Chat GPT can now see and speak. Your Android phone might look a little different. I'll explain why. Details on the new fitbit and Meta's new AR headset, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on.
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and of course fun. And now phone lines are open triple a Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you want to get in on
the show. If you have a question about technology, you need to know something, you have a comment about something, You got a question about something. I know it sounds like me in a closet, but no, there's an entire team here. We've got Bobo on the board. Bobo say hi. Oh, he can't Kim say hi. We got Kim on phones. Kim say hi. Oh, she can't say hi either. We've got Bill somewhere overseeing this whole operation.
Bill say hi.
Okay, it's just me for the most part, but we do have a team that helps me, so I do appreciate their help each and every week. There we go see the whole crowd is here. Email is also open. You can go to richon tech dot tv hit the contact button there. Many of you take advantage of that, So thank you for keeping me busy twenty four to seven, even when I'm not on air. I know you're probably surprised when you get a response from me directly. Yes,
I do respond to your emails. It may take a bit sometimes, but I do look at each and every one of them. Guests this week, we've got Matthew Casanelli. He invented the shortcuts on the iPhone and now he's going to join up to discuss the new action button on the iPhone fifteen pro give us some ideas on how to best use that. And Wi Fi always a hot topic, how to get a better signal, how to make sure we're getting the most out of our router. We've got David Henry, president and general manager over at
Netgear to talk about our Wi Fi signal. I just got back from New York City. I was there for an event and I can't tell you what the event was, but it was pretty cool. Lots of tech folks in town. I will reveal all very soon, Neilas will say, lots of experiences when I travel.
Let's see here.
So I've been spending about a week with the iPhone and the iPhone fifteen Promax.
Has my life changed? No, it is not.
It is exactly the same. In fact, this is kind of funny. So I take an Uber to the airport and my phone. I'll be honest, battery life on the iPhone fifteen Promax is not incredible.
It really isn't.
And Apple just acknowledge there are some issues with the overheating as well, so we'll see what happens with that, because a lot of people the phone gets very warm and the battery life is not great. So I do expect a software update to kind of help with those two aspects. But anyway, it was ironic. I'm in the uber and I my phone is already kind of like getting low. And by the way, mind you, it's only like six am in the morning. But you know, I use my phone a lot, and so I'm like, oh,
I need to charge my phone. So I look in the uber for you know, sometimes they have a charger, and of course what does he have in the uber
but a lightning cable. Only here, I am thinking, it's so great to switch to this universal USBC, And it's actually gotten tougher now to find a charger because USBC, as as much as it is very prominent on the Android side of things, you know, sometimes you don't find that lightning or sometimes you don't find that cable in places, and so he only had lightning, and I just thought
that was so ironic. Then when I was going out with my family, I got to have dinner with my mom in New Jersey when I was out in New York City, So I took the bus over to Jersey and I get there and of course my phone is again not very The other thing is the iPhones don't charge very fast. So after a whole day out in New York City, my phone did not fully charge before I had to go out for the night. And so I'm like, no problem, I'll bring my little cable that
I have. I've got this little nomad. It's like a keychain charging cable. It's really small, it fits on your keychain. So I put it in my pocket and I get to my sister's house, and I said, oh, I need a place to plug in, and I look at my cable and I took the wrong one. I took the lightning and so again I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I'm O for two here, and my little nephew he said, oh, I have that USBC. That's how my iPad charges. I said, perfect, can you go plug
in my phone? And I think it charged like maybe like three percent in the time that before we went out for dinner. Anyway, so it's growing pains. I did take the opportunity when I was in New York City to compair some phone pictures, so I took the nothing phone along with me. And then last night we went to one of these pumpkin patches, these kind of like walk through pumpkin things, which was really cool if you're in the LA area.
It's called Knights of the Jack. Very fun.
But of course for me, it's an opportunity to test cameras and so you know, my kids not only have to take one picture, but they have to take like three pictures.
So yeah, I'm the not cool dad.
But it's fun for Instagram because you get to see what these cameras look like against each other. So last night I brought the Pixel seven pro compared to against the iPhone Promax and you can see all of this on my Instagram at rich On Tech. I've got the iPhone versus the new iPhone versus last year's iPhone. I've got the new iPhone versus the Nothing phone, which is by the way half the price. Then I've got the
new iPhone versus the Pixel. And so if you go to my Instagram at rich On Tech, you can see on my highlights it says iPhone versus. You tap that you can see all the pictures and people have been weighing in. So that was a lot of fun. And I'm gonna tell tell you the iPhone. Look, it's one of these things where people love the phone that they have, but when you compare these things head to head, you realize that every single phone out there has its pros
and cons. Every single phone out there has its advantages some places where it really excels in some places where it just doesn't do too well in different circumstances, in different lighting conditions, whether it's daytime, whether it's nighttime, and so you can see for yourself. I mean when you talk about a six hundred dollars phone. Nine times out of ten, the pictures are pretty identical to the iPhone,
if not better in some cases. Now, is it good in every single circumstance low light, video, mixed lighting, Maybe not, But again that's why it's fun to compare these things. A couple things I thought were interesting when I was on my trip. Number one, I stopped at They Hotel. This is a hotel in New York City that has a luggage robot. It's nothing new, but it's really cool and it's fun. We stopped in and I said to the I didn't stay there, but I just stopped in.
I said, oh my gosh, this is the luggage robot. I've seen this on Instagram. I said, can you fire it up for me? Said sure, and so we got our cameras ready, me, my friend, and we started taking video of this luggage robot. You put two dollars, I think it was two or three dollars. You put your luggage in this slot. The robot picks up your luggage. It whizzes around, and it puts it in a slot in the wall like a pull out area.
And so it's all automated. It's like a bell hop.
Accepted this robot and then when you want your luggage back, you type in your number on the screen.
It pulls your luggage.
Out of the wall and it puts it back in the little area where you can retrieve it. I've got that video on my Instagram. That was super cool. And then I went to Uniclo. They only have a handful of these stores, but I think it's like out of Asia maybe.
But I went to Uniclo.
I bought a little sweatshirt for my kid, this little Peanuts sweatshirt, which was really cute. It's his birthday, by the way, this weekend, Tanner, Happy Birthday, Tanner. And so he loves baseball, and so it was a baseball snoopy sweatshirt.
So I get the sweatshirt.
I walk up to the front register and the person says, oh, you pay him by card or cash? And I said, uh card. He goes, oh, use the self checkout. I said, what, Like, I can't even go to the human anymore. Like you literally redirected me. I was like, all right, and I don't mind self checkout as long as it's efficient. Well, this one was unlike anything I've ever seen. There's a bin and you toss all of your clothes in this bin, and instantly a machine reads little antennas on the tags
on the clothing. It's called RFID, and all of your stuff is wrung up in a second at the same time, and it all shows up on the screen. So immediately it recognized the sweatshirt that I got, and it said, okay, tap to pay, and so you tap the screen, it's got the list. You pay, and you're done. You bag your own stuff and you're out of there. So this is called RFID radio frequency identification, and it's the first time I've really seen this used in a big way
that is super efficient and just makes sense. You dump your clothes in this bin, it figures out what you purchase, gives you a total, and you're on your way. It was very, very efficient, And on my Instagram, I actually posted I took the tag on the clothing. It's the paper tag that hangs on the clothes. It's not embedded into the clothes, although it could be. But the tag, if you put it up to the light, you see
this little antenna. And I know, for you conspiracy theorists out there, you'll know that uniclo is forever tracking you with this little antenna on your clothing. But you pull the tag off and it's fine, it's not there anymore. And finally, the other thing I saw that was pretty interesting was at the airport, And I kid you not. If I did not see this with my own eyes, I would not think it was real. I went to the self checkout. You see the trend by the way
of everything that is just automated. I mean, this is the world we live in. But I'm at the airport. I ring up my protein bar and my water, which was overpriced. Oh, overpriced protein bar, overpriced water, and overpriced pack of gum. Those three things were like seventeen dollars okay, which if you go to the grocery store, those three things would be about four or five dollars. So I ring it up myself and I press check out, and I kid you not, the screen said do you want
to leave a tip? Let me let me tell you exactly what it said said, would you like to leave a tip? And it said no tip fifteen percent, eighteen percent, or twenty percent. This is on a self checkout kiosk. My mind is blown at this point because I'm like, wait, who's getting this tip. Is it the programmer of this machine? Is it the people that don't work here?
Is it me?
Do I get a discount if I give myself a twenty percent tip? Do they take that off my bill? Because that would make sense. But just to give a tip to a cyber robot in the middle of nowhere in Newark Airport, where it's already overpriced, did not make any sense. I had to snap a picture and put it on my Instagram because I just couldn't believe it. And boy did the responses come in. The comments came
in hot and fast. Because nobody's tipping a self checkout robot. Okay, I can't even believe, like someone's laughing that they even asked that question. Why would they put that on a self checkout screen? But just be prepared, because these screens are everywhere. You already know when they say, oh, hold on before you check out, there's just one question. They rotate that screen to you, and it's like the moment of truth where you're like, oh gosh, do I have
to tip this person? Did they really do anything? They pulled a muffin off the shelf behind them. I mean, they didn't even make anything. Come on, all right, Triple A Rich one on one is the phone number to call Triple A seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology or you have a comment about the tipping situation that has gotten out of control. Here email rich on Tech dot TV. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at Triple A rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Jen wrote in on the website, what Rich, that was a strange intro.
Were you really going to introduce the crew and were they all really busy or is that just a joke.
By the way, it would have been good to hear a hello from Kim. What about Bobo? What about a hello from Bobo? Uh?
Here, Bobo's coming in so you can actually hear what there you go if they're not gonna be able to hear you from there here, Bobo actually exists. Okay, see, so does Kim. But you know this is a this is I guess they call it rich on Tech for a reason. They only gave me a mic, so they didn't give anyone else a mike let's go to Fernando in Laguna Hills, California. Fernando, you're on with Rich. Hi.
Rich, thank you for taking my call. Appreciate all you do for us. Uh needing some high tech advice?
Sure?
The question I have Rich, is I always a sense this some some dry that I used to and he has a Wi Fi connection to it, and I can put a Minia's D card and active movies or photos or whatever I want.
But this is some drive.
Eventually it's a it's a battery power to eventually charge it, but then it's just dying. It doesn't do it doesn't hold charge anymore. So I'm trying to see I there's another device that does almost the same thing.
