Hands on impressions of Samsung's new Galaxy lineup and their new flip phone. Mac malware is on the rise. Siri has Election Smarts plus Your Tech Questions Answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and I answer the questions that you send me. My name is Rich Demiro, tech reporter
at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Joining me is producer Megan, who's still trying to figure out what percentage of Jeff Bezos's wealth it took to buy the most expensive house in LA.
Hello Meghan, Hello, what's going on?
You know, I don't know, just a lot just getting through a lot of stuff.
So weird, isn't it.
We were talking about this earlier, but I always wonder what, like what it you know, how you log into your bank account? Do you have like an app on your phone or just like shows your balance?
Yeah?
Yeah, like most people check it like all the time, right to like see if you have enough to like cover whatever, Like can you imagine?
I always think about this, like not even just.
Jeff Bezos, but like you're like a crazy celebrity like Tom Hanks, does he have to do that?
You know what, I'm going to assume they don't even have the app.
They don't even have the app, Like he doesn't have like the Chase Banking app on his phone or like Bank of America.
Probably not.
He just doesn't need it.
That's frustrating, but it's just funny for like most people. It's like, I mean, my parents don't do that. I mean they don't have like an app. They don't even use like the ATM.
Wait, this is such a great question, Like why isn't Jimmy Fallon asking like these people when.
Oh, my celebrities like like hey, uh, what does it look like when you open up your bank account your Bank.
Of America app?
Oh, it's not like what does it look like? It's like do you have the app? And like do they know of it? You know? Like I want I just I don't know, but.
I would just I would just stare at that figure unless like since there's so much interest being accrued, it probably just like changes every second, like with more money on there.
You know how they do those Vogue videos where they like show their houses, They're like hey yeah, yeah, like hey, I'm gonna show you my bank account.
Yeah, day, here's my savings, which has like seventy four million in it.
Yeah.
This is my tiny fun account, which like I just keep like a million in there.
Yeah, I just have one hundred thousand, like if I'm you know, just going to dinner or lunch.
Just just to have uh one can dream. Let's talk about something closer to home. The Samsung Galaxy event happened this week, and this was there was a little failure to launch at the beginning, but then it all worked out. So originally last week and I can talk about this
now because I'm not under embargo anymore. But last week I was supposed to go to a Samsung event, was like a private hands on event in San Francisco where they give you an hour with the phone and you kind of shoot some videos so that you have a heads up for when it actually launches, you can release all your videos. It's mostly meant for like YouTubers and influencers so that they can release their video as soon
as that deadline is open. They call embargoes, like they'll say Tuesday at eleven, you can show off your stuff, but you have it on Friday, so imagine you have the whole weekend to like polish your videos, get them ready, and have them ready to go, time them out. Well, that was supposed to be me, but that didn't happen because my flight was so severely delayed to San Francisco that I couldn't make it. Long story short, we had the event on Tuesday. That's when we got our first
look at this device. We were a little behind, but it was fine. Our video still did really well. We still got our segment for TV and we now know what the Galaxy S twenty series is all about. Three different phones. They're all five G compatible, which is kind of a first. That's a big all in on five G for Samsung. And the main things that have changed is the camera, of course, because the camera is the
most important part of any phone. Samsung told me that it is their biggest revamp of the camera since the Galaxy S seven, which is about four years ago. That's big now, I will tell you. In the time that I saw these cameras, we were not able to take them outside, so I couldn't really tell if these cameras are amazing or if there's a lot of hype going on. I will say I think that the one hundred times zoom, which one of these phones does, is kind of a lot of hype because you're never going to get a
picture good enough with one hundred time zoom. That's going to be anything you want right now if you lived in New York City and you just want to use it to spy on people you know across the street.
Fine, but I liked.
Your comment about it. What you know, the thing about your kids and going to their place.
Oh that I can sit in the back seat now and not feel guilty.
Yeah, like that's great.
It is now. The phones do have a good zoom.
So they've got like anywhere from three times optical all the way up to ten times optical.
Which is pretty good.
Yeah.
So the iPhone has like I think two times optical, which you know is fine, but this is gonna be nice. So some of the other features on the phone. You got three devices. One is a six point two in screen six point seven and point nine. The large one, the S twenty Ultra five G is a big phone.
I mean is a large phone, and it's a powerful phone. That's the most powerful model on there.
And I mean, really, what you need to know is the camera is improved. Is it a better camera? We won't know until we try it out. We have to try it out in everyday situations, low light, lots of light, movement, all this stuff. But if I had to guess, I would think that Samsung brought it with the camera because they need to. The iPhone camera's pretty amazing. Let's see
what other things are there. There's this feature called single Take, which the only time I could ever see it being useful is if you're trying to capture your kids first steps or a birthday party when someone's blown out candles. You press the button once and it kind of just captures a whole bunch of videos and pictures and affects them all at the same time.
Yeah, I thought that that was kind of cool.
It's cool, it's kind of fun.
Yeah.
