HomePod Mini is a winner

tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you are having a fantastic day so far. Everything's good over here, just you know, surrounded in new technology. I have mentioned this on the show for the past couple of weeks, but it is tech season like I have never seen. And maybe it's because I'm working from home and everything's just much more apparent and it's all just kind of here in the office and stacking up. But man, I've been playing with a lot of stuff lately, just

in the past week. iPhone, Mini, iPhone, Max, HomePod, Mini PlayStation, Xbox. I mean, woo, what a group of things. Huh man, man, man, So uh, you know, I've got lots of thoughts on these things, and all I have to say is that I do understand that for many folks, this is a tough time. It's pandemic, it is you know, a lot of people are finding themselves either less than employed, or underemployed or not employed. And so that is not lost on me, right like, I understand that this is not

a typical time for the American people. But with that said, I am doing my job. I am taking talking about the things that people are asking me about, and I am not trying to assume that everyone has the extra cash this holiday season to buy all of the stuff that I'm talking about. But at the same time, you know, it's it's out there, it's being marketed, and I need to let you know what's good, what's bad, what you should spend your hard earned cash on. And that's kind

of where I come from. So do I think you need to rush out and buy the five hundred dollars PlayStation five tomorrow? Probably not. It will be there in six months. It'll probably be a better deal in six months because it'll have more games and more things, and the bugs will be worked out and some software updates. But I'll still tell you about it now, so you know what to do. And also I'm a big proponent of saving money as well. So save up for these things.

If you hear something that you really like and you really got your eye on it, save up for it. You don't have to do the financing plan. You don't have to do the you know, behold into whatever tech company on there, you know, divide it by twenty four or thirty or ninety. Save up the money, don't go out, you know, don't spend something you know, for me personally, like every I think of everything in terms of like Spotify, even though I don't subscribe to Spotify right now. Well

technically I do cause I have a free trial. But anyway, so I think of everything in terms of Spotify. So if I can save like, you know, seven or eight or ten dollars on a lunch one day, I think of it as, oh, I just paid for Spotify for the whole month, and so just you know, continue to

do that. Like this morning, I did go to Starbucks and you know, I looked at the it was like twelve dollars for you know, well, my wife got a fancy coffee, which I really can't bring myself to buy there because I just can't get over the fact that they're literally creeping up here in Los Angeles to like six dollars for a Grande. I mean, come on, that's insane to me. So I always go for the Brood, which you know they probably make more on that per

ounce or something thing, who knows. But anyway, I digress. I mean, I'm not this is not the Dave Ramsey Show, so I'm not sitting here giving you all your financial advice. But the reality is, look, I love this stuff just as much as you do. You know, I love to

buy technology just as much as the next person. And the reality is that, yes, I get to play with a lot of this stuff before, so I can you know, I can really want something and then play with it and be like, h nevermind, I don't really need that. But at the same time, this is this is all good to know. So anyway, let's talk about some of these things. Let's just get right into it. Get right into it after I've been talking for four minutes on a diatribe. But let's talk about the Mini and the Max,

the iPhone twelve. I have been using the iPhone twelve Pro, just the standard one and I have fallen in love with that device. It's so refreshingly good sized that I kind of just really really like the size of this phone. And when I'm presented with the iPhone twelve Pro Max, which is kind of a honk and big phone, and then the iPhone twelve Mini, which I just have no

need for, but I get that. There's you know, so you have three different size phones this year, right, you have the Mini, you have the two twelves in the middle, the twelve and the twelve Pro, and then you have the twelve Pro Max. So I think the ones right in the middle are the perfect size for ninety nine point nine percent of people. Now, I do like the Mini for someone who just is a casual phone user.

And someone kind of got on me on social media for saying, what do you mean, We're not a pro or something like that, or a power user, and I said, yeah, I didn't reply back, but you know you're not. Power users are not getting the Mini because the Mini is too small to be a power user's phone. So you know, you have to be a casual user if you want

the Mini. Now, the Max is for the power user, and realistically, the biggest difference is in the Max and the and the twelve Pro is when it comes to the camera, the camera is going to give you a gosh. My friend Jefferson Graham on USA Today did a really good job of explaining, and it's basically it comes down to the low light photography, which of course, but also

comes down to the lens. And the lens is you get more zoom, obviously, but you also get a I'm trying to find exactly how he says it here because it's like fifty six I think seventy two. Oh, here we go. So the Max telephoto, the Max Max is out telephoto at sixty five, which he says is close to the seventy millimeters that pros use, and then the twelve Pro Max or the twelve Pro maxes out at fifty two milimeters, so you get more zoom on the Pro Max. So in looking at his pictures, you know

it's definitely a little bit more. You can push in a little bit more on your pictures. But is that a reason to spend the extra hundred bucks he seems to think. So when it comes to you know, if you're a pro photographer, and that's kind of what I've been saying the whole time. If you want the absolute best camera that Apple has to offer, you got to go Pro Max. But you do have to get that larger size phone. And I'm just not sure that the

trade off is there for me personally. This year, I've really gotten used to being able to hold my phone, put it in my pocket, take it on a hike, and it just doesn't seem to like, you know, you know, move around so much like it, you know, and everything with the with the Max I had last year. You know, when you put it in like one of those holders or anything, it's always just a little bit bigger. It's always a little heavier, it's always just a little bit

more complex. But with that said, this thing is beautiful. Like the screen is just so nice. The form factor is just perfect. I think that it just feels like a small iPad slash computer. So if you want sort of one thing for everything, the Max is the way to go. The Mini is just fantastic for you know, like I said, the casual user that just doesn't care as much wants everything that's good about the iPhone, the

fast processing speed, the great camera. You only get two lenses, not three, but you know, it's just gonna be a great little phone, and especially at six ninety nine or maybe even cheaper with carrier deals, it's just great. But I think that the twelve and the twelve Pro are the perfect size. They're identical sizing or close to it, and it's just a great It's just a perfect size

