Hands on with the new iPhone, thirteen models, iOS, fifteen features to try out, Kindle gets a big upgrade, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech.
This is 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 you send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, Hollywood, California.
Yeah, we are literally in the middle of.
Hollywood, one of the last TV stations sets in Hollywood. In fact, used to be a couple of them, and I think, yeah, at least one more, but I don't know. Yeah, I guess they were all in the same area. What a great start to the show. Anyway, I digress. So this is the time of the year when and tech companies just roll out more gadgets than any human tech
reviewer can handle. I mean, just alone with Apple last week we had all kinds of iPhones and iPads and this and that, and they're still not done apparently, still some things perhaps in the works by the end of the year, we don't know. But now next week we have Amazon. Even though this week Amazon revealed like three, let's see three new gadgets, plus another like an echo that has the face of Billie Eilish on it. So you've got to be a true fan to get that speaker.
And then we have the Pixel still coming. We had Facebook with new devices. I mean, just so many devices. I'm trying to keep up, and I'll talk about some of them in this show. But just to kind of follow up on last week's show, so I told you about the whole is selling my car and getting a new one. So I will say that I absolutely love the new Tesla. It is far a seeded my expectations and it's just such.
A pleasure to drive.
It's the first time I think I've ever driven a car that I actually really really like, and it's it's just really been a nice experience. And I think the reason why I like it even more so than just the fact that it's a cool, high tech car, is because it feels like I'm on the verge of something new, Like I remember when I got the first iPhone and I just kind of could not get enough of diving into the features and seeing what it can do and
discussing it with people. And by the way, thirteen years later, it's still like that. But the Tesla is a whole nother beast. I mean, it's like I've been on YouTube watching all the videos and just every day I kind of find something new that the car can do. And also it's given me a new kind of perspective on just electric cars and the whole entire ecosystem of cars in general.
And I think that the Tesla is just the beginning.
We are going to see a lot of disruption coming our way, and the Tesla is literally just at the forefront of it. And kind of like with phones, I mean with iPhone, it spawned an entire new category of phone and device, and that's kind of the way I see the Tesla. But it's also a challenge for these companies to stay ahead, and I think Tesla is pretty far ahead with the whole supercharger network and the way that they do things and the fact that they built
a company from the ground up. So anyway, I will continue to talk about it on the podcast because it's just fascinating to me, the whole idea that I leave work every day with a full tank of gas, so to say, it's just such a new thing to me, and like last weekend we drove around. We didn't use a sip of gas because my wife's car, we just you shelved it for the weekend because we wanted to
take mine. By the way, I want to follow up on I talked about how I sold my old car using Shift dot Com and I will say that it all worked out.
It was amazing.
So I couldn't believe it because Shift was willing to pay a little bit more than Carvana, so I went with Shift. But the difference is when my friend sold his car with Carvana, he had his money by the time they left the driveway, and Shift said, well, we take your car, we do a final inspection at the headquarters, and then you should have your money within a week. And I said, I'm like handing over this slip, you know,
this DMV pink slip. And I just felt worried. But I will tell you that I by the time I woke up in the morning, well maybe not I wake up pretty early, but I would say the next morning, after the guy drove my car off, I had an email that said, hey, your car passed final inspection. This was like eight am, nine am. The next day, your car passed final inspection and payment will be sent and then I would say either the next day or the next day payment was in my account, like cleared my
bank account. So I was very impressed with Shift. I'll put a link in the show notes. I can put a referral. I think you get an extra hundred bucks. I'm not just saying this because of that, but if you want, you know, like every little dollar counts, Like if you're thinking of selling your car, it's a really good time. Like they gave me more for my car than I expected, because cars are so hard to come by, and I keep, I keep take good care of my stuff.
So whoever gets my car next will will really get a nice deal because they have a car that has low mileage and it's.
A nice you know. I mean, I don't think it's a nice car, but it's it's a I mean, it's a nice car.
It's a car that gets you around, so anyway, I can't I very very impressed with the fact that we live in a world where you can sell your car. Someone will come to your place, pay you more than you think, and take it away and your money is in there. You don't have to deal with people coming to your house for you know, test drives and you know, asking questions about it. I mean, these companies are so far advanced. They do all the research. I had a little fender bender on my car and it was in
the car fax, no problem. It even said when I got my last oil change, I was so impressed with the whole thing. So these companies know that's how they can value your car so quickly. They're not like a regular person that has to like figure this stuff out. They have data behind them.
So let's get to the big story of the week.
The iPhone thirteen releases this week, and already a bunch of reviewers got them early. I got mine probably a week after the you know, I always say I'm on the B or C team with the reviewers, and so I'd say with Apple, probably a solid B. Because the A listers got theirs, they must have gotten them the day of the event or the day after, because already the reviews are out less than a week later. I get mine, you know, like a week after. So that's fine.
You know, how do you do a review in the week.
I don't know. I mean, that's really tough. But here is the bottom line.
The early reviews say that the cameras are great on the iPhone thirteen. The battery life is great, there's double the base storage, which is nice.
The front camera no different.
Refresh rate on the iPhone thirteen is still the same sixty hurtz And as I confirm with Apple, the iPhone twelve cases do not fit, so there's always a slight difference in your case. Even though the phone looks the same, there's always a slight difference where your case does not fit.
Funny how that works.
So even after you spend another eight hundred dollars, you still got a spring for another fifty bucks for a case. But I don't buy the expensive cases most of the time. Most of the time I'll buy like a thirty. It just depends. It depends on if I had a mag Safe case. Yes, those are going to be a little bit more expensive. But there are some good cases out
there that are not as expensive. Like I got my wife the Smartish case, which is really good and it's like thirteen bucks and it's got a great grip on it. I like the Spegan cases, it's like a standard case. Okay, iPhone thirteen Pro this is the one that I'm most interested in because the cameras are much more improved. The battery of course is improved as well. It's got that high refresh rate for the display, so it's one hundred and twenty hurts and it adjusts.
