Twitter introduces its version of stories, Chrome gets faster, and is Amazon always the cheapest? What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I.
Think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer the questions that you send me. My name once again is Rich Demiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you are having a fantastic day so far, so good for me over here. But I will say that, uh, this is it.
We are.
We are deep into the slide, the slide into the holidays. And I know this year is a little bit different with the holidays because of you know that whole uh, you know, little pandemic going around the whole world. Yeah, still happening. I still can't believe that. When I left my desk at work back on it was around March fifteenth or so, I thought I was gonna be gone
for about two weeks. I left my coffee there, coffee creamer, you know, some other assorted things and I just took the essentials, right, my laptop, whatever, And here we are March April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November about eight or nine months later, depending on how you do the math. And I'm sure you can't do the math the right way. I just don't feel like doing it the right way right now. But wow, and it's so weird because I don't think this is ending anytime soon.
We've got these.
What are they the vaccines on the way, But I mean, it's not like an overnight fix just because we have that. So I'm sort of buckled in. I'm assuming my kids are not going back to school until the next school year, which is just wild to think that they will be home for an entire school year. And myself, I'm not sure what's gonna happen with me. I've been working from home and I kind of enjoy it, to be honest, I like it. In fact, I was talking about this
with my wife last night. My house has become sort of like the best case scenario for a tech set because I have everything I need to shoot my segments. Oh, you need to sit on a couch and watch TV. Okay, we go to a living room. Need to go outside, take some pictures. Go outside. Need to get a picture of the Christmas tree. Sure we got that. Need to be working in the office absolutely want to be on the exercise bike. Sure, So it's actually kind of worked
out pretty well. And the more I think about it, it makes total sense for me as someone who's doing consumer technology for people working from home and you know, doing just in general most of this stuff we use at home. It kind of works. So I don't know, I'm thinking, maybe I need to build like a little a real set in here and that's where I can shoot all my stories going forward. But you do miss being out on the anchor desk on the set for KTLA.
That is kind of fun and I miss that. So anyway, have to.
Figure out all that.
But let me start this week with something that has really been well. There's two things that are on my mind twenty four to seven right now, and it's like the dumbest things, but you know, this is what I think about as a tech person. The first is my speaker set up, and I have talked about this on the show. How you know, all these new smart speakers are coming out and it's forced me to reconsider my
Sonos system. But now that I look into my Sonos account, it seems that they give you a pretty good discount for having old speakers. So now when I look at that, and I've tried all the new ones, so I've tried the Google Home grouping those up. After I talked to you on the show last week, Google Home got this big update on the app. I call it the Sonos update because now you can group speakers on the fly in Google Home, just like you can in Sonos.
Now, Sonos is.
Still way easier and a little bit more kind of uh what's I don't know what the terminology is, fleshed out, fleshed out whatever, but you know, so it's it works, but it's not as pretty or as smooth as Sonos. And the Apple stuff is great, but it really bugs me that you have to use Apple Music. Not that I hate Apple Music, but it's just I like having the flexibility like in my Sons.
I've said this before.
I had like a bookmarked all the different playlists on various services that I like. So for me, you know, maybe the Christmas station on iHeartRadio is the one I really like and I want to play, and so that was easily bookmarked. No, yes, you can do all these same things with these smart speakers. It's just a little bit more work. And so Anyway, I've been on this hunt. I've been switching out the speakers in different rooms, trying
out you know what works. But now I feel like I'm going all the way back to Sons because I'm like, you know what, I'll buy these speakers for a discounted price and it'll take me to kind of like the place I was at.
But you know, just I don't know I was.
I was drawn in by the allure of all these smart speakers around it. But to be honest, they get kind of annoying to have multiple smart speakers because the all responding when you say those magic words, and I don't really need that. Like with my music, Yes, calling out playlists and stuff by voice is cool and it's nice to have, but at the end of the day, it's kind of nice to just open the app group the speakers you want and press play. So anyway, that's
the one thing that's that's on my mind. The other thing is this whole Google Photos situation. So Google came out with a blog post titled updating Google Photos Storage Policy to build for the Future, which tells you absolutely nothing in the title. And they do that on purpose because you know, they don't want you to realize that, hey, we're gonna start charging you for storage. That should have
been like the actual headline they use. But starting June first, twenty twenty one, any new photos and videos you upload counts towards your free fifteen gigabytes that you get with a Google Storage account and anything. So it's really complicated. Anything that you put in before June first, twenty twenty one on that high quality setting.
Is still going to be stored for free.
So even if you have a giz zillion pictures in there at high quality as of June first, those are all fine. They're like sort of grandfathered in until Google decides to change that. But then any new photos and videos, even in that high quality format will still count towards
your fifteen gigs of storage. Now, on the surface, this doesn't really affect me too much because I've been paying the ten dollars a month for the two terabytes of Google Storage forever, forever and ever, and I've always uploaded in high quality except for all these random big video files that I accrue through my work that I just throw in there in high quality because I don't really care. I just want, like, you know, to remember these things like you know, like a trip to uh, you know,
Shanghai that I took a million GoPro videos on. I don't need those in like the best quality. I just kind of want to store them forever. But they're not my personal photo collection. But they're in my personal photo collection, if that makes sense. But I with my personal photos, I've always always always done the original quality, which is always counted against your storage and so on the surface, it doesn't really affect me, but it affects me in
various ways. Number One, I think that this is really lame because Google Photos built their entire business over the fact that people can.
Just put their photos in here.