Again, for the average consumer, they're gonna use a lot of these features the first time they get their phone. They're gonna show them to their friends, like, let me show you a hundred time zoom and then that's it. You're not really going to use on time zoom now, thirty times zoom. Sure, even ten times zoom is.
Going to be great. Are the pictures going to be that great. Probably not.
I never use zoom on my phone.
I try not to, Yeah, because as a rule I want the highest quality pictures exactly, and if you're zooming in, you're not getting the highest quality pictures. Now, optical zoom you are. So if you can use optical, that's fine, but the rest of it you don't want to use. There's eight K video, which, again, how good is eight K video going to be on the very first phone that does eight K video? Not very good, So you
don't want to use that. It's limited to five minutes, so you can't really even take much video away.
Because it would take up all the space on the phone.
I think they limit it for various reasons, but yeah, one of them is probably space and just other considerations. Probably use a lot of horsepower on the phone and you can't really sustain that for very long. I'm guessing.
HD video chat with Google Duo.
Google Duo, when it came out a couple years ago, I thought was the coolest thing to ever happen in video chat, and still nobody knows about it.
Right, You know FaceTime, you know Skype.
But when after FaceTime, video chat falls off a cliff, you can't even mention another program that people use for video chat.
Yeah, that's true.
It's crazy.
Did you ever, like, did you use people do?
The only person I can get is my brother, who is an Android fanatic, and that's it. And so it's you're not going to get a person that's an iPhone user to download another video chat app unless you're a cross platform and you're on Android and they're on iPhone and you're like, please, can you download this? I swear the sign up's not that tough. But iPhone users default to everything iPhone and Apple because it's just easy. It's built in and it's already there, right, and that's been
part of Apple's magic as well. Pricing for these new phones starting at one thousand dollars for the S twenty, twelve hundred dollars for the mid range S twenty plus, and then fourteen hundred dollars for the S twenty Ultra five G, which is the granddaddy of all phones. Pre Orders begin on the twenty first of February. The phones are in stores on March.
Sixth, and my uh oh.
The ram was also if you're really interested in this stuff, if you're like an Android nerd, you're interested in the RAM, which is twelve gig standard, which is a lot of horsepower, okay, and then storage is one twenty eight standard, and it can go all the way up to one point five terabytes with a micro SD card, so you can really store a lot of stuff on these things. And the
batteries are huge as well. Four thousand million powers, forty five hundred million powers and five thousand million powers, which is the most I've ever seen on a phone. I think even the iPhone tops out at like three thousand million powers. So these are powerful phones, but Samsung has always been known for powerful phones. They throw a lot of specs at things. Does it all add up to
being like the best phone in the world. A lot of times the iPhone still beats them in various ways, like the camera this year, But we're have to see.
I will tell you.
Just in passing the you know, going hands on with these devices, of course, I fell in love with them and I want them, or at least the Ultra Yeah,
kind of. I always get this idea of like, oh my gosh, it's so you know, like there's just things you could do on Android that are so simpler, so much simpler than you can do on iOS, right, And it's just until you use it for a bit, you can't realize like why Android's simpler in a lot of ways, whereas iOS makes you do a lot of taps, and like just one example I always give, I'll give two examples, okay, and this is a very real world example because I'm
always researching restaurants. Let's say you're reading an article about a restaurant and they have a link to like the restaurant's Instagram page. Right, Like yesterday, I was on an article La Times linked to their La Times Food which had a picture of this cheeseburger from this restaurant in Santa Monica. And on Android, number one, I can click those links and bring me into Instagram versus on iOS.
It brings you into a browser that has Instagram, then you have to open up Instagram and blah blah.
So two things. So that's number one.
Second thing you're able to do on Android is actually press and hold down the home button, and that will scan the screen for any pertinent information like the restaurant name and it's Yelp review, And so instantly I can go from Instagram looking at this picture to pressing down the home button, which scans Google Assistant for anything that's on the screen and then gives me everything I need
to know about that restaurant. Here's it's Google page, right, And it's just a simple thing that's like really tough to explain, but it's super useful. And so I instantly bookmarked this restaurant on Yelp and took a little note that said try the cheeseburger in like two seconds. On iPhone, that would have taken me a lot of cross searching. I would have had to go into Chrome or into browser and like search the restaurant name. Remember the restaurant name.
Then once I get it in the browser, I get to like click it and hope it takes me into Yelp. And then if it doesn't take me into Yelp, I have to go into Yelp and search again.
So or if you like swipe up on Instagram, like on a link, yeah, it would take you like directly to whatever Chrome to like look at that link. But on the iPhone it'll just open within the app. So it looks saw messed up, which is what you're saying.
I actually Instagram on the on Android. This is an abnormality. Instagram does use its own in app browser, and that's an Instagram thing. They decided they're not using like any browser that goes into the actual system. Okay, so I don't know why they do that. It is very complicated. And you know, again, it's like a little thing like this, like you open up a link on YouTube on the iPhone and it's going to bring you into like this small YouTube thing that you may not be signed in on.