And then the.
Front camera I still think it's the same, and that cinematic mode. This is the big new thing that people are talking about now. I have the phones and I've been playing with them, and I'll do I'll tell you a couple things. Number one, the iPhone thirteen is kind of like a standard phone. So to me, if you are upgrading from last year, you don't need to go with the iPhone thirteen. But if you're upgrading from a couple of years ago, yeah, you gonna you're gonna love
the iPhone thirteen. The cameras are gonna be improved, it's gonna be better. The battery life is gonna be better than last year. Last year, I think, and I mentioned this in my review last year, that the battery life was just not very good on the iPhone twelve or twelve pro. And Apple definitely figured that out. They went back to the drawing board, they put bigger batteries in, They tweaked the software so that it helps, you know,
keep the battery going longer. And I just know in my use of the iPhone twelve Pro that by the end of the day, like I'm talking, you know, three o'clock whatever, my phone is, actually even halfway through the day, my phone's just hurting. And I never noticed that on an iPhone before. Like my wife was telling her that last night, how annoying that is. And she's like, oh, that must be so annoying because she's got the iPhone eleven Pro Max and the battery on that thing is
a champ. Now there's no five G and I think that's the main differentiator here.
But hopefully Apple has figured out the battery.
I've not had the phone, like using it long enough in a day to figure out the battery situation, but hopefully it's better now. The thing I did test out, I took the iPhone thirteen Pro and I took it out outside and I compared it against the iPhone twelve Pro and then the Samsung S twenty one Ultra. And so I will tell you that I thought that the I thought that it was just gonna be kind of blown away. The which one am I talking about here? Sorry,
I got off track here. I thought I was gonna be blown away by the iPhone thirteen Pro because of all this talk about the cameras, and I'll be honest, I'm not as blown away as I thought. Now I need more time with these things, and yes, it'll take a while to figure it all out, but I do. I will say that I just think like it should have been better like it seems. And here's the thing,
I'm not knocking it. I think that when it comes to phones, out of all the phones I test, the phone that will give you the most reliable, every day great pictures.
Is always the iPhone.
Samsung has a lot more going on with their camera, and yes you can flex it in different ways that lets you have more fun with it. But the iPhone is just kind of this standard thing that just always works, and the apps are optimized for it, so that's always nice. But I will tell you, and you can look at these results. I have them on the website ktla dot com, slash or just go to my website rich on Tech dot ta and look for the link that says iPhone
thirteen Pro photo comparison. And if you look at these pictures, you would not sit there and say Oh wow, clear winner.
I mean, look at.
All the pictures and they're all nearly identical except for the picture I took of the moon, which is really where the iPhone are the S twenty one Ultra Excels. But who's taking pictures of the moon every day? I mean, you take one picture of the moon you've got doesn't change. So you've got a picture of the moon.
You're good. You don't really need to take more of those.
So you can see a couple of things you've got my hands on with all four of the new devices on my Instagram at rich on Tech, I've got pictures on the website rich on Tech dot tv for you to compare. I will continue to compare these devices and kind of form my opinions on them. But the reality is, the way I see things is that most people are wondering if they need a reason to upgrade, and so if you're a camera enthusiast, of course you always want the absolute.
Best that's out there.
Otherwise, I mean, it's one of those things where the iterations at this point, unless they're adding a big new feature, is just kind of like it's there and it will be there when you're ready to upgrade the phone will be great, and of course the latest and the latest phone will always be pretty darn good. So one thing I will say is that the camera bumps on the new Pro models are significantly bigger than last year's. Apple just continues to push the envelope with these camera bumps.
They're just they get bigger and bigger, and you know, it's like, I get it because they want to make this thing as good as possible, but it's a big bump. The other thing is that cinematic mode real quick and just I need to test it more, but it's definitely not a feature that you would buy a phone for. It's cool, it's portrait mode for your video, but it's not something that you need to like rush out and upgrade for. All right, let's get to the first question
of the day. Michael says, Hey, Rich, I have an old cell phone, an old Samsung tablet, and two old laptop computers. Do you have any suggestions on how to dispose of them safely and perhaps be useful to someone who guts who uses the guts from these items. Please let me know when you have a moment. Thanks for doing such a great job on Katla I've been watching you for years and glad to see that you are back in the studio. Thanks again, Michael. All right, Michael,
A couple of things you can do with this. If you just want to get rid of these and recycle them, you can take them somewhere like a Staples. And Staples has a pretty robust recycling program, and they stopped it for a while, but they might have started it again. They stopped it during COVID, but let me see if
they started accepting it again. It looks like they have started accepting it again, so I would go there and it looks yeah, it looks like they're there, So I would go there and let me just see one more thing real quick.
Oh hold on, Nope. Sorry.
In an effort to keep our customers and associates safe, our tech recycling program has been temporarily spend it. So I guess they don't want to accept electronics that are from people's homes right now. So with that said, I would just go to my second choice, which is a gizmo go And this is a website that I did a story with. They have, you know, proven themselves to be pretty worthy of this. They will either give you
money for these devices. You can type them in the website, or you can just send them in and they will properly dispose of them. Now you say you have two old laptop computers. If you're if you're watching me on KTLA, that leads me to believe you're in Los Angeles.
So I would lead you to someone called.
The Laptop Elf and they will he will will take your stuff and basically refactory format it and kind of fix it up and then give it to someone in need. So that's a cool that's a cool little program. David Lombard.
So he runs something called the Laptop Elf Project. So check that out.
And I think you bring laptops there, you send the other stuff to gizmo Go, and you're good. Now if you just want to bring it locally, Best Buy does recycling, but again you have to check with these companies to see exactly what they'll accept. I was recycling some batteries and you know, I thought, I can bring them into this store, this battery store, and they said, now we don't accept those, so but you can go to the library.