So it's a is it do you plug it into your computer or is it Wi Fi? Okay, so you put this stuff on the SD card. You put the stuff on the SD card, and then you can access that wirelessly from your computer.
It kind of.
Creates a computer or from their phone also.
Okay, So it creates like a little a little network.
Yeah, you can download a map and you have access to the to the drive with the map.
Oh, okay, that's cool. That's an interesting feature.
Okay, so I I don't know if sand disk is making that anymore. I know I have a hard drive like this, which it's like a Wi Fi hard drive. But I think the the interesting thing is that this has an SD card. It's smaller, it's slimmer. Obviously, you can put in an SD card of any size that you want, so you can expand it. But the one I am seeing on Amazon, I have not tested this one is the let's see here, where is it? Oh, it's called the New Queue. So this is called the
new Q file Hub. And so it's a portable hard drive, SD card reader and mini Wi Fi. So basically you pop in an SD card into this and you can put in the files wirelessly to whatever you want. So I guess you can stream those now. What you're talking about used to be very popular. I feel like ever since the the phones have gotten more storage on board, those have not been as popular.
Now.
You can get a regular thumb drive, by the way, and it will work on the modern phone, so both the iPhone and the androids, you can get any sort of thumb drive. For the iPhone, you'd have to get a lightning thumb drive if you have an older iPhone. But for the rest of them, you can just get a USBC thumb drive and you can plug it right into the bottom of your phone and it will access anything that's on that thumb drive, and you can stream
movies and all that kind of stuf. Sand Disc, their brand is called sand disc is extra gosh, what is it? Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the name of this sand disc.
I Extreme.
So those things are pretty popular, but what you're talking about sounds like it's more of a standalone. So I check out this new q file hub. This is eighty dollars though, so it's it's significantly more expensive than a standard sort of thumb drive that you can get for ten to fifteen dollars, but you do get that wireless compatibility. So if you want to be able to access this thing and drag files onto it, that's probably what I would do. You can also use a cloud service as well.
I mean, you can upload these files to some sort of cloud service and stream from there. Plex is the popular one, but that's going to use data, and so that's probably not the thing that you want to do.
If you're trying to avoid data.
You could do on your local network as well, but again that's a little bit of a more complicated setup. But I think I check out this one. It's called new Que. It's actually got decent ratings on am on. I have not tested this personally, but that's not a bad not a bad place to start. USB storage device to back up photo and files from iPhone. But otherwise, Fernando, I might just go with the UH with a thumb drive and just plug it into the bottom of my phone, So that might be the way to do it.
Thanks for the question. If you have one, give me a call.
It's triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one, uh real quick. I mentioned earlier that iPhone has acknowledged, or Apple has acknowledged, that some of the iPhone fifteen Pro models are getting a little hot, and I will agree that my phone is definitely hotter than typical. And even when I was charging it, it said I can't charge
anymore because your phone is too warm. And that's just randomly having the phone next to me while I was just you know, using my computer and it just said, sorry, can't charge. So there's definitely something going on here. It's got to get a little software update. So if you have the new iPhone you know, or you want to get it, maybe wait just a little bit to make sure that this is all figured out before where you
purchased a new one. Rich on Tech Here, Rich DeMuro talk in tech with you at triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro here. You can find me online on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram. Oh is it called Twitter anymore? No, it's X I'm on x X Instagram. Instagram hasn't changed its name. I think it did it start as a different name. No,
let's see what else is our Facebook? You know all those things?
Oh, you know what?
Hold on, let me mention this. I wouldn't typically mention this, but I just thought it was pretty funny. So the CEO of X, Linda Yakarino, she was at the Code conference, which happens in southern California every year. It's a big, big conference of all the the up and the ups in the tech world, and she didn an interview. In the interview, I'm not going to talk about that because I guess it was a mess. I didn't watch it, but apparently they brought like they brought a surprise guest.
He was like the old Twitter like head of safety, which obviously putting them on stage together was not a good thing. I don't know if she walked off, whatever happened, it was kind of wild. But what I thought was interesting is that she flashed her iPhone home screen. And you would think that the CEO of X would have X on her home screen, right. Apparently some eagle eyed viewers noticed that she did not. Now I am sorry.
If you are the CEO of a company, you should have that company's app on your home screen.
Now.
She did have Starbucks, she did have Gmail, she had Signal, she had Instagram, she had Facebook, and she had a bunch of Apple apps, but no X. Maybe she changed her home screen just for the conference. I don't think so. How can you be the CEO of a company and not have your company's app on your home screen?
I don't know. Now I can't verify. I was not there in person.
I didn't see her phone, but this is what the people screenshoted, and believe me, it made the rounds. And I don't know and yes, you can argue that maybe she had it in her app library or on a secondary home screen. But if you're working for a company, not even do She's not even working for a company. She's the CEO of a company. You gotta believe in that company. You got to have it on your home screen.
Let's go to Michael in Kenoga Park, Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Michael, you're on with Rich.
Hey Michael, how you doing a brother?
Who's Michael? You're Michael, I'm Rich nervous much.
Welcome to the show, Rich.
Yes, there we go. It's Rich on tech, not Michael on Tech. I'm just trying to do I hear you, I hear you. What's what can I help you with?
So?
I have Oprah Oprah Opera. I know I saved one way one one time in the next brave im it gets very mad at me.
So that's Look, that's another show you got to call like, uh, you know you got it. That's that's like the therapy hour. What can I help you with?
So I'm trying to download the browser onto Kindle uh fire ten plus yep, and I can't.
Get it to work.
I toggle the you know, download there's a toggle thing that says you can you can download unknown sources.
I know.
So yes, I do that, and I go to the app store and it still doesn't It doesn't show in there. When I go to the website for Opera, I try to download it and it doesn't work.
Yeah.
Okay, So so here's the deal. Uh, this is the now you've got the Fire Max eleven.
Fire. No, this is the Kindle Fire ten plus.
Okay, ten plus? All right, Well either way, so you got to get a decent tablet there. Now, the the Amazon tablets are great, they have you know, they're they're well, okay, I shouldn't say they're right. They are a good value. And what people realize as soon as they get these tablets is that they do not come with Google apps, and they do not come with a proper app store. It is the Amazon App Store. So every app that you want to download to this device, you have to
go through Amazon. Now, it's kind of like Apple. They do the same thing. You have to go through the Apple App Store when you want to install something on the iPhone. And that's fine because the app store has every app known to mankind. Amazon's app store has a lot of the popular ones, but a lot of stuff is missing. You try to find Gmail, it's not in there. You try to find Chrome, it's not there. You try
to find YouTube, it's not there. You have to use web versions of these because the Amazon tablets do not come with Google Play Services and they do not come with the Google Play App Store. So where does that leave you, Michael? When you want to install something like Opera, it's a little bit tricky. Now, if you're super nerdy and techie, you would do a sideload of the Google Play Services framework and you would install the Google Play Store.
That is really advanced, and there's tons of tutorials on how to do it on YouTube. You can do that, and you can try to do it, and it may work and it may be fine, but precede at your own caution. Now, what you're talking about is a little bit easier, and what you need is called an APK, and APK is the file that allows you to install something on an Android device.
It's basically the software.
So if you're on a Windows computer, you may remember that it is called an ex file that's like a software program file from back in the day. Nowadays everything goes through app stores, so we don't really see these files as much anymore. But what you need to do
is get the APK of the Opera browser. Now, I just went to the Opera website and if you search Opera APK file on Google from your tablet, it should bring you to what's called the Latest Opera Mini for Android, and that's from the official You want to get this from the official Opera website. You can get APKs from a whole bunch of websites, and the one that I
like is called apk mirror dot com. But you have to remember they could be corrupt files, they could be untrusted, so be very careful when you're installing an APK on your device because if it's from an untrusted source, it could do harm to your device. It could be a security issue. So if you come from a trusted place like APK Mirror, there's a better chance that things are going to be okay, but you never know because it can happen. And also when you're trying to download these things,
they could trick you. It may look like you're downloading the APK and you're not, so as you can see, you're stepping into a little bit of a of an issue here because this is not as straightforward as you want. But once you have that APK, you're on the right path, Michael. You install from unknown sources, you allow that to happen, click that toggle, and then you can go through and install this on the device. So again, you open up the Silk browser, which is the browser on there, search
for that Opera. I searched Opera APK file. It should show up latest Opera Mini for Android, and then you can download that and you should be able to run it if you have installed from unknown sources, and that should hopefully let you install it. It's not going to be perfect. I mean, it's weird that Opera is not available for the Fire Tablet. I would think they would because they're available for so many different platforms. But again, you do have to jump through some hoops to do this.
It's probably going to be fine if you get that APK and get it in there and it should work.
But you never know.
Some of these apps, even though you get the APK, it may actually require Google on the back end. That's why it's called Google Play Services. A lot of these apps run using the Google services. I know it's very techy, it's very nerdy, but and I don't generally recommend that the average person does that. But when I cover the these things on KTLA and I talk about the fire tablets, people email me all the time to say, Rich, why do you not mention that you could just add sideload
apps or you can sideload the Google Play services. Well, not every person that is of average tech knowledge is going to be able to do that, and that's why I don't necessarily recommend doing that.
Thanks for the call, Michael.
I do appreciate it, and hopefully you get it figured out and email me if you do so. I mentioned if you have an Android phone, it may look a little different. A couple of things are changing on there. Number one, if you have this like at a glance widget, it's kind of like that smart Google widget that tells you your next appointment, or it tells you what the weather's going to be, or when you're taking a flight,
it tells you that you have a flight. If you don't have this installed in your phone, I highly recommend you put it on your home screen and I'll tell you how to do that. So just press a hold on your home screen and where it says widgets, go to your widgets and scroll to where you see Google
and let's see, I'm going to Google. And it's called Assistant at a Glance And you put that, you drag that to your home screen and it's really cool because it uses all these different things to tell you, you know, your calendar and your your upcoming flights and all that stuff, and so it's very very helpful. So I highly recommend you do that. But they did just change it so it looks completely different. And in fact, I was out to dinner with my mom and I saw her phone.
I said, how did you get this before me?
I don't know.
It just showed up on my phone. So it's a really cool widget. They did redesign it. It's going to be getting some new AI smarts as well. So if you see that new sort of pill shaped widget, it changed, it transformed overnight. That's what it's all about. Google is rolling out a new design for that widget, which has not changed in probably five or six years, so it's very very helpful. It's called the Google at a Glance widget.
