Walmart adds a new perk to its membership program. One of the best deals in wireless is gone. If you use a VPN on iOS, you probably want to do this first. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you are
having a fantastic day, week, month, year. Can you believe that we are more than six months into the year.
I don't know why I said that. I just looked at the data as I said that, I'm.
Like, wait a second, We're like, we're more like eight months into the year, almost nine months into the year.
But here's the deal I was.
I keep thinking about the fact that we are in this gentle slide into the holidays, and I don't wanna I don't want to get you like, you know, freaked out or.
Anything like that.
But the reality is, in my world, we just had the Samsung release. Now we've got Apple, then we have Google and you know, so all these things sort of happened throughout the holiday season, and it's it's really like a little gentle slide into the holiday shopping season, and then you have Thanksgiving and then you have just a couple of weeks of shopping until the holidays, and then you've got cees. So my entire like rest of the year is all sort of figured out. And in my mind,
I'm like, I'm already there. I'm like, it's twenty twenty three. So I don't wanna I don't want to alarm you. You do not have to feel that way. You do not have to think that way. I'm just saying for me, you know, a lot of what I do is planning. You know, it's planning to have coverage of the various gadgets and things that are coming out, and you know, it's it's a lot in the next.
Couple of months. One of the gadgets I've been playing with.
Are the Samsung Galaxy let me get this name right, Galaxy Buds to Pro. And these are the follow up to the Galaxy Buds Pro and these are the best earbuds that Samsung has ever made. Oh the music was still playing, there we go, That's what I wanted to do.
So I don't say that lightly.
Now, I will tell you I've done several workouts with these EarPods.
Are these earbuds?
I should say, I'm mixing air pods and earbuds and my own number one.
The case is awesome. It's this nice rubbery, grippy case.
My only downside of the case is that there is no pairing button on it and I really have grown to dislike that. And i'll tell you why. There's a pair of Samsung earbuds that I disabled the touch controls because I didn't want them on the earbuds, and next thing, you know, I put them in the case and I
had to pair them with a new phone. And the way that you do that is there's like a button that you press or I'm sorry, not a button, but you press and hold the two earbuds like the touch area on them for a couple of seconds to get it into pairing mode. Well, guess what, since I had disabled the earbuds, you know, touch areas, that didn't work, and so it was kind of a pain. I had to find a Samsung phone, install the app on it. Make sure that you know there, it was just a
whole thing. So anyway, I like the pairing button because it's just simple.
It's easy.
There's no directions necessary. You want to pair these with a new device, you just press the button. I'm not sure how you pair these the two phones that I've paired them with. Both times, i'd kind of opened the lid and next thing you know, they showed up in the pairing So maybe they automatically pair. I'm not sure. But the actual case is awesome. You open it up and the earbuds themselves same grippiness, so it's like kind of the same exact material that the case is in.
But on the earbuds they're nice and grippy, they're the perfect size, they fit into your ear really well, and for the most part, they do not fall out. Now, there is a little creepage where you know, I was on the treadmill and it you know, you're running really hard, there might be a little bit of that sensation where it's kind of falling out and then you push it
back into your ear. And what I don't like about the touch, and this is why I disabled it on the previous pair, is that I don't like the fact of feeling like I can't push the earbuds back into my ear without pressing the touch area. So just looking through some of the materials that Samsung sent by, let's see does I have a listening time on these things. So it's fifteen percent smaller than the Buds Pro. It's
got twenty four bit high fi sound. That's only if you're using it with a Samsung device that supports that. It's got three sixty audio. The noise cancelation on these earbuds is absolutely fantastic. I was using them in a gym with very loud music and I'm not kidding. You put these things in and immediately everything fades away.
I'm very, very impressed.
And it doesn't have that feeling where your ears are super sealed up, which.
I'm not really a fan of.
So I like the fact that somehow they got the ambient noise reduction or they sorry the noise cancelation to be really good even without feeling.
Like my ears are clogged up with cotton. So that's really cool.
There's a way that you can find these if they're lost, even if they're out of their case. So it's got this feature called smart Things Fined, and you can basically find these as long as the battery is alive. I'm not sure how they're doing that. I don't think the little buds have GPS in them, so I guess maybe they're pinging other Bluetooth devices, other Samsung devices. They come in graphite white and Boora purple. It's interesting that they
don't say how long the battery is rated for. But honestly, I think the batteries on these wireless earbuds have gotten so good that I don't put any thought into it. I mean, I just charge them, you know, once in a while, if you think about it, you plug them in. Otherwise, the buds, you know, they last pretty long. Then the case recharges them. But I've got to say, so far,
I'm very impressed with these, this Galaxy buds too. Pro So, if you're in a situation where you are making a purchasing decision, I think that you will be uh, you'll be very very impressed with the quality of these. Now, the price tag on these two hundred and twenty nine dollars,
which you know, that's expensive, that's that's very expensive. But the thing about these is that you basically shouldn't be buying them unless they are on some sort of deal and so I'm just looking like just when you go to the website for Samsung, immediately it's like, are you a first responder? Are you a you know, a teacher. So there's a lot of ways to get deals on these things. I'm sure there are special codes out there. You can also get kind of a credit. I mean,
let's see recycle. Look at this, save up to seventy five dollars recycle or trade in an audio device. So that's that's pretty interesting. You could save seventy five dollars.
Sort off the bat and is the case why I did not test this though? I did not test to.