And I went to the library. They had a little drop box outside, dump the batteries in and boom, felt a little better about myself because I used to throw out batteries all the time until I did a story about recycling batteries, and I had no idea that you should not throw your double a's and triple as in the trash. And so I felt really bad the fact that I've been doing that, and I vowed to never
do it again. And so now I keep a Mason jar, and I go through a lot of batteries in this house with all the electronics and the kids and all that stuff. So when the batteries go dead, you throw them in the jar, and then when the jar fills up, you put them in a plastic bag, bring them somewhere. And as some people pointed out on my Twitter, Rich, you're not supposed to put the plastic bag.
In the bin, And I said, I didn't.
I dumped the batteries out of the plastic bag, and then I put the plastic bag in another recycling bin.
So yeah, I got you.
But Michael, that's what I would recommend. I'll put all the links in the show notes. Okay, let's talk about iOS fifteen. Since you've probably downloaded it and installed it on your phone. I'll just talk about some of the features that are new that you're aware of so you can check them out. The number one biggest feature is this thing called Focus Mode, which I think is a lot of busy work, but it has the potential to
be useful, but it seems like a lot. So Focus Mode helps you create different profiles for your phone, kind of like do not Disturb, but amped to the max. So you can now have focus modes for fitness, for reading, for wellness, for friends and family, for your weekend, for your morning, for your afternoon, for your commute. And it's just like the idea is that you would set up all these modes and only the apps that you want would send you notifications. Only the people that you want
could call you and text you. But it's a lot to set up. In fact, I was worried that when I was testing the iPhone thirteen that my phone would you know, when I upgrade, sorry, when I upgraded to iOS fifteen and I was, you know, going to sleep for the first time, I was like, is my phone gonna ring this alarm in the morning because I have
no idea what sort of mode I'm on? Because they do not Disturb has been replaced with this focus, and it's kind of like a it's a whole big thing now, and so I'm not convinced that this is what I want to do is sit there and set this all up.
But if you want to, you can.
You go into control, Center, Focus, and then are sorry, go into settings and then focus, and then you can choose all your different focuses to get started.
Now.
With FaceTime, they've got spatial audio, so voices sound like they're coming from the direction that they're on the screen.
Okay, that's cool, that's small.
You can also use face Time with friends and family who are on Windows devices, like if you're going through that much trouble to send them a link from FaceTime. I mean, yeah, it'll work in a pinch if you don't really want to install a different program. But by this point aren't we all on zoom? Like, do you really need to use FaceTime with like a friend that's not on Android or not on on iPhone? I mean, use something like Google Duo. I don't think that the
FaceTime link. I think that's kind of like a last ditch effort if the person is like, I'm not downloading anything new on my phone or actually, hold on, let me think about this. If your FaceTime, Oh yeah, you would be the one that doesn't want to download anything new. Your friend that's on Android is using Duo or something else, but you're the one that's on iPhone. You're like, I'm not I'm not game. I already have FaceTime. What do I need another video chat app for? Oh, it'd be
nice to have one that's crossed platform, like natively. I mean, yes, you can send a device a link to another device, but and it looks fine. I tried it. It's fine, it's just not my preferred way of chatting. Uh, let's see shared with Oh this is kind of cool. They've
got this little section called shared with You. And so now when you you know how people like text you something like an article and you look at it, but you're at work and you kind of forget about it until like two weeks later when you go back to their text and you're like, oh, totally forgot about that article they sent me and I never even commented on it. Well, Apple knows that this must happen a lot, and so
now they have this thing called Shared with You. So inside Apple News, Safari Photos, Apple TV podcasts, and Apple Music, notice they are all Apple programs. Whenever someone sends you something, it will sort of go in this little section, so that when you open up Apple News, Oh there's that article someone sent me on Apple News.
You open up.
Safari, Oh there's that link that Jim sent me last week that I never opened. Oh there's that photo that I never commented on. There's that podcast that never listened to, And.
I opened up my podcast.
I had a podcast from my friend John that he sent me like months ago that.
I never listened to.
And because I just forgot about it, what do you How do you bookmark it? I mean, you just forget about it as soon as someone texts you. And then of course with music, that's pretty handy too. That would actually be probably the most useful because people can send you songs. But again, if you notice, this is all from native apps, so if you're not using all these native apps, then it doesn't really help you.
So I still think it's a cool feature though.
It's nice to have, And definitely all your old links, by the way, are indexed and they're now available. So if someone sent you something previously, if you go into any of these apps, you will see the stuff that people sent you previously. Now, the other big new feature on iOS fifteen is called live text, and this is big and I got a hand it to Apple. They
did a really really fantastic job of this. So you can now aim your camera at something and the text will light up and you can highlight it and copy.
And paste and whatever.
Or you can take a picture and then press this little text button in the right hand lower right hand corner and it will highlight all the things that you can do with this picture, which is copy and paste text. You can tap a phone number to call it, you can tap a website to go to it. You can tap an email address to send an email. And they nailed it. They did really really good and so I'm
very impressed. And Google's had this forever, but I would say that Apple, I think, might have done a better job at implementing this than Google.
And it's so.
Funny because Google is so scared to like ever build anything into like the core functionality of Android because they're worried about like anti trust and all this stuff. So they always dance around like putting these features in places that like make it, you know, a little bit tougher for you to find because they want to make sure that they're not like pushing their own products. But Apple they could care less. They just push all their own stuff.
So they put this this feature front and center. It's right on the native camera and it works phenomenally, and honestly, Google should build this right into their native camera. They do in certain ways, but you still kind of have to press this lens button. And they just finally put Google Lens on the search bar on Android phones, which took forever too. So hopefully now that Apple has put this front and center, they will I'll also put this front and center on the Google phones.
Because it is very handy.