Install it.
The other thing is if you use Google Photos, you'll notice this has rolled out more widely. At the bottom of the Google's Photos tab, it now says memories, and so now you can relive all of your memories by going to that bottom tab. If you don't see it just yet, it'll say memories, and now you can scroll through and it'll use AI to generate fun memories. You
may know these from the inside the app. At the top it shows a bunch of memories, but now you can access all of these at the bottom on a new tab called memories, and you can name them, and you can even use AI to help you suggest names. So if it's like, you know, Rich's fun weekend at the at you know, Santa Monica Beach or whatever, it'll suggest titles for your memories. Or you know, your kid's
latest birthday party. So again, if you open up Google Photos, you go to the bottom at that bottom tab, it'll say now memories. And if you don't see this just yet, you can try to update your Google Photos app and make sure you have the latest Google Photos app and it should show up there. But again, I'm just giving you a heads up so you know that these things are changing, and when they come up on your phone, you don't say what happened? Why didn't do anything differently? No,
it's just Google chaining things. It happens all right, triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about tech. You got lots of folks on the line waiting to ask some questions. I got lots of emails to answer as well. You are doing something smart today. You're listening to Rich on Tech.
Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology on X Reform, Tweeter says that was the stupidest rant ever, bringing up that a CEO doesn't have their companies app on their home screen on their phone.
WGAF.
I'm not going to tell you what that stands for, but you can figure it out. Who gives something well reformed Tweeter, you know what?
Uh, you know? Good? Try it.
Try to run a company without your with being invested in the app that you that you run. But you know, I'm like I said, I didn't see it in person, so it wasn't me. Let's go to Let's go to Jack in Goldendale, Washington.
Jack, you're on with Rich.
Hello, my friend, I'm old and I'm ignorant when it comes to these phones.
Okay, I hope this.
Is a simple question. It probably is for you. I'm getting tired of this old moto E so called smartphone, and I want to get a new one. But I was wondering, if I ordered one online, can I take this in card out of this one and plug it into the new one and it'll work.
Good question, and I will say yes, it will, but with some caveats because most of the time, and I you know, I'm swapping sims all the time because I test phones. I've got a test SIM that I use and I just pop it into a phone and boom, it works. And I've been doing this for a decade now and I have never, almost almost never ever had an issue. And no, I don't call the company. I don't call Verizon, I don't call AT and T. I don't call T Mobile to say hey, I'm switching SIMS.
And a lot of the world has moved to eSIMs, and most of the time it's easy to move an eSIM as well. And in many ways you can actually activate the phone yourself, even if it has an eSIM. You can go to the website of your carrier and just pop in the what's called the IMEI of your phone and it will figure out what that phone is and it will activate it and it will switch out the service. But here is the caveat the caveat Jack, is that not if you have an old, old SIM,
it may not be up to date. It may not have the latest tech on that SIM to connect to the newest network. So if you're going from this old motive phone that may have been a four G phone and you're going to a five G phone, you may need a new SIM. Now, with that said, you can probably just call your carrier and get one online and they will send it to you, even if you purchase this phone third party. So you can just say, Hey, I'm getting a new phone, I want to swap sims.
I just want to pop it into my new phone. You know, will this old SIM work? And they'll probably give you a little bit of a run around, because ideally they probably want you to come into the source they can upsell you on stuff. But if they don't, they may say, oh, you know what, we're going to send you a new SIM. But Jack, I will tell you I've done this a thousand times, and I've never
ever had an issue. The only thing is sometimes if the phone doesn't automatically figure out the new network, that could be an issue. Sometimes you have to restart the phone. Sometimes the phone, if it's an mv and O like a Mint Mobile or some of these other carriers, third party carriers, they may send what's called an APN to your via text. And sometimes the phone is very easy to install and do that. Sometimes it's not. But I will tell you. I know I'm saying a lot of stuff.
Bottom line, ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it will just work. In fact, I did this two days ago and it was just fine. You Just as soon as you pop in the new SIM, the phone says, hey, we recognize that you have new settings. Would you like us to restart your phone? And you say yes, and it should work. So that is my answer, Jack. I think it's going to work just fine, and I think you'll appreciate the new phone too, So thanks for calling in today.
Appreciate it.
Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I got an email. This is really scary, James wrote in on richon tech Dot TV and said, my daughter and wife were scammed, and I have a question about our WiFi. Unfortunately, my wife figured out as a scam as it became too late. This guy had my daughter download an app that allowed him to see her on her iPhone. She thought she was talking to
apple Care about her cracked screen. Then he told her that someone hacked her cash app and in order to fix it, she needed to make a transaction in the same amount, So she sent four thousand dollars to her mom, who was then supposedly supposed to send the money back with a cash app card to a number this guy gave to my wife. By the way, my wife downloaded the same app that allowed him to view her phone. I don't know or use any of these kind of apps, but I know Apple Care is not going to have
any idea what's going on with my money apps. My daughter panicked. It's her first real adult situation to figure out on her own. Yeah, very unfortunate, very unfortunate way to figure this out. Question, Can this guy somehow corrupt our Wi Fi system in the same home through my wife's phone, which obviously has our Wi Fi password? My daughter is a freshman in college. The only computer with the app to access our router is my Mac computer, which has turned off every night, and it was off
during this unfortunate session. By the way, I listened to your Tech show on the way home from my bowling league, and you've done a great job taken over the spot. I hope you can help. I thought it was something you might want to highlight on your show. Yes, oh, James, this is horrible. So it wasn't clear if the guy made out with the money through the cash app.
I hope he didn't.
But when it comes to the Wi Fi, so the iPhone is actually pretty secure other than what just happened here. Obviously, you want to delete these screen sharing apps from the iPhone. I don't know what app they used, or maybe they just used a built in FaceTime screen sharing feature, but delete those off the iPhone. If he looked around the phone, maybe he could have seen the Wi Fi password, but I don't think he was able to do that on
the iPhone. To see a password for the Wi Fi, you do have to use a face ID, and it's not very clear on how to do that to begin with, so I don't think he has access to your home WiFi, And I know changing your home Wi Fi passcode would be a nightmare because you know, any smart home things you have on there would definitely have to be switched as well. So I think you're okay, But I think the lesson to learn here is do not give people access to your stuff. Whether it's your phone, whether it's
your computer. Almost no third party, random person is going to need access to those. Now, this is where it gets complicated because when you go to your work and they say and you say, hey, I have a problem my computer, they say, okay, can you screen share your computer to me? And someone remotely fixes your computer. So you've been trained that that is the way that people help us with our computers. But the scam artists know that, and so they flip it on us and they do
the same thing. Do not call random numbers. Think before you act. Please, these scam artists are scamming twenty four to seven. Do not send them money. Do not share your screen. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich.
One oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can also go to the website rich on tech dot TV, hit the contact button and that will send an email right to my inbox, no intermediaries, right to me.
Yes.
I see him coming up on the show. Matthew Cassanelli. He is the creator of the Shortcuts app on iPhone. He's going to discuss what shortcuts are on the iPhone, how they can help you, and also give us some ideas on how to use the iPhone fifteen pros new action button. Now, I will say the action button is in a.
Not the best place for action. I'll be honest.
It's kind of like an awkward place to reach for a button, so it's not the fastest thing to use, even though it's called the action button. I have a feeling that Apple may change the location in a future model what we'll see, well say, I could be wrong. David Henry later on is going to join us. He is with neck Gear. He's going to talk about Wi Fi getting connected and you know all the terms you need to know. James just texted me on Instagram. He said, hey,
Rich I'm listening on Oh I'm listening now. I used I took Zipbear to Japan two weeks ago. No complaints on the flight, the crew was happy. And then I spoke and understood Japanese and the uniclosed store is, Oh, it's Japanese.
Okay. I knew it was somewhere there. I didn't know if it was Japanese though, but okay.
And he said he has used the self service checkout at the de Lamo Mall in Torrents, so I guess they have it there too.
I didn't.
I didn't need to go all the way to New York City to try the self checkout at Uniclo. But anyway, thanks for listening. James appreciate it, and I'm glad you like Zipbear. I took it last year to Japan. It's kind of like, I mean, it's like almost like a Southwest airline to Japan. I know that's very oversimplifying, but it's kind of like a La cart very inexpensive fares to Japan, but it's kind of like you just get the seat and then everything else they charge you for.
I think even a glass of water, Like I think water is like twenty yen or something. But it's very high tech. You get free Wi fi's. It's a really cool airline. So I had the opportunity they flew me out on it last year and so I did like a little reels about it. So a lot of people when they've they've taken it, they've been talking to me about it. Like Rich, I got my own experience on this airline, so that was really cool and highly recommend it.
All right, let's go to Paul. Paul is in Brea, California. Paul, you're on with Rich.
Thank you for taking the call.
Thanks for calling that question.
Yeah, got a question regarding older tower computers. I've got a few of them that have been hanging around for a while. I've been afraid to get rid of them. There's a place that just popped up at a shopping center for this weekend only, So it's this is the reason for the call. I don't know how sketchy this could be if I take my electronics to a place like that. Is there any concerns that I should have with delivering that or is there any thing that I should do prior to delivering those.
So these are old towers and they still have the hard drives in them. Have you reformatted these hard drives? Have you cleared out your personal info.
Nope, they're they're they're older stuff that has like years old. But I'm sure there's there's information on it that is sensitive.
Okay, Well it comes down to trust. So this company, it's pop up. You know a lot of these companies that do these kind of weekend collections, they will have uh sort of like a bill of rights, you know, what they're going to do with the data on there. If it's a reputable company, they are going to clean this stuff off and you know, not have anyone look at it and not have anyone search the data, download
the data. And I think that's you know, if you're running one of these companies, you're not sitting there downloading all the stuff from the hard drive and you know, looking through and trying to put it, you know, on the web. But there's always a chance that that could happen. So I understand the concern. I think that if it was me personally, I would not bring these computers down there with the data still on the hard drives. So
that leaves you with a couple of options. Number One, you can remove the hard drives, get a screwdriver, open up these towers, get the hard drives out, take them out, hold on to them, and figure out what to do with them in the future. You can either have a friend you know, or if you know, if you're handy, you can maybe drill a hole in them and get
rid of them that way. Or you can take them to a recycling center that has a hard drive shredder, and you can look that up on Google and see if one near you has that, and it's it's a pretty cool process. I've seen it happened, seen it happen, so that's really neat.
