Google Photos Gets a Helpful New Texting Feature

The FBI warns about smart TVs, the mattress hackers, top apps of twenty nineteen, plus Your tech questions answered.

What's going on? I'm Rich damiro.

This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and answer the questions that you send me.

Joining me is producer Megan. There you are, Oh, here you are.

Sorry, my Mike wasn't.

I feel like I'm back at the radio station pressing buttons that I don't know what they do. We did, Man, the questions are at an all time high, Megan, I will tell you this, I'm getting so many. Yesterday I spent two hours just in the afternoon going through excited like a backlog from before Thanksgiving. Oh and I felt back as some people were like kind of asking me about their Cyber Monday and Black Friday shopping and I couldn't get to all of them.

I just couldn't. So some people were like, thanks, Rich, I already bought whatever I asked you about.

I was like, sorry, but we had a great time. We did four hours on the radio on KFI in Los Angeles, So thanks to KFI for letting me do that and Megan was there and we had a great time.

Yeah, it was really fun. Felt like one hour.

What was your highlight of that. I know, your cousin or your.

Uncle, Maddie, that was probably the highlight.

I got my uncle we call him crazy Uncle Matt, and he called in and he wasn't that crazy on air.

But he was pretty good though.

I could see you could feel that, yes, I could.

I could see. He was like an onion. There was a lot of layers.

He's from New York and he wears shorts to like Christmas, Eve and Thanksgiving. He really doesn't really he doesn't care much about looking super fancy.

And he's really fun and hysterical.

And I called my sister, who is like a vegan and she's a health nut and it's so funny.

I got so many emails about that too. They were like, I love your sister. She's so great. I have a brother that's vegan or whatever, and like, I love the back and forth.

She should get a podcast.

I gave her a hard time about, you know, her eating and stuff, because it's just it's just interesting to me, Like I try to eat healthy, but it's like really very healthy. I just had four peanut butter chocolate oreos in the newsroom.

Like four donuts.

No, I wish. I'm really trying to stay off the donuts at this point.

But anyway, so she you know, so like I try, but she actually delivers, like she really does eat healthy like and the stuff that she eats, it's like I can't imagine, Like to me, like if I eat a healthy lunch, I immediately go to the cabinet and get like a whole bag of M and ms and eCos. Yes, like I punctuate all healthy meals with like something really bad. I'm the same, and it's just weird.

I don't know why I have.

To do that oat meal. Then I'm like, okay, you can have hot cheetos now, right.

So anyway, uh so we got lots of questions. You have some queued up for the show?

Yeah, I do. I have a lot.

Actually, well we'll get to those in a moment. But first let's start with this a new rumor about the next iPhone. Maybe it might be completely wireless. So first they remove the headphone jack everyone's talking about. Maybe they're going to take the lightning off and put on a USBC. But ming chi quo, this noted analyst that always seems to get it right, says that he thinks the highest end model in the twenty twenty one lineup is going

Get used to this idea.

But if you look at Apple's past, and you look at the computer I'm on right now, there's no CD drive, there's no DVD drive, there's there is a headphone jack, there's no micro SD cards.

Saw.

All these things that we used to have on laptops are all gone. Yeah, And every time they went away, people cried. And now I've been using this like this for years and I still cry when I.

Do, I still cry.

I do cry because it is annoying.

Sometimes they just simplify.

They simplify, but to a level that like we're not like the average person's not ready yet.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean I missed the headphone jack.

Sometimes there are just times when you want to plug in a headphone. Yeah.

So the twenty twenty lineup, according to this prediction, is a four point seven inch LCD screen, which will be the kind of part of the iPhone se like that small one a five point four inch OLED screen. Oh, they're going all O lead now except for that tiny one, a six point one inch O lead, another six point one inch O lead, and then another six point seven inch O lead, which is kind of like the flagship with triple cameras. So it looks like kind of the

C on the bottom of the phone.

But otherwise it seems like the triple camera is kind of gonna stay. Triple camera is gonna move to like, you know, the top of the end phones, or stay on the top of end phones, but there's gonna be more on the bottom end, so it seems like the lower end there'll be more to choose from. Okay, and the lower end continues to get better because the screens are.

Better, right, So that's great.

Yeah, I mean it just continues to kind of go along. The iPhone is now at this point where it's tough to innovate within a big way, like because we have pretty much everything we want on it, and I think there's more that people can always want, like battery. But I mean, if you think about my phone, like my iPhone eleven Pro Max, I would say five nights out of the week, I am going to bed and this is at like seventy to eighty percent battery.