in your hand. The only thing I will say that I've definitely noticed about the iPhone twelve and I haven't done enough with the twelve Mini and Max, is the battery life is definitely not as strong as it was on the eleven, which is funny because that is one of the biggest things I noticed about the eleven was the improved camera, but also the improved battery life, and

it's just kind of lost on the twelve. Maybe it'll kind of, you know, maybe I'll just I mean, I'm probably getting used to having a smaller phone in general with the battery life, but also I think the five G is taking a toll and just maybe who knows some other stuff. But I noticed it's not as strong,

but it's fine. Believe me, I'm getting through the day overall very happy, and honestly, you know, I kind of waver between Android and iOS a lot, and this is one of the first times right now when you compare what you can get with Android with what you can get with iOS, and you just can't match it with Android right now. The Note twenty Ultra comes close. But that phone again was a little bit too big for me.

So if they made that Note twenty Ultra in an iPhone twelve Pro size, I would have a tougher time considering or deciding between these two. But the fact is, when they made the Note twenty, they took you know, the screen and all these weird things. They just kind of took a back seat too, I guess. So anyway, that made my decision easy. All right, let's end up of that, so let's get into the first question of

the day. Dear rich DeMuro, very formal. I just reread your article regarding Wi Fi and I have a question regarding Wi Fi and Mesh network. I live in a single story house thirty two hundred square feet. Our Wi Fi is slow with lots of dead zones. The wires for the modem are in a walking closet and one side of the house not my idea. The other side of the house is the family room, which Mesh system do you recommend to be the most effective. I need to upgrade the Wi Fi speed as well. What do

you recommend with Frontier? I have a choice of five hundred, five hundred or one gig. Thank you, Lauren, Lauren, thank you for your formality number one. But you know, look, I always recommend Eero. I have Euroo. It works great. I plan on upgrading to the new euro Wi Fi six or the Euro Pro, I should say with Wi Fi six it's right now six hundred bucks, so I'm waiting for that to go on sale for Black Friday. But you know, I have one gig Internet and it's great.

I mean, it's it's good. I love it for the uploads. I think that for ninety nine point nine percent of people, five hundred five hundred is going to be just fine. I don't think you need the full gig unless you are uploading large video files on a daily basis like I am. So right now, I'm working from home. My photographer is working from home. He will take all the video files and put them in a dropbox kind of thing and then send them to me and I will

download them, and it's it's a big process. And then I'm uploading you know, regularly gigabyte files five hundred gig or five hundred megabytes whatever, And yes, five hundred, five hundred will handle that. But the gig is just nice to have. So I don't think you need the gig. I think I do because of my job. If your job is similar, then definitely go with that. Now, when it comes to the ero, they I think they underestimate

how many you need. I'd go with a at least a two point system, probably a three point for thirty two hundred square feet. But it's a single story, which means is probably since that is a large house, it's probably spread out more. So I would go one on the far corner where that closet is, one in the middle, and then one on the other side in the family room. And once you get that mesh network up and running, you will not believe just how fantastic your internet can be.

All right, let's talk about what I think is going to be the number one thing to give or get this holiday season, and it is the home Pod Mini. Now I was just okay, so let me just give you a little background on this thing. So Apple sent me the HomePod Mini to test out, and I plugged it in and started listening to it, and wow, I immediately was just blown away. This thing is three inches. It's a hundred bucks. And I've been so used to my Sono speakers that have been my kind of gold standard

for many years. Last week on the show, you heard me say that I replaced them with some Google home speakers. Well, guess what. This week, I think I'm going to replace everything with the HomePod minis because they sound so good that I was I couldn't say anything about them, because you know, we have these things called embargos where you can't really talk about stuff. So the only person I can call was my wife, and I was just like, oh my god, I can't wait till you get home

because I want you to hear these speakers. They sound so good. And so when she got home, I had they actually work with my sons, Like I have one Sonos that has airplay built in. It's a newer model, and I didn't realize that it kind of works in concert with these home pods, and so I kind of got them all up and running and I played the music throughout the house and it was only a couple of rooms. Case I don't have enough of these for everything. But I will say, she said, wow, that is impressive.

It sounds really good. So now I've got a quandary. The home pod, I feel like sounds better than the Google stuff, and the Google stuff is having trouble grouping. That's the main thing that I found. And the iPhone with the HomePods, it groups a little bit better. And by grouping, I mean, Okay, I want to play this

music throughout the house. Okay, fine, But then when I go to change the volume, I try to change it across all the speakers at once, and I have not been able to figure out a way to do that. I can do them individually, but I can't figure out the whole home like one volume everywhere. And sons I keep coming back to because number one, it's Switzerland, you can use any service you want. With the HomePod. You really got to use Apple Music, which is fine. I've

resubscribed to it. But it's one of these things where you know, once you go down this HomePod route, you are beholden to the iPhone. And I've always been sort of a platform agnostic kind of person, like I like to have stuff that is not just one company, because

then I'm ruled by one company. And that's what I liked about the Google homes is that you know, they work with YouTube Music, they work with you know, what's the other one, Spotify, But you know, then you go up to Sonos and it works with everything, I mean everything. So what I loved about Sonos is that on one screen, my home screen, I had my favorite playlists from iHeartRadio, my favorite playlist from Apple Music, my favorite playlist from

spot and my favorite playlist from YouTube Music. And yes, at one point I was subscribed to all those things. I still kind of am. But yeah, a lot of them are like free trials, like Spotify. My credit card gave me like and I know, they gave me like six months free of Spotify. It's one of these things where they want you to sign up and then forget about it and then all of a sudden you get charged, like the nine ninety nine, and you're like, oh, yeah,

so they just got a free month. Anyway, So anyway, the home pod is fantastic. I immediately ordered one for my sister. It was shipping in like mid December, by the way, so I don't know if that's going to change. But if you want one of these things. You better order it because you might not have it by Christmas. It's just great. I mean, I really really think that Apple did a fantastic job. And don't forget people are gonna say, oh, it doesn't sound as good as but here is the thing.