The other thing you.
Can do is it sounds like you're probably not going to be able to turn on these computers and get them set up, especially if you're trying to do it this weekend. But listener Dave emailed in and said that the stuff he recommends to wipe the hard drives is one called shred os, and so you can install that, boot it up to that, and you can shred the hard drive that way. But that's getting a little techy, a little bit complicated, and so that's probably not your
first option. So what I would do is probably go down to the area, see what they're what they say when you talk to them, and ask them what their data, what their data privacy kind of rules and regulations are. I know that if you bring these things to something like a Staples, something like a best Buy, they do have rules in place that they say, look, we're going to handle your data securely. We're going to handle these drives securely, and we're not going to just have someone
look through these hard drives and find anything they can. Now, Paul, you also said that these things are kind of old, maybe there's not that much on them. I mean, really, what you're thinking is you know, old photos, old documents, tax paperwork, maybe your social Security numbers or date of birth, driver's license, whatever. So if it has those things on them, there's always a concern, and there is a real concern that these could land in the wrong hands and someone
could do something with that data. Is it gonna happen? Probably not, But in today's day and age, you can't be too safe. You can't be too secure, especially with data. So what I would do is talk to them, see what they say. If you get a good feeling, if you feel like they're going to handle these in a proper manner, go ahead, take them off your hands, get them recycled. If you don't feel like that's the case, then maybe perhaps bring them somewhere else.
There are places that do this every day. Staples is one of them.
Assureon that's another company that will take them off your hands for free, and best Buy, I know will take them off your hands. I'm not sure it's free in every state. I know in California maybe, but you just have to be aware. But again, I'm glad that you're thinking about this, because that's the real important thing is
just think about before you do this. Now, if you're bringing, by the way, an Android phone, an iPhone, Windows computer, or a modern Mac, they all have a system on there built in to format that hard drive and get your data off of that drive before you recycle it. So Android, you can go into the settings, you can format that, it's called a factory reset. On iPhone, same thing it's called under general under settings it's transfer or
reset iPhone. And then Windows also has a way to do this, it's under the it's called reset this PC. So it has a built in service to do that. And sort of the Mac computers as long as it's a newer Mac computer. So with the modern stuff, it's very easy. It's these old computers we have laying around the house that make it a little tricky, especially the towers, like you said that have these hard drives. But you know, get a screwdriver, take out the hard drive, bring it
to a shredder. They'll probably charge you ten bucks to shread that hard drive. You can watch it happen. That's what I did. It was pretty cool. And yes, even I have a couple of hard drives laying around the house that need to be taken care of.
I've got to bring them to that place. I've mentioned that before.
Thanks for the call, Paul, Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
There is a new Fitbit.
We've got a Google event happening next week where they're going to unveil the Pixel phone, the Pixel eight, the Pixel eight Pro, and also the new Pixel Watch. I guess they wanted to reveal the Fitbit in advance of that so it doesn't take away from the new pixels. So they've already announced the new Fitbit Charge six fitness tracker. They say it's the most accurate heart rate tracking of any fitbit tracker because of what they learned from the
pixel Watch. So the pixel Watch, I think they said, it takes your heart rate every second, and so they've learned a lot from that and now it is specifically optimized for this new fitbit.
Let's see.
It can also connect to compatible gym equipment like the Order Track, the Peloton, and Tonal via bluetooth, so it can display your real time heart rate on the machine screen during workouts.
That's kind of cool.
Twenty new workout options including hit, strength training, rowing, spinning, snowboarding, so there's more than forty exercises to choose from this new fitbit. Charge six does have built in GPS, which is really nice, so that means you can run outside and not bring your phone. Some of the cheaper fitbits do not have GPS built in, so they'll take your run and they'll give you some information, but it's not exact.
This will be much more precise. It also has on device controls for YouTube music, so if you want to play pause and skip songs while you're running, you can do that from your wrist, but again you will need your phone. This does not seem to store the music on the device. It also has Google Maps for turn by turn directions on your wrist and Google wallets. It also has a new zoom plus magnification accessibility feature. This means you can see the screen a lot bigger if
the default text is too small. It's got daily sleep scores, and of course the sleep score is the new thing. The sleep score was kind of started by the Aura smart ring, and now everyone's all about these sleep scores. I personally don't like them because if you get your
sleep score, I guarantee you'll have a bad day. You might have woken up on the best side of the bed and you, oh, you take that nice yawn, you look at your sleep score and it's terrible, and you go, oh, man, my day is gonna be horrible.
So I don't like the sleep scores because of that reason.
This is gonna launch in the fall one hundred and sixty bucks for the new fit Bit Charge six. So if you're looking to upgrade your Fitbit for the holidays, you've got a new option. Triple eight rich one oh one is the phone number eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk about shortcuts on the iPhone, how they can make a big difference in how you do things on the phone. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech, Talking Technology. Let's go to U Bill in San Diego. Bill, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich thanks taking my calls.
Thanks for calling.
I've I've got an email problem for you. My sister passed away at the end of twenty twenty one unexpectedly.
Sorry to hear that.
Yeah, it's been super sad, and she has, you know, fifteen thousand emails and some of them are really interesting about family things, about things that were important to her. But I don't have time to sit through looking at each email and saving saving them that way. Is there a way that I can download all of her emails at one time onto a folder on a hard drive? Is there like a program that will help with that or a procedure?
Yeah, so there is.
With Google, they have a product called Takeout, so you can actually download all of your data from different Google products and services. So if you go to Google Takeout, and I'm assuming you have access to her account, because it sounds like you've looked through some of these things, so that's good news.
But I'll talk about another way to do that in a second.
But if you go to Google Takeout, you can click the items that you want to download. So that could be Google Photos, it could be Google Drive, it could be Gmail. And once you do that, it will and you don't have to download everything all at once. You can just say I just want Gmail or I just
want my Google Photos. And so it takes a little bit because Google on the back end goes through and it compiles all of these things into one giant file, and if it's a huge amount of data, it will break them up into different files and once it's ready, it will email you. It'll say, hey, your takeout is ready, and you can download it. And you can also download it. You can transfer it directly to something like Dropbox or
one drive or what's the other one. It's Dropbox drive, one drive I think those are the supported cloud services, or you can just download it. And with Gmail, it's not I mean, it's not going to be that much in the Gmail even though you said she's got like fifteen thousand messages, I think it's not a ton of.
Storage.
Like emails are pretty small, so even the attachments are not going to be that big.
But that's the way I do it.
And then you can go through the gmails that way, and I would even take it a step further. You may take that that all those gmails and feed them into an AI, like I would maybe fire up Claude Claude dot ai and drop this. I mean, well, got to be careful because you know there is some private information in there, so you do need to be aware
of the privacy implications there. So maybe you don't want to do that, but it would be interesting because you can ask Claude to sort of analyze some of these emails, like what are the most interesting things, what are the things my sister talked about the most, you know, who are the most important people in our lives life? I mean there's really some you know, you can ask some interesting questions, almost like a little database of these emails.
But you do have to be careful because I would read up on the privacy policy because you don't want her emails shared across the AI with other people, so you got to see what the deal is with that. But with all that said, I think Takeout should do it. The other thing this would be for you know, if you're listening and you're thinking about you have a significant other or a family member that you want to have access to your account. Many people may just share their
password or they may not. But another thing you could do is there is a legacy You can set up a legacy contact. And this is both for Apple and for Google, so Google calls it inactive account Manager. So if you go to Google Inactive Account Manager, if you have a Google account, you can set someone that will get access to your account if you don't access it after a certain period of time. So this may be six months, it could be three months, it could be
ninety days, whatever you decide. If you don't access your account for that amount of time, this legacy contact will get an email saying, hey, we notice that Rich didn't access his email in sixty days.
You are going to get.
Access to his full account in the next week or so. I think there's some sort of buffer. Now, some of you may be sitting there go WHOA, I don't want that, so don't set that up. And some of you may be listening and say, oh, that sounds like a really nice thing.
So it's up to you to set it up. But if you look up.
Gmail or Google Inactive Account Manager, that's where you can add a legacy contact. On the iPhone, you can do the same thing for Apple. So if you go into settings under your Apple ID and it's under sign in and security, it says a legacy contact, So I don't have mind set up, I should probably do that. But a legacy contact is someone you trust to have access to the data in your account after your death. And so once you set that up again very similar, they
will be alerted. And by the way, once you set this up, you'll get a reminder every couple of months saying, hey, just so you remember, you've set this person up as
your legacy contact, and why do they do that. Maybe you set up a significant other that you're no longer with, you know, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, family member that maybe you know you just don't speak to anymore, whatever it is, but they will remind you who you set up as this person, and so you can say, oh, wait a second, I don't want them to have access anymore, so you can revoke that access. But again it's called Google Inactive
Account Manager. On Apple it's called the Legacy Contact and it's a very similar program. But if you want someone to have access to your stuff after you pass, it might be a good idea, or you can just share some of your passwords with them, you know, if you
really trust them, that's the way to do it. The problem with that is that a lot of times it's if you have two factor authentications set up, they may not have access to that second factor, especially if it's your phone or your email account or whatever that code is coming in through. So you just have to be aware of that. This is probably a much more guaranteed
way of giving them access to your account. So Bill, I'm sorry to hear about your sister, but i do think that your question does help a lot of people.
So thank you for calling with that today.
All right, coming up, Matthew Cassonelli is going to talk about shortcuts on the iPhone, how you can optimize the use of your phone, and give us some ideas on how to use that new action button on the iPhone fifteen pro. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Joining me now is Matthew Cassanelli. He is creator of the Shortcuts app on the iPhone and kind of a oh.
My gosh, the stuff that Matthew talks about.
It's all about using this shortcuts on the iPhone to kind of automate your life, automate processes. And now that the iPhone has the iPhone fifteen pro models have this new action button which can be programmed to be a shortcut. I believe Matthew, you're probably getting a lot of interest in the shortcuts.
Huh.
Welcome to the show.
Yeah, definitely, thank you for having me.
So.
Yeah, it's it's an exciting time for shortcuts and bringing it to the action button has brought it to seemingly everybody, at least if you have the iPhone fifteen Pro. So tell me it's time to get into it.
Tell me about your kind of background.
So did you you sort of invented this whole thing?
Totally definitely. I don't want to take credit for that.
That.
I joined the team close to when they were about to get acquired by Apple, So I've done a lot of the the actual shortcuts in the app. But the it was called workflow originally back in the day.