It's free, it's a lifetime of photos and you don't have to worry about it. And yes, I think that many people will be just fine with that fifteen gigs. And in fact, Google has like a page that you can check to see like how many years it'll take before you have to pay, and they say for the average person it'll be three years. And yeah, and once you pay, you can pay a buck ninety nine a month for one hundred gigs. Okay, sure, it's kind of like what Apple's been doing with iCloud. Forever and ever.
But the reality is, this is not how this started out. iCloud has always been paid storage, except for the five gigs. Google Photos was always free storage if you did that high quality. Now, the thing that really bugs me is that they made all these people lose the quality of their pictures by putting them in high quality so that they can get free storage. And now it's like, oh, that actually doesn't really matter anymore.
So I mean it does.
Those will be stored forever and ever in you know, for free. But going forward, I assume they're just going to change this high quality to be to be gone, I guess, because I guess maybe it'll still take less storage.
I don't know. But the point is it.
Just makes things very confusing for consumers. And that's who I cover tech news for, and I don't like it. And now for me personally, it has me. It actually, I think is good for the industry because it kind of puts everyone on the equal playing field. So now let's say you were in Google Photos even though you're
an iPhone person because you like the idea of free storage. Well, now you might say now that things aren't free moving forward, that you know, maybe I'll just go to iCloud, and now it can consolidate.
I mean, perhaps when you know this iCloud, this.
Whole you know, their their iCloud one or whatever they're calling it, their you know storage or you know their bundle subscription Apple one, you know, you can perhaps save some money by bundling a whole bunch of stuff through that, including two terabytes of storage. That's what I'm looking at because with that it's thirty bucks a month.
But you get all this stuff.
You get the two terabytes of storage, you get Apple Music, you get Apple Fitness when that comes out, you get Apple Arcade, you get the News which I really like, the Apple whatever, like the magazine subscription. I mean that alone. You know, you add all those things up and you're saving some significant money. So this also requires me downloading my entire Google photos uploading it to Apple.
I mean, it's a whole big thing. Believe me. This is what keeps me up at night. So that's on my mind.
I'm sure you are sort of thinking about this stuff as well, but you know, that's kind of what keeps me up at night. And again, I just don't like when companies change things when they've built their entire business. And in fact, you know, even Dropbox looks viable now because you know they don't have the same search functionality. I think Google really wins with a search functionality. That's that's kind of a big thing there. All right, let's
get started with a question. M have an little sip of my tea there, Cody asks, can you help me? Is there an Android app that I can use to look up unidentified phone numbers and cell phone numbers? It seems every app I've tried redirects you to sites I can tell us been verified or truthfinder. I hate those sites. All I want to do is find out who's calling. As I'm constantly getting calls. I've tried to call a few back, but then I get a message that's the
numbers not in use, not valid. I'm at a loss. Please help, Thank you.
PS.
I love watching you on KTLF. Oh, I like watching you on KTLF five. Okay, I'll give you a little ding for that, not a ding, but like a ding ding if love love would have been better, but like, I'll take Okay. So Google has the solution here. So there's a couple of things I used to Okay. Number one, the site that's really good. It's called whitepages dot com and so whitepages dot com is a really good reverse
search site. If you have a phone number, you want to pop it in there, just click reverse phone and it pretty much gets let's see, pretty much gets it right, like almost all the time. So yeah, I just put my phone number in there, and yeah, sure enough it's in there. So there you go. But I'm a low spam risk.
That's good.
So you pop in a phone number. That's one way of doing it. Now that's just a you know, one off kind of thing. If you want white pages. I don't believe they have like an app like it doesn't.
It's not gonna identify you.
It's not gonna like you can download their app to your phone, but it's not gonna identify things on the fly. But the thing that will is Google's app. And they have the Google Phone app that they just launched into the play Store called Phone by Google, Caller ID and Spam Protection Beta. And this used to be only exclusive for like the Pixel phones, but now they've launched it where it works with all and so now you can
see who's calling you. So most of these callers, most of The caller ID is for businesses, but that's gonna be mostly what you need anyway, but I would start with that. So it's called phone by Google. Download that.
I'll put the link in the show notes. The other thing you can do is depending on your provider, your cell phone provider, you can get caller ID through them, and usually it's like three bucks a month, but that will give you everyone, like I'm talking, you know, if someone it's a even if it's a personal line, it will identify it. T Mobile gives you that for free, but you do have to activate it, I believe. But the rest AT and T and Verizon, gosh, it's so weird.
There's only three now. They will charge you three dollars a month, but it might be worth it if you're getting so many calls. I it's one of the things that like, whenever I use a Samsung phone or my Google phone, I love having the caller ID, And on iPhone it's just like never there. Maybe it is if you have T Mobile. I don't have that, so I don't really see that, but it's just one of those things. It's so nice to see caller idea on your phone.