It works with the iPhone. So many people that have the iPhone are going to purchase this product just because it is an Apple product, and yes does it. Am I an audio file that can tell you whether it sounds precisely as good as the Sonos or as good as the you know, Alexa or the whatever from Google, But no, I can't tell you that. I could just

tell you from my ears. When I plug this thing in, it sounded phenomenal, and I feel like the sound fills the room in a bigger way than definitely the Google Home, maybe on par with the Sonos. And I don't have enough experience with the Alexa stuff or the Echo stuff to really give you a comparison there, but I can tell you that this sounds pretty darn good, and pretty darn good means that Apple is going to sell a bazillion of these things for a hundred bucks. It's like

doling out candy to kids. And those kids are the iPhone users and one hundred dollars. Yeah, people are gonna say, well, it's more expensive than you know, the Google Home is only fifty and the echoes or are really discounted. Well, yes, I get that, but again, this is Apple. Now. If we are in normal times, you'd be in an Apple store going for a screen repair and you'd see this little speaker and you'd be like, whoa, what's that? Hundred bucks? Boom,

take my money. But you know, we're in a pandemic. Things are a little different. It's gonna take people some time. But from everything I've seen, I haven't really read a lot of reviews on the HomePod just yet, but I have a feeling when I do, people are gonna say what I'm saying, this thing is pretty awesome. Let's see what a review saying. Verge says doesn't sound as good as similarly priced competitors. Okay, well whatever, Tech Crunch, remarkably big, sound,

Wall Street Journal, showdown Guardian. Let's see is anyone acceptable in gadget and acceptable Echo Alternative? Oh give me a break, come on, okay, Fast Company. For Apple fans, this ninety nine dollars smart Speed a no brainer Forbes, dead cheap, dead sheep. It's not dead cheap. Come on, dead cheap, David, Come on. Ninety nine bucks is not dead cheap. Twenty bucks is dead cheap. Apple doesn't do dead cheap. It sounds like I'm saying dead sheep, dead sheep, dead cheap, depth,

dead cheap. What do you say dead cheap? Now all I hear is dead sheep. H Okay. So bottom line on the home pod is, look for one hundred dollars.

You're gonna get this thing, and you're gonna be blown away and you're gonna want to buy more, which is what's happening to me right now, because now I'm sitting here thinking, do I want to maybe upgrade all of my Sono speakers and you know, go that route and continue down the Soo's route, Or do I want to spend half the money and get home Pods everywhere and then I'm beholden to Apple for the next year or two, you know, because I gotta get my money's worth or

three or four and stick with Apple Music. Yes, you can use other music services. It works with airplay, but look, if you want the cleanest, smoothest experience, it looks like, right now, you got to use Apple Music. I think they mentioned Amazon Music later on. And the delineation here is to not have to say on Apple or you know, like you know, h Siri, play this song, you know, and it'll just default your music default music service, right

without having to say, play this song on YouTube music. Right. That's who wants to say that every time you forget? So anyway, let me know what you think I mean. Plus, you get all the smart home stuff, which you know, it's just kind of starting. You get the smarts of Siri, which, let's be honest, series not as good as the other stuff, you know, the other assistants, especially Google. But you know I did the other night, I said, you know, play

some relaxing music, and it did that. I think I actually think Siri is the best at coming up with music to surface versus Google Assistant is really bad at that for some reason. I don't know why, but I'll be like, hey, play some workout music and it's like here's a heavy metal hard rock and I'm like, I don't ever listen to that kind of music, Like why would you play that? You know? So anyway, that's my thoughts on the home pod Mini, and let's be honest,

you're listening to Rich on tech. I mean, these are gonna be my thoughts. Are they the right thoughts that everyone else has? I don't know, but these are my thoughts, and my thoughts are this is gonna be one of the biggest sellers for Apple this holiday season, if not for the next year. So take that, enjoy it, and let me know what you think, because I, like I said, I'm not an audiophile. I'm just a regular person. And when I heard this little speaker, I thought it was fantastic.

So you let me know if you think it sounds fantastic for being a tiny, tiny speaker. That is ninety nine dollars. All right, let's get to the next question. Adam says, we have an eight year old Toshiba satellite. On Friday, when I went to shut down, the message of update and shut down was displayed, Okay, no problem. On Saturday, same scenario, different outcome, no problem. Oh, different outcome problem. There was a blue screen with refreshed might help.

It didn't. Paid closer attention the second time page fault in non page area t M com dot sis. I have an appointment with Best Buy tomorrow, see if it can be fixed. If not, what would you recommend as a replacement. It's used for Facebook, Yahoo, mal angry birds, Google, searches, word Excel, and visiting websites. Anything else you can think of is appreciated. Well, eight year old computer to Shiba satellite,

i'd say, is getting kind of up there. I would probably see how much it costs to be fixed, if you know best buy. I can't imagine this is going to be a cheap fix. I mean, maybe, you know, if it's one hundred hundred and fifty bucks, fine, But honestly, I would not invest much more into this laptop than that, because you can get a perfectly replace perfectly acceptable replacement for you know, five to six hundred dollars, So I would I would probably replace it after eight years. It's

this thing is slow. It's buggy. You know, you've got a small hard drive, you got not much memory on it. It's it's really starting a lag when it comes to opening programs and you know, just running in general. Now, the things you're doing on this computer are pretty simple, so that's why you know it's still fine. But yeah, I think a replacement would probably be better. If this repairs anything over one hundred and fifty dollars. So with that said, I like to recommend Costco as a good

place to find a replacement laptop. They don't stock a ton of laptops, but you know, if they have one or two, they're usually a fantastic deal. And what I mean by that is that you know, these are kind of curated selections, they're just remembers. So no matter what, if a laptop is five hundred dollars at Costco and five hundred dollars at best Buy and it's the same laptop, you're literally gonna get either double the memory at Costco or you know, double the hard drives. Something is going

to be better on the specs. It's going to be a little bit more specked out for the same price. And that's because Costco is a private club. It has a membership and a private club. It sounds so fancy, you know, anyone can join, but the reality is they always get a little bit of a better deal for their members, especially on the electronics. So I would go there.