And so next thing, No, I want to watch that video later, but I can't say save later because it's like we'll sign into YouTube. What do you mean sign in like I am. It's like very confusing. Yeah, so anyway, I fell in love with these devices. I will say in passing my impression of the camera that I saw in the like terrible lighting conditions that they had there was not very good. It wasn't like taking better pictures than my pixel, and so I have to kind of
see if that was an abnormality of the lighting. The lighting was terrible. The pixel pictures weren't.
Very good either.
Yeah, we really couldn't get a good idea.
But I will say we took a lot of video on the I phone with our like social media and it came out amazing.
Yes, so I also am just like so not used to taking a picture on it.
Pes you get your your very iPhone.
A lot of the biased are yeah, and it's bad. Okay. I think once they figure out like making how to make stories look good.
This is this is very true.
This is Megan's big thing, and I do agree with that.
But if you look at if you post.
An Instagram story from your Samsung or your Pixel or any other phone that's not iPhone, no, they are terrible looking. And the people that are posting them don't realize this. And so when you look at it on an iPhone, I'm I will literally go back to my iPhone and take a look and be like, does this look that bad?
No, it looks fine on iPhone.
So if I were to watch a Samsung story on a Samsung, it will look good when.
You're posting it. It does.
I feel like it just doesn't. It's not the same. They don't have the same codex.
I feel like, Okay, all right, well are so if you want Rich to answer your tech questions, just go to his website, Rich on tech dot tv and hit the contact button. Our first question comes from Michael. It's actually really a comment. He said, Rich. There is way too much emphasis being placed on five G devices by the telecom companies and device makers. Verizon has five G downtown and Santa Monica only in LA. Companies like Samsung are pitching five G phones. Obviously, these phones just launched
and they have five G, but there's nowhere to use it. Basically, buying a phone or any mobile device with five G is a waste. Five G towers may be installed in the next two to three years, but by then the device you bought in twenty twenty is dated. So what are your thoughts on that?
That's a good question.
I'm actually looking at my address on T Mobile because T Mobile has nationwide five G. Okay, curious like what their deal is with their you know, five G. So let's see if it has it in my and it does actually, So here's the thing I think that I understand Michael.
I understand his argument.
He's saying that the telecom companies are pushing five G, pushing five G, but you have to understand their standpoint. They are marketing machines, They're spending a lot of money to upgrade to five G.
They're not gonna just sit back.
They're gonna try to get as many people on board as possible to help subsidize some of these new towers and things that they're building.
Is it a lot of hype?
Yes, at this point it is. Is there anyone I've met or run into that's saying, rich, five G has changed my life? It's so amazing. No, Will it happen, Yes, eventually over time. And I think that Samsung going all in on these five G phones right now. Number one,
They did it in a unique way. They, except for the lowest model phone, which is the Samsung Galaxy S twenty, the S twenty plus and the Ultra, support all the flavors of five G that are out there, which means Verizon's building a network that doesn't really is a little bit different than the way that T Mobile built their network. But the phones have the technology built in to handle both networks.
Does that make sense? So again, and do they not have they have five G as well?
They have a different Now every carrier.
Has five G at this point. They're all building them in slightly different ways. Some of them overlap, for instance, or some I don't want to get in the weeds.
It's different.
There's just different ways of doing it, and you know every carrier is kind of doing it differently. But these phones have the technology built in to handle both types of networks that you can build. So is it a lot of hype, Yes, but you got to think on the flip side, Michael. People are upgrading their phones today and keeping them for three years, So the system is going to evolve over three years and be better, and so that the phone you got today, yeah, is it
going to be the best phone in three years? No, But you're still gonna be able to ride that wave as these five G.
Networks get better, right because obviously they've done like the math and they see that, like you said, people upgrade every two to three years.
Yeah, and I forget the I just Samsung just told me that number.
I'm like less than two years. I feel like once I hit the like year and a half mark, I already want the next phone. But then again, I'm like three years behind with my new phone with okay.
Current, So upgrade cycles are now four months longer. According to Samsung with their Galaxy S devices, they're noticing that people now upgrade every twenty seven months. It used to be every twenty two months, so on average, if you look at twenty seven months, that's a little over two years. When people start to get that itch of like I need a new phone. For me, it's every six months, but that's just me.
It's more like every every two months, every two months, but that's just because you switch back.
Yeah, when these new phones come out, I just get very excited to try.
So are you going to buy?
I was?
I already put in the pre order kind of like I got everything ready for the pre order so I may get a review unit from Samsung.
I'm not sure. Okay, try that first before I order, but I did. I am.
I'm also trying to decide between the S twenty Plus and the S twenty Ultra because I like the idea of the Ultra, but I feel like it's too big for me.
That's really hot.
I like a phone, well, I like the phone that I like a phone that fits in my pocket, and that's like a larger than you need, right right. Well, there's another phone from Samsung, the Galaxy Z Flip, and this one went bananas on my Facebook page. We did a little video on this and Megan, how many views did that.
Get like three billion, three million.