See if the case supports wireless charging. And I'm oh, my gosh, I feel like I should know this. It says you can get a wireless charger with it, so I assume that the case would support wireless charging. So should do a little bit more homework on that. But anyway, Galaxy Buds too pro I give them two thumbs up in my book. I'm very very impressed with what Samsung did there. All right, let's get to the first question
of the show. Let's see no name on this one, but rich I will be traveling to Ireland and the UK in about a month. According to my carrier, T Mobile, I have unlimited international data, which would include using my phone as GPS. I don't plan on making any calls, so the higher cost per minute does not come into play. Could you explain the advantage, if any, of getting an
e SIM for my iPhone. I've never used an international SIM, so I'm not real clear on how they operate if you choose to do so, could you recommend a company? Thank you, your segments always contain us full information.
Yes, so here's the deal.
Since I just went to Italy and used my first eSIM, it was a very very smooth process. And let me explain what you get over T Mobile now, I think this really comes down to what do you need?
So if T Mobile, if.
Your plan and T Mobile has a bunch, you know, depending on the plan you're on, you get something different. So I don't know if you're on an old plan, if you're on a new plan, but find out exactly what you get with your plan. But I'm gonna give you the generics of sort of what's included, what's not included. So, like you mentioned, let me just give the example of what they give you right now.
So right now.
If you're on a Magenta Max plan, you get five gigs of high speed data in two hundred and fifteen countries. If you're on the Magenta plan, you get five gigs of high speed in eleven European countries. And the data they say is two times faster than before. So I don't know what the speed is exactly. Let's see if they say it on here see full terms, Uh five speed that okay? It so it's high speed data, which
I assume is just like no limit. But then after that it's unlimited up to two hundred and fifty six kilobits per second, which is super duper slow. Now it is two times faster than before, which was one twenty eight, which was basically worthless except for like checking your email. But two fifty six you might be able to do
some stuff with that. I personally would never want that limitation because I just couldn't imagine being in a different country and trying to do anything on two fifty six K versus you know, anything other than maybe maybe Google maps, maybe a quick Google search. I'm not even sure those would work. I mean, that's really for like push email, like that's it. So you know, If you're gonna use more than five gigs of high speed data, then I would consider an e SIM.
If you're not, then just stick to what you got. Now.
The other thing you could do, and you probably should do this, is just go ahead and use your five gigs of high speed data. See how far that gets you, and don't limit yourself. Because these e sims are so cheap, it's not even a big deal to worry about how much you're going to spend on one.
So use your five gigs of data.
I'm assuming that T Mobile at the end of that five gigs is going to text you and say, up, you are at your five gig limit. Now you have unlimited basic data for two fifty six. And at that moment I would go on an app called.
Er low Ai r Alo Ai r Alo.
And I would go ahead and buy a simpack or an e SIM for Ireland. And Ireland is going to cost you. Let's see, five gigs for thirty days is thirteen dollars. If you want to go big time, you can go ten gigs for thirty days, which is twenty two dollars. And you buy that right from your phone, right from your iPhone, you activate it right from your phone.
You do need a connection to do that, but once you do that, it's phenomenal and you're gonna have high speed data for that entire ten gigs twenty two dollars for.
That for that data.
I think it's well worth it. But again, use what's included first. Now you said the other thing is that you do not need texting.
You do not need calling.
So texting is included on T mobiles plan, which I think is also really cool. But if you want to call anyone, that's where you're gonna get hit with a twenty five cent per minute charge. And the texting situation is a little weird with the eSIM because texting is included, but only I message right, Like, you're not going to get a phone number, so there's gonna be no text messaging, you know, historic text messaging. And there's also gonna be no phone calls with the SIM.
So what I did was.
I just flipped my phone into airplane mode. For those two things, I turned off. What I do I turned off Oh. I think once you have an eSIM you have the ability to turn off your other SIM. So I just turned off my other SIM completely, And like I said, use the five gigs first, then then go into purchasing the eSIM. But fun times ahead. That's exciting to be going over to Europe. I mean, I know so much on the news is about the luggage and all that stuff, but once you're there, it's such a
fantastic experience. You are going to have such a great time.
All right, let's talk about what do we want to talk about? First?
Android thirteen. So Android thirteen was sort of a dropped on everyone as a surprise. And I know that iPhone commands all of the attention in the world, but there are a lot of people that run Android. But here's the thing. Android updates are not as big of a thing as they are for iOS. And the reason being is that iOS launches entirely new features that are core to the phone, which Android does too, but not in
the same way like Android. If you want a new feature, you just go on the app Store and you download an app that ninety nine percent of the time will solve or give you the feature you need. But some of the features do have to be baked into the operating system, and so we get new operating systems, they take a lot longer to kind of percolate through the lineup of phones, like I have a Pixel six Pro sitting here and it still hasn't gotten the Android thirteen update.
And that is one of like that's like a dev phone, Like that's a phone that developers would use to sort of test their software. Now, if you're doing that, you probably download the BEATA. But still my point is the way Apple does it is they released the software and everyone gets it pretty much at the same time, which is I guess, good and bad.
So let me go over some of the features.
I have not played with Android thirteen just yet, because, like I said, I did not get it on my phone, and once you get it on the Pixel you can't go back to twelve. So I figured, you know what, I'm not going to force the issue because maybe they're, you know, working out some little random bugs and things and that's why they're not setting out to that many phones right at once. But okay, so a couple things.
Google did a list of what they do thirteen. Let me guess, oh, had I guess thirteen things that they like about Android thirteen. I'm not going to go over all of them, but I think some of them are pretty cool. So number one you can assign a specific language to an individual app.
That is really really cool.
And this what I love about Google's mission and Android is that they sort of like to bring the entire world together. So if you want one of your apps to be in you know, I don't know if it's a supported language, but Chinese, and you want another app to be in English, you can say, Hey, every time I open up we Chat, I want the whole app to be in Chinese. And every time I open up you know, Facebook Messenger, I want the entire app to be in Italian.