Okay.
I basically was observing it from Afar South. The team was super talented engineers, and I could tell I was like, this is a very complicated thing. People need to understand
this a little bit better. And so I joined the team to help do some of that marketing stuff, and then it got acquired by Apple in a very lucky timing, I'll say, And then since then I went independent and Shortcuts have been out and released it to the public since then inside of Apple, And basically what I do now is just teach people how to use it, because I was like, I know this tool better than almost anybody, so I might as well share with people and give
away my shortcuts too. That's one of the fun parts is Shortcuts are freely distributable, so you can make your own and share it with somebody else. That's part of the power of it.
Yeah, it's kind of fun, and it's like it's it's really it's so interesting because the iPhone is such a mass market consumer advice device, but this is such a feature that is like a real power user feature, and it reminds me of back in the day on Android, I used to tinker with that app called Tasker, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Oh yeah, but that was like so complicated to do anything.
It was like, you know, it's just anyway.
But I'm sure some Android folks listening know that they you know, they remember using that, and now, of course even on the Samsung they have like routines. Even in Google well Home they have routines. It's all kind of cut from the same cloth. But explain what shortcuts is on the iPhone first off.
Sure, at its simplest, it's a way to take actions that you would normally do in your apps and then perform them outside of the app, either standalone using something like Siri, or maybe running it from the shortcuts widget on your home screen, or combining them into multiple step workflow type things that you can then press one button and have everything get set up for your work, or actually it can actually do some of the work for you at certain times. So there's a lot of potential there.
And like you said, it's very an Apple in some ways, partially because it was bought and acquired rather than being developed internally, so that might be why you haven't heard about it so much until now. But in many ways, shortcuts has been getting more advanced and hooking into Siri and then now on the action button it's literally part of the device itself. So for the for the first time, it's kind of being introduced to a ton of people.
It's like Oh, I have a reason to use this now there's just a button there, I can press it and it'll do anything that I want.
Yeah, I mean I certainly took another look at this because you know, I've been interested in it and I think it's neat. But it's like I wasn't actively using them on a daily basis. I know you share your kind of your screens all the time, and it's it's basically like it reminds me of like a like an audio board, you know, because you have so many short cuts on our screen, you know, where you just like
press these little things. What are some like basic kind of give me some ideas of how to use this basically, at least.
The one you're referring to was on the Mac, and a good one is setting up your screens and your windows the way that you want. So if you have a certain thing you're doing for work, and it always you have the browser on the left and this thing on the right, you can have it open to the right page, maybe even pull some of the data for you and then arrange everything so kind of like switching contexts and getting set up to do work, especially work you don't want to do shortcuts for that.
That's like brilliant.
So you're saying, I can set up all my windows, like let's say when I do the radio show on the weekend, I have my windows a certain way, I open up certain apps, and then during the week I'm at the TV station, I have certain apps for that. You're saying, I could set a shortcut to just pop all those windows into the place I want them.
In totally, even on the second screen. If you have it too, see, yeah, it's exactly the depth of it. I think what's hardest about shortcuts is it's like you can do anything but that. When you hear that, you that means nothing in many ways. So what I did when I first was learning the app was just looked through all of the actions that are built in, plus all of the ones from the apps I've gotten from
the app store. A lot of times they can provide functionality too, So it's definitely worth checking all that out because then you can kind of feel out where the edges are because if like it can do almost anything but not everything.
Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to get it to call up Google Assistant, because there is a Google Assistant app and the act button can be mapped to it, but it doesn't fire up the microphone, which is kind of like the whole point. You know, you want it to open up the app and turn on the microphone.
That's a good point I could think of on the spot. You could use dictate text in shortcuts and then pass that text into the Google Assistant action. See And what's this is hilarious because I was gonna mention this as one of my clever shortcuts workarounds that Google Assistant thing does.
Actually you can type in text into the Google Assistant action, And so I figured out there's no Xbox integration with shortcuts, but Google Assistant has one, and so I use shortcuts to ask Google Assistant to open a game on my Xbox remotely without opening like having to even touch the
controller or anything. And it's it's kind of ridiculous, but it's also like, it's pretty funny when people people can be uh, not so forgiving about siries sometimes, which is perhaps just justly earned, but cooking it, turning in the serie button into a Google as System button, it's just funny.
So how should people start, Like, if they've never explored this on their phone, how do they start like what what do you look for and what do you think they should do?
First off, sure the Shortcuts comes with a starter shortcuts collection which they'll put into your library automatically that will provide just some basic ideas for you. And then there's also in app gallery. When I worked at Workflow, that
was part of my job was curating that gallery. And so in many ways since I've left, I've done the same thing on my own and I've released over a thousand shortcuts on my website that you can also get, and there's tons on Reddit to like a really good way is to look at other people's shortcuts and see how they're using different functionality beyond just some of the basics that you could maybe look around and find yourself, because you do quickly get into some sort of scripting stuff,
just little things that are confusing at first, but if you see someone else use it, then you can kind of learn from that. That's how I honestly started originally, was just like what are these other people doing? Then I can kind of recreate it for myself, But then just kind of observing what you actually do during the day, Like take a week and take note of what you do during the day and then make the automations afterwards.
I have a bad habit of coming up with an idea and then figuring out how I can use it. But really you want to solve your actual problems first rather than something that's like theoretical, so that's always helpful. And then also starting with automations and just finding little things that happen regularly throughout your day that then you could turn on the lights when you get home or
something in a specific way. One thing that happens with home automations is you can't run actions from apps, but with shortcuts personal automations now you can do location triggers, so you can like when I get home, this third party app runs a function that's new and I was seventeen. So automations are good just because it gives you the value without you ever having to do anything.
Yeah, I've been wanting to figure out and every time I come home from work, I do the same thing. I play music on my Sono speakers, and I'm like, there has to be a way to automatically trigger that, and I know there is, but I have yet to like put the time and effort into figuring out how to do that. But it would just it's like something I do every single day. I you know, go to my app, I open up the sonosapp, and I choose like a station that's usually my favorites, and then I
adjust the grouping and I adjust the volume. I am sure I can automate that process. I just don't know how to do it, or I haven't put the time into figuring out how to do it, because I'm sure there's multiple ways. But it's one of those things where again what you're saying, you look at your life and you see the things that you do over and over
and you say, how can I make this easier? So, for instance, if you're always you know, converting a photo into you know, a jpeg to a PDF or something, or PDF into a jpeg whatever, you can use shortcuts to do those kind of things too, right.
Totally, those are great, especially if you are working with text or files or images. Shortcuts is really powerful with that. I may generate hundreds of icons for my website and put all of my data onto my blog in ways that there's no way I would do this without being able to automate it. So that's created my whole business model. I think what's always confusing for me is it's about shortcuts, So it gets very meta when I'm explaining it because
I'm publishing shortcuts on my site. But it's still regardless if you were just making documents or things like that. Sometimes what's hard about shortcuts is sort of abstracting from the app into kind of the content that you're using in that app. So like most apps are just files or text or images or something like that, and you can use shortcuts to work with that data and then just paste it into the app if that app didn't support it too, all right, and before I forget Soro
for Sonos is the app that you need. And then it also wasn't possible until iOS seventeen to do okay type of location automations. Yes, automatically, so now they can run immediately, which is great.
Okay, so when I get home, okay, yeah, Sorrow for Sos, I'll be downloading that and real quick before I run what is your iPhone fifteen action button set?
To mine? I have to get my current focus and then let me run other shortcuts depending on that. So something like if I'm in my personal mode, it'll turn on the TV and then if I'm in work mode when that I love It'll use a remote login on my Mac to wake my macup remotely from my phone.
I love it.
You've got a shortcut set for the shortcuts Matthew Cassinelli. Matthewcassonelli dot com is the website. If you want to subscribe to his news letter or look at his shortcuts, it'll be linked up on my website.
Rich on Tech dot tv. Thanks for joining me today.
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Blue Green sent me a DM on Instagram at rich on Tech and it was a scammer impersonating Sandra Bullock. And he said, Uh, why is this person trying so hard to meet me? What? What what happens if I chat with them? Curious if they tried chatting with you? And what happens if you
talk to them? And good question number one. I don't think you should engage with these people, these scam artists that you know they're impersonating someone else on Instagram, Facebook, whatever. But the bottom line is they are going to try to scam you. So I did this the other day a guy I know, he was you know, they set up a bogus account that looked just like his, grabbed his pictures, and they started chatting with me, and so of course I'm just curious.
So I chatted with him. I said, Hey, how you doing, what's going on?
I missed you at the last Apple event, you know, bl blah blah blah, knowing he wasn't even there.
And the person's like, oh, yeah, how's work.
And you know, we talked a little little niceties back and forth, and I kept trying to drop little things that I know only this person would know, the real person that this scam artist wouldn't, but he kept ignoring those parts of the questioning anyway.
Finally, what did he get to, Hey, I've been really.
Getting into crypto and uh, you know, I think that it would be great for you to do this.
And what do they want you to do?
They want you to download some app, they want you to transfer some money. They want to scam you. Be careful, be aware. And it looks like someone you know, they're not asking for help. They're not you know, just be aware. They a lot of times people do it for me, So they will they will clone my accounts and it will look like me and it'll say private or subscribe or whatever.
It's not me. I am not friending you.
Sorry to say, but I'm not reaching out to random people on the internet that listen to me and saying, hey, will you be my friend.
I don't do that, just so you know.
Uh, let's see, chat gybt is getting voice and image capabilities. Open a eyes, rolling out a new voice and image features and chat gbt. These are for paying subscribers right now. Maybe it'll come to the rest of us later. So the voice feature allows you to have back and forth conversational interactions. So if you want to try this, you can, and you pay for chat GBT and you have the app, go to settings and new features. It was not in my app the last I checked. Maybe it's there now
checked yesterday. The voices sound great, They're very conversational, pretty impressive. The image feature lets you send a photo to chat gbt and it can analyze it. And the coolest part is you can even draw on the picture. Like let's say you want to repair a bike and you draw you take a picture and you draw on your phone like the part that you want to replace. You can say, what's this part of this bike and we'll try to figure out what bike that is and what that part is.
So cool, new features coming to chat, GBT Voice and Chat. It's just incredible, incredible to see how these AI systems are progressing at a very very fast clip. And it's scary, it really is, because they're so good, but they're so wrong. Sometimes you have to be careful. They do hallucinate Karen and San Pedro, San Pedro, How do you say that, San Pedro, San Pedro?