If you don't have a membership to Costco and you know you want to go to best Buy and buy something, usually I'd recommend the Microsoft Store because when you buy stuff from there, it the computers are not filled with bloatwear like they are at Best Buy. But Microsoft Store is all gone now, so and I don't feel like you want to spend the money on an Apple laptop

because those are basically double the price. So I would just go into best Buy with that five hundred dollars budget and find something that is, you know, just talk to the folks there and see what they sell the most of or you know whatever. But don't go with a two hundred dollars chromebook. Don't just don't make that mistake, because it'll be it's underpowered from day one, it's under powered from day twenty, and it's underpowered day three hundred.

So all I hear about is people complaining about chromebooks. They love them and they hate them. They love them that they're so cheap, and then they get at home and all they do is say it's a little slow. Yeah, of course it's slow. It's got like one gigabyte of RAM. I mean, it's like, these things are so underpowered. How do you think they sell them for one hundred and fifty bucks? I mean, you know, what's the margin? There. They probably make them for twenty you know, so just

you know, be aware. Now, I think you could get away with a Chromebook here, because everything that you're doing works, you know, on a Chromebook. Just get a nicer model, you know, like get a higher end model. I would say minimum. I'd say, you know, I like to see like four to eight gigs a RAM and then at least a sixty four gig hard drive. Now again that sounds really low for a laptop, but we're talking chromebooks,

so you know, do what you want. But I would say, go the best, go to the cost go route, and hopefully you'll find something there. All right, good luck on that. Let's move on to the next story. I feel like this podcast is like Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple Apple, but I got a lot of Apple stories. I mean, this company is a force to be reckoned with. They got a lot going on. I'll do two in one.

How about that? Two and one? Mac os Big sur is available and I have not downloaded it yet for my computer, so I can't tell you exactly how awesome it is or not awesome, but I will be I think I might spend the afternoon today doing that. I like to do a clean install, which means I like to factory format my computer and install the new operating system fresh. I don't recommend that everyone does that, because, yeah, you got to start over. It takes time. It takes

much more time to do it that way. But I like to do it that way because I find that you know, I'm running you know, I'm a tech person, you know, a tech reporter, and so I'm downloading stuff all the time. I'm trying out new programs, downloading video files. There's fragments of garbage everywhere all over my computer. So I like to start fresh once a year when a new operating system comes out, because it gives me a chance to kind of like, ah, like everything is fresh again.

The downside is that inevitably I forget about ninety nine percent of these settings and programs that I had installed in my computer. And you know, the next like three weeks after I do any sort of update, I'm just scrambling for everything. I'm like, Ah, where's my little program that keeps my computer alive? Ah, where's my little program that hides my desktop ICMS? Ugh, where's my Google backup? Oh? I gotta install this scanner driver again. H I gotta

install my printer driver again. So I don't recommend it, but for me, it's just kind of the thing that I do. And now that I think about it and I'm talking through it, ugh, it sounds like such a nightmare, but I will. I guess I'll still do it. Maybe I'll maybe I'll just upgrade this year and deal with a stinky old computer and nothing fresh anyway, big sir. From what I can tell, it's kind of like the

iosing of the MACA. Now. I don't know that for certain, but you know, they added something called Control Center, which gives you a quick access to things like do not Disturb, displays, keyboard brightness and more from the menu bar. There's a lot of talk about Safari getting upgraded, and you know, Safari is great, but I still use Chrome messages. It's all about messages, all about maps. And then of course you can run iPhone and iPad apps on the desktop

if the developers allow it. So yeah, sounds a lot like the iPhone is coming to your Mac desktop, which I don't know. I like my desktop because it's a desktop. I don't If I want my iPhone, I'm gonna use the iPhone. But things are merging now these years, these days, so maybe you know I'm the dinosaur here, all right, So I said I was gonna do two in one. This is also Apple related, so don't don't you know, get angry at me just yet. I think this is the last Apple story of the day, is it? Yes,

it is, I think it is. Oh no, there's one more. Oh my gosh, there's so much Apple stuff Apple. Let's see. Apple home Airplay two and home Kit support is now available on select four k Roku streaming players. So if you have one of the four k rokus, you got the new operating system nine point four, and Apple Airplay two is on some of those devices. Now do they give me a list of which devices Roku TV models are expected to Let's see, it doesn't give me the

exact ones. But anyway, the airplay on Roku is kind of cool because now you can show your pictures on your Roku screen. I'm looking at it right now, and it's pretty cool. I've played some music on the TV screen through airplay on Roku, and I haven't let me see, should try a picture. Let me let me put a picture up there and see what it looks like. Because that I think is like the best case scenario or best use case scenario is that you can see the picture on your Let's see play and I'm gonna do