Or Facebook whatever. That's a really cool feature.
There's a media player that's updated. It looks and feels based on the music or podcast you're listening to.
Let's see.
Android thirteen allows you to customize your bedtime mode with wallpaper dimming and dark theme that sort of happened with iOS. These screen options help you help your eyes adjust to the dark when you're about to go to bed and go back to sleep. If you wake up and check your phone in the middle of the night. That is very true because I often do that with my iPhone and Android thirteen, you can select only the specific photos
and videos that apps get access to. Again another I'm not going to compare everything to iOS, but yeah, these are.
It's kind of like.
iOS and Android are getting aligned in a lot.
Of different ways with some of these features.
But you can say, like if you down load a app that you're kind of thinking is a little sketchy, like one of those like profile maker apps or something, and you say, I just want to give it access to one of my pictures because I'm not sure what servers these pictures are going to. You can now do that. This is interesting. The clipboard.
If you copy sensitive data to it, like an email.
Address, a phone number, or log in credentials, Android automatically clears it after a certain period of time, So that's pretty smart. The apps you download now have to get your permission to send notifications, rather than being allowed to send notifications by default. That's a huge change, something that Apple had years and years ago. Spatial audio is now supported. You can stream your messaging apps directly to a Chromebooks. You can send and receive messages from your laptop. I'm
not sure how useful that is. I'm also just not really understanding why Google is so hesitant to come out with an easier way to use messages on a like a you know, a Mac computer. I guess you have, you know, the web app, but why can't they just come out?
I don't know.
It's fine. I guess I just want like a real app. But I guess the web apps are fine, you know what. I use web apps for Google Photos. I use a web app for Outlook, and they're just fine. I mean they're they're really you can't really tell them apart from the actual app. Most of the time, you can copy content like a URL, picture, text, or video from your Android phone and paste it on your tablet.
So kind of this. There's this little app called is it called clipped.
It's made by OnePlus actually, and it's a great little app Clipped c l i PT is it still around, And it's a great little app that lets you copy and paste from Android to any computer, whether it's an iOS or sorry, whether it's Android or a Mac or Android or Windows. So that's c l I p T. It's a really cool little app and it uses your own Google Drive, so I feel like it's pretty safe. Let's see what else do we have that's it? Okay, So that's the only thing I thought was pretty interesting. Again,
I haven't played with it. I feel like this is one of those incremental updates, but I will. I will check it out in more detail. Android thirteen is rolling out to rolling out the worst Words to a Nerd, rolling out to Pixels today, and then later this year, Android thirteen will roll out to Samsung, Galaxy Asus, Nokia, Motorola one Plus, Oppo, real Me, Sharp, Sony, Shoomi, and more. The sad part is in the US, the only Android phones that matter are Samsung and Pixel in one plus.
That's it.
And Motorola is like, I don't even know if that's a blip on the radar, but that's it. I mean, all these brands that you that people like look to in other countries. It's just Android is huge in other places. I've talked about this. In the US, it just it's it's just not as popular as I as Apple. Although I will say when you leave the Los Angeles area, I immediately see an uptick in a lot of the non Apple phones like the Android devices. So that's kind
of interesting. Let's get to the next question, Paul says, Rich, do you remember monocle on yelp?
We need something like that again.
Thank you, Paul, Paul, of course, I remember the monocle mode on Yelp. This was one of those features that was way before its time, way before kind of like
the whole augmented reality thing took off. And what monocle was is you would open up Yelp, you'd go into the settings and there was a feature called Monocle and you would tap it and then hold your phone up and you can look through your phone's camera at the viewfinder and see like the real world, like a street in front of you, and the Yelp reviews would be overlaid on the businesses down the street, so you can say, OK,
is there a good coffee place around here? Let me look up coffee, and then overlay and oh, it's that way. It's funny because I just thought about this the other day.
Where was I.
I was in Sacramento, and I was like, I didn't want to walk too far for a coffee place, so I wanted to see if there was one really close. And so that's what I did. I use that little I wanted to use the monocle on my phone. I was like looking for it. I'm like, where is that feature? So, Paul, I think you're reading my mind, because I was literally looking for that feature the other day and sadly it seems to be gone.
But we'll see, we'll see if.
If maybe you know, someone brings I mean, I don't think it would be too much for Google to bring that. I've This is the funny thing too, I've gotten more used to now using Google for my restaurant recommendations than anything else. Yelp is now sort of a cross reference and mostly to see menus and pictures, whereas it used to be the other way around. I would use Yelp first and then cross reference on Google. Now Google has
gotten so good with the restaurant recommendations. They have that little thing that says your match, So when you look up a restaurant, it says how much that restaurant matches you, And you know, like this place I'm looking at as a seventy eight percent match, This food Trucks is seventy five percent, tie place is seventy four percent. Then this
Tratoria is ninety two percent. So I'm like, all right, I never heard of this place, but you know what, I might try it because Google, let's be honest, knows exactly the types of restaurants that you are frequenting. And if you don't think they do, yeah, they do because they see that your phone is in there for a longer period of time. They see that you went in there. And so Google has this rich data set and I know it's scary, it's privacy, oh my gosh, but it's
actually quite useful. And when I'm in different cities now, I'm almost exclusively using Google Maps to research almost everything about my trip. And quite honestly, it is I would say it's right ninety nine percent of the time.
Like this stuff that it tells me.