Three million views over three million. Yeah, and it's clear people are interested in these in these foldable These phones with a foldable screen are very interesting to people because it's something that you never saw before. And now we've seen it about three or four times over the past year,
because don't forget it. Last year's Ces we saw our first foldable tablet and that was like, whoa what, And then we've had a couple foldable phones between now and then, the Samsung Galaxy Fold and also the the Motorola Razor, which folds well. The z Flip is not as high end as the other Samsung phones, but it's really cool looking and we played with this. This is not a phone for me, but I can see the appeal of
this phone because it's basically a Samsung Galaxy device. Let's imagine it's from last year, like last year's model, let's say last year's specs, but it folds in half, which means it's kind of cool and I like that idea because it fits in your pocket. It appeals to a lot of people because of that reason. It's got a six point seven inch display. Let's see the cameras, you know, it's very standard cameras. You've got a ten megapixel on the selfie, twelve megapixels on the other one.
You've got a wide angle.
You've got eight gigabytes a RAM to fifty six storage, thirty three hundred million hour battery.
So it's a good phone. Yeah, it's not gonna be your high end.
You're not gonna use this as a creation phone, but it's enough for like just doing fun stuff.
This is it.
You're looking at a video of on Instagram at rich On Tech and again it fits in the palm of your hand. And the cool thing is there are some fun things you can do with it, like set it on a table and watch video because it acts as its own little tripod.
Yeah, which is cool.
You can you know, you can take selfies because it's like again, it's own little tripod.
So it's cool.
It's thirteen hundred and eighty dollars and it'll be on sale on Valentine's Day. So they kind of surprised everyone with this, and it's cool. I think that a lot of people. A lot of the videos that I watched, the reviewers were they didn't do standard reviews on them just yet because nobody's had this for long enough to do a review, but everyone's kind of pleasantly surprised. Like Samsung got this right. It's a good phone out of
the gate. It's not something that i'd recommend as like a high end phone, but it's high end in like a way of this is futuristic. It f's in your pocket. It's kind of a cool phone. Yeah, if you have a Galaxy and you don't need the high powered stuff, all those extra features, then you get this and it's it's kind of a neat little device.
One of the comments is funny, Scott DG. This is on your Instagram. Everything old is new again, looking forward to the Samsung rotary. That's funny.
Oh that's a good one.
Yeah, that's next.
Actually not a bad idea.
I don't even know what a rotary is.
Oh, it's a rotary phone, like like you a turn little dial. Oh, but that's not a bad idea for Samsung, just for fun to come out with a phone or someone that would actually be a rotary phone that sits in your house that would use cellular.
Okay, be kind of cool, or just like an app that you can.
I'm sure they have on an iPhone.
That's cool, all right. So this next question comes from Steve. This kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. When I Google, for instance, a restaurant and there is a map showing its location or a button for directions, my iPhone opens my Apple Maps app, but shows me my current location and not the location of the restaurant and or the directions to it. So why does that happen?
Oh, this is talking about differences between iOS and Android. Yeah, this is another difference. And this is the thing. None of these are deal breakers, none of these are enough. Look, Apple has some of the most popular phones in the world, especially here in the US, and I have never met maybe I've met a handful of people who are like rich.
It's really annoying that when I click.
And this is another example I'm gonna give when I'm in Yelp on the iPhone, it kills me that I cannot press that directions button on there and get directions to a place because it will open Apple Maps, which I don't have installed on my iPhone. So that means it'll say broken link. Do you want us to download this from the app store? And I say no, there's a reason why I don't have it. Let me set
Apple Maps as our Google Maps as my mapping app. Now, I remember there used to be away in Yelp on the iPhone to do that, and I think they took it away.
It's funny because I love Apple Maps.
Do you really?
I think it looks beautiful. It just doesn't work. It doesn't route you the right way. It does not have the information that Google has. Okay, period, I've tried it. I sat there and you know when I went all in on the iPhone. Yeah, when I was writing my book. I'm sitting there and I'm trying to use it, and I'm.
Like, this is great. It looks beautiful, it's so.
Smooth the animations, and yes, it's gotten better, but at the end of the day, it does not bring you to the places you need to go in a proper format.
Yeah, the only thing on a regular basis, I honestly have never really had these issues with Apple Maps, but Google Maps for me, maybe you can fix this. There's a delay, Like there's like a little bit of a lag. I've noticed, Like I'll be going and then it'll all like pass the street and I'll be like turn left here and I'm like, well, I didn't get in the left hand turn lane. Like there's a total I've never.
Had that problem. That could be isolated to just mage.
Maybe it's just my it could be. I mean there are like hear it five seconds later for raps.
I mean there are definitely sometimes when I'm waiting for my maps to kind of catch up to where I'm going.
If you're disoriented, you just got on the you know.
Off the airplane, and you're like going somewhere like in a rental car, and I'm like, do I need.
To make a love to write let me.
Sometimes happens Apple. Okay, I will give this to Apple Maps. I will okay, I will give this to Apple Maps.
You are right now. I will tell you this.