Oh, you can say either one. Yes, there you go. Karen, you're on with Rich. What can I help you with?
Thank you Rich for taking my call. I have actually two questions that're kind of related. I have a Galaxy A ten e, which is probably an old model. You probably know how old it is, I'm not sure, probably pre COVID. I'm having problems with charging it the original charger. I have to practically stand on my head to get it to charge. Talk to a guy at a Kiosk and he said, oh, just get another one online Amazon
and that'll work. No, it did not. A friend gave me one of those chargers that have multiple charging units in it that did not work. So do I need to get a new phone? I really don't want to. And if I do need to get a new phone, what kind would I get that similar? Because when I go to the vendor, I don't want them to try to upsale me and say, oh you need this and this and this and this.
Yeah. Okay, So first off, have you checked has anyone cleaned out the charging area?
No?
Okay, because a lot of times when things aren't charging, there's just lint in there and it's holding the it's holding the connection back, and so that is that is the number one thing to do is maybe get a little candare or a toothpick and very gently clean out that little area that is, you know, where you plug the charger in, So that's number one. If that doesn't work, and then try to plug it in. Now, be careful,
you don't want to ruin your phone. But you can also take a Q tip and I'm even loath to like recommend this, but a little tiny rubbing alcohol and maybe kind of clean in that area as well. That could help make sure it's very very dry. You do not want to get that wet in that area. So that's number one and plug it in see if that works. If it doesn't, you can take it to a place like I mentioned this earlier, but Asurian they will they
will see what's wrong with your phone for free. So you can take it to one of those uh one of those Asurian places as U r Io n and they will say what's wrong with it. You don't have to pay them unless you get the repair done, but they can say, oh yeah, your charging port is totally is totally ruined. Now if you find out that the repair is, you know, two hundred and fifty three hundred dollars, it's not worth it for this phone. So I would
recommend a new phone. So for budget phones, the one I like, I would go with the Pixel seven A. And the Pixel seven A is going to be a great, great phone. It's it's about five hundred dollars. You might be able to get it cheaper online, but that's going to be a really good phone. It's going to take great pictures, the software is going to last a long time. The other one is the one plus Nord they have a great budget phone. And then the Samsung I think it's the A. What do you have the A ten?
So I think the A fourteen is the newest kind of like budget Samsung. They have a bunch of budget phones. I don't typically review too many of them, but that will work as well. But if it's if it's too expensive and it's not working, you know, you got to get the new phone. But I would take it in and see if they can diagnose it for free, but clean out the area.
The lint.
My kid discovered lint last night. He put his hand in his pocket. He said, Dad, I have all these like dirt in my pocket and I said, let me see it, and he shows.
It to me.
I go, that's called lint. How amazing. Nine year old didn't even know link was. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven.
Four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question. I've got emails. I've got so much to get through. It's like this is it's just wild how much I bring to the show every week and how much I still want to tell you even after I'm done with the show, and we pack a lot in believe me, but there's still there's a lot on the docket here. I got an email from Marci. Hey, Rich, I'm listening to you right now. I saw your Instagram stories about the new adaptive noise
reduction for AirPods with iOS seventeen. I have AirPods Pro and iOS seventeen, but it's not there.
I hope you can answer this.
You're the best. Congrats on taking over this show. I've watched you for years on KTLA. Thanks Marcy. Okay, so what Marcy is talking about is on iOS seventeen and AirPods Pro, any version of AirPods Pro by the way, the new ones and the ones with the old charging case, there is a new feature that is just incredible. It's called adaptive noise control. And this is not invented by Apple. This is done on some other earbuds as well that I've tested over the years, but Apple's works really well.
It's like uncanny because I will tell you I've gone from being able to wear the AirPods Pro for like a couple of minutes to like now all day because this adaptive audio listens to your surroundings and it will
adjust accordingly. So if you've very used noise canceling headphones, you know that sometimes it can sound like you're underwater because it's just like very like you know, it just fills like your entire ears with like nothing except like your own sound of your ears, like kind of like when you put a shell up your ear listening to
the ocean in it. That's what it sounds like to have a noise canceling headphones sometimes or these earbuds, I should say headphones maybe not so much, but the earbuds specifically. And so they came up with this new adaptive noise canceling or noise control, which blends active noise cancelation and transparency mode. So what's transparency mode. Transparency mode is when the earbuds let in the outside sounds that you can
hear stuff, but they're not actually letting it in. They're just using the microphones to pass that sound to your ears. So that's also sounded weird in the past. But Apple somehow magically mixed these two things together and came up with this new adaptive noise control that works really really well.
So Marci, to answer your question, you have to update the firmware on your air pods, and this is typically done automatically while your AirPods are charging and when they're in Bluetooth range of your phone, but that's not always the case. Maybe you charge them not near your phone and so that doesn't they don't get the new software. So if you want to go into your your Bluetooth on your iPhone, that's how you can check to see
if these things are up to date. And the version that you need is six A three hundred or six A three oh one. And again this only applies to AirPods Pro second generation. I don't believe. Yeah, it's only the second generation, so it's the ones with the USBC case and also the lightning case. It's not the first generation of the AirPods Pro. So if you have those, you're not going to get this. So now, Marci, that
may be the case here. You might have the first generation, So you got to figure out which generation AirPods Pro you have. But once you do that, definitely enable the adaptive audio. And the way you do that is you swipe down from the upper right hand corner of your phone, you press and hold on the volume control and at the bottom. You should see as long as you're connected to your AirPods, you should see that adaptive audio. I put this on my Instagram stories. That's where Marshy saw it.
But that's what you want to do. If you're on your iPhone, you just want to go to your settings your Bluetooth and tap the eye next to the name of your AirPods and you can see in there if there is a software update.
So I can go in here.
And I tap the eye and once it's connected, it will show you if there is a software update for those so good question.
And it really is. I'm not kidding.
I mean.
The cool thing about that mode is that, for instance, when you're on the plane and you're listening to something on your AirPods with the noise cancelation, or if you're an adaptive and the flight attendant comes up to you and says, hey, you know, would you like to get a meal, a snack, whatever. Most of the time you have to take your you gotta rip your air your ear pod out right, your earbud has to come out
of your ear so you can talk to them. But with this mode, when you start talking, it will automatically reduce the noise cancelations so that you can hear them, and it does a really good job of it. Google is ending gmails Basic HTML version in twenty twenty four. So Google's going to discontinue this basic HTML version of Gmail that's been around since like day one. They're getting rid of that in January twenty twenty four. HTML Basic is a stripped down version of Gmail that's was designed
for slower connections and also old browsers. And Google says that this did not have all the functionality of Gmail, so they are going to get rid of it.
And the.
Visually impaired community has been very unhappy over this because they say that a lot of them use this HTML view. Now that's just based on some reports I've seen online. I've yet to have someone kind of email me or tell me that. But whenever something gets whenever something is changed or a company takes away something that people use, and Gmail has a lot of users, you know, people get angry.
Now.
I think Google knows how many people are using this basic HTML and it's.
Probably not enough for them to continue developing it.
Now.
I tried to bring up this version of Gmail.
If you have a fast internet connection, it's almost impossible because it shows up at the bottom of your screen so fast that you have to be ready to tap it when you load your Gmail because it happens so fast. So I just did it, and now I'm viewing my Gmail in basic HTML and it is so weird looking. It looks like what Gmail looked like when it launched. I mean, it's kind of fun. Actually, if you can do it, you put your mouse in the lower right hand corner of your browser and then bring up Gmail.
You might have to refresh a couple of times, but you click as soon as you bring up Gmail and it says basic htmlview and it's pretty wild.
So that's basic htmlview. Let's see what else.
Oh, remember that whole thing with the iPhone where it was the French authorities said that there's too much radiation in the iPhone twelve. Well, Apple put out a software update. According to Reuters, it's all good now. So the suspension of iPhone sales earlier this month because of the radiation output on the iPhone twelve has been It's all been solved.
So good to hear that.
Triple A rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one Antonio is in Covina, California.
You're on with Rich Hi Rich.
So this may sound like a silly question, but I'm not really tech savvy. So I got on laptop, you know, with the Labor Day sales. It was really pretty cheap, and I'm just wondering, if I'm not using it, do I keep it plugged in like with that during the battery faster or over targe a battery, or should I unplug it every time I'm not using it?
Good question, you know, it's one of these things. It's kind of like an eternal debate on the internet whether to keep things plugged in, whether to take them or to unplug them. I feel like it's probably better to leave it plugged in it because your laptop is going to use the power its own power management to kind of say, okay, we've got power coming in from this cord, you know, the batteries at this percentage, and we're just
gonna keep the battery topped off. In fact, Tesla recommends that you leave your car plugged in all the time when you're not using it. Let's say you go on a vacation or something like that, so it's always topped off. And it can better manage its power. If you leave this thing unplugged, what's gonna happen is it's gonna cycle through the battery every single time you unplug it, versus just topping it off a little bit as necessary. And when you go through a battery cycle, they only have
a certain amount of cycles before they go bad. And so when you're constantly draining it and bringing it back up to one hundred, that puts a lot of pressure on the battery. So some people believe that you should leave this plugged in all the time. I pretty much believe that I leave my stuff plugged in a majority of the time. I will say, with the newest Apple laptop, it almost doesn't need to be ever plugged in, which is kind of weird because the battery is so good.
But I think it really depends on what you believe and what you want to believe. I just feel like it's better to leave it plugged in if you're using your laptop all the time and you have it on your desk. It just seems like it's easier also than trying to figure out when your battery is going to be dead. Now there's gonna be people that debate me on this. They're going to say, Rich, you should never
leave your computer plugged in all the time. I just think that Antonio, by unplugging this, you're actually putting more wear and tear on the battery, because, like I said, every single time this battery drains, you are going to be using a cycle of that battery. And if you look at the look up battery cycles, and you can see how many cycles, it's a finite number. In fact, on the Mac computers, it'll tell you how many battery
cycles you've used with your battery. And so if you go into the settings and then the system settings, there is a way to see on the system report how many battery cycles. Let's see mine I'm looking at Let's go to battery. Where are you a battery? Well, I can't find it, of course when I need it, I can't find it. But it'll tell you how many battery cycles you've used on your computer. And you can see I'll say, like you know, out of like I don't know, five hundred cycles.
Whatever gets here? We go? Power? Is that it? There? We go battery?