I'll like, they sort of nail it, and the locations of things, the proximity of things. It's all very very good. And I'm I'm and I love making the lists. So I make a list for a city before I go, and I do it all on Google Maps. That to do is all in there. I mean, it's really really phenomenal. How much information's in there. So good question, Paul, And yeah, let's they should bring it back. All right, Let's get to some sad news. Visible was one of the best
deals in wireless. They had a plan that was forty dollars all in and they run on Verizon, so it's a really good network. But they had this thing called party pay, and party pay if you got I think it was like three or four people on your plan, not a family plan, but all you had to do was link up with them. You could then pay twenty five dollars a month for unlimited service on Verizon. I'm talking unlimited calls, texts, and data. And it was a really really good deal. But now that deal is gone
because Visible has raised their prices. Well they actually lowered they you know, these all these companies kind of use a little bit of trickery, but they they lowered some prices, but they raised their base price of their main plan is now forty five dollars. It includes a bunch of stuff that it didn't before, and then the cheaper plan is now thirty dollars. They kind of split the difference between twenty five and forty.
So for thirty.
Dollars you still get a pretty good plan. Okay, pretty pretty pretty good. You get unlimited talk, text and data five G and four four G. You get unlimited mobile hotspot. Obviously the hotspot is limited to a certain megabits per second.
I think it's five.
And then you get the extras which is unlimited talking text to Canada, Canada, Mexico and Canada. That's thirty dollars a month, which is still really good. Now they have Visible Plus which is forty five dollars a month, and this gives you the same data, but you also get five g UW which is you know, Verizon's super duper fast stuff. And then a premium network experience whatever that means,
unlimited mobile hotspot. And then you get the extras include the unlimited talking text to Mexico and Canada, unlimited talking text and data roaming in Mexico and Canada, international calling from the US to thirty countries, international texting from the US to two hundred countries. So and you can add a smart watch for five dollars. So again, if you if you have the Party play, it's not going away for you, you are grandfathered in. But for new customers,
it's going away. Let's see when is it going away on? It doesn't really say when it's going away, but you are you can let's see. You can now refer new customers and receive twenty dollars off your next month of service. You can bank up to twelve months at a time, so if you refer twelve friends, you can get two hundred and forty dollars off your bill for the year. So twenty dollars off of thirty is really actually cheaper.
So that's ten dollars.
You just have to bring someone in every month, which is kind of a lot.
So let's see when does this go away.
I don't know when it goes away, but basically, you can't sign up for a new Visible plan at the twenty five dollars. And the whole trick of the twenty five dollars party play our party pay is that you didn't have to sign up up with your friends. You could literally go on Reddit or any you know, anywhere, find a link to a party plan and just join in.
And so some of these plans had like twenty five hundred people on them that didn't know each other, but they were all paying twenty five dollars, and so this was something that you sort of needed to know how to do to get it. And I asked Visible when I did a story on this, I said, Hey, this is this legit, Like, are you guys okay with this? And they said, eah, we're sure, we're fine with that.
But I guess now they're saying, our members love the discounts, but not the hoops they had to jump through to get it. So okay, I mean hoops they had to jump through, they had to sign up one time. I mean, that's not that.
Big of a deal.
By the way, existing members, if you have Visible, if you want to move to one of these new plans, you can do so, but you have to get a new sim because Visible's network is expanding and evolving with these new plans, which should provide you with improved speeds and latency. So Visible is still fantastic. I have been testing out Boost Wireless Boost Mobile with their new twenty five dollars unlimited plan, and it's been really, really good.
I only had one problem with it at the beach where I've really had like zero signal, and it was kind of a problem, like I couldn't use my phone at all, Like it was just really really bad. And that's the only place that I've had an issue. But the beach historically has, you know, depending on your carrier, has connection issues anyway, because there's not that many cell towers on a beach, and so it's not like I'm not gonna.
Give Boost a total like f because of that.
So far, I've been very impressed with their service, and for twenty five dollars unlimited everything, I'm pretty impressed with that as well. So it just depends what you want. All right, let's get to the next question of the show. This comes from Bob says, Hey, Rich, which is the best streaming device, Roku or Fire? Thank you, Bob, Ooh wow, you're really trying to ask me the tough questions here. So I think this is really a matter of personal preference,
and it also kind of depends on your setup. So if you have one of the TCL series TVs that has Roku built in, which I highly recommend the TCL six series, go with Roku.
It's built into the TV. It's gonna be great, you know.
Less cables, less fuss, it starts right up, you know, it gets pretty decent software updates, I would assume, and the apps are nice and updated because they're all Roku apps. So and Roku has pretty much every app available. I'm not sure that there's an app that's not available a popular streaming apps that's not available on Roku. So what I don't like about Roku is pretty much, you know, the maybe the presentation. There's a lot of ads on the screen, and that's basically it. I mean otherwise, I
think Roku's fantastic. I think people that have it, they love it. I've yet to meet a person who doesn't like their Roku. So Roku's great. And they've got the you know, the free stuff. I mean, they've got a lot of stuff on there. I think at one point Roku had everything represented on theirs when some others did not. But now I think the streamers pretty much all have.
The same stuff available.
But okay, so then when it comes to fire TV, now this, you know, some people might have a problem with it because it's Amazon, and not everyone wants to support Amazon or likes Amazon. I'll be honest, I love Amazon, but I'm noticing that a lot of my income is going to Amazon, and it's a little scary. Like the other night, we were eating Amazon pizza, opening up an Amazon package, watching an Amazon movie, buying stuff from the Amazon website, and it just gets a little weird.
Drink in Amazon water.