Apple Maps, you know, all the headlines are like Apple Maps is now on par with Google Maps. That is not true in any way, shape or form. Google Maps has information on pretty much the whole world. Apple Maps has been upgraded for LA, New York, San Francisco, and London.
So I'm sorry.
I live in LA, which is great, and the maps look amazing here, but you go anywhere outside LA and they're not.
Going to be as good.
And honestly, I just I can tell you from personal experience, I like the look of Apple Maps better, but the raw data that they have is just not there. Google has so much data about businesses and up to the minute data about everything that Apple just doesn't really compete with.
Now.
I don't think that that's gonna happen forever, but I think at this point, Google Maps is still kind of like a gold standard when it comes to mapping, and I really just trust that, and I can't bring myself to trust Apple Maps. I just can't because there's just too many times when I've typed in something and it just doesn't figure it out right, and I'm like, all right, sorry, going back to Apple, I mean, going back to Google.
The weather app totally redesigned. It looks pretty cool, and now it'll tell you when it's gonna rain or snow. It also has new big maps that show you how hot or cold it is. The notes app now is pretty good. I mean, I would love you, No, I would love to use the notes app. I switched back to every Note because I just can't get my brain around apps that are only on one platform. And Notes is really nice, but if I'm using an Android phone, I can't access any of my notes, and I just
don't like that. If I'm on the web somewhere and I need to like somehow get a note. I can't do that with Notes, and maybe you can. I don't think it's an iCloud, but maybe it is. It might be,
you know what, Notes might be an iCloud. But my point is it's one of these things where it's very much written for the Mac, it's written for the iPhone, it's written for the iPad, which is great if you only use Apple stuff, but I like to I'd like to try to remain platform agnostic as much as possible because that allows me to choose the best product for the job and not just something that's convenient.
And Notes is very convenient.
It's built in and it does a lot of stuff, and it's free and it's nice, but I just can't bring myself to use it in a big way. The thing that they added to Notes is you can now use hashtags, which is really cool because that helps you automatically organize notes. So when you're typing a note in just type of hashtag, and now you can see that hashtag along with other notes that have that hashtag. The email I got the most was from a bunch of
people saying, Rich, what's up with this iCloud. I've been Apple sent out an email it said you've been upgraded for free to iCloud plus.
Oh my gosh.
It sounds so fancy, but I mean, come on, it's like you're already. This is only for paying members of iCloud. So if you're paying for iCloud, you now get a couple of new features. Which is the most notable to me is hide my Email, which it allows you to generate disposable email addresses, and that's kind of cool. So you can go into your settings iCloud password I think it's or I forget it's one of those, and you can generate a one time it's not really a one
time use. It's just an email address that stays good until you delete it, and then it forwards that whatever email comes into that email to your real email. So the way that you'd use that is if you sign up for you know, like let's say you want to buy something on wayfair dot com and you just can't stand getting emails from them for the rest of your life.
You can use one of these private email addresses and make your order, do all your stuff, and then once your order is gotten to your place safely, you turn off that email address and you don't really ever have to hear from Wayfair again, I guess on the side note, if you need a quick email address to sign up for like a new coupon or a promo code, that
would be an easy way to do it. So if you need to, you know, get a ten percent off or something, and you need a new email address like a new sign up, that could be a way to do it.
The other thing they do.
Is private relay, and this is kind of like a VPN, but they're not calling it a VPN, so clearly it's not a VPN, But the way that Apple describes it, it says, when private relay is enabled, your requests are sent through two separate secure Internet relays. Your IP address
is visible to your network provider. So I think that's the difference between the VPN, because I don't think it is immediately and to the first relay, which is operated by Apple, which aka they can see your IP address as well, but your DNS records are encrypted, so neither party can see the address of the website you're trying to visit.
Oh okay.
The second relay, which is operated by a third party content provider, generates a temporary IP address decrypts the name of the website you requested, and connects you. All this is done to maintain high performance browsing and protect your privacy. So it's kind of like a VPN, but a little bit less secure because Apple can theoretically see your IP address, and so can your network provider, which you know is fine. Well,
I guess it depends what you're doing. So if you're a real privacy fiend, you won't want to do that, But if you're just kind of like casually trying to protect your tracks, you know, this will be a nice thing to enable.
I'll have to check that out.
I'm not sure if I need that on my phone, but it's kind of I guess it's one more way to just kind of keep things private on there, right, all right. Next question from Maricarr. Hey, Rich, I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to ask what a good Wi Fi extender would be for me to use. I live in a two bedroom apartment. There are literally dead zones in my dining area and in one of the bedrooms. I'd like for my Wi Fi to reach throughout my place, but honestly, it's driving me crazy how
slow it is. In some areas, can you recommend a good one. I have Spectrum for my internet service, if that makes a difference. Thanks so much, Maricar. Okay, So I did a story on this. It's a Villo Vlo and it is a sixty dollars mesh Wi Fi network, and.
I did the review on this.
I found it to be great, especially for standard Wi Fi. If you need something that's if you told me you had like gigabit internet or like a huge house or something, I'd probably recommend euro But this is perfect for your two bedroom apartment.
And there's three.
Units that you get for sixty dollars, and what you do is you put the first one by your modem, then you put the other two in the other far reaches of your house and this will create a mesh network. So these things all communicate with each other to blanket your house in a nice network of Wi Fi that works the same.
Pretty much everywhere.
And the reviews I got on this are pretty good, like the people that like I test this stuff, but I'm just one person, and so when people get this in their houses and they write me emails, so far, I think with the ex option of one person, everyone said they really like how this works.
So for sixty.
Dollars, you can't really go wrong because that is a pretty good price on a better Wi Fi for your whole house. So that's what I recommend. Check it out and once you get it installed, let me know what you.
Think of it.