So all right, let's talk about Amazon, Are they always the cheapest? I figured this was a good story because it's shopping season, and now this was sent to me from Amazon, so clearly it's a little bias towards them. But you know, Amazon does have fantastic pricing, but they're not always the best, and they're not always the only
shop in town. So this is a report from a website or an organization called Profittero pandemic price wars, which online retailers are beating competitors on price heading into the holiday season. The study compared prices on eighteen four hundred best selling items and twenty one categories across fourteen retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Chewy, Wayfair, best Buy. And these are all the online retailers, so we're not talking in
store here. So Amazon was competitively priced most competitively priced in eighteen out of twenty one. It tied Walmart dot Com for the lowest online prices for beauty item and Chewy dot Com for pet items. Target is the least competitively priced, averaging ten percent more expensive than Amazon. And I believe that I've always said that Target does not compete on price, They compete on their experience in the store,
and I guess that translates to their website. But to me, Target is just a nice, very pretty shopping experience, or very pleasant, I should say, And so you are going to pay more there compared to Walmart, which some stores are really nice, but others are not as kept up, and so there is a big difference. Whereas you go into Target, it's pretty much it's pretty nice most of the time. It's interesting too. Specialists don't really get into
price wars. So it says that best Buy was generally thirteen percent more expensive than Amazon, and Electronics wayfair thirty seven percent more expensive. In home furniture. And here's some of the exact stuff. So when you look at like appliances, Amazon had the lowest price. The closest were Walmart, Target, and Home Depot. Electronics price of Amazon, the next closest was Walmart, then Target, then best Buy. Let's see clothes,
don't care home furnishings. Home furnishings. Amazon had the lowest price by about thirty five percent on average. Walmart was a little bit more expensive then Target than well, actually Walmart and Home Depot were about the same.
Then Target gets kind of expensive. Let's see video games. I mean, just go down the line.
The main thing I'm getting the takeaway from here is that if you're looking for beauty products, Walmart is just fine compared to Amazon, and pet products Chewy is just fine compared to Amazon. And let's see, is there anything else?
Let's see.
Oh for consumers, buyer beware, promotional discounts may be mirages. Twenty percent off of product that's price fifty percent higher on Amazon or Walmart is no deal, so.
Amazon and one.
Basically it's basically just the bottom line is that like Amazon and Walmart are like the best place to shop along with Target.
If you want a slightly improved experience. But do your price checks. I do.
I do my price checks. I love that popcart thing. Popcart just extension on Google. It's really good at finding the price comparisons at different stores.
All right, let's let's see here. Let's see what do we want to do next?
Sue says, how do I get my iPad and iPhone not to be paired? I haven't used my iPad for a while, and the other day while I'm charging it, next thing, you know, all my pictures were on it and it was ringing. I'd like to keep these separate. Thanks in advance. We elders miss having the kids around the house to.
Do this stuff.
Sue, and Sue spells her name Sioux, So the only reason I'm thinking it's Sue is because Sioux City, Iowa, right, or Sue Sue falls South Dakota is spelled s i i Oux. So I'm guessing it's Sue. So the thing that's happening here is twofold number one. You've got handoff turned on, and handoff is what connects your iPad to your iPhone for phone calls. It's a continuity feature, they call it, and so you can just go into your
settings and turn off hand off. I believe it's under the phone settings on the iPad or under gosh.
On the iPad. I'm not sure. Let's see.
I have to look in my iPad, but it's kind of, you know, I don't want to make this show kind of.
Like the Let's see.
I wonder if you can search for handoff, Oh, handoff, yeah, okay, handoff right, that's.
Okay, that's airplay.
Handoff is under airplay and handoff on the iPad, turn that off. I have mine turned off because I don't need all my stuff coming to the iPad. I'm on the workout bike and next thing you know, I'm in a peloton class and my iPad is ringing. I'm like, I don't need that. If it's ringing. Enough things ring. I've got my phone ringing, I've got the the Apple Watch ringing, my computer rings it's so annoying.
I don't need handoff on all these things. I get it. It's convenient.
It's cool if you need it, but I don't personally need it. I like having my calls go to my phone or my watch, and that's it. The other thing that you had is your iCloud photos turned on, so you can turn that off under iCloud, just turn off iCloud photos and specifically you can also turn off the iCloud photos stream as well, and or you can leave the stream on and turn the photos off. But those
are the two settings that you need to look at. Obviously, do your research and kind of see what that entails, because you may have some photos on your iPad that you took that you want to save an iCloud, but just kind of look and see what the ramifications are of those two things. But those are the two settings that you're looking for. All Right, Chrome got a big update this week. It's Chrome eighty seven. And I'm not gonna go into like a big thing about Chrome and
how great it is. But I love Chrome, but I hate Chrome. And the reason I don't like Chrome is because it is so slow and so like laggy. I could barely do a word press post on this thing. So I actually use Safari on my computer to do word press posts because it just works.
Now.
Maybe it's because of all these extensions I have, and I really try to pair down to my extensions, but I just I need certain extensions to function. So I'm not sure if it's like an extension thing or if it's just a Chrome thing. But nonetheless, Chrome did get an update this week to Chrome eighty seven. And if you're on a Mac, you can go up at the top it says Chrome about Google Chrome, and it will check for an update. That's how I got it, and usually you know, Chrome will also give you if you
you know. Chrome does an auto update per se unless you close it out, So if you never close it out in your computer, like really doesn't update. But I don't think, but I guess you can turn on automatic updates. Now I see that as an option, But there's a little whenever there's an update for Chrome, if you look to the right on your menu bar on Chrome, next to your picture, there'll be like a little arrow pointing up with I think it's in like green. You hit
that and that will update Chrome. It's like very silent, doesn't like give you any indication that there's an update. But if you want to manually update, go to Chrome about Google Chrome. You'll see it says checking for updates, and if there's an update, you can press update, which is what I did, and I'll be honest, it got a lot better. So according to Google, it says Chrome now prioritizes your active tabs versus everything that's open, which
is smart. Can't believe they didn't do that before. Says it reduces CPU by five times usage, extends battery life by an hour point twenty five and then it says Chrome now starts up twenty five percent faster and loads pages up to seven percent faster. And on Android, page loads are now instantaneous when you go back or forward, which yes, that should have always been a thing as well. But anyway, I've noticed there is definitely an improvement in Chrome.