Wait what, I'm a whole from not trickle charging.

Well, I do charge.

I would say probably once throughout the day, like when I'm driving in my car.

But that's it.

And I'm talking I've gone through a whole day, and like even on like days where I'm using my phone a ton. I mean, the battery on this thing is crazy good.

It really just is.

That's amazing.

Anyway, let's get to your first question, Megan.

All right, so this first question comes from Paul and he actually wrote this on your Facebook page, which is Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech looks like Apple slash Goldman Sachs just started reporting to credit agencies today, prompting all the credit monitoring companies I employ to report suspicious activity on my account. When I called gold Sacks, they said people had been calling about the credit alerts all day, no email warning or anything.

This is interesting because so you know the Apple card, this is Apple's credit card that they issued with Goldman Sacks. And the thing is they kind of thought differently from like your standard credit card. But I guess in the beginning they were not. They were not reporting to credit agencies your activity on this card, which for some people's good, some people it's bad. So for the good, it's basically, you know, if you're late on a payment or something like,

So now it started.

Now they just started, So I guess this guy has all of his alerts from all these different credit reporting agencies saying like, hey, make sure you tell me when something goes on my credit report, and he's like.

Bing, mgm mming. So I guess that's probably a good thing and it was inevitable.

We know, why did they do that just to get people to.

Be like, oh, you know what, I don't know.

I think maybe it was just a system they you know. Maybe I don't know like why they did it. Maybe they just wanted they just didn't care at the beginning.

Oh here that they didn't warn anyone.

Yeah, it did something.

Well I think you knew.

I think if look, if you if you read the terms and conditions when you signed up, I guarantee you In there it says we will begin reporting to the credit agencies or we have the right to report to their credit agency. So I'm sure it was in there somewhere. But now that it started, be warned. So if you are late with a payment, they might not charge you for that lateness, but they might actually report.

That yeah, and your credit could be affected.

Have you ever been late on a payment?

No? No, I haven't.

You know what.

I was late on a payment this month for the first time and I think almost a decade, so I actually totally forgot to pay my water bill, my water and electricity, and so all of a sudden on Thanksgiving Day, I get I think it was a text.

Or an email from like Element Automatic. No, I don't do any automatic bills. Oh you don't know. I don't do anything.

The only automatic bills I do are like Netflix, the things that are required to be automatic. But anything else, like any bill I have, I always pay manually because I want the right to have the option. Like with my water bill, especially it could be hundreds of dollars. I want to make sure it's okay, and even if it isn't, like what am I gonna do? It'll be like I think I use five gallons instead of a thousand that you said.

Yeah.

Anyway, So I got a text during Thanksgiving dinner. I'm like looking at my phone, like this thing comes in. It's like, we are disconnecting your service within like five days if you don't pay your bill.

I'm like, what do you get charged to it? They did not charge me, I guess cause my first time or whatever.

But so I went on and I paid like immediately, but I was like, I literally just totally forgot, Like I got the bill in the mail and I just totally forgot.

So it can happen.

I mean for my credit cards, I have it on automatic, but I still manually want to go in and do it myself because I want to like see what's going on versus just like completely forgetting about it.

You know.

Yeah, Yeah, it's nice. It's nice to have.

A little manual control because then you're more kind of in control of what happens, right, Yeah, I guess that's the main thing anyway. Good to know I don't have the Apple credit card.

I don't either, so.

I don't have that.

I don't know why I wanted it when it first came out, because it just like seemed cool and then I.

Was like, yeah, I'm good.

Yeah.

My thing about it is that I do have one credit card. I actually don't have it linked up to Apple Pay. I use my debit card with that. But there's no difference, Like to me, it's like I already have a card in Apple Pay. There's what's the difference between having the Apple card or my other card? Like it's to me, it's literally the same thing except my other card. The money comes out of my bank account immediately,

Yeah, and so if I'm good, yeah, it is.

It's that's very smart.

Well, it took me a lot of learning to figure that out, because back in the day, I would when it's a credit card, it's a swipe and it just goes through and oh my gosh.

Worry about the bill later. And believe me, that only worked out for a.

Few years for me.

It catches up to definitely caught up to me. Yeah, so but I'm good now, Yeah, I know you're chilling. No, I'm okay, but back, oh my gosh, not so good. Uh for a while.

Actually, there's a point when I couldn't get a credit card because that's how bad my credit was.