New kindles are out first time since twenty eighteen. These kindles got a big new update, the Kindle paper White. I'll just go over this quickly what the new features are, because in fact, my wife scratched the heck out of the screen on her Kindle, so I've got to get her a new one. And it's funny because I have a case for my Kindle, which I get it. It makes it heavier and not as nice. But I've had this case on it since I've got it, and it's
kept this thing pristine. I mean, it's my Kindle is perfect, and it's like a couple of years old, and it's like, I want an excuse to buy a new one, but I don't need it. But my wife she scratched hers, and I said, I told you to get the case, and she didn't want it because she said I don't need it. I don't bring my kindle anywhere it's fine.
Well, sure enough, a huge scratch across the screen. So get a case.
The one I bought is really inexpensive. It was like had like eleven thousand reviews or something, and it was super cheap. It was like ten bucks. It's not the Amazon official but it was like ten bucks in.
It really did a great job.
And of course I know I'm gonna get a million emails from people saying, rich, which kindle case did you get?
So I will go ahead.
And look inside my Kindle order and see what the name of this case is if I can find it.
But I'm gonna have to go. I'm gonna have to go way back.
Moco case fits Kindle paper white, eleven dollars and ninety nine cents, so perfect, perfect, perfect, Get it and protect your kindle. But anyway, let me go over the new Kindle features. Okay, so the number one new feature is that these Kindles have USB C on them, which is long time coming. Everyone else in the world has switched to USBC, except the Kindles were still shipping with micro USB. And that's fine because the Kindle battery lasts so long
you don't really need to charge it very often. But for me, that is pretty much the last thing that I have that uses micro USB, so I when I finally get a new Kindle, we'll retire that and go to USBC. And the other flip side is that I would always charge my Kindle before I went out of trip or vacation. And yes, the battery lasts so long, I didn't really have to worry about it much, but
I didn't want to bring an extra cable. So you know, now that I can have USBC, I don't really have to worry about making sure that it's super charged up right before I go on a trip. So the Kindle Paper White is going to have twenty percent faster page turns, up to ten weeks of battery life up from six weeks. It's waterproof, It has everything you need for one hundred and forty dollars. And my warning to you is don't
pay full price. These things go on sale all the time, so set a price drop alert on Honey or Camel Camel Camel, and buy it when this thing goes on sale sometime over the holidays. They always go on sale. Next up, if you want to step up, is the Kindle Paper White Signature Edition, and this has the they both have the front light, but this one has the sensor, and so the front light adjusts automatically and it will adjust depending on how dark or light the room you're
in is. And then it also has wireless charging, which I guess that's cool. I don't really see that as a big feature on the Kindle because you're not the battery lasts so long. Like wireless charging is good when you're trying to keep your phone charged all day, but for a Kindle, I don't really see the point of that.
And then you get more storage thirty two gigs.
But again, who has more than one book on their kindle at any given time? Do you really need to store more than one.
Book on there?
I don't think so, So that's one ninety So really the only thing you need there is the auto adjusting front light sensor, which quite honestly, my Kindle has that, and I still adjust the light manually because I find that the censor is not all that great. The other thing they came out with is the Kindle Paper White Kids. This is the first ever waterproof kindle for kids, no distractions, not like an iPad where it's got games and all these other things.
I want to buy all the time.
It includes a one year subscription to Amazon Kids Plus, which has thousands of books.
Personally, I don't know.
I mean, some of those books are probably good, some of them probably are not very good. And then this is one hundred and sixty dollars, which sounds expensive for a kid's kindle. But again, find these things on sale. That's my advice. With the kindles, they go on sale late October. By the way, you can pre order them now. They'll be available before the holidays.
Next question from Lisa hey Rich.
You did a segment a few months ago about being able to download unlimited amounts of digital photos for ten dollars a year. Can you send me that information if it's still available. Sure, the website is called I drive. Now it's not downloading. I mean, I guess you could download, but it's really about uploading the unlimited photos.
So.
I drive is a company based here in the Los Angeles area, and they're known for their backups for like enterprise computers and also desktop computers. But they saw a need to do something when Google raised all their prices to introduce full resolution backup that's unlimited for ten dollars a year, and I got to say, I'm impressed it looks the app is very simple, but it does exactly
what you need. So if you download this app to your iPhone or your Android, it will take in all the pictures on your phone, upload them to the cloud in full resolution and videos by the way, And it's ten dollars a year. And when you get a new phone, the other little party trick it has built in is that it can download all those photos to your camera
role on your new phone. Now, I don't know why you'd want to do that necessarily unless you like all your pictures on your physical device, but I mean maybe you do. I don't know, but I think that them being in the cloud is a better place for them. But this is a great thing. It's ten dollars a year. I recommend it, and I of course, because you know, no matter what, if you have your photos somewhere, I
recommend a second place where you have them. And I'll be quite a honest with you, I don't right now I need to get this set up because I've got my photos in one place, Google Photos, and I'm really really concerned about that because I have some old backups here, but I don't have a current backup that's like every day, and I need to do that very soon. I need to set that up, so don't be like me get your photos in two different places. I just happen to
have a large, large, large amount of photos. So my solution just takes a little bit longer because it's kind of expensive and I just don't feel like spending the money to.
Set it up.
But I don't want to lose my picture, So you know what, I need to set that up very soon.
So that's what it's called.
I drive Photos and I will put the link, of course in the show notes. Facebook this week came out with two new devices. They're portal devices. So if you remember last week or the week before, Facebook came out with sunglasses, now they've got two new.
Video chat devices. These are called portals. Now.
I was there for the launch of the first generation of devices, and honestly, the reception was chilli at best. I mean, I've never seen the media knock down a company, and Facebook cannot catch a break at this point. The company has I don't know what they're gonna do to get on the positive side of things with people, but it's interesting because people I look at face, I look at people's phones all the time when I'm out and about. People are on Facebook all the time. People are on
Instagram all the time. Instagram's owned by Facebook. But yet somehow people always say, like I see in the media how much people hate Facebook. So do you hate it or do you like it? Because a lot of people are using it. This platform has two point seven billion
people on it. I think it's amazing because it connects people and it allows you to do things like I personally have a Facebook page that has a lot of followers on it, and I love the fact that I can reach people around the world because of this free product, and it's amazing. I've had videos go viral on there that do so many views, it's like mind boggling.