So go get the update and be on your merry way. M All right, let's see next question here, Jonathan. Hey Rich, I'm a senior citizen, so I'm not so good with computers since I didn't grow up with them. I follow a number of people on Instagram and was told I have to have a profile on Instagram in order to do this. Instagram seems to show something for me that deals with yoga, and I would never use that in
creating my Instagram site slash profile. How do I delete the yoga one and create something that more closely follows my interests?
Thanks for your help.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this, and the only thing that I can think of is that when you're looking at the search page, it's showing yoga stuff or yoga related. That's the only thing I can think of, and as far as I know, you can't really change that.
So up at the top of.
Mine, it says like Instagram, TV, travel, architecture, decor, art, food, style, TV movies, DIY, music, sports, beauty. I mean, I don't understand what any of those things have to do with what I look at on Instagram, but I will say
on Instagram. They do show and this is something I've I've noticed on Twitter as well, people complaining is that they show kind of like what I call the LCD videos Lowest Common denominator, And by this, I mean, you know, the dancing girls and you know, just like these pictures that get a lot of interaction from folks, but it's not necessarily stuff that you're fully interested in. So for me, if I see something I don't like on those pages, you can just press and hold a picture and just
say not interested. So that's how you do it. And I think if you do that with a couple of those yoga pictures, that should do it. But I don't know. I think that's what you're talking about now. I know that this stuff is supposedly supposedly personalized to what you look at on Instagram, but I'm not convinced that's one hundred percent correct. I mean, I think some of it is, but I think some of it they're also sort of seating and getting you know, just kind of pumping up
some of those accounts and things like that. But anyway, that's what I would do, is press and hold on a picture and get rid of it. Otherwise, just look at that area. But it's just I think Instagram is just trying to, you know, give people a way to discover more things, and I think that's what's happening to you. All Right, let's move on another small story. HBO Max. Not going to spend a lot of time on this, but it's available on fireTV. And the cool thing about
that is that that was a major holdout. So HBO Max came out a couple months ago and it was sorely lacking on Roku and Amazon fireTV sticks and fireTV devices. So now it is on fireTV. You can get it by asking you know who, find HBO Max via your voice remote, or you can just search for HBO Max and HBO Max a little confusing, but it is included with your HBO subscription. So if you have HBO you subscribe to your cable, Hulu AT and T DirecTV, you can use that login to log into HBO Max, or
you can subscribe separately to HBO Max. It's your choice, but it is available on Fire TV. I found the app on mine.
It's there.
It's great. They've got that new Wonder Woman movie coming out, and I think December twenty fifth is the day which is so exciting for me. Not that I'll necessarily watch a movie on Christmas Day, but certainly the day after.
And it's just really neat that, like Wonder Woman nineteen eighty four is like a real Hollywood blockbuster movie that is coming straight to HBO Max for free, I mean according to my account, because it's you know, something I already pay for, I mean free by something I subscribe to. But how cool is that? I mean it's like this
is that's really great. And I know that's because of the pandemic, but it definitely is a benefit to people here that have been sitting at home for months and months and months and want some new entertainment.
So I love that. And there you go, and they'll probably pick up a lot of subscribers that day.
By the way, let's see, Derek asks, Rich, can you bypass cell phone activation fees by buying an unlocked phone?
You know what? It sort of depends. I remember when I.
Actually switched to T Mobile a couple of years ago for a little bit, and I bought my phone out right, and you know, they charged me full price for it, and they still charge me forty dollars for activation. I think it was forty maybe it was thirty five. Uh, I can't remember, but anyway, and I couldn't believe it. I was like, wait, what for an unlocked phone? I still got to pay this forty dollars to activate a line? And sure enough. Yeah, now that was a couple of
years ago. So I don't know, maybe that's changed. But if you want to bypass cell phone activation fees, I think in general, if you pop your SIM card into a new phone, like let's say you let's say you're on Verizon, you have the iPhone eleven, you upgrade to the iPhone twelve by buying it unlocked through the Apple Store.
If you just go through and swap your phone out through like putting your SIM card in and just your I think you have to go through the website to do it and say like I'm switching my Imei out or whatever like this little code on your phone. I think you would bypass the activation fee because they're not really activating a new line or anything. But I know that they when you upgrade your phone through your carrier,
they do charge an upgrade fee many times. So look, these carriers, they're gonna do what they can to preserve their profits. It's kind of funny because, oh, there's no contracts anymore. But guess what, there are contracts because people buy their phones for twenty four months or thirty months through the carrier. You're on just a contract for the phone instead of the service. What are you going to use that at and T phone without service? No, So it's kind of funny. Back in the day, we used
to give you the phone for free. Yes, I worked at a phone place. Back in the day, we used to give you the phone for free, for a penny, and then you'd be on a twenty four thirty six whatever the contract was.
I think it was a year, maybe it was Yeah, I think it was a year.
Twelve months and you were on a contract, or maybe it was twenty four months, whatever it was, but you would pay the survey was your fee, and that service was so expensive it would pay for also the phone on the back end. Well, then they made the phones full price, which is funny. We went through that whole shift, and now the service is a little bit cheaper, but you're just paying for the phone now, so it's kind
of the same thing. I mean, my bill has been like two hundred dollars a month for like as far as long as I can remember, and it's the same thing two lines, you know, But anyway, so you can try avoiding it, but you know, call and ask I guess and say, hey, if I bring an unlocked phone, will you charge me?
All right?