So it'll say fully charged, yes, charging, no state of charge, okay, Health information cycle count eighty two condition normal maximum capacity is one hundred. So that means that even though Antonio, the information I'm giving you about how I use my computer, my battery is still at one hundred percent. This computer given is only you know, six months old, maybe it's a year. I don't remember when I got this thing. You could also check on your phones for battery cycle.
I already taught you how to do it on the Samsung Pixel. I believe they just built it in as well. But this idea of battery cycle is getting much more popular because people are realizing they can't use and abuse these batteries and just expect them to last forever. They do have a finite life, and especially how much we're
using our phones. So if you go into settings on the iPhone and then go into battery, you can look up battery health and charging and it will tell you what your maximum capacity is of that battery and charging optimization. I would probably recommend optimized battery charging if you want your iPhone to last the longest.
Triple eight Rich.
One on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Thanks to the call, Antonio, appreciate it. Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to David Henry at Neckgear about how to get better Wi Fi.
This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech, rich DeMuro. Here you can find me online at Richontech dot tv.
That's the website.
It kind of has all the information you need about how to follow me on Instagram, X, Twitter, Facebook.
What else is there? YouTube?
I don't really do much on YouTube, but it's there. The newsletter that'll come back one day. And let's see what else is there? A lot of stuff you can go in the lower Let's see this is a little something that most people don't know. You can actually see all the stories I do for TV on there. And there's if you go in the lower right hand corner of the web page, there's two little tricks. Number one, there's a microphone you can leave a voicemail for the show.
And there's also a link called shop. And that is all the stuff that I sort of like like so a lot of people ask me over and over recommend a speaker, recommend a charging cable, recommend you know, whatever, the basics and so a lot of those things I'll put on Amazon so you can, like in this Amazon shop, so you can easily access those, So that's all on the website. Rich on tech dot TV got an email
from Jim. He says, are there speakers that will allow your music that's playing in one room to follow you from room to room in your house? And yeah, there's there's a couple I mean you could use. I mean, Son's pioneered this. Sons is kind of the best, and they're expensive. That's the problem is that they're very, very expensive, and so that's probably the best way to do it if you want the same music that's playing everywhere. And I think that's what you mean here. But you can
do it with the Echo speakers. You can group those. You can do it with HomePods, you can group those, you can do it with the Google speakers, you can group those. I think that the easiest to group are probably going to be either the home pods from Apple, and they have like a big HomePod that's expensive like three hundred bucks, and they have a little one that's one hundred dollars. So if you're all Apple, that's probably
an easy way to do it. The Echo speakers are going to be probably the second easiest to do because you use the app or you can actually do it just with your voice. You can say group all my speakers together. You can say play this music, you know, play pop music throughout my entire house, or you can say played on this specific speaker. And the other way is sons and Sons is probably going to be the most expensive, but it's probably the most flexible and has
the most ways to listen and things like that. So my pick is so nos That's what I like, but it's very expensive, and I've built my collection over the years. It's not something that I did overnight because those speakers are pricey. Friend of the show Jared Newman writes in his Advisorator newsletter, there's a big Windows update Windows is that Microsoft is rolling out a new version of Windows eleven with only one feature that I truly care about.
It brings back the never combined option for taskbar icons, so that each window can have its own text label. I previously used an app called Explorer Patcher for this purpose, one of the several Windows eleven tweaks I've recommended, but I've installed it for now. That is a great tip,
Thank you Jared Newman of Advisorator. So if you know Windows, it groups together all of the similar Windows back in the day used to be able to see like at the bottom, like if you have two Chrome windows open, or two email messages open or whatever.
It's like.
People probably went nuts trying to figure out how to separate those, and so it took Microsoft a while, but they figured it out.
So now you can use that.
Never combine option for taskbar icons, so everything that you have open will have its own icon in the taskbar. That is a great thing. But you do have to get out or download the new version of Windows eleven to figure that out. By the way, subscribe to Jared's newsletter. He does write it regularly, unlike me. It's called Advisorator, and it's always packed with great stuff. Facebook new AI Experiences something that's kind of fun. You should check this out if you may or may not have access to
it in your Instagram. But if you go to your Instagram stories, there's a new sticker called AI stickers, And so you go into your stickers and then you tap AI stickers and you can type anything in and it will generate a sticker on the fly.
You know.
Stickers are those things you put on your stories that like animate like a baseball bat cracking a ball, or like a you know, a wow face or something like that. Whatever you type in and find stuff. But this you can type in anything and it will generate it using AI. So for instance, you can type in, you know, dogs playing baseball and it will create that. Or I did rich On Tech in New York City and that created like a nerd kind of like standing in New York
City as a cartoon character. So that's kind of fun. It just makes it more creative. The other two features is this restyle feature, which will transform any picture into however you want it to look like a watercolor painting or you know, something like that. And then they have this backdrop feature which changes the background, so you can literally take a picture of you in your driveway, use this backdrop feature and say make me in Italy and it will make an Italian, you know, villa backdrop for
you all using AI. So this may not be available immediately on your Instagram Stories, your Facebook stories, your WhatsApp, or your Messenger app, but it will be coming. So when you see it, you can try all these new editing tools and you can remember you heard them right here on rich On Tech all right. Phone line is eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're talking to David Henry, President and general manager of
Connected Home Products at Neckgear. He's going to talk about Wi Fi, how to get a better signal, what you can do, and we'll have more of your emails and your feedback coming up right here on rich on Tech. My name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. Rich on Tech dot tv is the website.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you. Talking technology and Wi Fi is always at the top of mine for everyone because we're always connecting to it. We're always trying to get the best signal possible and pretty much our lives depend on this stuff. We love our WiFi and here to talk about it is David Henry, President and general manager of Connected Home Products and Services at Neckgear.
David, thanks so much for joining me today.
Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Rich, Hey, thank you. So I was thinking about this today.
I was looking at the USC game which I went to USC, and I was like, you know, obviously, what do people do on the weekends. They now with all the streaming and stuff, they look to see where their game is playing, right Like, it's not like it used to be. You just kind of turn on the TV and it was it was playing on the Fox Sports app. And I downloaded the app and within three, four or five seconds, I'm sitting there watching a live stream of the game and it says it's like in four k
uhd or something. Anyway, my point is, I just thought about how cool it is and how far we've come that here it is, this game is accessible by anyone nationwide through this app, and it's all because of Wi Fi and streaming, and we've just we've come a long way.
Now. I think you nailed it.
I mean, football games is one thing, and in fact, right now there are football games, NFL games, college games that you can't even see on linear tele even if it's subscribe to cable and all those sports packages. You have to stream them. I mean Amazon Prime has games they stream only on Thursday nights. I read that there'll be at least one or two playoff games this year that will only be streamed, and so you know, Wi Fi can deliver it all. But streaming is just one
thing that Wi Fi brings to us. Wi Fi brings gaming, Wi Fi brings shopping, Wi Fi brings home security. I mean, it's it really supports pretty much.
Everything we do.
And we learned that, you know, painfully, so during the during the pandemic shutdown.
Oh yeah, this is I think I got more questions about how to get better Wi Fi during the pandemic than any other time of my life because we were pushing our networks to the limit, to the brink, and you know, mesh networks, we're just sort of starting to come along. But let's talk about some of the basics. Okay, So first off, what is Wi Fi?
Yeah, so, you know, if you think back to internet connectivity in the old days, if you're old enough, if your audience is old enough, they remember plugging into a phone line and connecting to the Internet. And then very quickly we got broadband, this high speed broadband that didn't have to use a phone line anymore. But we're all basically plugging one laptop or typically into an Internet connection.
And you know, in the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands, we realize how powerful that was and that all of your information, your news, your communication was going to come over the internet, and so pretty quickly realized, Wow, this is a whole home.
Type of connectivity that people are going to want.
So we created Wi Fi in the early two thousands, late late nineties, early two thousands to get to make sure that any device in your home, whether it's your phone, your TV, your laptop, your gaming gaming console, all could connect.
To the Internet wirelessly.
And it's called Wi Fi, which is a standard that all of these devices use to talk.
To each other.
Now, it's interesting because we often hear about different flavors of Wi Fi, like, you know, we've heard of Wi Fi six. I've now heard Wi Fi seven coming along. What does that mean exactly?
Yeah, it's it's the latest. It's the generation of Why Fi.
And you know, a good analogy would be for you for your your television.
You mentioned four khd.
Well, before that it was you know, it was ten a top, and then it was seven twenty and before that it was you know, something else. But every few years, technology gets better, and that's set the same as true with Wi Fi. We're now in the seventh generation of Wi Fi. It's hard to believe that we're seven generations in and every few years a new technology.
Standard comes to make it better.
And it's really designed to figure out what are the applications and what are.
The devices that are going to use Wi Fi in the future.
And as an industry, we get together and develop wireless standards to make sure that we can we can deliver those things. So Wi Fi seven happens to be the latest one. And it's all about speed so that you can do all that streaming you want to do. It's about range so you can you know, connect to the Internet anywhere in your home or even in your back in your backyard. And it's about something else that people don't really consider so much, but it's very important, which
is network capacity. And what I mean by network capacity is how many devices and how many applications can you run on your Wi Fi at the same time without having them slow down.
So those are the three things that Wi Fi seven is all about.
So if I'm using my like Wi Fi box from the cable company, it's like underneath my TV or in a cabinet.
Am I doing things right?
Or no?
Well, I guess.
First and foremost the question is is is the Wi Fi box from your cable company the right WiFi box to have? You know, depends on how long you've had it. Sometimes the cable companies or the internet companies will give you a relatively low cost to them internet box because
they have to give it out to everyone. And if you have to have a large home, or you happen to have a lot of people on the network at the same time, or you're subscribing to a very very fast speed, or you do a lot of streaming, maybe that Wi Fi box is just not good enough for you. It's good enough for a lot of people, but it's not good enough for everyone. So I guess the first question is is the Wi Fi box good enough? And then the second plus the question of course will be
a location. Where do you put it? And how do you configure it? But I think first and foremost people have to figure out for the Internet I'm paying for and for the applications that I run, and the number of people in my house that are using it, is my WiFi box good enough?
Now, when it comes to the router placement, if you're just using the basic router that you have, or maybe you bought one, where do you put that?
Yeah?