It is. It is a huge platform.
And if you're discounting it and saying that they're you know, oh, they're just in it for your you know, data, and they're.
In it, yes they are.
But at the same time, they do provide a service to people, and that is connecting people and now keeping people informed is a little bit different. Yes, people get a lot of stuff from Facebook, but it's not always the best stuff, and that's a problem. Yes, and I but I But at the same time, the fact that I can disseminate a story on Facebook just as well
as anyone else in the world is pretty cool. It's just I don't know what the solution is to the fact that people get their news nowadays from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok I mean, no joke people and YouTube, and
the problem is there's just no editor. I'm nothing against all this information out there, it's amazing, but when you get your information from a company like the company I work for, like KTLA, we have systems, we have processes for getting information on TV and writing information on the web, and what we're allowed to do and what we're not allowed to do, and what we are comfortable with doing.
But if you're just some random Joe Schmoe on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook or Twitter, you can do whatever you want. You can say the sky is green and that's because there are you know, particles that the government sprays into the sky every day to make it blue, but it's actually green. I mean, you can say that it's free
speech whatever. Well free speech doesn't really apply to social media, but you know what I mean, My point is it's not fact checked necessarily, and these social media networks are trying to do that, but it is an uphill battle. It's the stuff that I hear people say to me that is so un grounded or grounded in nothing is just wild. I mean, look at the Apple rumors alone that we see that are published on big blogs and this and that, and half of them turn out to
not be true. So I used to never cover Apple rumors for a long time, in fact, probably the first like eight years of my job at KTLA, because I was like, this is a rumor. I don't cover rumors. I am a journalist that covers actual stories. And the problem became so many people are interested in the rumors and it's being reported everywhere. You look like you don't know what you're talking about because you're not talking about
the rumors. And so I'm very clear when I talk about the fact that these are rumors or analysts, you know, analyst predictions or whatever.
I mean, that's really what the rumors are.
Now they're analysts and analyst says Okay, portal Go, Let's talk about these two new devices from Facebook. So portal Go is a ten inch screen, it's portable. So this means that this little device can be taken from room to room, so when it's not being used, it sits on a wireless charger or some sort of charger. Maybe it's a contact charger. I'm not really sure. I haven't seen this in person yet, but you take it from
room to room. So if your kids want a video chat with Grandma in their bedroom, read them a book at night, whatever you can. It's got a twelve megapixel smart camera which has an ultra wide field of view, which means it follows you around the room. Like so you got that video that kind of like moves around, it zooms into like where the person is on the screen. And this is a cool little touch. This doubles as a portable speaker. So pretty smart because it is wireless
and you can take it anywhere. That is a nice I think that's a brilliant side use of this thing. This is one hundred and ninety nine dollars and available soon.
The Portal Plus.
Is a fourteen inch screen and it's stationary, but the screen does tilt up and down, and that's three hundred and fifty dollars.
This is really for the This is like Portal Go.
I think would be for most people. This is kind of like high end. Three fifty is a lot, and this can let you zoom with twenty five people at once on the screen. And so this is for someone who might want to keep this on their desk. Maybe we're talking like a work at home situation. You want they use it for zoom. It's a little bit I hope it's a little bit higher powered than the portal Go. When I played with the devices when they first launched, I think this was pre pandemic. Oh my gosh, was
it really that long ago. They were not well received, and honestly, when I played with them, they seem to be a little bit underpowered. And I feel like that's kind of a theme I've seen with all of these like little devices that you put around your house, like the smart screens. They all seem to be just have a little bit less horsepower than you'd like. And I think they do that because they're using cheap chips inside,
because they're mass producing these things. But and we're also spoiled from our iPhones and androids that are so fast and snappy these days that these screens don't look like they're as fast.
But those are the portal devices.
I think they're really cool because everyone has a Facebook account, it's easy to get someone on board. But honestly, I don't think they've sold as well as Facebook wants. But they're going to continue to make them because I do think it's a bedrock of what they do do. They want to have this thing in the house, easy to chat, easy to connect, show your pictures, it can show your status, updates, whatever,
and I think that it's a cool product. I just think it's the problem of getting over that whole we don't trust Facebook kind of thing with these subject line is printers high rich. I moved across country and the printer I've had for years didn't quite make it.
Lol.
My HP eighty six twenty has worked great over the years, but for some reason only prints some items. A friend said it might be a quote unquote chrome issue. I tried to update it, but my computer won't even recognize it. Needless to say, I need a new printer now on the East Coast. Not knowing anyone, you're the only one I can think of that might be able to help. Do you have any suggestions for a good all in one? Thanks for the time, Sincerely, Jamie Jamie, your question couldn't
have come at a better time. I just purchased a new printer, and I got mine at Costco, and it's a highlight rated printer, and it might be overkill for what you need. But I got the HP. It's hold on, I got to look up what I got here because I have it written down.
Let's see here, printers, Let's see. Okay, where is it? Well I thought I had it. There we go.
Okay, so I got the HP nine zero one eight. Now this might be a little overkill. It's only like two hundred bucks at Costco, and so a couple things here. Number one, you kind of have to decide do you want to go. There's a couple of major manufacturers. Well, there's a couple types of printers. Do you want to go with a laser jet or do you want to go with a ink jet? Now I had laser jet for many years. I had a brother printer that lasted me. I think it was twelve years and.
All right, wait when did I get it twenty thirteen?