Twitter this week introduce something called fleets. And if you're familiar with the idea of Instagram stories or Snapchat, you already know what a fleet is. And a fleet is just a disappearing fleet. They call it a you know,
a tweet for a fleeting thought. And Twitter says the reason behind this is because so many people thought that tweeting was uncomfortable because it's public, it's permanent pressure to rack up likes and retweet, and so they're doing the lower pressure way to help people start talking about what's happening. And fleets, they say, are for sharing momentary thoughts. And when they did their tests of these, they saw people with fleets talk more on Twitter. They disappear after twenty
four hours. You can you know, videos, photos. You can actually fleet a tweet and so if you're on a tweet, you can press a little share button and it says like share and fleet or says fleet this tweet something like that, and you also be able to broadcast live
on fleets soon. But here's my thought about fleets after using them for a week, is that I used it exactly once the first minute it was available, And honestly, I haven't really looked at them at the top of my Twitter timeline because I don't identify Twitter with those kind of things just yet. Now, with all that said, I do think that Twitter is actually the quite perfect social media platform because at this point it is the most universal platform it is.
It's pretty much open.
You've got stories now, You've got a way to go live, You've got a way to share videos, even though they have to be kind of short. You have a way of commenting on other people's stuff, you have a way of retweeting. It kind of checks off all the boxes of a good social network. But the problem is it doesn't have a lot of pickup. Like I don't put a lot of effort into Twitter because that's not really
where my following is. And most of my following is on Facebook and Instagram, and that's because I kind of have a consumer following and my mom is not on Twitter, and that's really my audience and so not just my mom. I mean, that's probably how it was when I started out,
but it used to. This is funny story. So when I first started my social media accounts, you know, I had no followers, and my mom would comment on everything, and I was so embarrassed that I felt so like embarrassed that it was just my mom commenting on everything, and she'd be like.
Oh, this was so cute, just like you were when you were a little baby.
I'm gonna be like, oh mom, please, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to get like random strangers to like my stuff, stop, you know, cramp in my style here. And now my mom doesn't comment on my stuff as much, and now I feel sad. I'm like, oh, my mom doesn't comment because, like you know, Twitter or Facebook and Instagram are smart enough to show you like you're the people closest to you. They show their comments like kind of first when you look at all your comments.
And I don't see my mom's comments as much anymore.
So I guess she got the thing because now she feels lost in the crowd. But she'll still comment every once in a while, so that's good.
Anyway.
I tell lots of stories on this podcast, hmm, all right Lydia, this is a long one, finally giving up on dud computers and taking a bite of the Apple. Not a techie, but would like to check emails and do searches several times a day, and recently have had to do work related tasks online even when supposedly off duty. Ooh, that sounds like something you want to discuss with your employer. I have an iPad, but I've only played with and haven't gotten the hang of it. Don't want to put
work on there yet. I bought a MacBook Air about three weeks ago, haven't opened the box. Now the newer model comes out for only fifty.
Dash zero dollars more. I don't know what that means.
So should I go to Costco and see if you'll take the unopen one back for the price paid and order the new one? Also, will I be able to transfer the Apple Care plan I paid for but haven't set up to the new model? Enjoy your segments on KTLA five. With a less problematic laptop, I can check your podcasts. Maybe this year I should order your book for my birthday Christmas and hope there's a valid section on Apple for Dummies.
Thanks Lydia Lydia.
Okay, well, number one, my book, unless you're running the older version of the software for the iPhone, probably wouldn't be as relevant anymore. I did not do the version for iOS fourteen for reasons I will not get into right now. But there's still some tips in there that do work. It's just it's not as specific for the latest version of the operating system. In fact, iOS fourteen would have been a perfect operating system to do my book for because so many things changed, but I didn't.
Okay, my answer to your question.
Is yes, I would absolutely see if Costco will take back the unopened one. I don't see why they wouldn't. I don't know what the return policy is on computers. I think it's ninety days usually this ninety days. Yes, so I would definitely do that. And when it comes to the Apple plan, just you know, you just cancel that. It can't charge you for a plan you haven't set up, so cancel that. And then yeah, get the new one. Get the new MacBook Air with the m one ship.
It is getting rave reviews. I have not tested it, but I am I'm like wanting to switch out my laptop. I wish they made it in a sixteen inch because the MacBook Air thirteen sounds like it's just screaming fast, and it's like, whoa what And I expected this from Apple, That's what I expected. So yes, go get the new one MacBook Air. If you are in any way a teacher or related to education, be sure to buy the Education edition because you'll get a one hundred bucks off same thing.
It's just education pricing. So great question, And yeah.
It's kind of kind of bad timing, but you know, this is why I recommend that website. What is it, the Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com. And so when you before you're gonna buy any Apple product Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com, you look at the product and it will tell you how long it's been since the last one came out and whether you should wait or buy or use caution. And so with the sixteen inch MacBook Pro right now, it's saying don't buy. With the iMac,
it's saying caution. With the Macmini, it says buy now because they just came out with one ten days ago, and it gives you the day since last release, the average days between releases, and then the recent releases. So it's a really, really fantastic resource. So get on there, all right. Google pay is trying to become more like Venmo.
Now I got on Venmo.
I was a Venmo hater for many, many, many, many many many years, and it just became a thing where people you know at school would be like, Oh, can you venmo the teacher twenty bucks?
Or can you venmo parent ten dollars? Hey, can you venmo the in laws ten bucks for dinner? Whatever?