Roku and boom, do we see it? Come on there? It is Tetris effect right on my big screen. So I think that's the best case scenario, is that you know, you can show your pictures from your iPhone on your TV screen. Now I get it. We're in a pandemic. Nobody's coming over to the house, so it's like, do you really have friends that you need to show your pictures to? No. But when this is all over, which hopefully it will be one of these days, it'll be a cool feature to have. And it's just nice because

it gives you more flexibility with your iPhone. If you know, if you had a Roku and you had an iPhone, they didn't They didn't really play very nice over the years. Now they play nice and boom. You don't have to get an Apple TV, which is a win in my book. Now you just saved two hundred bucks. All right, let it's get to the next question. H Francis. Oh good Francis. Apple question with Apple's new and anouncement today, they didn't update the chip in the iMac. I made the decision

to buy, but was waiting for Black Friday. If anything, do you think it's worthwhile to wait for the M one chip for that? I don't want the mini as by the time I purchased the screen, keyboard and mouse, the iMac is cheaper. Always watching on KTLA, app and Fox five San Diego, Francis. Thank you Francis for watching. All right, Well you kind of okay, So I said there was no more Apple stories, but there was kind of one more story, and you know it's kind of

a big one. But Apple this week announced their new M one chip, and this is their new processor that they put in three new computers, well, I guess three

existing computers that they've had. The M one is think of the iPhone as having its own processor inside that Apple makes the the A fourteen Bionic and now you have the equivalent of that, but for Apple's laptops or computers, I should say, which is really cool because Apple has been really really good at getting its processor and its software and it's hardware in such sync that it just kind of blows away the competition. That's what we see

with the iPhone. When you do certain tasks on the iPhone, notably all of them, they're most of the time faster and more battery life. We just see a lot of synergies between because Apple creates its own hardware and software, and now they're trying to do that same thing with their laptops. And already they've introduced three new or sorry, three new computers that do this. So the m one is inside the MacBook Air, the new MacBook Air thirteen inch.

They say it's three times three and a half times faster, graphics are five times faster, two times faster solid state disk drive performance, it's fanless, and you get fifteen hours of battery life or eighteen hours of video playback, the longest ever on a MacBook Air. Now, I think that sounds pretty good. And what I love about this is that it's kind of applying, like I said, that iPhone magic to their computers. And because Apple is creating that chip,

they don't have to kind of back into what Intel does. Right, the Intel presents them the chip and now they have to kind of build everything around it. Now Apple's hardware and software engineers can work together to make this chip kind of sing on this computer. So the MacBook Air is nine ninety nine or eight ninety nine for educational pricing, and if you're a teacher or a student or somehow in that realm, you can get that education price, which

one hundred bucks off, which is pretty darn good. Thirteen inch MacBook Pro also has the new M one chip. It's two point eight times faster than the previous generation. Let's see, three times faster than the best selling Windows laptop in its class, seventeen hours of web browsing, twenty hours of video playback, twice the battery life of the previous generation, which is pretty amazing. Previous generation had like, you know, ten hours, which really, you know, when you

actually use your computer, it's more like six. To me, I feel like I'm just always plugging you in my sixteen inch MacBook Pro. But I don't feel like the battery life is a strong point on this device. But anyway, that's pretty amazing too. I mean, thirteen inch MacBook Pro with the M one and UH three pound design. It's got the uh the touch id on it, it's got two Thunderbowl ports, and this is twelve hundred ninety nine

dollars or eleven ninety nine for education. And again these are all available, likely by the time you hear this, they'll be available within a week if they're not already available. There's also a new Mac Mini for six ninety nine, which they say is one hundred dollars less than the previous generation. Macmini is kind of cool, like I always had the dream of using a Mac Mini as kind of like my my network server at home plus my home entertainment hub for the TV. But I don't see that.

I don't need that anymore. Everything's in the cloud now and I don't keep like a library of videos or anything anymore like I used to back in the day, Back in the old days of tech, everything was about creating this collection of stuff this First it was physical, then it became digital, Like I just wanted my digital music collection to be so large, or my digital movie collection to be so large, or my photo collection to

be large. And yeah, photos I still keep. But now with everything in the cloud and everything streaming, there is no need to have anything anymore. And yes, I get it they want you to pay that ten bucks a month forever, but the and I still get lots of emails from people saying I got my music collection and this and that, like people are still clinging to this.

But to me to pay ten dollars or fifteen dollars a month for all the music I could ever imagine listening to in my lifetime, it's like it's just a small price to pay. And yes, it's one of these things where it gets pricey over a lifetime. It's probably more. Did I buy a CD every month for ten dollars or fifteen No, when I was a teen, maybe, but you know now, no, you know, you barely buy music. Did I buy Did I buy ten dollars worth of music every month when iTunes was doing ninety nine cents

a pop? Probably not? And so yeah, it's more expensive probably or for sure in the long term, But in the short term it's just to me, it just makes so much sense. It's so simple, and there's lots of free alternatives out there. I mean, there's free versions of Spotify. You can listen to all the music you want on

Apple on a you know, iHeart radio streaming. I mean, you know, if you don't mind with ads, Like my sister, you know, I bought her the home Pod Mini and I said, now, you're probably gonna want to subscribe to Apple Music once you get this thing. And she's like, oh, no, I have Pandora. I'm like, oh, perfect, well that works with it natively. And she's like, yeah, I don't mind the ads. I'm like, what what ads? What are you talking about? And she said, yeah, I just listen to

the ads. I'm like, pay the five dollars a month to get rid of the ads. Pandora is like four nine, right, Pandora? What's Pandora Pro? I don't even know what do they call their Pandora subscription? What they what do they even call Pandora Pandora Plus? Let's see how much is Pandora plus five dollars a month for no ads? I mean come on, that's like so cheap. I mean, come on, sixty dollars a year to not have to listen to

any ads. I mean that's not bad. Let's see, search and play what you want, but you have to unlock by viewing an ad. That's kind of weird. But look, you get unlimited skips offline listening, I mean for five dollars now, and again you can be saying rich. I mean, didn't you just say how you like to save money? And this and that it's like, Okay, do you not spend five dollars a month on something that is like disposable, like a coffee once a month or a beer or