Now, I kind of joke we weren't doing all those things at the same time, but it's kind of a reality in my house when I look around I'm like, there's a lot of Amazon, and when you factor in the Amazon Fresh, like their grocery service, if you're buying like their brand, it's called a Plenty, which is, by the way, fantastic. It's a really great brand. But it's just weird that you're eating like Amazon pizza. Like we had an Amazon Truffle mushroom pizza the other night and
it was delicious. But I'm sitting there like this is weird. But is it weird that I'm eating a Kroger pizza or a Walmart pizza? Which maybe I would need a Walmart pizza, But you know, like there's these different brands out there, all the companies, all the grocery stores have their own house brand. So what's the difference, you know, if I'm eating a Target pop tart, you know, versus a pop Tart pop tart, which probably is better, by the way, although I haven't had a pop tart in
many years. It's one of those things that I really really want. But I have to draw the line somewhere with like junk food, Like this morning, I had a pumpkin spice donut and it was fantastic. It was just so good, But you know, someone brought them into work and I ate it and I didn't even know it was pumpkin spice.
It just picked it out because it looked good and.
I took a bite and I'm like, oh, first pump can spice products or the season. It was delicious. But you know, again, I wouldn't have I would like to seek that out, but for health reasons. I would rather be presented with a donu and say, oh, how can I resist this, Dona?
I mean you brought them into work, thank you, So that's what I did. But at home, if.
I'm buying stuff, I'm trying to buy the healthier version of stuff, so which is why I don't have pop darts anyway. How does that have anything to do with Roku and Amazon? Let me remember so Amazon. Yeah, people might take, you know, take a problem or have a problem with the fact that it's Amazon, and they're like, I don't want to support Amazon. So that's fine, that's
within your right. What I like about Amazon is I think their firesticks are pretty good for the price, and the software is updated on a regular basis.
I like the presentation.
Amazon keeps trying to tweak their presentation because you know, Amazon is riding this fine line kind of like Roku. Of you know, they get paid for a lot of the placements on that screen, like whether it's an ad, whether it's a movie, whether it's a service, so they want to make it useful, but they also want to introduce stuff that you wouldn't typically see otherwise because they want you to click it and they want you to watch it. Same thing with Roku. Apple TV does not
do that. They don't have any sort of ads on the home screen, and it's very much like it. Once you set it up, if you never go in the app store again, you may never discover anything ever again on that thing. So it's just a different way of doing things. But I like the movie selection. I think the Amazon is fast. It's got Alexa or the A word built in, so if you need that a assistant that's built in, so if you're used to that, that's kind of cool.
I just like it.
That's my personal preference. I use a combination of Apple TV and fire TV. I do not actively have a Roku set up. I have in the past and it's fine. Throughout the pandemic, I had one set up and I was watching it every single day to monitor the newscast while I was on.
Air, and it was fine. I mean, it works.
The only thing I didn't like was that it didn't have a photo slide show. And I think that they have fixed that. I think we talked about it on this podcast that they fixed it. So, Bob, I can't make your decision for you, but I hope that those little differences help you make your own decision. Oh, speaking of Walmart, Walmart, if you are a Walmart Plus subscriber, this is sort of their answer to Amazon Prime. You probably want to activate this new perk. It's Paramount Plus.
So they're giving Walmart Plus subscribers Paramount Plus for free. Say that ten times fast. So Walmart Plus is, you know, like I said, their answer to Amazon Prime. It's ninety eight dollars a year or thirteen dollars a month, and a lot of people, by the way, pay for these things monthly. So I feel like, if you're thinking you're gonna stick with it, honestly, I just just try to pay it yearly because twelve ninety five a month.
Let's just do the math. So that's thirteen times twelve. Oh gosh, that's a lot of money.
More Okay, do not pay for Walmart plus month to month twelve ninety five a month or ninety eight dollars for the year. So if you're paying by the month, you are paying an extra fifty eight dollars a year. That's more than fifty percent. So I would not pay for this monthly. Now I know that Amazon also does a monthly plan and it's I think it's up to
is it fifteen dollars a month? Now fifteen dollars a month or one thirty nine a year, So if you're paying fifteen times twelve, that's eighty So it's thirty dollars more to pay it by month. So let's divide that by month or sorry, oneint eighty minus one thirty nine forty one dollars more. Okay, so it's not as big of a deal there, but it's still three dollars and forty one cents extra a month.
And that may not seem like a big.
Deal, but that's a third of Spotify, that's half of Hulu. I mean, you can put that money towards other things. So this is not a financial podcast. I'm not telling you how to run your financial life. But you know, if you're sticking with things in the long term, Like, for instance, I was paying for Google Cloud Storage by
the month. It was twenty five dollars a month for five terabytes, And the two hundred and fifty dollars was really scary because I was like, that's a lot of money all at once to pay in one fell swoop for this cloud stage. But I'm like, rich, you're paying this every month no matter what I get that two fifty is a lot scarier than twenty five, but you're wasting money every month, Like you're going to spend that money. You're going to spend a year with Google Cloud service,
So why are you doing this? And so I did. I ended up just you know, I ended up just paying for the two fifty and you know, I haven't looked back, and it's it's much better because you know, I don't want to do the math again and bore you with math on the show.
But it's a better deal. So anyway, ninety eight.
Dollars a year paramount plus you're getting the Essential plan, which is fifty They say it's fifty.
Nine dollars a year.
I'm not sure that's the case because paramount, I know you can prepay for the year and I think it's fifty. So realistically, no matter what, it's still a pretty good deal because you're paying ninety eight and you're getting a fifty dollars item right off the bat, So really you're paying forty eight dollars for this, So that's pretty good if if you need Paramount Plus, I wouldn't join Walmart Plus four Paramount Plus, But if you're thinking of it, you're like, Okay, well I get uh and what else
do you get? By the way, you get savings at the gas pump, and if you're filling up at Walmart, you get faster delivery, you get this grocery delivery service, and also six months free of Spotify, So there are some perks. I don't live near a Walmart, so it's tough for me to have a Walmart Plus subscription. I know that American expressed the Platinum card, which is very expensive, just added it, which.