That'd be a cheap dinner. But I held out and I said, now I use Zelle. I'll pay pall you, which by the way, is the same company, and or I'll cash app you. And everyone was like rich dude, you're the tech guy, Like why do you hate venmo so much? And I said, I'll give you my reasons. Number one, I hate the fact that it has a public record of all the things that you do, which you can change to private, but most people don't, so
I do. I did not like the fact that Venmo pulled from my my like like, let's say I had one hundred bucks in my account and I need to send someone fifty dollars. It would pull it for my debit card and not the account. Well, I realized that that was because I never verified my account with like my you know, full information.
So now I fix that.
I turned off the privacy thing. And honestly, now I'm a huge fan of Venmo.
Now I know, I know, I know, I know. Now I still think that Venmo.
I still think at the end of the day, it offers less protections than i'd like to see.
Like, if something went.
Wrong with venmo' I'd be curious to see how long it would take to get that sold. Now, in a couple of times I've emailed Venmo, they have emailed me back like quickly, and so I am impressed with that
aspect of customer service. I just feel like at all, if I can use like and I know I'm not a big credit card person, but when I'm purchasing things online or from a mysterious retailer, I like to use a credit card because it offers a little bit more protection at In general, I don't like to give out my debit card number because that is tied to my bank account, and I'm sure my bank has some you know, precautions in place to try to keep fraud from happening,
and nine nine percent of the time they keep me from purchasing at Target for some reason. Whenever I use my I try to be good and use my debit card at Target and that's like, sorry, fraud alert on your account. Please call us or text us. What did you try to make a purchase for seven dollars and seventy nine cents of you know, ibuprofen at Target?
Like yes, you have to like call in and like whatever, Now you don't have to call, you just have to text.
But still, and it's like embarrassing because you know, it's like whatever. So anyway, that never happens with the credit card, by the way, But anyway, so I digress, and yes, I like Venmo and now I'm using it, and I actually think the Venmo credit cards they're coming out with actually looks really good because it seems like a no whatever, no brainer kind of way. Ever, anyway, so I'm all about Venmo. Now I'm fine with it. But now Google pay is trying to become Venmo. The app is totally
redesigned and they've got some cool features. It will help you pay people, which is fine. I don't know if we're going to see as much uptake on that because Venmo is kind of like the king there, and it's also free, so there's not really much that differentiates it except your friend may not have a Google Pay account.
Then they've got.
These offers, which who cares. But here's the cool part. You can connect your bank account or cards to Google Pay and the app will apply some Google magic to give you trends and insights over time to show you, like how much you spent on things. Now, I've never really understood the allure of saying like, oh, last year I spent one thousand, five hundred dollars on Starbucks, Like okay, great, Like what does that do? So next year I'm gona try to spend one thousand, four hundred Like I don't
really get that. Like to me, I like to try to, like, day by day whatever I'm spending, like try to be mindful of it. So just saying like, oh, you spent you know, five hundred dollars at best Buy or that would be a lot less, I mean a lot more. But anyway, so I don't really understand that, but I do see if they can apply trends and say, like, you know what, I don't know, but that's one aspect.
Let's see what else. Oh, the cool thing is that they're.
Gonna start a bad account, a new mobile first bank account that's integrated into Google Play, and that I actually do think could be kind of compelling because not everyone wants.
To have a big old bank account anymore.
And you know, as all these people are going towards these like transaction, you know, these app based transactions, like I kind of see the allure of that because it'll include checking in savings accounts with no monthly fees, no overdraft charges, and no minimum balance requirements.
So why not if you can open it up.
That's coming in twenty twenty one, So just be aware if Google Pay looks totally different, that's what's going on. I you know, if you're if you're on Android, you're probably using Google Pay to like tap uh to pay. But if not, you're just you know, you're probably using Venmo. So yeah, there you have it, all right. David says, last week I saw your piece on TV about the Samsung fe phone. Your glowing review convinced me to purchase it.
This phone sucks.
It won't say passwords for some websites, such as my Car Insurance company. And now there's a password that I have to enter to access the phone. Even though I've hit canceled many times, I'll not make the mistake again and listen to what you suggest. Oh, David, well, sorry that this.
Happened to you.
But what everything you're describing has nothing to do with the quality of this phone. I mean, let's let's break it down here. The phone sucks. Okay, Well, you didn't give any basis why, but I guess the two reasons you list after is why you think it sucks. It won't save passwords for some websites. Well, David, you didn't mention what software you're using to save passwords. I mean, there's a million ways you can do this, and yeah, I mean even on my password manager. There are some
websites it just doesn't play nice with. I mean, and I've been using it for a couple of years now. And okay, you get over it, you go into the app, you copy, you paste, it's all good. But ninety nine percent of the time it works as advertised. Now there's a password that I have to enter to access the phone. Well, I mean, yeah, that's for your safety. And even though
you plus press cancel a million times. I don't know what that means, but yeah, you should have a password to enter your phone, because you know, do you want people randomly having access to your phone?
I don't think so.
So if you don't want a password on your phone, number one, try using the fingerprint sensor that's on there. Otherwise, if you really want your phone to just be unlocked forever, you can go into your security settings and just turn off all locks. And I don't recommend doing that at all, but you can't do it, and those two reasons do not make this phone suck. The Samsung Fe is a
fantastic phone. It's on my list of things that I recommend on my website rich on tech dot tv and you can go there and see my richest favorite things. I'm keeping a list for the holidays because you know, everyone always.
Asks me, hey, what do you recommend this?
And the Samsung phone is on there, so I think it's a fantastic device. It's on some great deals for the holidays. Samsung f Samsung S twenty Fe is let's see what the deals are. Yeah, it's really cheap, like I saw it for like, I can't see the price right now, but it was it was, it's on sale during the holiday, so anyway, yeah, get it.