you know, a subway foot long for five dollars? And yes, I guess that sustains you. It's sustenance, it's food. But come on, I think that you got if you're listening to this podcast and you're considering the home pod Mini, I mean, I think maybe you can spring the five

bucks a month for the Pandora Plus. Now. Yeah, a lot of people like to listen for free, and it's great that these options are out there, But to me personally, like I've I'm always amazed when I'm in an uber, you know, someone's driving for a living, and all of a sudden the ads come up on Pandora, I'm like, dude, dude, like just pay the five bucks. Come on, You're your

passengers will love you for it. I mean, and you you have to sit there and listen all these ads every you know, when I was, you know, and I try to look I try to test this stuff so that I can see, you know, like as a you know, just try to get all the different angles of things. I like to test a lot of stuff, and so I've gone through and I've said, okay, let me see what it's like to have Pandora with ads, and it's a lot of them. I feel like, actually spotify same thing.

It's like. Oh, so anyway, if you have the ads, it's fine. I'm not judging you for it. I'm just saying, yeah, you got to put everything in perspective. So yeah, Francis, to answer your question about the iMac, I think you made the right decision. I think you're fine the iMac. I think you get much more bang for your buck with the iMac than you would with any of those laptops with the M one chip. The iMac is still you know, it's fine, and I think you did the

right thing. Yes, you can wait for the iMac to have the M one, but I think that it's probably best if you need a new computer and you're looking for those Black Friday sales. Usually Apple does a one or two day sale during Black Friday, so wait for that day if you can. I can't tell by your email if you already purchased it or not, but you know, I think you'll be fine, and the iMac is what

I want too. I mean that's you know, like I want like a computer for my house, like a I've said this just a minute ago with the iMac, but I want like a base computer to like have it like the desk. I don't know why for like the kids and stuff. They all they have their own, but anyway, be nice. All right, are you done listening to me yet? You're still tuned in? Okay, I guess if you're still there, we'll continue. Let's talk about Instagram this week. Big changes

to Instagram. They have modified the program, and of course everyone hates it, including myself and my so they added a reels tab and a shop tab. The reels tab, I'm fine, I can I can do that. I can totally do the reels tab. I'm fine with that because reels are funny. It took me a little bit to warm up to them. But they're fine. They're creative. People are having fun with that short little content. You know, it's basically their their TikTok. The shopping tab, come on.

It's a little bit annoying because I don't know one person who's ever shopped for something on Instagram. Now I say that as someone who does technology reporting, and you know, everyone wants to buy the stuff that I'm post on my Instagram and I'm not like your typical influencer that's

actually selling this stuff, but I can get that. I can see that if you were making a living on selling the stuff that you talk about or linking to it or whatever, like the shop tab is cool and products are on Instagram, like I follow, like my thing. When I find out about a new product that I don't I'm not ready to purchase just yet, or even a hotel, like almost anything that I want to do

in life, I will. I will follow on Instagram because that's kind of like my bookmark, and so of course I'll see their posts incessantly, like like let's say I follow a hotel that I want to stay at next thing. You know, I'm seeing their posts like every day of my life, and so I'm like, okay, I do want to stay there. I do want to stay there, but like not right now, and eventually it wears me down and I'm like, okay, I'll either book or unfollow them.

And I can see that with shopping, I do a lot, Like when I want to buy something or keep tabs on a product, I will follow it on Instagram, and so I get why the shopping tab is there, because they want you to be able to go there and see the stuff that all these things that you're you know, following or selling. I personally have never purchased something through Instagram. I don't ever see myself doing that. They don't have my credit card. As far as I know, I don't

even know how that process would work. Maybe I should try buying something and seeing. But I'm sure people do, and I'm sure that's why they did this. But the let's see, they say, our focus has always been on young people and creators because they're trend setters. We've seen an explosion in short entertaining videos. Yeah, I get that, and we've seen now here read between the lines share.

We've seen an incredible amount of shopping move online. Yeah okay, with more and more people buying online and young people looking to their favorite creators for recommendations on what to buy. So in this blog post, Adam Osuri, the head of Instagram, never says that people are actually shopping through Instagram, but they are getting recommendations through Instagram, So I get that. So they're trying to capitalize on the whole movement of Yes,

everyone gets their recommendations from online and especially their influencers. Now, I was a little bit of a brat on Twitter, and when the uh, I see the CEO of Instagram, Adam Mosseeri, head of Instagram. So he tweeted and said, this week we added reels, tabs and shopping given how

important video and shopping are to Instagram, that's it. And I said, I retweeted him and said would have been more useful as an Amazon shopping tab, being a little facetious because saying like I do all my shopping in Amazon. And he actually tweeted me back, which I feel bad about now because I was being a little brat, and he said, we're looking to build a windows shopping experience, a place where you can browse and check things out, not a search for a specific product experience where Amazon

and others shine. And I got to hand it to him. He kind of like he got me right in the gut. He's like, dude, he like checked me. He's like, come on, bro, He's like, I see what you're saying. You're trying to be a little brat by tweeting this. And I'm just gonna say here's what we see, what we're doing versus what youth. You know, we're trying to be. You know, KOI about or is KOI the right word? What's KOI mean? Koi? Cooi means making, oh, making a pretense of shyness or

modesty that has tended to be alluring. Okay, never mind us that is not what I meant. Okay, never mind, koi is not Okay, that's never mind. Let's strike that from the record. I didn't mean koi. I meant Brady. So what's another word for Brady? It was like facetious, self centered, spoiled Brady, badly behaved. Yeah, it's kind of me, so I get it. It's a way of shopping of you know, looking at all this stuff and kind of getting ideas. Personally, I spend enough money. I don't need

any more ideas on how to spend my money. So I'm not gonna be looking at that shopping tab anytime soon. But you never know, and it's probably a growing place for them, and they see it Amazon. It is funny because I was shopping on Amazon the other day and I realized Amazon must have this amazing like you know, they call it like the imposter syndrome when you're successful

but you feel like you shouldn't be. Amazon has some form of that because think about it, they're like the most popular place to shop online, but they can't upsell you if their life depended on it. When was the last time you went on Amazon to order the water filter if you're fridge like I did yesterday, and suddenly they upsell you and they make you know, like you're at the checkout at Ralphs and they, you know, sell you a pack of gum or mince or chocolate bar.