Anyway, I got a long time ago, and it was great and it's it's lasted me forever. But the kids really wanted a color printer so they can print all they want. And so I was like, all right, fine, color laser is cool, but I figured the ink jet was better because.
I wanted to print pictures at home.
So with that in mind, you really have a choice of like you have Canon, you have HP, and you have epsin. Canon I haven't really heard much from lately, so really it comes down to Epsen and HP for me. HP to me is synonymous with really expensive printer cartridges, but they've been around forever and they kind of know what they're doing, whereas epsin is really pushing this whole freefillable ink well kind of concept where you just squeeze
new ink into the well. And I like that because it appeals to my frugal side and I like when companies are kind of like in the number two position where they, you know, will do things a little bit different to try to make it better. But at the end of the day, I did go with HP because I just figured, you know, HP has been around forever and this was highly rated and let me do it. So that's what I got, and I think that you
can look for one along that line. I got the kind of the Pro series, but maybe you don't need the pro depends what you're doing with this thing.
But I would go to Costco if you can.
I know you're on the East Coast at Costco. What I love about them, and I talk about them on the show a lot, is that when it comes to electronics, they don't have a huge selection, but the selection they do have is really good, and so whatever you get there is going to be a little bit better than say another place, now best Buy. You'll notice this is
what I don't want you to do. Don't just find the cheapest printer that's on sale for sixty sixty seven ninety dollars at best Buy on an end cap, because what happens there is that you're going to get subpar quality and you're going to be using the ink on that that's a razor blade, you know what I mean. Or that's a razor handle, and the blades are where they make a lot of the money. Now on my printer, same thing, but it is a very nice printer and it has a lot of great features and it's high end.
So these cheap O printers, they're cutting corners somewhere, and that's probably in the quality of the print or the cartridges that are going to be a little bit more expensive whatever, So I would be just don't get that one. The other thing that I did, which I this is news to me, But HP has this subscription service called like HP Instant Inc. I think it's called HP Instant Inc.
And it's so wild because it's basically a subscription. So my my printer, I'm getting this free for six months, by the way, and again I'll put a referral link if you want to try it with your printer. But in the show notes, but it's I am. My printer is not my own. It's connected to the internet. And once you sign up for this program, you pay a monthly fee, and for that monthly fee, you get to
print a certain amount of pages. They don't care how much ink it takes, so for instance, you can pay I think on mine, I'm doing five dollars a month for one hundred pages, and so I can print one hundred pages of pictures. I can print one hundred pages of whatever I want as long as I'm you know, paying that five dollars a month. Now, they send you unlimited ink to do that, so they don't go buy
the ink cartridge price. You're just they just send you a bunch of ink and you pop it in your machine, and your machine talks back to the internet and reports every time you print a page. So as of right now, I can tell you how many pages I have printed on my printer and if I'm getting up against my limit, and so I don't know if.
This is going to last. I don't know if I'm gonna do this forever. But I don't know. I'm trying to figure out if it's cheaper.
It seems like it might be cheaper than you know, buying ink all the time. So it says you're saving up to fifty percent on ink and toner, and you can also print from anywhere, which is kind of cool.
And I've printed thirty nine pages this month.
So it's just such a weird kind of it's such a weird system, Like it's I'm kind of like, I feel like I work in an office where someone else, like a third party's like managing my printer, even though I purchase this printer.
But I hope I answered your question.
I've got thirty six out of one hundred pages this month, and oh yeah, four ninety nine, So four ninety nine for one hundred pages a month. So if the kids end up printing more than that, Now, to me, that's sixty dollars a year. Five times twelve is sixty. That sounds like it's the price of an inkjet cartridge. And I don't know how much inkjet cartridge cartridges are.
For my computer. It might be more, might be less.
But I think that this is a cool little a cool little system to go with. All right, let's see, let's go to the next question or not that we're going to next story here. Wisecam has come out with a new version, the wise Campan two.
This is the wisecam I did.
A story on many many years ago before this company was a big thing and people could not believe that you can get a camera for twenty bucks. Then they came out with some other products. I think the Wisecampan was their second product, and this was a little bit more expensive, but it was a camera that would move like on its base. It would you know, move left, right, up, down, whatever. So now they have a new version of that and this I'll tell you about the feature. So number one,
you could see the whole room in three seconds. It's got a three hundred and sixty degree horizontal coverage and ninety three degrees vertical coverage, so it goes up, down, left, right, you can just kind of pan see everything. There's this pan scan mode which patrols your room, so you can set up to four custom waypoints and kind of like those security cameras of the mall that just rotate left, right, up, down, you can have that in your house.
So this thing just does that by itself.
Color night vision, so they use this starlight sensor which illuminates details in full color even in the dark. So you know, most cameras at night are black and white, but this one you can see things in color. Those infrared lights are not visible to the naked eye.
So I know my kids when.
They were little with a little camera in their room, the kids cam, they were like, Dad, I don't like those little lights on the thing.
And I'd be like, oh, they're okay, don't worry about it.
But really I'm like, oh my god, that's like the scariest thing I've ever seen for a little tiny kid. But somehow my kids made it through. And Wi Pan V two does not have those lights on them, so it's invisible or I guess the infrared lights are not visible to the naked eye for night vision motion tracking. It'll track things so if something's detected, it will pan across as a as an object moves across, So if you have like bigfoot spoted in your yard, it will
follow it until it goes out of the frame. And then two way audio and a little siren so you can chat two way audio. If you've got like a pet at home you want to chat with, you can talk two ways with them and hear them bark back. And then there's also a siren button and they call it a mini siren. So clearly it's not gonna be that loud, but at least it's I haven't tested this, but at least it's going to be loud enough where you have a nice little siren if you need to ring the alarm.
As we say, this.
Camera is forty dollars plus shipping, so it'll be available soon. But wise cam Pan V two. I love why stuff. They do a really nice job.