It mainly why do I always do that one? That's what I meant to do. I will tell you this walking directions specifically, Apple Maps does a better job of finding your location quicker, getting a lock on that location, and navigating around. I don't know why that is, but I have noticed that. Yeah, So I don't know. That's that's just one thing I've noticed. All right, Okay, so what do we answer the question. Yeah, So the thing
is it's just it's the Android versus iOS. iOS does not let you set defaults, which means, no matter what whatever you're clicking on, it's not going to take you to that thing because it's not It doesn't let you set to faults. Even if you have the Chrome web browser installed on your iPhone, any link you click is not going to take you to Chrome.
It's going to take you to Safari. Yeah.
And so basically, Steve, you should probably be using the Safari app. He's using the Google app. So if you were to use the Safari app and go to a restaurant address and click on that, it would take him to Google Maps or Apple Maps.
Yeah, take him to Apple Maps, yes, Notchrome.
Yeah, So I will tell you this.
So this is the other thing that it's which is also confusing Google codes their apps with what are called deep links, which means when you click a link on Safari, it's actually kind of tricking the iOS operating system into opening Google Maps because normally it defaults to Apple Maps. But Google has hard coded that link to actually take you into its app, and that's.
Something that developers can do.
Google is very good about it because they want to keep you in the Google ecosystem.
So let me give you an example.
I use Gmail on my phone and I click links in Gmail to an address, it will take me into Google Maps. It's not happening, Nat, It's happening because Google is kind of tricking the system with these deep links.
Okay, I'm gonna try it right now. So you're on what I looked up Nobo.
So you looked up Nobuo R and why on Safari?
On Safari, So look up noboo and on Google and do directions right there?
Big link? Okay, that which one? Either one. Let's see what happens.
You're clicking the map link and it takes you into Google Maps. Yep, that's because they have hard coded that from Google Search. They said, oh, we want to make sure. We're going to check to see if you have Google Maps installed on your phone. This is why it's so confusing, because half the time, if a developer has taken the time to deep link it, it'll work.
Right.
If they haven't, it takes you to Apple Maps. You're like, wait, well, I'm confused.
It's very interesting, very confusing.
And I think that's part of the reason why Google Maps changed their logo because now it's much more clear that this is a different app than Apple Maps.
Very competitive.
Yes, other things to talk about from the Samsung event Galaxy Buds Plus.
And you got to.
Pay Galaxy Buds at the last event, right, Yes, they gave you a test repair. Yeah, and you used them for a while before. You're just made fun of you and said you should have air pods. Yep, and now they've been banished. But Galaxy Buds Plus are the new version. And get this, the even the newest air pods have about I think four to five hours of time use time. Now, I've never had a problem with battery life on AirPods ever in my life.
Thrown back in they charge super easy. Yeah, but the Galaxy.
Buds now have eleven hours of playback on a single charge.
That is quite impressives.
When you put them in the case, you are getting an additional eleven hours. So you're talking twenty two hours.
What are you doing where you needed to be charged? No, it just means you can go days without.
Charging it, right basically.
Now, Also, you could be traveling a far distance, maybe you're on a plane for a long time. That's when it really comes into play. I've actually started to use headphones less because I read this book about the body I've talked about, and it was saying how our ears were not really meant to have headphones in them at all times. There's little tiny hairs in your ear that helps you that help you hear. Those are like the little they move in like the waves. So when you're
blasting them. And I'm not a doctor, don't take this for you know, like any medical advice, but I'm just saying it makes sense. The more you use them, the more you're wearing them out. The hairs, the little kind of receptors that are.
That makes sense. I mean, it sounds like it makes sense.
That's as a very basic version of it.
Now an audiologist may dispute that, but it makes it made sense to me that the more you're using these, not like a muscle in your body where you can just work it out and it gets bigger and better, this is your ears, it gets worse.
Yeah, So that is my thought, is that.
Maybe I don't need headphones in all the time when I'm cruising through the airport or on a plane. So I've been trying to make a mindful effort to not use them as much.
Take it for what it's worth.
Do you hear better? No?
I still can't hear my wife when she yells me. Now here's another cool thing about these Galaxy buds. Plus you get sixty minutes of playback with just three minutes of quick charging.
So have you ever had this thing?
And it hasn't really happened to me recently, but there used to be a time when, like you would forget to charge your earbuds you go to the gym.
You know, if I'm only like a heavy lifting day.
I bet your sister love that job.
Yeah, yeah, I don't do that.
So my point he does not lift, so I do five pounds, yeah, five pound weights.
So if you know, if you're in a big day where you're like going to the gym and all of a sudden your thing's not charged, you can put these on the charger for three minutes and you'll get sixty minutes of playback, which is great. You can also put them on the back of your phone because the Galaxy has what's called reverse charging. You can put them on the back of your Samsung phone and charge them for
three minutes and get sixty minutes. If you you know, forget to charge your device and you get to the gym and it's totally dead. Three minutes on a charger and you're good to go for an hour. Now, for me, my workouts use last closer to like three to four hours, so this would not work out for my major lift sessions.
So funny, but I'm kidding.
That's a joke.
Like my goal with the gym is to get in and out as fast as humanly.