Oh no, but you have a house now, yeah.

Now I have a house. Oh look it all worked out. Well.

I feel like if you have bad credit, like you never can get out.

No, it was it was so he did I did? I think it was like seven years wait, not like I had bankruptcy, but it was just like so bad that literally the only company that would give me a credit card was Capital One, and it gave me a five hundred dollars credit line out of every company. So I should have a Capital one credit card to this day because they were so kind and like, yeah, helping me out back in the day when nobody else would give.

Me a card.

That's a that's a good like uh, what's it called?

Like tip? Yeah, if you're a part for credit.

Check because they helped you out, I should but I don't know.

But look at me, I didn't. I don't have them anymore my wallet.

So Also, there's another podcast that I was listening to like the other day, and she her name is Stossy from Bravo okay, and she makes a ton of money, but like recently now she can actually look into getting houses because her credit has been horrible.

For like ten years.

Oh wow. Yeah. It definitely like it's all paperwork.

Like it's like literally, it's like it's no matter how good you are, if something happened, it's like sorry, we're not Like banks are just not going to take that risk. All right, let's talk about T Mobile. They are taking a risk, not really, I guess not first five G network nationwide five G and it is lit up.

They've got it all over America.

They got two hundred million people covered more than a million square miles and.

This is it.

They are first out of the gate with five G in a very big, meaningful way. Now what does this mean for you? Because you are gonna be seeing a lot of commercials, a lot of hype about five G from T Mobile. Full disclosure, I have not tested this network, so I cannot tell you if it's good, if it's bad, if it's somewhere in between. But I will tell you this, you probably don't need to go out and jump on

It's not as fast.

They went with that kind, so that's how they're able to get such wide swaths of coverage.

Versus like Verizon.

If you go and look at their five G maps for like Chicago or La or LA is non existent. But like Chicago, it's literally like a park that has five G or like a street that has five G.

It's really small areas.

So if you're outside in that park, you'll get five G as soon as you go into that building that's right there, no five G. So there's two phones that work with T Mobile right now. It is the one plus seven T Pro five G. McLaren say that five times fast and this. Yeah, McLaren is the car company. They do the one plus teams with them to like make these super fast phones. Basically Samsung Galaxy Note ten

Let's see uhi. Yeah, so I didn't want to talk about this. It's a little source subject.

But basically Qualcom, who makes all the chips and the phones, they fly out all these journalists, well sorry, not necessarily journalists.

They fly out.

Tech tech influencers.

Yeah, influencers to like Maui every year, tastemakers, taste makers, and so here's and this is you know, I don't want to knock them because like I get it, and we've we've done trips before, like we've done press trips where a company will host us and so I'm I'm not sitting here throwing glass you know what is it rocks in a glasshouse. Yeah, but here's the thing that

They don't need to go to Maui.

They could do this insane you go, but they fly them all out there, put them up at this five star hotel, very nice. I mean, everything's covered, but and then they talk about their new chip that's in all the phones and five G and.

All the stuff.

But like I was thinking about this, like if the news like we're not going there to cover it, and like I bet nobody else is either, But like if it was that big, wouldn't tech publications when the New York Times go there, like wouldn't on their own dime. I don't know, I don't. I don't even know if they could take a trip like that. But the point

Bought to hype it up.

I did not say that, but well, I agree, But those that's the question as.

A consumer, You're right, that's the question that goes through your mind.

But also like I don't know.

I don't work for this company, but like if it was company X, like wouldn't you want your new tech to be on the like actual news.

Or well that's the thing.

So I don't know on YouTube, like I just I don't know.

It's their audience. Look, and this is the world we live in. This is the world we live in today.

And like I said, we've gone on trips like this, so I can't say that I've never taken a trip where we went to We went to Disney one time and they opened up a new ride and they did a new land and you know, it was a whole big thing and Disney took care of us. And like, yeah, it happens, and you disclose it. You make sure that when you're on a trip like that, you have to make sure. And you also like to me, I've never gone on a trip because it's a free trip like that would be yeah, just not cool.

No, And believe me, going on the trip, I get offered a lot of these things. You know it. I tell you all the time, like hey, this this place offered to take us and they're all in like Alaska, I'd go there.

That would actually be really cool.

I guess at the bottom line, I'm jealous I wasn't invited.

I guess that's really a horrible place.

Yeah, I would not want to go there. I hear this is really cold this time of year.