Honestly, I don't you know.
I feel like that's like it's so weird to me because the AMEX Platinum has a credit for Equinox, which is the most expensive gym in your entire life, Like you don't even want to look up how much that gym costs you can't find anywhere online because they don't want to publish the prices because they're so expensive. It's like two hundred and something dollars a month for that gym. Yeah, I'm sure there's more expensive gyms, but it's it's insane. And I can say that because I was.
A member for a while.
Uh and you know much, you know for a while, and it's like, once you realize just how expensive that is, you're just like, Okay, never mind, I can't.
Yeah, it's a very nice gym, don't get me wrong. But on the one.
Side, you know, the Platinum card from Amex has an Equinox membership, you know, or an Equinox twenty five dollars a month credit. On the on the other side, they've got Walmart plus a free membership to that. So it's kind of weird. It's like it's like two extremes Walmart an Equinox. I don't see those two brands in the same place, but they're both. I I like them both. I mean, Equinox is amazing, and I personally I love Walmart. If I'm if I'm near a Walmart, I'm going in.
My wife she's always like ugh, do we have to. I'm like, yes, I love Walmart's. When you're in a Walmart, the price is going there's no fooling around.
The price you.
See is going to be the cheapest price for that item. It's just that's the way it is. That's the way it's always been. Whereas when you're in Target, and I love Target, but you can tell that they're playing with the prices. Some things are really expensive, some things are really cheap, some things are in the middle, some things are like a dollar or two more, so they.
They kind of fiddle with the prices a little bit more.
Whereas Walmart, no matter what you're getting, it's going to be the cheapest. And that's what I appreciate about it because they don't fool around, and I feel like they respect me with their pricing, and that's that's something that builds loyalty for me.
All Right, Janet says, good evening.
I have a question. I've always been an Android user. I have the Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. My grandson is trying to talk me into an iPhone. In your opinion, which is better? I take lots of pictures.
Thank you, Janet.
Oh Janet another million dollar question. Why is everyone asking me a million these these really really deep tech questions?
What's next? Mac versus PC? So here's the thing.
The Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra is an amazing phone. It's my favorite Android phone of the year. It is the best Android phone, yes, even over the pixel because the pixel is great, the software is amazing, but the full package leaves at a little bit to be desired.
Whereas the Samsung S twenty two Ultra.
My biggest downside is I just wish they made it in a handheld size. The S twenty two Ultra is so big that it's like I don't even want to put a screen protector in a case on it because it's like it's just gonna make it bigger. But I wish they would make this in a in different models like the iPhone this year came out in the iPhone thirteen Pro and Pro Max identical hardware specs. I mean,
minus the battery obviously, minus the screen size obviously. But you know, the cameras are the same, the processor is the same, everything's the same except the size. One of them is a lot easier to hold than the other. Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra is an amazing device, but they make you pick do you want the most amazing phone Samsung has to offer, or do you want a more pocketable phone, which is the S twenty two Plus or the S twenty two, which are not as good.
They're not the same phone.
It's not the same phone across the lineup, and so it's just one of those things that makes life just a little bit trickier. So, with all that said, do you get a new iPhone and switch from the S twenty two Ultra. So I don't really feel like you need to unless there's something that's lacking in your relationship
with this phone. So if everyone you text is a blue bubble and you feel like you're being left out and you feel like you want to be on that train and people are giving you a hard time, okay, maybe you want to switch. I hate that peer pressure, and so I don't think that's a good reason because that's sort of an Apple manufactured reason, And I don't think you should. You should, you know, I don't think that should make you go over to the other side.
Camera.
I think the camera on the S twenty two Ultra is excellent I think that the video on the iPhone is is a little bit better, maybe maybe even more better, maybe even a little bit better than better, Like I like to me, it's tough to trust any other video on any other phone, but this Samsung is excellent. The pictures, I would say, are both on par with each other.
I think that the iPhone is maybe a little bit easier sometimes because there's less features, But there are so many cool features about the S twenty two Ultra, like the customization. Everything that you're used to as an Android user. A lot of that stuff goes away when you're an iPhone user because iPhone you're not able to customize as much. So it's just the way the phone works and taking
pictures of let's see your grandson. So if you take a lot of pictures, it depends are you're taking pictures of people? Are you taking pictures of things? So I think that it sort of depends. It's just how do you feel. Do you feel like you're ready for something new? Do you feel like you want to stick with what
you got? You've got the newest, latest, greatest Android, so you're in a pretty good position if you feel like you're taking pictures and you know, fifty percent of them are not very good, then maybe you switch over and see what the deal is on the other side with the iPhone. But good question, Thanks for asking it, Janet.
All right, speaking of iOS, if you're using of VPN on iOS and I get a lot of questions about VPNs, you know, VPNs are basically small software applications that tunnel your Internet connection through them to hide your activity from other people, like anyone that might be on the line, which is pretty rare, but if you're on a Wi Fi network, perhaps that can happen. Or maybe you know you want to access a website and you don't want your ISP, your Internet service provider to see that. That
is how a VPN can protect you. And you know VPNs for work, they help you access your corporate servers from a regular consumer device. And the way that does that is that it kind of fakes the connection. Imagine you took a long Ethernet cable from your workplace and dragged it to your house, like, stretched it all the way to your house and then plugged it into your phone. That's basically what your work VPN does, except it does it wirelessly.
It kind of creates that secure.