Amazon cannot do that. I mean, there's like almost no way like eh, And they've tried, you know, they put these little things like oh did you forget this? It's like it's always the worst recommendations. I don't need it, and I rarely do I ever go on for my hair product and then all of a sudden find myself

buying some other random thing at checkout on Amazon. That must frustrate the heck out of Amazon, because if they can figure out how to add a dollar two, three, four five bucks to an order times a billion orders a day or whatever they get, they would be doing even better. And this is what we always talk about here in my house with Amazon Fresh, because we do a lot of the grocery ordering, is that I feel it's so bad that someone has to go and they got to collect my stuff and bring it to my house.

But the reality is it's cheaper for me to order that on Amazon and tip the person that gives it to me than it is to go to Ralphs. Because when I go to Ralphs for twenty five dollars worth of stuff, I inevitably end up walking out with fifty to seventy five dollars worth of stuff because when you walk through those aisles, you see a whole bunch of stuff that you don't really need. And on Amazon that just doesn't happen. There's no filing you through a whole

bunch of aisles to get to the milk. You just order milk, you put it in there. And the flip side is on Amazon, you see your ongoing total of what you're spending, and so that's even better because you're like, oh, I'm getting close to one hundred bucks. I don't want to spend that much right now. Let me take a couple items out. So that's what's going on with the whole shopping Instagram. We'll get used to it. I just don't like how they move the hearts now up to

the top. And I still you know what, while I had Adam Moosseeri's ear, I should have said, you know, I'm gonna reply to him and say, hey, can you please can you please surface out or separate out people's comments from the likes. I don't need to see every time I've said this before, I don't need to see all the people that liked my picture. All I want to see is people that comment so I can respond to those comments. That would be much more useful to me.

Oh wow, Reels is right in the middle now. Ooh oh wow they moved create to the top. Oh wow, that's really different. Okay, wow, okay, yeah, Instagram's changed. All right. Do I have time for one more question? This a quick one, we'll do phase. A few months ago, you afford mentioned affordable pet insurance and I've been looking for that information ever since. Wow, you've been looking for this information for several months, FAE. Oh my gosh, sad. Sorry,

can you send me that information? Yes, it's Lemonade dot com slash pet. Lemonade does fantastic insurance for your renters in house. Let's see, Yeah, they do renters and let's say lemonade. Yeah, renters, homeowners insurance, that's what it's called homeowners and now pet insurance. And the prices are just fantastic, So definitely check it out. And it's it's pretty legit. If you're like, oh my gosh, this is like fifty percent of what I'm paying for State Farm or all

Stay or whatever. But just just do it. I mean, it's it's pretty good. It's fantastic pricing. They don't have to pay all the agents. I guess. Oh sorry, I know everything I say on this show I offend somebody, Like someone out there is an agent for one of these things, and they're like, rich, why are you recommending this? There goes my job. Sorry. I am not the person that invents this stuff. I am just the person that talks about it. So I can't keep progress from happening.

I can't keep these companies from coming up with new and different and unique ways of doing stuff. I just tell you about it, and it's your life. You decide whether you want to embrace it or not. You don't have to. Let's see next question Sandra says, hey, Rich, how do I delete my Facebook account? I have years of history and photos on there? One? Will it be completely deleted? Or will Facebook always have it? Thank you? Oh where's the second question? Okay? One? Will it be

completely deleted or a Facebook? Okay, thank you? So Facebook will have it for a while. I think even after you delete your stuff, that stays in their servers for a certain amount of time. I don't know how long that time is. I would assume ninety days to six months, depending on what I'm sure it's in there. I'm sure it's in there like facts FAQs, so you can check that. But the way to delete your Facebook account is two steps. Number one, you have to download all of your data.

I mean, you don't have to do that, but I personally would you say? You have all your years of history and photos on there, so you probably want those. So go to Facebook. There's like a let's see download a copy or Facebook data. Go to settings and privacy settings your Facebook information, download your information, and then view and you can download all of your stuff. Then once you download it, you can delete your Facebook page or your Facebook account fully. And the way I find that

is a website called just Delete dot me. Just delete dot me and search Facebook and it will take you to the link that deletes your account, which is oh gosh, it's so sad when you go to that link. Yeah, that's it, and then you can delete. Look at download your information. You have eight hundred and ninety three photos, three hundred and sixty posts and more uploaded to Facebook. Now. I actually at one point deleted my entire I did this.

I think I talked about this on the podcast. It's really I'm done with deleting my accounts because I did that with Facebook as well. I deleted my entire account, and now it makes me so sad because I wish I could have I want my entire history. I want to see what I posted fifteen years ago on Facebook or whatever. It was probably fifteen at this point, and now I can never see that because it's gone. I deleted it now. I downloaded it, I think at some point,

but who knows, I'll never find that file. So don't delete these things unless you really really have to. That's my advice. Let's see, do we have any other things? Oh my gosh, I never talked about the Xbox and the PlayStation. Well, I'll just give you those that my quick thoughts. I'm not a gamer. You don't tune into this show for my gaming advice, so I'll just give you my impressions of these two boxes. PlayStation five, big old Honkin device. It is huge, it is large, it