Goal with the gym is just to like look at the weights acknowledge their presence.
I just wish it would work with just looking at them and not having that. That's the next and the.
Other cool thing is that since Samsung has the reverse wireless charging, you can just place these Galaxy buds in their case on the back of your Galaxy phone. If you have one of the newer phones that reverse wireless charges, it'll charge them in three minutes and you get sixty minutes to work out.
Wow. Sorry, I don't want to take this like Samsung thing away from Samsung, But can you do that with AirPods?
No, the iPhone does not let you reverse wireless charge. It has wireless charging, it doesn't it will not charge another device, but you can charge your AirPods on the back of a Galaxy device.
I'm sure there are a lot of like iPhone users that they were wondering that question though.
You know, absolutely speaking for the people, and that would be a cool feature for Apple to do, and they probably.
Will, Yeah, eventually.
Apple usually is a little step behind. But when they do things, they do them polished. Yes, and I'm not saying Samsung's not polished, but Samsung, let's be honest, they like to try things and fail publicly. We've seen it with the Galaxy Note seven which lit on fire. They just send the hand to my house to like pick it up. They sent someone to pick.
Up the device.
I didn't know that that happened to you.
I didn't blow up, but they recalled all the devices, including the review units. So I had one which I was secretly going to keep just to hike have it.
I was gonna be like, oh.
I don't have one, and sure enough they're like, no, no, We're sending someone to you to pick it up from.
You, and so yeah, wow, I wish you had it. Yeah, that was I remember that that whole situation.
Did keep the fire phone from Amazon. That was the other one.
That was the one where they really wanted it back, and I was just like, I take it for another week, just to try something.
And then they finally like, forgot that.
If Jeff was using a fire phone when that whole hack happened.
He wouldn't have been hacked.
No, he would have.
I just thought it'd be so cool to look back at the fire phone in like a couple of years, and can we do a story on the fire We should revisit.
Let's power up. It probably doesn't power up anymore.
You'll never for sure get invited to an Amazon.
Amazon hates me.
Actually, the list of companies that are ever since I started this podcast where I talk more about the companies that I cover, that's when it all started.
Because they probably listened and they're like, Rich, we don't like you anymore. But here's the thing.
I gotta keep it real for you, the listener.
For your homies out there listening.
I do because that is the bottom line. You gotta look, if I don't get invited to the secret champagne room at the Samsung event, so be it.
Hey, at least your video got three million views. That doesn't hurt. That feels good. It did feel good, better than you know, less than that go ahead anyways. Next week is from Richard. Hello, Oh, I wrote this honestly, I think you did say he loves me. Richard asks, as of late, I have plenty of time. That must be nice, and I would like to know what equipment is needed to start a podcast. I have the latest Apple software.
Oh, I don't think you.
Should tell him because we don't need any more competition. Yeah, just kidding, Richard.
You know I am not the best to answer this question because number one, we do this podcast in the worst possible way ever. I mean you hear the audio quality is not very good. Production quality is not very good.
It's just not very We're not we are not.
I was so harsh for the Model podcast.
Let's be honest, and our audio audio sounds fine, I guess.
But we have a nice board, which I'm not going to recommend to him because it's too expensive to start. But we have We use what's called the road cast roadcaster Pro. Are you is it on the back of it?
Yeah?
Okay, because it doesn't say it looking any broadcaster pro does this say it on there? And I thought it was about five hundred dollars.
Yeah, it's probably about five hundred bucks.
Okay, Hey, Richard might have some time.
It depends if he has. He didn't say he hid money, he said he has time. And there's a couple of things in this life you.
Get like if you have time. Though, if you have time, you can make money.
You could make money.
Well.
So what I would recommend, and I would not recommend starting out with anything expensive. Start out with a USB microphone from Blue Microphones b l U E. Look up their mics. They've got great selections of things that started like fifty bucks all the way up to like a couple hundred. Get one of their mics, plug it into your computer. If you have an Apple computer with the latest software, get an app that lets your record. You can do it with something as simple as quick Time,
or you can look at a company audio Hijack. Audio Hijack lets you record things. But this company, Rogue AMIEBA r O g U E A m O E b A Rogue Amiba has great little apps that can help you produce a podcast. They've got a whole bunch of them. But you can do it in garage band again for free. So my advice start out as cheap and as free as you can because the toughest part about doing a podcast is actually.
Doing it on a regular basis.
And it took me about three years of doing this podcast to actually do it on a regular basis. And now we have it in the calendar and we do it and we know we're gonna do it, and that's it.
It's like meditation.
Yeah, you have to do it every day five am.
Like me, is that where you do at five am? Then I will do it at five am.
Two.
If you ever come to my desk and see me, like my biggest fear is like someone taps on me and they're like and they turn around.
I'm like, oh, but you do it.
Yeah, I do a little headspace. I don't do it every day. I do it and I remember, but I will be honest. Doing a little meditation at the beginning of your day is a very nice thing because it's to.
The time when you start your day. What do you want to do? You want to get in, go, go, go go.