One to one connection with your work computers that allow you to access things you can't access on the open web. And it's kind of the same thing with just websites. So if you're going to websites, nobody else can see what you're doing. Now the caveat is if you're using your corporate VPN, I would not use that for personal because your work can see everything that you do on there. So when it comes to a VPN, you want to choose one that is a no log VPN and don't
use the free ones. They're not very good as far
as many of the researchers have told me. So with all of that said, a security reacher has said that Apple's iOS devices don't really work that well when it comes to VPNs, So there could be a potential security issue because you would think when you activate the VPN, all of your connections would now go through that VPN, But it turns out, due to iOS architecture, some connections to apps and websites and things they sort of stay persistent and they aren't rerouted through the VPN when you
activate it, which is kind of a surprise. You would think that wouldn't happen. Oh, the solution apparently by the way, it's been going on since May twenty twenty. Solution and it's pretty effective, is that you want to open up your VPN, then you want to turn on airplane mode and then turn it off and then that should you know, like basically switch airplane mode on and off and that should help. Now here's the caveat to all this. Do not use the airplane mode that is in your control center.
So that's the one that you pull down from the upper right hand corner of your phone and then you press a little airplane icon.
If you do.
That, that does not necessarily turn off all of your connections because it typically leaves Bluetooth.
And Wi Fi on.
So that you can continue connecting the things. Depending on the situation, like if you're on an airplane, sometimes airplane mode will actually leave Wi Fi on or bluetooths that you can continue listening to your headphones or you can connect to the Wi Fi on the plane. So what you want to do is go into settings and once you go in the settings, you can activate airplane mode there and that actually turns off the Wi Fi. Oh well, it left Bluetooth on, so what do I know? Okay,
that's odd. So it left that's weird. So that's strange. Why would it do that? Why would it leave the bluetooth on? So I guess it turned off Wi Fi and cellular, which are the two important ones for the VPN. But that's what I would do if you're using a VPN as just kind of flip the airplane mode on and off, and that should give you a little bit more security. And it's not foolproof, but hopefully it should
be pretty effective. All right, let's see Octavio says, hey, Rich for iPhone thirteen, do we even need a phone protecting case anymore?
Have you seen their video? Yes?
I have, And I know that Apple came out with a commercial that is saying that the iPhone is super durable. I think it falls falls over and it you know, it's like this great thing, you know, falls off the table. But the reality is I still think that you need Look, I can't tell you what to do with your phone. I will tell you what I like.
And I like my.
Phone after a year of use to look like new and so for that reason, and I hate cracks on my phone. I hate scuffs on my phone. I don't want any of that stuff on my phone at all, because if I ever have a rough edge on my phone, what does my hand do all day on that edge?
It feels the rough edge I bought Oh my gosh, it was so long ago, but I bought the They used to come out with these oh gosh, I can't even remember what they called it, but it was like a basically a pixel version before it was called the
Pixel of the Samsung phones. And so they would come out with the Samsung but then I know, this is so wild to think about, but they would come out with another version that is it was completely a Google kind of you know, I think they call it ASoP, which it's just like the Android that is not affected, Like there's kind of the pixel as we know it like just a standard operating system where it's not you know,
there's nothing you know, flavored about it. You know, they don't put any software on it, they don't put any extra apps.
It's just like the Plaine Vanilla Android. Right.
And so I bought that phone one time from Samsung and it was like, you know, whatever it was back then, six hundred bucks and like literally day two, I'm putting it in my pocket, and then you know that little like that little gene like that little what's it like that little metal piece on your jeans, like on the pocket that I don't know what it does, like a mallet. I don't know what they call it, but it kind of holds your genes together. I guess it's like almost
like a giant ring kind of staple. I know there's a term for it. I just can't think of it. But I scratched the screen on there like the second day, and I was so annoyed because there's nothing I could do. I hadn't put on a screen protector, and it just like that was it, And so I ended up calling Samsung. I forget if I went through like some sort of I went through I think my credit card protection, which of course it was like sorry, no help there. It's
like whatever it was. Maybe I was out of my room. Maybe it wasn't day two, maybe it was day sixty.
I don't know, but it was. It just was annoying. And anyway, I tell you this because I like to put a screen protector on my phone.
I like to put a nice case on there because I think that these phones can last a long time. And I see a lot of people walking around with damaged screens and damaged cases on their phone, like damaged backs, and so you get that if you carry your phone naked, and yes, I get it. It feels great, it's beautiful. It's such a nice device. But why put yourself through all that stress of always worrying about dropping your phone or always worrying about cracking your phone.
I don't know, Maybe do the math. Maybe instead of buying.
A fifty dollars case, put that fifty bucks in a little envelope, and then you know, when you need a repair, just take that fifty dollars and put it towards it. And if you get if you're gonna get two cases over two years.
But the extra fifty bucks in the envelope. Again, I don't know.
Maybe most people have Apple Care and they just don't even care about this stuff. But I personally just like the phone to physically be nice and clean and and and just not messy, like not all you know, mucked up, And so it just feels nicer to have the case
on there. I'm using my phone in all kinds of different places, all kinds of different shoots and stuff, and it's just nice to know that if it drops or if it falls like yesterday, it fell to the gym and you know, you do that thing where it falls face first and you kind of lifted up slowly to see if the screen shattered, and it didn't.
But it's just I feel better that way.
So all right, what should we talk about next.
Let's talk about the Jamba robot.