Yeah, it's raining, actually raining, like nice warm water. Okay, So this next question comes from Adriana. She asks, I'm looking for some cool ideas for my husband. I'm assuming for Christmas or the holidays, and she says, any thoughts on wireless charging pads versus charging banks.

So wireless charging pads versus a wireless charging bank, they're two different things, and they're two different uses. So I'll just tell you what I do. So I have a wireless charging pad next to my bed. So wireless charging is way slower than typical charging. In most cases. It's just not as fast as plugging in your phone. So if you need your phone done WI, you know, charged up fast, always plugging it in is going to be faster.

Mm hmm.

So that's so I'd recommend the wireless charging for two places bedside overnight, so.

You put your phone there and it charges slowly throughout the night and you wake up and it's done.

Or at work, when you're just sitting there and your phone is next to your desk, you can have it trickle charging all day. You just kind of lay your phone down there. Anyway, most people lay their phone on their desk, might as well lay it on a charging pad, wireless charging pad. Those are the two places. Now with the bedside thing, I will tell you there have been many nights where if you don't place it just right, you wake up in the morning and your phone has

It one of those things where you're just supposed to really like look and see that you put it down and you hear it go.

Yes, you have to. You have to check every single time.

Yeah.

And sometimes I'll like go to sleep and I'll like open an eye, I'm like, oh, I really, let me check again, and you have to look and make sure.

Yeah.

So that's number one. The power bank is different.

That's when you need portable power, right, And so I would recommend a company named Anchor. They make fantastic portable battery packs.

Go on Amazon. You can get a great pack.

The higher the number, they're usually in milliamp hours, so ten thousand, so about I'll just give it to you this way. iPhone battery is about three thousand million amp hours. Let's just say that. Okay, if you get one of these power banks, let's say it's three thousand million powers, how many times does that charge your iPhone once? Yes, if it's about five thousand, you might get twice. If

And it's not a perfect science.

And you get wireless charging banks that charge.

It faster, yes you can.

And in fact, there are actually power banks that are wireless as well, like Mophi Mate Turn where you sit it on top of it. Yeah, so there are Yeah, that's the sound. So there's a lot of things to do. But I mean, I think he's gonna be happy with something from Mophy for the wireless charging and then something from Anchor for the regular charging power bank.

Cool.

All right, this was my head scratcher of the week. Oregon FBI. Do you know that I used to say Oregon when I came from New Jersey.

Oh?

Really soon?

What's that?

Oh isn't that a character from Lord of the Rings.

Oh I don't know. Okay, I never saw that.

Uh, Oregon, now it's now I'm getting confused. It's Oregon, It's Orgon Okay, so Oregon. FBI out with a press release this week that says you must secure your smart TV. So a lot of people are getting these smart TVs, especially during Black Friday Cyber Monday, a lot of people picked up TVs, and they're warning about the microphones in these TVs that could potentially be used to.

Spy on you.

But also they say a number of the newer TVs also have built in cameras. Now this is where I find their advice to be kind of strange, because here in the US, we have not seen a large number of TVs with cameras in them. In fact, I have yet to find one model that's been sold in the US. I did find some that were sold overseas, Asia and India. Okay,

Yeah.

Anyway, so their article is going through all the things that like, they're basically saying that you just need to keep in mind that your smart TV could be spying on you with the camera and the microphone, so just be aware of that. And so my advice is twofold number one. If you don't use the smart side of your TV, like the apps, then just disconnect it from Wi Fi. Some TVs you can't do that, so that's maybe never logged into the Wi Fi.

I don't know. They also recommend that if you do have a camera, you can put a piece of black tape over it as a basic option for like privacy.

I see a lot of people putting tape over the camera on their laptop.

Yeah. They make those little slider things too.

I have one on my computer, but it just kind of interrupted the close ability, like the it didn't sit flat, and it really just annoyed me. Yeah, and it's just annoyed the aesthetic of you.

I really think someone's watching.

I don't think someone's watching, but I definitely think there is a potential for that.

Yeah.

I mean, but here's the thing we've carried phones around now for ten years, and they have cameras, and they have cameras and microphones, and we have yet to see a wide spread issue of like someone tapping into a lot of phones and monitoring people. And we also have these speakers in our homes from Google and elect and Echo you know Amazon, the Echo, Yeah, that also have microphones. And we have cameras, like we have Nest cameras, we have ring cameras.

So no matter what your TV is, just like the least your worries.