Goody wants to meditate. I just like, have to get some stuff done, you know?
So do I No? I know, but you find so I do it.
And now I have so many questions.
Well, usually what I do? I come in a little Yeah, it's a new thing.
Okay, because because I can tell I yes, I yep, yep.
I really have.
I'm not kidding, like I truly feel like I've been more zen.
This is really sorry for all the listeners listening to.
This, but there aren't any, so that's okay.
Sorry. Mom. So last week I was listening to a podcast about meditating and someone was commenting, oh, by the way, like once you started meditating, like everyone could tell and anyway, So then I meditated that day and I was like, wow, I need to do this more. And then the next day I was like, I should tell Rich we should have like designated ten minute like you're meditating, I'm meditating.
Yeah, you're doing that.
So now it okay.
And we also actually have a room in the tech studio that's fully dark, so I think we get some candles in there, like a little mac and it's just like you put the little thing on the door that says, you know, do not disturb, But that would actually be kind of funny because that room is never used.
We have two little rooms.
Well one is like a closet. The other one's like more of like a little tiny be perfect meditation. Yeah, and I think it's important. I think the naps at work are important. I think that this is what I think we're realizing as humans as we get into like this new century is like I am.
All about hard work. I love to work hard.
You know that I love to Yes, I do play hard too, But the reality is you also have to take time to further yourself and to really make sure that you're doing okay. For me, a lot of it is running. Like I run a lot, so that's like my time and like whatever, and I like to read a lot. Some other people it's like Netflix or whatever. But I don't feel like that really actually calms your brain. Like I know a lot of people think like, oh, if I watch TV for an hour, but I don't
think it does. I think it actually it shuffles things around a lot more because you're seeing things on the screen and you're kind of like thinking about them and they it triggers other feelings and you know what I mean, Like if you're.
Totally any show you're watch, I feel like whenever I watch TV, I'm always on my phone too.
That's another show.
So I'm like basically doing like too much at once.
But that's a real problem in general, and I don't know what the solution is because I find myself like yesterday I was homesick with my kid and I'm not kidding, I must have looked at my phone for seven hours and it's it's a problem, like.
The screen time stuff. I'm like, that's a problem.
Yeah, it is.
Anyway, start the podcast and you know it'll be great.
Just just send us a link so we can listen to it.
Okay, let me get to this because I did mention it in the intro. But Mac malware out pacing Windows malware for the our Windows PC threats for the first time since twenty nineteen. A new report from malware Bite says four hundred percent increase in detected Mac malware on a year by year basis. And you might be thinking, wait, what, Mac doesn't have any issues, there's no malware for Mac.
But here is what they say.
It's not necessarily viruses like you would think and the trojan horses of the like the Windows.
Side of things. What it really is.
And there's one program in particular that I've seen in action on my mother in law's computer.
It's a lot of it is.
This is basic malware like adware that takes over I call it browser hijacking. And when you go to search for something, all of a sudden, it's searching on some random search website. And what they're doing is you might get the same links like some Google stuff, but all the ads are taken over by this other company that makes money when you misclick something or just keeps putting pop ups. The other program is called mac Keeper, which
is a quote unquote cleaning program. And I noticed this was installed on her computer, and at first I thought it was a handy little program. I was like, Oh, that's good, she has a little Mac clean up clean. No, it's total bogus. So to uninstall these things on Mac is actually quite easy, but you have to know what you're doing. Yeah, most people that are getting these things don't know what they're doing, so they can't just find
and drag the program to the trash. And a lot of times they do put tentacles in the operating system that makes them a little bit tougher to get rid of than a typical program that's so creepy.
It's just really annoying.
And Mac is still a safe environment when it comes to like viruses.
A lot of the times.
But again, what they're doing is they're targeting this malware because they can make money off of it, and they've got it installed on a bunch of computers. So the two things you need to look out for is something called new tab and that again is what you know tab and that's kind of adware. And then there's one called pc vark pc vark and mac keeper and those are the things that are really the bad stuff. All right, I think we have time for one more question on your OPA.
One more quick, one quick one.
Okay, let's see. Okay, So this last question comes from Subhan. Currently, I'm using Google Chrome, Google Chrome Cast first generation and I'm upgrading to Roku Ultra streaming player. Is the Roku ultrastreaming player worth it?
Yes? I think so. Roku Ultra is their nicest Roku player.
It's got a lot of great features, it's fast, it's smooth. I've been testing it out. I think we've talked about this in previous shows. So I've been using it, you know, every once in a while to kind of see like what it does, how it reacts to things like when Disney Plus came out, I kind of looked on there to see how Disney Plus worked. I would say my
impression of the Roku interface, it's not my favorite. I think for simplicity, Apple TV is my favorite, and I think for like just a cheap streamer, Fire TV is really nice, but it's crowded with a lot of stuff on the screen. Roku, I think has a nice balance of like simplicity, but also there are ads on the screen, which I don't necessarily like. But also I love their universal search, and I love all the features you get.
It's the Ultra has all the features you can want in a streaming player for a hundred.