So I went to Jamba, or I went to UCLA at their campus in West Los Angeles, and there's this Jamba robot. So it's actually a company called Blended b L E N D I D. This is a startup that is making a SMOOTHI robot. Now they're actually making just food like AI food robots, but I guess this is one of them, or maybe their first I don't know, but anyway, this is our flagship product. But it's a self contained, fully automated kiosk. It requires just like eight
by eight to operate, so it's a small area. It holds up to twenty ingredients, and it just requires a few hours of restocking a day. So they someone told me there that they only need two hours a day kind of to get this thing up and running in the morning and just make sure it's maintained obviously there's someone nearby in case something goes wrong, Like I'm talking a person nearby for all of the locations, not like just sitting there by the smoothie. This is like or
buy the machine. This is self contained. I'm sure if something goes wrong it would text someone to come over. The robot uses artificial intelligence and hardware to fulfill orders on demand. You can order a phone or a tablet on the kiosk. You can slide to customize your ingredients. You can choose your ad ins, like if you want
like the energy powder or the protein powder. The robot has nine cameras so it can see the ingredients, and the mechanical arm works on multiple smoothies at once, so it can work on nine smoothies at the same time. It also, you know, puts some of them under the spencers. It's washing other ones, it's serving other ones. I mean, it's pretty wild to watch this thing. And when it's not in use, it makes a little dance, which is kind of cool. The only thing I thought was really
kind of ironic about this whole situation. And by the way, there was so many students. I mean, this thing was busy the entire time I was at it. There was not a moment. There was one moment where it was had some downtime. That's when it did the little celebration dance. But I'm not kidding. It was a steady flow of students and they weren't even classesn't even in session yet. These are just like summer school students and campers and.
Stuff like that.
So I thought that this was pretty wild because the ironic part is that the blending actually takes place out of view. And I asked one of the employees and I was like, what's the deal with that, because wouldn't that be the most fun to see the smoothies being you know, sort of swirled up. And he said, well, it's kind of the messiest part of the process. We'd rather keep it out of sight. So I don't know,
I think that's a little bit of a misstep. Like I think that the blending is actually the best part. But whatever, I mean, it's not my robot. So they've got a half a dozen of these robots operating at college campuses, malls, and even a Walmart. And then they also have this cool little feature at the end where
they've got these magnetic sliders it's tough to describe. But when the robot is done pouring the drink, instead of the robot sort of sliding the drink, they have these two pickup windows because the whole thing is enclosed in like a plexiglass.
So they have these two pickup windows.
And you know, they rotate kind of like a bank teller window that rotates open and closed. But it slides the smoothie into this pickup window. But it's not the robot arm that's doing it. It's two little like magnetic sliders on the table that they remind me of. I think it's called thing from the Adams family, you know, a little hand. It almost reminds me of that because it's just moving the cup by itself. And it was anyway, it was really cool. So this smoothie robot, I get it.
It sort of went a little bit wild on my Instagram because people are saying this is you know, this is evil, this is terrible, Like what about jobs for people?
And you know, I get it.
I mean I understand that we're seeing a lot of automation in food and every person I talk to says people don't want these jobs. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I can tell you just from me going out and about that every restaurant I go to has a help wanted sign and I asked them, they say, yeah, we can't. We can't hire people for
these positions. Nobody wants to do it. And it's I don't know if nobody wants to do it, but it's just one of these things where you know, in California, they're paying more and more for these, you know, entry level jobs at restaurants, but you see that they just still need people. And so a lot of these companies are focused on how do we get around this this employee labor shortage and make these things at a price that's reasonable.
Now.
I think some of it is sort of they see the writing on the wall. They want, they want things to be They want costs to go down, and humans are expensive and a robot's expensive initially, but over time I think it brings a lot of the costs down because, like the person we interviewed said, there's no sick days, there's no bad hair days. They can get into little
spaces that they couldn't. So if a location they want only has a tiny little space, they can get in there because this is such a small eight by eight box, so I thought it was pretty cool. You can let me know what you think of it on my website or on my Instagram. It is at rich on Tech. All right, final question, Kim Peterson says, Hey, rich thanks
for your post about Disney Plus and Hulu bundles. Let's see I lost my question and Hulu ESPN bundles, so I'm wondering if you know of any bundles with just Disney Plus and Hulu, no ESPN.
I do not watch sports. Thank you, Kim. Kim, great question. I think you're referring to.
Last week because they had, you know, they had a whole situation where Disney is raising prices and so is Hulu and you know whatever. So I don't want to rehash that whole thing. But the bottom line is Disney prices are going up, and I think Hulu and ESPN have.
Either gone up or they're going up, but the bundle is not.
So the bundle is staying at nineteen ninety nine a month, and I think this is one of those examples of really good marketing a manufactured issue. So they're making all the prices go up of the individual services, which when you do the math, if you add them up, you're like, hmm, shouldn't I just get all three and I'll pay either a little bit more or you know, a little bit less than I'm paying for them separately. Well, the reality
is yet, like you said, you don't need ESPN. And this sort of reminds me of the triple play that the cable companies did for a very long time. So many many people, yourself included, might have had a phone line for many years that you just didn't need. But it was cheaper to have the bundle with the phone line than it was to have the bundle with just
Internet and TV. And nowadays the Internet is the most important thing to many people, and so it's almost gotten to the point where the Internet is almost as expensive by itself as it was with the Internet and TV as it was with the internet, TV and phone line. So Disney knows this all. Look like I said in the last week's episode, the free ride is over these streaming services, the delivery services. They are not subsidizing our
lifestyle and convenience anymore. It's gotten real. They've gotten to a point where the saturation is there. They know the customer base is there. They know people like their shows, they've gotten accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and they just said, you know what, this is what we're doing. We're going to raise the prices because we know that people are
gonna do this. We know that people are gonna stick with it, and if a couple of them don't, it's fine because they know there's gonna be more people on board. Because what's the alternative, and you know it's the alternative to Netflix is no Netflix?
So what are you gonna do?
You're gonna subscribe to cable Again, Probably not so good question, and it's definitely one of those frustrating things where it's just do you need it? No, but you have it, and then you feel like you got to use it.
That's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
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social media. I am at Rich on tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is Rich dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I'll talk to you real soon.