Well, this is the unfortunate thing is sometimes you don't have a choice, right the Wi Fi box usually goes wherever the internet tech connection happens to come into your house, which is usually may maybe it's a coax line, or it could be a fiber line or something, and it usually comes in usually at the edge of your home, maybe near a wall that goes outside towards the garage. And in some homes that can be a very not a very good location in terms of covering your all home.
And so, for example, if you have the choice, you'd want to put your wireless network, a wireless route someplace away from or not behind a door, or not behind walls, or not behind a mirror or a TV or a TV or a computer screen, because all those things can block wireless signal.
But in many cases, you know, cousiners don't have a choice.
My recommendation is, if you have to put it in a certain location, at least try to, you know, raise it up a few feet off the ground. Make sure there's not a lot of clutter around it, so those Internet Wi Fi waves can kind of penetrate your home.
We're talking to David Henry of neck Year about Wi Fi and what about mesh networks. Can you explain briefly what that is and why those are so popular.
Now, yeah, it's exactly what we're just talking about.
If your Wi Fi comes in, say in your basement or in the bottom floor of your home, but you use it a lot on the second or the third third floor of your home, or it comes on one side of the home, but you know you want to do a lot of streaming on the other side of the home. What happens is that wireless signal it erodes, it degrades for every wall it goes through. Sometimes by the time you get to your bedroom, by the time you get to your living room or your family room.
You just don't even have a connection.
And so what wireless mesh networking is technology was invented in twenty sixteen. You know, next year we have our Orbi product line, which is the best in class mesh network.
What mesh networks.
Are is instead of having one wireless router or one wireless box, say you know in your home office, you have multiple of them. Maybe if the three of them are scattered around your home so that you can no matter where you are, you're always near a strong network connection.
So that's called mesh networking.
Okay, now you just mentioned the Orby, So that's what netgear does. And I'm just curious like if okay, so if I'm going with like a high end neckgear, would that be Orby? And then if I was getting like a standard neckgear, what would you recommend?
Yeah, So, if you have a large home, if you have two stories, if you have three stories, if you have a situation where maybe your network router is in
your basement and can't penetrate maybe the floors. If you have an outside building like a garage or a pool house or or something where you just really can't penetrate with the box you have, Uh, the Orby network is excellent for that is the best in class in terms of getting your maximum speed all the way around your home and even we say all all around your property, you know, near the pool, right you have outdoors? Yeah, yeah, So so if you got that that that coverage issue,
net Yar's Orby is the best for it. Now, if you have a smaller home, maybe it's it's it's on a single story, or maybe it is uh you know, two stories, but it has very thin walls and coverage is not the problem. But you just want max speed, well, then I would I would Gear a guide customers towards our Nighthawk line.
Nighthawk is our line of wireless writers.
We've been in you know again, the market leader in wireless routers as long as I can remember. And Nighthawk is our brand for wireless routers that really gives you maximum speed, the latest technology, lots of devices connected at the same time.
So those are our two solutions.
Nighthawk is our best in class for maybe for smaller homes and people who want to even sometimes they want to tinker or configure their networks. They like to play with it, maybe a little bit more technical of an audience. And our ORBI is for the large homes, people who just want to set it, forget it.
And have the best performance everywhere in the home.
Okay, I've got about thirty seconds. Can you give me the quickest explanation of two point four gigaherts versus five.
Yes, two point four gigaherts is the original Wi Fi frequency. It had good range but very low speed, and there were a lot of other devices on it baby monitors, microwave oves and the like. Five gigaherts does much faster speed and much cleaner, meaning there's not a lot of other devices on it, but it may not have as good of range as two point four, and I'll just go go straight forward.
Six Giar Hurts is the latest.
It's in the Wi Fi seven technology and it's even faster than five gigears or two two point four.
The iPhone fifteen uses it. The new Samsung phone use it. The Macnipro use it.
I would really recommend if you have a new device, like a new iPhone, you gotta get Wi Fi seven because of the supports that sif, giga hitts frequency.
Wow. Good to know. I did not know that.
David Henry, President and general manager of Connected Home Products and Services at Netgear, thanks so much for.
Joining me today. All right, thanks rich all right Netgear dot com.
I'll put the website online rich on Tech, and I'll link up the products that he mentioned there.
It is a good little information about Wi Fi. I love learning that.
If you're listening to rich on Tech, coming up feedback, Welcome back to rich on tech. New report on teams and their relationship with their smartphone. Ooh, it's not good. Four and a half hours on their phones daily on average, they're always nearby two hundred and thirty seven notifications a day. Ooh, that's how many they get. They view about forty six per day. This is all from common sense media. Bobo
says more than that, Yeah, I believe it. It's annoying when you get notifications from apps that shouldn't be sending you them, right, like the stuff that's not very important, like Target, Come on in, we've got a sale.
Your favorite T shirts are on sale.
Teens feel notifications are distracting, but they prioritize those from people. See what I was I saying, See all the ones that are like nonsense. Social media dominates Forty two percent of their time is spent on social media. TikTok is used by half of teens for nearly two hours daily. That makes up thirty eight percent of their time on their phone. Next is YouTube. Nineteen percent. Teens use phones forty three minutes on average during their school hours. Obviously,
schools have different enforcement policies. Let's see what else. Oh, the overnight thing. This is the other thing. A lot of teens try to leave their phones on at night while they're trying to sleep, and that interrupts their sleep because they don't want to miss a thing. And teens kind of understand that this is a problem, but they don't really know what to do about it because they're teens. I mean, we don't as adults. We don't even know what to do. And this is the other side of this.
A lot of these apps aren't even meant for people under thirteen. A lot of these social media apps, and these teens still use them because they just use a different ad a different age and they get around that. But common Sense Media with a new relationship. But it's an interesting report, so check it out. Relationship teens have with their smartphones. Mister Beast is the top digital creator in twenty twenty three, according to Forbes eighty two million dollars. Wow,
that's how much he earned. Yeah, a lot of people watch mister Beast. My kids asked me if he'd be friends with me. He's like, do you think you'd be friends with mister Beasts?
Like, I don't know.
I don't know what mister Beast is like his real name, by the way, Jimmy Donaldson.
Eighty two million.
In the next to two people are tie Ret and Link thirty five million, and Preston Plays he makes thirty five million as well. Jake Paul thirty four million at number five. Let's see anyone else. The Dmilio Kid, Charlie, she makes twenty three million. Emma Chamberlain, I think she's like a famous podcaster twenty million. Alex Cooper another famous podcaster, twenty million. Okay, there's some money in digital creators. I don't think most of it's like celebrities. You know, most
of them are not making that. But there are some of them making a lot of money. But if you ask any teenager what do they want to do?
They want to be a YouTuber.
Now it's probably a TikToker, but they want to be they want to be a content creator. They don't you know, they don't want a regular job. They don't want to do what I'm doing. They don't want to come in every day and do hard work. I mean, it is hard work to be a creator, like really hard. I know a lot of these people, I hang out with them. It is it is wild how much work it is. Nathan writes in Hey Rich, I have a Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold four that hasn't gotten a security update since April.
First, I factory reset it and still no update.
I did some googling and found that I could download Samsung's smart Switch to my desktop and I was able to get an update via USB to my phone. Now I've got the September first Android security patch. Feel free to use this on your show to help others. Thanks Rich. Yes, that's a good little tip there. If you're not getting your security update, you can download the smart Switch app on Samsung on your desktop computer, plug in your phone and it will probably force that update. Donna says, Hey,
we enjoy your talks on KTLA. Just wonder if you ever heard about or can warn people about a computer problem. Our senior citizen friend nearly got scammed and our computer got ruined by folks supposedly working for Microsoft. First they disabled her home computer, then talked to her while fixing it, and wanted payment through bankwire. She finally realized the con and ended the contact. Today today she called geek Squad for a real fix, and they say they see this
scam every day. Can you put out a warning? Yes, tech support scams very very prevalent. Do not fall for them. You get a pop up window on your computer that says you know your computer's infected. Call this number. It's Microsoft. Do not fall for it. Turn off your computer. Close your web browser if you can. If you can't, turn off your computer, restart it, unplug it. If you have to plug it back in, your computer will start up.
It'll be fine.
Scott says, Hey, Rich, I've been following you since the day you started on KTLA. I want to know that I've had a problem with an item you endorse Rolo last year in Germany. Last year my Samsung Flip three. It quit working for a day, and now have a Flip five and in Spain it only works half the time. Their support is great, but they want me to sit and send them screenshots of at least five different configuration steps. I have books, tours booked, and I cannot sit at
a computer. They have no phone support. I have been very I'll say the word mad, especially when I'm stranded ten miles out of Barcelona. This e SIM should be configured from the get go.
It's not.
I have a month in southern Europe. I'm gonna buy a simcard, a physical SIM when I have the chance. Wanting you to give the heads up on the downfalls of Arlo. Cheers Scott. Yes, Scott, so I don't endorse them. I don't endorse anything, but I do talk about them because I use them a lot, and I agree they are great, but you your mileage may vary. There are so many different cell phones, so many different networks, so many different configurations.
It's not always going to work out perfectly.
So know that going in and have a backup plan if you're gonna get an e sim for your international travel. Like me, when I got to Japan, it did not work as expected on one of my phones. Turns out that phone was not supported with Aerolow in Japan specifically, and so I had to make do with my other phone, which I know not everyone's gonna have two phones, so
you may need to get a physical sim. You may need to take a different direction, But I would say a majority of the time, Scott, I've used aerolow at least a half a dozen times, and my mom and many many others that I've recommended this to, and they've all said it works. So yes, you need to be prepared for any sort of hitch in anything. And Peter says, my eighteen year old boy worked. He quite quit within a month, miss days every day because of the online gaming.
I'm about to shut it all down for him. Any advice before I do. He graduated or he's been a good kid, but he's addicted to these giant online worlds. Peter, I am so sorry to hear this, and I think what you're experiencing is very, very common. You got to put some limits in place. If he can't deal with those limits, I think you know therapy is in order here because he may not be able to cope with this.
He's a kid.
These developers develop games that are meant to lure you in. They're meant to keep you connected. They're meant to keep you on as much as possible. He may not be equipped to handle that. You may need to seek outside help. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Go to richontech dot tv. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. Next week, it is back to New York City. Pixel phone Pixel
is launching. Google has a big event. We are gonna go hands on with a Pixel eight. I cannot wait to see what Google is doing with a new pixel. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time.
I do appreciate you. Spending it right here with me.
Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Kim Bobo, bill engineers.
My name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon.
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