the bottom of the entry level has the you know, three hundred resolution, so that's like a higher resolution display, three hundred ppi, so three times more than before, three

times more pixels. I should say, I don't think it's three. I don't think the old was one hundred PPI, two times of storage with sixteen gigs now six weeks of battery life USBC charging dark Mode. It's got the front light which is adjustable. And there's also a new Kindle Kids for one hundred and twenty dollars. Don't forget the price of these Kindles at one and one hundred and twenty. Well, not for the kids, but one hundred dollars is the ads supported version of that Kindle, So that means when

you on your lock screen you're gonna have ads. If you don't want ads, you can pay twenty bucks to get rid of them, which I highly recommend because then you can show the cover of the book that you're reading on your home screen, which I think is a much better use of the Kindle home screen than seeing

random ads every time it's just sitting there. The other thing is that you can get four months of Kindle Unlimited membership included, so that's like basically a forty dollars value if you use books that are on Kindle Unlimited. But there you go, all right, oh my gosh, I actually think that sound means it is the end of the show. Can't believe it. Man, oh man, that went so fast? Did you have fun? That's gonna do it?

For this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the email icon. I'd love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice. Write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand

why they should listen. You can find me on all social media at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.