I think that.
Yeah, five point fifty in this early Black Friday sale. Five hundred and fifty bucks for a great cell phone. That's a really really good deal, So sorry, David. All right, fipit getting a couple of new features if you have a fitbit Sense or VERSU three, which are too newer fippits, so probably not not many have this yet, but fipbit's
pretty popular. So now they're giving users more way to check their blood oxygen levels, and they're also the big news is that they're adding Google Assistant and also Bluetooth calling and audible replies for Alexa users, so those are
three pretty big things. With the blood oxygen you had to use now, mainly this applies to premium members right now, but you can see your blood oxygen levels while sleeping and your averages in the fipbit app without using a clockface, and so the other way you have to see your blood oxygen all day is to use their free clock face blood oxygen clockface, which is kind of weird, but they say they're going to offer seven new additional clockfaces in the app gallery by the end of the year.
So I guess that's good because it's going to be free. But right now, the premium members can see it like, you know, anytime.
I don't know, it's kind of weird.
The Google Assistant, that's pretty cool. So that's great. And you know, Google is purchasing this company. They haven't done it just yet, but they are in the process. But you know, they're jumping the gun and already putting Google Assistant in there. And audible replies for Google Assistant will be in the first half of twenty twenty one. But Android users can respond to messages text messages on the go,
and they also have hands free Bluetooth calls. So if you have a fipbit Sense or a verse of three, definitely do that software update. I love when new features hit these things. It's the best feeling ever to know these software engineers are hard at work bringing us new.
Stuff for free. Let's see.
Michael says, Hey, Rich, I'm contemplating buying a Google Nest doorbell. Please let me know the pluses and minuses of this device. I trust your judgment and I look forward to your segment on KTLA every time you have an item to review. Thanks again, Michael, Michael, I probably would not recommend the Google Nest doorbell. Here's my reasoning. Google is notoriously wishy washy, as I explained with Google Photos in sort of their
attention span. Now, this Google Nest doorbell, I am trying to remember if they've even had a new version of this thing. I'm not even sure this thing has been updated since it came out. Whereas Ring continues every single day to update and hone their stuff. And they're on the door doorbell I think it's three, Whereas this Nest is great. It works with the Nest stuff if you have all nests.
But honestly, I would just go Ring. This is their entire business.
I mean, Ring built their entire business on the video doorbell. You know, they invented it. Jamie Simmonov I mean I was, gosh, I'll never forget interviewing him when he had this tiny little office in Santa Monica show me the Ring doorbell. I mean he brought me into the lab he had set up. I mean, this guy is like, and I've said this before, He's like, he reminds me like Doc Brown and back to the future. Right. He's got this
little lab and he tinkers and that's his job. Now now he's like a multi you know, probably billionaire, if not probably a multi millionaire that is probably spending his time dealing with all the ins and outs of you know, the acquiring of Amazon. But he's still, you know, very hands on guy. And one time I went to the office and he's sitting there. He's like, oh, Rich, He's like, you know, we had a meeting and he's like, hey,
you want to come in on this meeting. And he brings me into this meeting that he's having with another startup and he's just like, he's like, you're good at this stuff, come on, just sit in this meeting.
The guy who's there for that startup was probably.
Like, who's this kid sitting in on my meeting with you, Jamie. But it was all good, and it's just that's the kind of guy he is. I mean, he's a really good guy. And so I love the direction that he is bringing to Ring. I think that they are really honed in on products that you know, make neighborhoods safer
and make you feel better. And in fact, I feel like my next move is to kind of move everything to Ring because right now I've got the doorbell and a couple other little things, but they are really they're really dialed in, whereas Nest it's kind of all over
the place. So I mean, do you really want to go with a doorbell from a company that's you know, their main job is search, and you know they've got YouTube and they've got all these other things they've got their hand in, and none of it has been as successful as Google Search. And so I love Google, but I so love a company that is going to focus on the products that I'm spending a lot of money for.
And with the doorbell, I think, you know, if you're talking about their Nest audio stuff, sure doorbell, I'm sure it's fine. I haven't tested it, but I'm sure it's fine. Anyway, that's my answer, Go ring, all right, Amazon, Let's see what we're getting towards the end of the show here. So I want to make sure I get some things right.
This is a quick one.
But Amazon opening up a pharmacy, and I think what's cool about this is that it kind of takes all the inefficiencies out of the pharmacy experience. And I don't know about you, but you know, when I have to get medications for my kids or occasionally for myself. You go to the here's the process. You know, your doctor
sends it into CVS or Walgreens or whatever. You go there and you know, they tap on their computer, they look at you for one second, they tap for an hour, they look at you again, they tap for another hour. I'd be ready and like, uh, give me, give me an hour. You're like an hour. Really, They're like, all right, can you do five minutes? I'm like yeah, five minutes. Okay, okay, go go shop five minutes. We'll got have it ready. So that's number one. It's just this weird, like I
don't really understand the experience. Then, you know when it comes to the price, like that'll be one hundred and seventy four seventy five, you're like, wait, what for this little tiny pill or whatever, this one bottle of whatever? Like yeah, that's your your your prescription benefits. Like okay, well what about with RX good RX? Like, ah, let me type in and they type in for another hour,
and you know it's like this on and on. So it's like all these inefficiencies of getting the prescription, and you know with Amazon, what they're gonna do. And I think this is the coolest part is that they're going to put all the pricing on one page. They're going to take into account your prescription pricing. They're going to
take into account branded and generic versions. They're gonna take into account the price without insurance or their new Prime Prescription Savings, which is kind of like a good RX but for Amazon customers.