Yeah, there's cameras and microphones everywhere nowadays, and we're putting them there. Yeah, and so if someone was able to figure out and exploit it could be pretty bad. But most of the time what happens ninety nine point nine percent of the time, your password is very weak and that's how they crack into these things. And so if you and I think like a lot of these companies are doing better at making you choose a strong pasth

Can do is change the password immediately. Just don't use the default password.

And in general, just be very very cognizant of how these things can affect you and just remember that. Like, you know, you want to set it up really fast and get the camera running, but like, think about the implications of using the same password that you use for everything for the past ten years on your security camera or your ring doorbell. Like, just think about that. Like you want it to be something unique and safe and a little bit uncrackable.

Producer Megan.

Okay, so our next question comes from Sherry Can Yeah, that's how she wants you to say it.

I was just listening to four Seasons yesterday in the car after we talked about them.

Oh yeah, yeah yeah.

So Sherry asked, can you recommend a good flip phone for seniors?

We are on T Mobile.

Oh my gosh, I know it. You're I have it. Oh no, because.

We're gonna do a story on this and I have tested it and it's great. It's called the Alcatel Go Flip three. It is a flip phone in all its glory. But here's the beauty of it. It has access to Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Assistant. So you have this little phone that's kind of a dumb phone. It's a flip phone, but it has just enough smarts to get you through the day.

Are they called dumb phone, like a pretty much.

Kind of smart Yeah, dumb phone, yeah, if you think about it.

And this is available on T Mobile.

I think it's like a hundred bucks maybe with a contract or whatever, you know, like you sign up or whatever.

But that, I mean, what more do you need?

So the YouTube videos play on that small screen?

Yeah, well this one inside it has a small screen on the outside and then a big screen on the inside.

Which is still small.

It's really interesting.

It's a flip phone. What did you think. I was gonna say the Motorola one.

Well, but then I realized that Motorola is only Verizon, yes for the Razor. Yeah, And and she didn't say smartphone.

And that's a smartphone, right, So it's like, it looks like a dumb phone, but it's actually pretty smart.

It actually looks pretty slick. But this is it.

I think this is fantastic, and I actually wish I get a lot of emails about a very simple flip phone that people want. And there's actually another phone I could recommend too, but it's almost too simple to recommend for most people. But it's called I should have brought in here. It's called the light phone, okay, and they sent it to me to test. We're gonna include it. I'm doing a story, all right. Since you're listening to the podcast, you just get to know like things ahead

Which is this. It almost does. I show it to you. It has the screen like a kindle No oh my. When you see it, you won't believe. It's so simple. It's crazy.

It's literally just a phone. It's a tiny phone like this. It just dials numbers and gets texts and that's it. And it's super simple. It doesn't have it has a black and white display.

Oh yeah, so.

I'll show you that. That's a little bit more expensive. And it also really I mean, it's good for seniors, I guess because it's you know, it doesn't do any thing.

Yeah, but no internet, no internet.

No nothing, no camera, no camera.

Does have a headphone jack, which I don't think it could play music right now, but it does have a headphone.

Jack for late calls and stuff. Maybe yeah, maybe for calls.

To and then the Go the Go Flip three is the other one, and then there's one more. It's the LGG eight X. I think it's a dual.

Screen kind of smartphone android. It's kind of funky, oh cool.

So anyway, that'll be that's in like two.

Weeks supposedly, I'm trying to get that story done before the end of the year.

But we are filling up fast stories, a.

Lot of stories because good stories.

It's happening on Channel five. You can watch us there.

Yeah, if you if you don't watch us there, you know we're on you know, I know, you know it's from the podcast, but we are also on TV and you are, well you're on sometimes too. Oh but yeah, you'll see Megan and my stories.

But we are.

I am on at five am, five point thirty five, generally seven fifty am, and then in the nine am hour, I usually say, because we switch around there a lot, right, So if you want to watch KTLA or Channel five, you know that's that's where I am. Google Photos I love one of my favorites, although I will say on the desktop it has gotten slower and slower and slower,

I was on the phone.

I don't think you ever told me the story.

Okay, well I dropped it off.

I saw the tweet and.

I was like, yes, okay, so I dropped my I was on my phone where you kind of have it up to your ear like this.

Yeah.

I was talking to I think it was my mom or Lindsay one or the other, and all of a sudden, it just fell out of my you know when you.

Move around, it just like slipped out.

Yeah, it just fell right into the downstairs. I was one floor up, fell onto their patio which had a fire going like a fire.

Pit, and it fell into the fire.

It popped onto the like just on the side, didn't fall into the fire. Popped on there and then it popped off to the side and this.