I gotta say, Okay, Earl Gee, good day, Hello Rich. I hope you're doing well. I'm Earl Gee.
I hope I'm saying that right From Philippines. I work on the I Store Service center. I Store is an authorized service provider of Apple. I always watch your videos because I've learned a lot of things for additional learning. Thanks Earl. Gee ah, well, thank you.
It's funny.
I do have a lot of followers in various countries because some of the videos I've done have gone viral, and you know, people, I mean, if someone is good, like you care if they live in the US or you know, wherever they live. I follow some you know, YouTube ers are in different countries, and so I love the fact that people watch in different countries. That's pretty cool. So thank you for watching, and I'm glad you like
the videos. I always I always keep if you notice, with my videos, I always keep in mind that not everyone watching is in Los Angeles. I mean, even though I'm based in Los Angeles. You know, with the web, things are everywhere and not just in the US. It's like international, and so I try to keep that in mind, and it doesn't always work, but I try to do that. Speaking of a US centric story, starting November first T Mobile will now have in store device repairs at five
hundred stores across the country. This is the first time they've done this and service locations are coming to nearly every major city across the country, so chances are this will be coming to you starting November first. Customers with Protection three sixty can find the authorized location use the online appointment tool to make a same.
Day repair schedule.
It's the repairs are coming from Assurant, which I'm assuming is the backers of this insurance. And honestly, I don't really typically recommend getting the protection plans on gadgets, but you know, if you can get them repaired in store at T Mobile and you're with T Mobile, that's a pretty good deal because nobody wants to be without their phone.
And I did the math.
This is about seven dollars a month, which is pretty inexpensive when you think about it. I mean, you buy, like I bought a Starbucks yesterday, it was five dollars. So clearly I can afford the seven dollars a month for this protection. And the fact that they will now repair these things in store, I think is really cool.
You also get up.
To five claims per year, so that's good, So you can for that seven dollars a month. Now, I don't know what it depends on. You know, the seven dollars. I don't know what that How if there's like a deductible if you have to pay stuff, you know, every time you break something, but says you get accidental damage, loss and theft coverage, including next business day replacements.
So that's cool.
You get Apple Care for eligible Apple devices, You get unlimited screen protector replacements and they will put it on for you. They get hardware service coverage like a mechanical breakdown included jump upgrades, which lets you get the atest, the latest and greatest device sooner tech support, and you can add the protection three sixty when you buy a new device, you complete a repair lease or finance up to thirty days later.
So I think this is cool.
I'm glad they're doing this because a lot of times, you know, authorized service centers are kind of limited to either an individual shop or you break eye fixed. But this is just one more way of getting your device fixed. And the fact that you know people will probably roll this protection three sixty. It's on their monthly bill, so it's just simpler that it's like one one stop shop for everything and you get your phone fixed. And I really like that, so good good job TEA Mobile, Like
I hope. I don't know if all the carriers are doing that. June, why or June says, hey, Rich, my wife bought a Tesla Model.
Oh, my wife.
Bought a Tesla Model three Standard range plus. We're currently looking for car insurance. Maybe you have a recommendation for us. We don't drive that much since we are currently teleworking. Thank you have a great day, best June. Jun Well, June, I would check out metro mile and this is the company that does insurance by the mile, and so you put like you used to be, you put this little like thing in your car, but maybe they do it
with your cell phone now. I don't know how it works at this point, but I was an early tester of this, and it was like they sent me this little gadget that you would plug into your like I don't know.
I think it was called like an ODB.
Port or something like that. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a port on your car that you know has all the let me see car port ob ob D Okay, maybe it's ob D yeah, ob D. And so you put this little thing in this let me see? Is that really what it's called. I think that's what it's called.
Yeah, I don't know.
Anyway you put it, you put this little thing in there, but I don't think that Tesla has that. But I know metro mile works with Tesla, but I would look at that. And so it says you pay twenty nine dollars monthly rate. Oh, we base your rates on age, credit score, and zip code and then we consider real time data like the miles you drive. So you pay like a certain monthly rate and then you pay per
the mile. I mean, it's really pretty straightforward. And those prices I think depend on you know, what you're like, I said, your credit rate and all that stuff. But anyway, I would look at Metrobile. The other thing I like
is called gabby Gabi dot com. You can compare insurance from various places and as you found out, as I found out, ensuring a Tesla three is quite expensive because they're safe, but the repairs are expensive because you have to have Tesla do it, and a lot of the repairs are very technical because of all of the gadgets involved. All right, one more question from Mark. Hey, Rich, I love following you for all your updates and tips. Do you know is there a way to clean out duplicate
photos on my main album Thank You sent for my iPhone. Yes, I've gotten this question a lot because so many people are upgrading to iPhones. But I like the app called Gemini Photos. G E M I NI Gemini Photos, and it's I don't know how much does it cost.
It's a one time fee, I believe in app purchases. It's probably not.
It probably changed it because everything is now a subscription. Yeah, monthly okay, one time purchase is thirty five dollars annual twenty monthly five so it removes similar pictures.
But I would just be.
Very careful anytime that you are deleting pictures off your phone, just be very careful because I don't want you to delete anything that might not be a duplicate or it's something that you can't get back. So when you're doing something like a batch delete, just be very very careful. Make sure you have a backup there. Oh wow, look at that. That sound means it is the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. That's going to
do it for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich On Tech, hit the big blue send email button, or you can go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the email icon, send me your question away and I will answer it or do my best to answer it on the show. So I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. So I think two more people reviewed it this week, but they didn't leave.
They just rated it, they didn't review.
So if you can write a quick line about what you like about the show, and that helps other people understand why they should listen. We've been shown up in the top charts on Apple a lot lately, and so the more that people can read about the show, the more that they can maybe download it and listen and become part of the family. You can also go to
rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on Tech. You can find me on social media at rich on tech, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Then you can scroll down to the tech section and watch all of my segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon
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