And you can see that all on one page.
So it might be cheaper to just buy this prescription straight up without your without your insurance copey and so I mean, maybe that happens.
I don't know.
I feel like that's rare, but you know, you never know, and so I like that idea. Now, this is not gonna be good for the time when you need antibiotics like that day, you're still gonna have to go to like a pharmacy. But this, I think is gonna be helpful for long term medications, like you know, blood thinning drugs or you know, any sort of like medication that you take regularly for like some sort of chronic issue. That's gonna be pretty helpful and it's definitely worth a shot.
All right, do I have time for one more question?
Derek says, greeting's rich. What's the best way to transfer all your info from one phone to another? I upgraded my iPhone yesterday. Gave me two options, phone to phone or iCloud.
I picked the first. It seemed to work just fine.
But what's the difference between the two options. I didn't have to connect a chord between the two phones, So how did the info just jump from one to the other because I didn't choose iCloud. Also other pros and cons of setting up a new iPhone through the first or second choice that Apple gives you.
Appreciate all you do.
Thanks for doing your podcast. I find them interesting and informative.
Have a great day. Well, thank you, Derek.
Okay, So the two options are phone to phone or iCloud, and Apple has made this process really, really easy. I like phone to phone because it's getting you know, the latest information off your phone and basically using Wi Fi direct to connect to download that information to your new phone. iCloud is just fine as well. It's just gonna take perhaps a little bit longer because what it does is
it downloads kind of the data from iCloud. It does like an initial dump of the data to the new phone and then it does like in the background, it'll kind of up download everything like after a little bit. So and now it's gotten so smart where even if you choose the iCloud option, Apple will say, hey, do you want to we notice that your last phone has been backed up in like a day or two. Do you want us to do a quick iPhone iCloud backup
before we transfer? And you're like, yeah, but of course that always takes forever, so it takes longer than they say all the time. But there's no real pros or cons. I mean, I personally like the phone to phone because it's like direct, but you do have to keep both phones nearby and close the whole time. But if it worked, it worked. But yes, to answer your question, it's using some sort of Bluetooth and Wi Fi to pair and
also transfer that data. So that's what I would do, And either one's gonna get you the same place, which Apple has sort of. Google's gotten a lot better with the Android devices. In fact, Samsung is pretty darn good of moving your information from device to device and having your home screen set up the same way. On other Android devices, I find it works about half the time, but on Samsung, yeah, pretty much's gonna work, and iPhone it's always gonna work, so you're gonna get all this stuff.
Your new phone's gonna look just like your old phone. All right, one more thing, I'll just talk about this little kerfuffle with Peanuts.
So you know, pe Nuts has moved to Apple.
They got the rights for like all the Snoopy and Charlie Brown stuff, and so it was announced that the Peanuts specials, like the ones for Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving, we're all going to be on Apple TV Plus. Well of course people went nuts because this has been on broadcast TV forever and ever and anyone can watch just by tuning in. Remember when you were a kid, you would just it'd be one night. One night would be the Charlie Brown special and you had to be there
or you missed it. And now with Apple TV it got a lot better because you could watch it for like weeks on end if you had Apple TV Plus, which is available on a lot of different devices, not just Apple TV.
I know, so confusing, and it's.
Also to make it even more confusing, you didn't necessarily need a subscription to Apple TV Plus to watch the specials. They made them free to anyone just opening the Apple tv Plus app, but only for a couple of days,
so it was like a window. So now after this whole big thing got in the media, people you know, noticed, and they got mad and they had petitions, and now these will air on PBS and PBS kits and so I guess Apple didn't really want to give the rights over to like, you know, an ABC or CBS or an NBC or a Fox. So they said, a PBS is innocent enough, they don't really compete with us, so we'll do that. So Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will air on PBS.
Charlie Brown Christmas will also air on PBS. They'll also stream for free on Apple tv Plus for a long period, but they'll be for subscribers for an even longer period. I'm not going to go through all the dates. I'll put those in the notes, but just know if you even if you have any sort of access to Apple tv Plus, you will be able to watch these specials for free for a certain time period.
So it's like, I think it's like three or four days.
But if you're an Apple tv Plus subscriber, you know, you kick it up a notch, you will get more access to these.
Over the dace. Is that confusing enough? I think it is. Oh my gosh, that's a lot. Oh there it is, you hear it? Mm hmm.
That's the end of the show. That's gonna do it for another episode of the rich on Tech podcast. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to rich on tech dot tv, hit the email button at the bottom of the page, or send an email to hello at richontech dot tv. You know, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it or like you know, spam your friends, just like send it to all your friends, say hey, you should be listening to this.
You can go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on tech to review it like Mymiko twenty four did best thirty minute workout ever. Thank you rich for blessing us with technoledge and power, very informative and love his candor oh we switched tenses there, I'm doing a thirty day challenge. Please keep more episode coming and keep and everyone keep on subscribing. With little smiley face emoji with sunglasses, well, thank you appreciate that. I can't imagine
listening to a podcast while I work out. But if it's working for you, hey, you know what. I hope that thirty day challenge is going really well. You can find me online at rich on tech everywhere if you haven't followed me online, especially on Instagram, doing a lot there. It's a lot of work to keep up these socials, but I try go to my website rich on tech dot tv find that favorite things list so you can see some stuff for your holiday shopping.
My name is rich Dedmiro. Thanks so much for listening.
Stay safe, have a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday.
I'll talk to you real soon.