Is like like heard surface.

It was a concrete surface and crack. So I'll tell you.

So, it actually took a picture as it hit the ground. Somehow it got the camera got activated. So I had this great picture once I retrieved it of the fire and it falling into the fire.

I don't know how it took the picture. Anyway. I was telling this story to Johnny Jet on the Leo Laporte.

Show and he's like, oh my god, what a fantastic picture I was able to While I was telling him, I was like, oh, I wish I could find it.

I searched in my email.

I either searched San Clemente or fire or something, and I was able to find the picture in about two seconds.

Thanks Google Photos. Anyway, it's amazing.

You can also search fire in photos on your I phone on your eyes. Yeah, like I always searched dog to find like pictures of my dog.

Yes, you can search you can. Yeah, you do that every day every day. Let's see. So this new feature in Google Photos.

It's I know that you take for granted since you have an iPhone that it's super easy to send people pictures on I Message, right, yeah, But when you're an Android, it's not that easy because if you're sending a picture via text on Android, it comes through small, and if you're sending a video, don't even think about it.

It's terrible. You can't. Have you ever gotten a video for an Android squares? Yes?

Yeah, it's really bad. It's really bad.

Okay.

So Google Photos is tackling this problem by letting you send kind of your own photos through Google Photos. Now, you've always been able to do that, but they're now making it more like a chat, so it feels like you're sending a text. But in Google Photos they're kind of going around the whole texting system because it's so messed up here in the US because there's no one platform that everyone's using that can guarantee when you go out somewhere and someone says, hey, can you send me

She can do like iPhone to Android through Google Photos exactly.

Or Android to Android, Android to iPhone, iPhone to Android, Android to iPhone, whatever wherever has Google Photos, you can finally send pictures as if it's a text. Yeah, so look for that feature in Google Photos. I do not have it yet on my Google Photos, but it is rolling out to Android iOS and the web without any image loss from the photos you've backed up, and it's gradually rolling out over the next week, so it'll be there any day now.

Okay, So the next question is from Nicole rich Help. I listened to you on Kfi from Houston. I bought your iPhone.

Book last year for my hobby.

You know it all, so I know you'll have my answer. I'm getting mixed answers on this. I want an Apple Watch to listen to my music at the gym. I want to leave my phone in the locker floor above where I'll be working out. Well the signal reach on a Series three. I need to be able to get texts and calls, just in case my boys' school calls. I'd love to buy the cheaper Series three, but do I need the Series five through.

With cellular five? Series five though with cellular thanks.

Okay, A couple things going on here. So she wants to be able to use She wants to be able to get her texts and calls on her watch when she's at the gym. Now, if your watch is in the locker and you're on Wi Fi at the gym, right,

And it doesn't matter if it's a Series three or Series five.

That's both. She number one, you only need. If she's looking to save money, she only needs a Series three. They both offer cellular.

The difference is some of the other features on the Series five, which always on screen, fall protection and a compass. She doesn't eat any of that stuff, So I don't know if she sounds young right, she's kids.

She did not say her age.

But well, I mean if you're.

She has kids, she has sounds like she has young kids.

Yeah, if you're at an age where you think you might be at risk for falling, then you might want to look into the series five. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at there. But with the music situation, so I would number one for her recommend cellular.

You got to get cellular.

Yeah, ten dollars a month. It's a necessary evil. It's one hundred and twenty bucks a year. Look, you know you get It opens up a lot of functionality on the Apple Watch. Number two music, So two things with music. Number one, if you have Apple Music, it automatically can transfer music to your Watch, and so you can listen to anything without a cellular connection. But if she's getting cellular, she can really use any music apps that she wants that supports the Apple Watch.

So you can't download music on like Spotify on the Apple Water.

Spotify, I don't think so.

But Pandora, I believe, is the only one that's first out of the gate besides Apple.

Music to let you download some music.

Now, I could be wrong there, And if you're listening and you think I'm wrong, let me know. But as far as I know, I don't think that you have Spotify on the Apple Watch. I feel like I would have heard about this and so far. Yeah, so what I'm seeing if you're a Spotify subscriber, you can play pause and skip music and podcasts, control the volume, get info about what's playing. Nowhere to to say that you can listen to music offline, okay, which is what you

Playlists like sync. So it's just like it's just like Cardio music or like workout beast mode. Duh.

I mean, I think beast Mode is a Spotify playlist?

Is it also an Apple No?

Sorry, I was okay, yeah, I was good, good catch on that. I used to have Spotify.

Yeah, now that I'm using Apple Music, I kind of switched over to Apple Music because it's free.

I get it through Verizon and I have it on my watch.

Really nice.

I resisted it for many years because Spotify is kind of like the you know, gold standards.

I just kidding.

It's so funny that you say that, because I actually think Apple Music is way better than Spotify.

Like, oh, I and I'm I feel like I have no idea because I've never used Apple Music truly, But I have a friend who had who got Apple Music because Taylor Swift had her album on there. Well it was taking off Spotify, Okay, so she switched to Apple Music and she thinks that she said, Spotify seems so much cooler.

Oh really, she has Apple Music.

So I think I think Spotify has more playlists, but I think there's more garbage on there, Like it's a lot of stuff.

It's like a lot of noise that.

Because the app is like a different color than no.

I just think there's too many playlists like anyone can create a playlist and it's like.

On there, it's like too much.

Like with Apple Music, it's like you want country music, it's like there's like five country music playlists and it like, now there's more than that.

So Apple Music, don't get mad at me. Yeah, but I'm just saying.

And it's organized in a way where it's like the top one is always called the A list, so it's like a list, pop A list, country a list, this, and it's.

Like okay, just easy.

But see now I'm like, maybe I don't get an Apple Watch and I continue to wait because I can't play my Spotify music.

I will say I think that uh they will. They will sell a lot of Apple Watches when you can finally use Spotify on it. Oh, because a lot of people that have been holding out because they're just kind of annoyed.

Yeah, we'll be like, oh I can.

Find I didn't know that I would.

Yeah, all right, so I got let's see, I don't have time for both stories. Which story do you want to hear? Do you want to hear the Oh?

I you know what? I the mattress hackers. I actually got so okay, really this is Wall Street Journal so uh, basically the story is that there are people out there.

I'm calling them mattress hackers. You these all these new mattresses that come to your home in a box, like we just bought one, yeah, Lisa and I love it.

By the way, the Lisa Hybrid. I got the Lisa Hybrid.

Yeah, non not spot hashtag, not sponsored, but it we actually went with that over the Casper because we went on well, I went on both. I went into the mall and I laid on the casper. They have little rooms at the mall where you can actually schedule a nap for half an hour oh wow, yeah, and lay on and take a nap on the casper. It's like a little house that you should take a nap and try it out and see because it's a very different feeling. Like the casper is very like you sink into it

How do they figure this out?

It's actually kind of brilliant. I mean, a hundred days for how many months?

Is that? Three months? Yeah, so it sounds like a lot.

More so how do they figure this out?

Though? Well, they just you know, all.

All the mattress companies talk obviously, no if you buy one from the other one, it's like you just you know, you go it.

So they talk about it.

You got Casper, You've got Tuft and Needle, You've got Liza. I mean, there's so many When I do the research on these, there are so many of them.

That I could see how you can do this.

Personally, I think it's really annoying, Like who wants to switch out their mattress? Every this thing? Once you unbox it, it inflates and.

You get so you basically pay so you pay for the mattress, you sleep on it for ninety nine days, then you're like, I want to return this, they'll pay give you the money back.

Yeah, which is also kind of weird because I was wondering about that because I was wondering if they don't charge you until the hundredth day, You're like.

What about the thirtieth day? Like why a hundred this is a long time.

Well, they want to make sure because it's you're buying. It's a very new way to buy a mattress. So I actually do appreciate that. And thirty three months kind of gives you different seasons a little bit, like if you you know, a mattress in the summer might be hot, Like a lot of people say that the the these new mattresses are really hot because they don't displace the heat as much as a regular mattress.

So that's something to think about. There's a lot like when you start doing research on them.

Yeah, there's like it's like a whole thing, like you never like the last time I bought a mattress, I literally was at the furniture store and I'm like, oh, take a mattress.

This time.

I was like online, I'm like pouring through all these websites and like reading about it, and everyone says like you take.

Like a personality test.

Yeah, it's crazy take do.

Blood work, like, oh, okay, this is the mattress.

This is your blood mattress.

I mean, in ten years, they're probably gonna make you do your blood test.

This is your blood mattress. Isn't there that diet? It's like, oh yeah, yeah, haven't you heard that, like the blood diet. It's like, no, yeah, I think that's what I thought you were referencing.

Oh no, I haven't heard that.

I'm pretty sure there's like a diet where it's like it matched up to your blood. Anyway, one quick question from you, go ahead, Okay.

I wasn't ready for this.

Okay, oh, there we go. This is from Ray Rich Hi, Rick, Sorry, I had.

To include that.

I know people love to take.

Can you recommend a decent duplicate photo finder?

Oh okay, what's his name?

His name is Ray?

Okay, Raw, I knew you were.

Going to do it back Okay, So I know on on my Mac computer, I know the one I like. It's called Gemini, and they also have a version of it for your iPhone. So that's pretty cool. So I would look into that. Does he say if he has Mac or PC? No, he doesn't say okay, he just says duplicate photo Finder. Okay, he says, so I would say the other one. I did some research on line found a website that recon So here's how I did

So softwarehow dot com.

They have two recommendations for PC Duplicate Cleaner Pro, which is their main one, and then easy Duplicate Finder. So those are the recommendations, so go with it as you will.

Fun Ray isn't that his name?

Okay, we're not going.

To get into the story about the top apps of the year, but I'll just mention two of them because they're kind of cool. Specter Camera by lux Optics this is Apple's top app of the year, and what's cool about it is that it lets you do really cool things with your photos with artificial intelligence.

Like you could take a.

Picture of like the Eiffel Tower and get rid of the whole crowd around it, which would be kind of cool. Yeah, I need to try that feature because I'm curious how they do it. How would we do I don't know, you just have to find some anyway, we'll try it out. And then the other ones they mentioned our Canva, which are these are all things like help you with Social Media Canva, which I've used Unfold, which is really cool

Yea Canva or no. Spark Camera. Spark Camera cool Instagram Stories.

Canva is also good for that, but that's mainly for like slides, you know what I mean, like still kind of thing. And then the other one is Over, which actually I did a panel. I mean I'm talking five six years ago and they mentioned over like so many years ago, so that's been around for a while. Over on Android, tell me about Albow. What happened yesterday with Albo? When you alow when you tested it? Okay, this is an app that lets.

You yes, yes, it was literally that so that was it.

What happens?

Okay, So what happens or old Megan had to test this app yesterday for me, poor little Megan, and what happened.

So basically, the app has cool graphics, like it shows you, doesn't show you, but it shows like the US, and then it takes like this plane and it flies to like Egypt, and then it's like.

You're now talking to like this person from Egypt.

And and I don't know what the person.

Was, man or a woman.

Oh well, so Luis tried it on video chat and he said, so he tried it first because he was like, oh, I just downloaded it, I'm gonna go try it. And he said that when he when the video chat started, the.

Guy that he was video chatting with was it wearing a shirt?

Oh okay, you said naked. Okay, that doesn't really count as naked.

Okay, Okay, that's he's just so. Then, so then I tried it when we're shooting the story, and every time I would say hi to someone.

I didn't do face chat, but I didn't want to.

They would just they would.

Just leave the chat.

Okay.

So it's so and then like when I don't know, so anyway.

This is this is the Google Best App of twenty nineteen.

I don't know how you find friends on this because I tried it for twenty minutes I made no friends.

Well, you know, maybe it's more popular. I don't know. Maybe they don't like people from the.

US, honestly, maybe maybe that's it.

The other app, Google's user choice app is another social media helper.

It's called Glitch Video Effects of Android. That was cool.

It looked like it had a lot of it's the same one that does that. I think it's called Inshot. It's like the video editor program, same people.

And then the Specter app.

We used it in the newsroom where there were people and it did get rid of all the like like if someone walked in front of the camera, it got rid of it. It would get rid of them, which was cool.

All right, yeah, well very cool. I like it. All right. Now you know the top apps, Well, that's going to do it for the show can you Believe it? Another show in what do you call it for a podcast in the can? You can't say in the can because it's like not really a can.

Was probably like back in the day when you had film in the in the digital world, in the digit.

In the library, in the library, I guess. Let's see.

You can get in touch with me on my website rich on Tech dot tv, follow me on Instagram at rich on tech and if you're looking for a last minute stocking stuff for my book one and one iPhone Tips and Tricks. It is the number one best selling what iPhone.

Guide right now?

What?

Yeah, that's Freeze Megan. How can people get in touch?

I'm on Twitter at producer Megan and we want people to like and subscribe to this podcast.

Yes, and leave comments and leave comments and comments. Yeah, put a review on because I think it does definitely does help.

And share it with your friends.

And share it with your friends.

That is your friends.

The number one is the holidays. It is the holidays we like to share. I think that's it. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you real soon. Bye bye