Bucks, which is kind of nice.
So I say it's a great upgrade from the and I think you're gonna love the fact that you have a remote control that's dedicated. You have a volume button on the side of your remote, which is really nice. You have a power on and off which controls your TV so you only need one remote for everything, which is great nice. Plus you can plug your headphones into the remote on the Ultra, which is also really nice, so you don't have to disturb people if you want to watch stuff quietly.
Right.
It's just a nice little player.
Cool.
So I think he made a great decision. All right, two more things I want to tell you about before we go twenty twenty elections. Siri can now answer questions about results, primaries and more so you can ask real time results like Hey, Siri, who's winning the New Hampshire primaries?
Who's winning? Who won the Democratic Iowa caucus?
Can I try it?
And yeah? Sure? Go ahead?
Results come from Associated Press, So ask it. Who won the what was the last New Hampshire? Ask who won the New Hampshire?
Hey, Siri, who won the New Hampshire primary primary?
According to the Associated Press, Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic prime.
I'm with twenty six point two percent of the vote.
Donald Trump won the Republican primary with ninety point four percent of the vote.
There you go, that's really so, that's kind of cool. Okay, so we got a Siri now Google assistant. I know Valentine's Day is coming up. You may listen to this before or after, but you've got a whole weekend. This is kind of cool. I did not get a chance to test this out yesterday, so I will do this when I get home. But you can now say, hey, Google, turn up the love which hold on I gotta make sure it doesn't do it on my phone. And it will do all kinds of stuff. So it will play
smooth jazz music. Wow, it will change your color, changing lights to romantic red and purple.
Kind of fun.
That is fun, kind of cool. Can am using that?
I will.
It's Valentine's Eve.
Awkward, But anyway, this is so I'll tell you a funny story. I'll get away from the awkward. Megan question, No awkward.
I was just asking they.
Had a similar thing for Halloween. And I told this story on the podcast. I thing a long time ago, but it used to be like, h Google get spooky or something like that. And I was doing this in my office testing and all of a sudden, every smart device in the house started doing creepy crazy Halloween things,
so playing music. I'm talking, the TV would start playing like creepy stuff, like all the lights were flickering, and my wife from the other room and yells, and she's like, what is going on because she had I had no idea what was happening in other rooms. Other things she can do asking the assistant for Valentine's Day, Hey, Google, play romantic music show romantic dinner recipes serenade me play a podcast about relationships.
Oh, Megan, you've said that before.
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna be using the Google serenade.
Me tell me a fact about love, to learn about love and the Animal Kingdom, and Happy Valentine's Day, to learn how to say I Love you in eight different languages, and do you love me? Will help create a heartfelt poem with the assistant. Oh real quick, Google Assistant. Another
thing I'm loving right now. And I just started using this because of that commercial during the Super Bowl where it was did you see the Loretta commercial where it was like the really sad old man who his wife died and he kept saying, remember that Loretta loved you know chocolate. Okay, turns out that actually does come in handy. I used it twice because my kid got sick and I had to remember when I gave him talentol and I said, Google, remember that I gave my kid talana
at twelve fifteen pm. And then my wife comes home she's like, what times you give him talent? I'm like, I can't remember, h Google, what did I tell you to remember? And sure enough on the screen is said, you gave your son talent aw twelve fifteen PM. Really kind of cool, so you can It's kind of like a reminder, but like it's for longer term remembering.
Reminder like kind of triggers at a certain time.
Remember is just like, hey, remember remember that I want to read that book, you know or whatever. So it's kind of a cool little feature to use.
Imber remember I should ignore that person?
Does Siri?
Do you remember, say, remember that I ate lunch four hours ago?
Hey, Siri, remember that I ate lunch four hours ago. I don't see an app Yeah, okay.
So she doesn't do it. Kind of cool. It's just kind of a neat little thing. And I think the more you use it, the more you can kind of come up with different I don't know, just different little things that you would use it for.
Right on forgets a lot of things. So maybe she should start.
So the syntax is h Google remember that. And I looked at it when I first started using this, I remembered that. The first time I used it, or I guess the first time I used it was when I said, remember me for Coco, like play the song, and so I said me Coco or something like the movie.
When that was so it clearly missed. Got my anyway, that's cool. That's going to do it for this episode of the show.
For links to what we talked about, take a look at the show notes, and if you have a question for me Megan, tell them how to submit it.
Oh so, if you want Rich to answer your tech questions, go to his website rich on Tech dot tv and hit the contact button.
Please rate and review the podcast. It helps other people discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech, or if you like, text the link to a friend so they can listen.
Don't keep us a secret.
We have one hundred and fifty three reviews and we are five stars. Megan's got a big family. You can find me on Instagram at rich on Tech. Just a reminder, Oh, never remind I had my notes in there from last week. I don't have a reminder.
Oh okay, well, remember to use the Google thing.
How can folks find you, Meghan?
I'm on Twitter at producer Megan.
That's going to do it for this episode of the show. I'm Rich damiro On behalf of everyone that gets us to your ears. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.