is in charge. It is amazing. The graphics everything about this device just screams power, power, power. The controller is just fantastic. The haptics are amazing. This is the device to get if you are the gamer that just wants the best of the best. You want the home entertainment center. It's got the Blu ray Player in the top of the line model. It's just a big old machine, and of course you have to like the games as well. But the controller is really really improved and kind of

it's pretty. I think it's what sets the PlayStation five apart, other than the IP you know, the games that they have the I love it. It's not for me. I don't. I don't game enough to have a system that powerful. But if you do, it's you're gonna love it, and it's awesome. The Spider Man game I played looked like it was filmed in New York City. It was so clear,

it was so realistic. I always want to be a gamer when I play these games to test these things out, Like I'm like sitting there playing for like an hour, and I'm just like, oh, I could be a gamer. I could be a gamer, but I can't. I'm a casual gamer. And that's that's just kind of where I'll I think I'll sit for the rest of my life. So, yeah, amazing the Xbox they sent over the digital version. The digital version is fine. I don't think it's the most

powerful box. I think if I was gonna get a PlayStation or sorry, an Xbox, I would definitely go with the x which is the more powerful machine and it has the drive on it. So the digital one is fine, And that three hundred dollars price point is really going to attract a lot of people. But I think I think you're doing yourself a little disservice by not spending the extra two hundred dollars and going with the best machine.

So you're getting, you know, a slightly lesser processing power machine, you're getting no drive, and you're getting you know, you're getting half the storage space. And believe me, these games take up a lot of storage. Like some of them are like ninety eight gigabytes, and the drive on the digital one is like five twelve. The drive on the

bigger one is like a terabyte. So I think that you'd be better served getting the Xbox Series X over the S. I would say, only get the S if you are sure that you're going to be fine with the lower power and the less storage and no drive. And I think the Xbox is more my flavor. It's got the games is amazing whatever they call it, what do they call the game pass thing? All access? So the way they're pricing these machines is you can buy it up front for three hundred or five hundred or

is it three hundred or four hundred? The Xbox is, oh gosh, I should know this because I just wrote this story three hundred or I think it's five, yeah, five hundred, so three hundred or five hundred, and I think, okay, the PlayStation five is four hundred or five hundred, and the Xbox is three hundred and five hundred. So the Xbox All Access. Oh sorry, I'm getting everything wrong here. Should I just start over? No, I'll just can I'll

just power through this. The okay, so you've got two versions. This is why I don't talk about gaming stuff because I'm not a gamer, but I appreciate gamers, and I think that in your world, if you're a gamer, it's a whole different world than what I. All I know is I see the PlayStation and the Xbox is great if you're a gamer and you decide which one you want based on what games you want to play, and

you know all about the games you want to play. Personally, I think the Xbox is really cool because I like

the All Access, which includes the Game Pass Ultimate. So if you do the All Access, it's twenty five bucks a month or thirty five dollars a month which includes the Game Pass Ultimate, So it's kind of like this no brainer thing where I'm not usually a fan of like splitting up the monthly payments, but it's kind of like, for thirty five dollars a month, you get the top of the line Xbox and you get this Gaming Pass which gives you like one hundred games, which a lot

of them are pretty cool, and if you have kids, of course they're gonna be bopping through a whole bunch of games. So I don't know, anyway, I really like the Xbox. I don't really see the big excitement with the controller there, it's not as like exciting as the PlayStation. But for me, I was playing Tetris on the Xbox. I'm hooked on Tetris effect, so that's enough for me to just love this thing. The kids love Minecraft, so

that's enough for them to love it. And there's probabrobably you know another game or two that I would end up finding on there. If that's that's pretty cool. So I think that's it for the console talk for me. I think you realize that I'm waiting in past my knees and I don't really understand and kind of grasp all of it, but you get it. If you're a gamer,

you're picking between these systems. I think at the end of the day, Nintendo Switch is still gonna sell a lot this holiday season, Xbox is gonna sell a ton. PS five is gonna sell a ton. These things are tough to get, and everyone I know is texting me saying, Rich can you hook me up? Can you get me a PlayStation? Can you get me an Xbox? The answer is no, I really can't. I can't. I can't ask Nintendo to send you a you know, Mario Kart live. I mean, I just can't do that. I can't. I

can't put them in that position. You know, I can't ask Sony to send you a PlayStation five or to help you get an Xbox. It's just you gotta go to these websites like everyone else. The now in Stock, the brick Seek, Popcart, those are the websites that can help you find these things in stock. Just you know,

you gotta be checking them. Follow people on Twitter that tweet out when they're in stock, and you know there they'll do it and you'll like for me, I wake up pretty early, so a lot of times these things are in stock really early. When do you think most people are shopping while they're at work. So if you can get online, you know, at these random times throughout the day, you can find these things in stock. Easy as that. Well it's not that easy, but you know,

you know what I mean. Well, looky, look, we came to the end of the show. That's going to do it for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to rich on tech dot tv, hit the email button at the bottom of the page, or send an email Hello at richontech dot TV. Also I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Right now, as we stand, we have two hundred and thirteen ratings and five stars. How do you like that?

Love it? Go to rate this podcast dot slash rich on Tech and you can be like, well it is taken. That's the name they used. I guess their username was taken. Five stars says, well, it is taken. They left this review on iTunes or they called that anymore Apple Podcasts. Learned a lot about tech from this podcast. The links in the podcast are very useful. Thank you rich Well, thank you for leaving that review. You can find me

online everywhere at rich on Tech. I love doing this podcast, but again it's called the rich on Tech podcast because this is my opinion. It's what I like to present to you as someone who is somewhat interested in what I have to say. So if you like it, thank you. If you don't debate me online, I'm open to that. But I hope you're here because you enjoy hearing what I have to say. Sometimes you get a little zany

on here, but you know it's a podcast. It's unlimited, unlimited time on the interweb, so the time never runs out, even though it looks like it's time to go. Thanks so much for listening. My name is rich Dmuro. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon