Instagram location warning breaks the Internet

what a week. What a week? Not necessarily for tech news, although we did get the iPhone fourteen announcement, not the announcement, but the announcement before the announcement, which still gets a lot of announcements because people love iPhone news. But there's so much going on this week. All right. First off, let me just talk about this Instagram precise location thing, because oh my gosh, I have never seen something go so viral so fast. That is so not true. Hold on,

let me get a like, what in the world. It's just it's amazing to me. I actually I am actually losing faith in our system of informing people because it is getting broken. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. But how does a random post go viral? And I'm not kidding. I got no less than you know, several under a dozen messages about this post. People were just going nuts about it, asking me if it's true, asking me what the deal is with it. Let me tell you what the post says. Okay,

so the post said, please read. If you have an iPhone, listen up. After a recent iOS update, people can now find your exact location from Instagram. For example, if you put the location tag of Salt Lake City, it will show your exact location versus a general location. There are allegedly stalkers and criminals using this feature to find people and break into homes and cars. Now is this rooted in truth? Yes? I think as many half truths are, there is a little bit of truth to them which

makes them believable. So if people went into their Instagram location on iPhone, they saw lo and behold, precise location was turned on. Does that mean that Instagram is sharing your precise location? No, it does not. It means that when you breezed past the location permissions when you installed Instagram, you didn't really notice that there was an option to toggle precise location versus non precise location on or off. But here's how Instagram shares your location anyhow. Number One,

they don't really share exact locations on Instagram. They used to on Twitter. I'm not even sure they do it on Twitter anymore. But I was a big advocate of saying do not share your exact location on Twitter. I think there's a lot of pros to that, especially when there's an event happening and you're trying to tell people exactly where it's happening. But on Instagram, you're tagging food, you're tagging vacation spots, you're tagging various places. Do people

need to know exact location GPS coordinates of where you are? No? Do they need to know that you're at a restaurant that you like. Sure, if you want to tag that restaurant. The way that it works on Instagram, when you post something, it says tag location, and it gives you a choice of locations. Now, even if you pick the most basic choice, let's say Los Angeles, it still does not reveal the exact coordinates of where you are in Los Angeles, even

if you clicked it. If a person viewing your post tapped the location, it would show them a generalized Los Angeles location, not even in the area you're in, really the downtown of the city that you tagged. So that's the way Instagram works. Now. Instagram came out on a post on Twitter and they said, we've seen the meme going around about how Instagram uses quote precise location. To be clear, we don't share your location with others similar

to other social media companies. We use precise location for things like location tags and map features. People can manage location services via their device settings and tag locations on their posts if they want to share that information. And even when you're sharing that information, it's not the precise location. But in general, like I mentioned, there's always some sort of lesson to be learned from this, and the lesson here is that you need to be careful when you're

sharing your location. And on the flip side, these companies do want access to your precise location because guess what, it helps them sell more stuff, It helps them target ads towards you. So does Instagram want everyone in the world to turn off their precise location? Not really. If a lot of people do, sure, they've already been hammered by the way by Apple's you know tracking situation where

they kind of turned off the cross tracking. So these companies are all trying to figure out new ways of doing business, and by us protecting our privacy, that definitely it challenges them a little bit more because they have to figure out, Okay, we've got less information about this individual, how do we still sell them stuff and how do

we still make a good profit? Are actually have our targeting systems still at a very high level that we can sell them stuff that we think that they're going to buy, and that way advertisers want to sell that.

So anyway, if you want to look into your location on whether it's you know, whether it's Instagram or sorry, whether it's Instagram or iOS or Android or anything that you've got on iOS, you can go into settings, you can go into Privacy Location Services, and you can check the location settings for any of your apps, and in general, when you're installing an app for the first time, you can say you don't want to give access to your

precise location. There's a little map that pops up and it says, do you want precise or do you not want precise? Now, an android's a little clearer because they have a choice where you tap and it says you know exact location or not exact location, but you can

check again. You can press and hold down an app and then go into the little eye and then tap permissions and then tap location and you will see so on Instagram on Android, I've got allow only while using the app, you can say ask every time, don't allow, and then use precise location. You can toggle that on or off, and so you can rinse and repeat for

all of your various apps. But to just be able to post something, and since you have a lot of followers and goes viral, it's really kind of scary the information that gets out there so quickly, and there's no turning back. Once people hear this, they read the headline and that's it that they do no more research. And now they think that Instagram is spying on their precise location and stalkers can use it to find them. And again again I'm not downplaying how vigilant we need to

be about protecting our privacy online. If I had my way, you would never share your location. You would never share where you are, you would never share a picture of your kids, you would never share anything in a public manner, but we don't live in that world anymore. That has all gone to the wayside, and so just just be aware of how you're sharing, what you're sharing, and the implications of what you're sharing. And I think that's the most important thing you could do. All right, let's get

to the first question of the podcast. Randy says, thanks for your info and knowledge in advance. I always joint benefit from the segments you do on KTLA. Yesterday I bought a car for the first time driver in the family. I'd love to say that I have one hundred percent confidence in the fact that all rules will be followed, but I live in the real world. Oftentimes my daughter's iPhone battery in quotes dies explaining why her location on the Find My app cannot be found. So there are

many different GPS tracking devices out there. Most require a monthly subscription, some covering the first year with purchase. Have you done a segment on these? I'd love to get your opinion on which ones offer the best value, features and performance. Thanks for your time, best Randy. All Right, So, Randy, a couple of options here, and yes, I get it. It's it's a game of cat and mouse when it comes to these GPS trackers. The kids are always trying to get around it. When I was a kid, I mean,

there was no such thing as tracking. There was no such thing as you know, even at the beginning of my driving there was There's cell phones were just sort of starting, and I did have one, but you know, it was like a dollar a minute or something. She didn't really use it, and there's no way your parents can tap into to the GPS on that phone. So we've come a long way where we expect to know someone's location, especially of family members twenty four to seven.

It's just kind of how it is. And even our close friends. There's a lot of friends that share their location with other friends in a real time basis. So I understand why you want to keep an eye on your daughter in this manner, for safety and for other reasons. So a couple of ways you can do this. Number One, the air tag is probably the easiest and the cheapest, but it's not GPS. It will only get a location

lock when there's some sort of iOS or Apple device nearby. Thankfully, there's a lot of iOS and Apple devices nearby, so you probably will get a pretty good reading most of the time may not be exact, but it'll probably give you a pretty good indication of where your daughter is. So that's the easiest. The cheapest you pop the tracker in the car, you kind of forget about it and there you go. It's not real time and it may

not be updated. That's the downside. So if you want something that's real time and always updated, I would look into something like a dedicated tre and T mobile has something called the sync Up. I have not tested these, and so I can't tell you how great it is, but it it is basically exactly what you're wanting. And the beauty of this is that it's plugged into your car. It's always on, it gets a GPS signal, it's got cellular so it's it's a very easy solution that was

pretty much made with what you want in mind. And you know, it also does things like track driving behavior and all kinds of other things. It plugs into the I don't know what it's called. It's like the OBD M port or whatever it is on your car. I used to know what this thing was called. But you got to plug it into your car, and that's basically it it's ten dollars. Let's see how much is it? Ten dollars a month for the service, and then you have to pay for the actual device. This is called

sync up Drive and again this from T Mobile. You need a subscription from T Mobile, so it's a little bit of a you know, you got to be a customer there, and then you can pay in full. It's one hundred and eight dollars if you pay for this thing in full, or you can do free if you add a line. So if you're adding this to your T Mobile account, it's actually a free device. You just have to pay for the monthly which is ten dollars.

So that's one way to do it. Let's see. The other way to do it is I haven't tested this yet, but I do have it in for testing. And this is brand new. This is a gadget from log Logie Stemistics, Loistical Logistomatics, Logistimatics there it is Logistomatics. It's the car charger GPS tracker with live audio monitoring. So this tracker

plugs into your vehicle's charging port. You can hear audio from inside the vehicle with a live audio feature and it tracks the location and it updates every four hundred meters while the vehicle is in motion. So again, this is probably not going to work if your car is turned off because this plugs into your charging port. So many cars the charging port, you know, the cigarette lighter as we've called it in the past, that turns off

when the car turns off. So this will only work and get an update when the car is in motion and when the car is powered. Seventy bucks I believe it's for the device, and then fifteen dollars a month for the actual service. But these are all going to be solutions that you can use. The other thing you can look into is a geobit tracker geobit jiob it. We did interview this company. They were recently purchased by

oh gosh, was it Life three sixty. Yeah, they were purchased by Life three sixty, so they've got a big company behind them. You can just clip this to your car inside the car, and that's going to be a real time GPS device as well. So a lot of options. I think that one of these should work. This has a monthly fee as well, but there are so many ways to do this. I think that you've got plenty of options to help track your daughter and you know, have a conversation with her why you want to do this.

I don't really think that parents should be secretly tracking their kids, you know. I think that it's it's better to have a conversation and explain so that way everyone's kind of upfront about this, and it's it's out of love. You want to make sure that if something ever happened, you'd be able to find where she is. So there you have it, all right, let's talk about the fold. So Amazon Samsung's Flip and Fold are on sale now,

and I've been testing both phones. I tested the Flip, which is the smaller of the two, and it's great. It's a great little phone. It's fun if you want to kind of tiptoe into the whole foldable world. It's not the most high powered phone out there, but it's fun. It's different. It's like having a regular phone, except at folds in half people will ask, oh, wow, what are you doing with that thing? Like what's going on there? And you'll have plenty of conversations over the next year.

So can I one recommend it to replace your phone that you have if you're in love with it? No, but if you want to try something new and you don't mind being on the cutting edge, it is a really cool phone. I think that I think that Samsung has addressed many of the shortcomings, except for the camera. I mean, the camera's still not as good as like the best cameras out there. But if you just want something that's fun and you know, usable on a daily basis and it folds up and it's kind of cool,

then there you go. And it's a pretty decent price point as well. Now the other phone I've really been trying to test by By Really, I've been hesitant in years past to even hold this thing for more than a day or two because I'm like, ah, that's just not for me. That's the fold four and that's the one that folds in half, so the flip flips up and down like an old school flip phone. The fold folds in half like a greeting card that you would

give someone. And this phone has the bigger screen on the outside, the giant screen on the inside, and look, it is a really amazing device. And the more I use it, the more I actually fell in love with

it. It's just I struggle because it's it's just a there's a lot of things that you give up to get that foldable, giant inside screen, and so what you're giving up is mainly the outside screen that you have to do most of your stuff on when you're just casually checking email and Twitter and Instagram and all those things, is just really narrow and it's a little bit tricky

to type on. It's a little bit smaller than we've gotten used to with our big screen phones, and you know, and then when it comes to taking pictures, the cameras are good. They're not the best, but you know, you can use the rear cameras to take your selfies, which

is kind of cool. But also, you're touching a lot of screen on this phone all the same time, so you're always like kind of messing up the screen by going into a menu or an app or something that you didn't want to because you're always sort of touching a screen no matter how you're holding this thing. So otherwise, I actually like it. I think I'm gonna take it on a flight to kind of see what it feels like to actually have like a little cool tablet that's

your phone. I love the fact that you can fold it up. That's kind of fun. I've noticed some quirks, Like I was listen to Spotify the other day in that mode where the phone is sort of flipped a folded in half, like a half fold, and so it can rest on your desk, and then you can have like half the screen facing up. Half the screen is resting on your desk. I was listening to Spotify and then I got a text and it was like a whole big thing to like it flipped into like a

different landscape versus portrait. So there's a lot of like little things. Multitasking is really cool on it. The battery life has been pretty good. I mean it's not the best, but you know, Samsung's charge up so fast now if you have a good charger that it doesn't really matter about the battery life, You're gonna get through what you need to do. It's just you may have to recharge

at some point during the day. What else. It's a little heavy, it's a little bulky, but I actually like the form factor when it's closed because it's really narrow, which is kind of nice and refreshing compared to all these big phones I test all the time. Let's see, it's expensive, it's eighteen hundred dollars, so it's not for everyone. Clearly, Samsung has a lot of promotions out there to bring the price down and in line with one thing more

people want to pay. Maybe you're not going to get this one really down unless you have a very new phone to trade in. The software is good, it's fast, the little taskbar at the bottom is really handy, and it's it's just a lot. I mean, there's a lot going on on this phone. So this is not something I can recommend for the average person. This is for someone who travels a lot, is maybe not so much doing a lot of content creation, but is doing a

lot of productivity. So I think there's a difference there. Like I feel like I fall on the content creator side more because I'm always recording and editing videos for my phone and doing all kinds of like little you know, Canva, dot com and all that kind of stuff. Whereas if you're like more a business person checking email, sending texts and then watching videos on your phone listening to music, I think this will be just fine. I use it at the gym to do a peloton workout where I

had the you know, the instructor on the screen. It was nice and big and so awesome, So that was a cool. Another use of it. The also the earbuds that Samsung released this year, the Galaxy Buds Too Pro or Galaxy Buds pro to, whatever they're called. They are fantastic. I should know what they're called. What are they called? Let me let me get the name of what they're called, so you don't think, Rich I'm listening to and you're recommending this stuff and you don't even know what they're called.

Galaxy Buds to Pro. They are absolutely fantastic. I really really like them. The noise cancelation is amazing, the just the rubbery feel of them is really great. The case is great, the battery lasts, they sound awesome. I can't recommend them highly enough. They're expensive. I think they're two twenty nine retail, but of course again you can get

them for cheaper. But I will say I think this year twenty twenty two is the year that Samsung really hit its stride with all of their phones, every single one of them. They did a knock it out of the park job. Now I think next year, hopefully barring any weird changes or things or setbacks that they do,

I think those phones are gonna be near perfect. The foldables are getting to the point where they are really really compelling, and so I think it's just the work they've done in this area is really cool, and the ecosystem is getting to the point where if you want Samsung, and you want everything Samsung, from the you know, the earbuds to the watch to the phone, you are in a very good place at this point. So good job

Samsung if you get one of these phones. Let me know, most people like get them, really love them, and I think it's a part that they are adopting something new and so they're in their mind they're like, all right, I'm doing this. I'm gonna try this out the foldable. The foldables, like if the flip had just a little bit of a better camera, I think that would be something I would consider switching to, because I love the convenience factor the fold I love it, love it, love it.

But I just don't think it's for me, unfortunately, Because I just really really think this is so cool and it's great and I love the cutting edge nature of it, I'm just not sure I'm ready to dive in. And so we'll see, But I have I will say, I've really really been enjoying Samsung software lately. You know, I love the pixel but the software is great, but the

rest of the package is kind of like eh. Whereas the Samsung's they've really come up in the world when it comes to like they're getting software updates, they're getting the features you want. There's so many little features built in. It just makes you feel like you are in command of that phone and you can make it act the way you want it to act. So there you have it, all right, Let's get to another question. Hey, Rich, I have a Visio TV that's less than five years old.

I've always had a problem with the streaming apps. The playback is very buggy, with video audios starting, stopping erratically, and occasionally locking up for thirty seconds or more at a time. Some days it works just fine. I've had zero luck identifying any cause for the problems. Issues occur when it's on Wi Fi as well as wired internet. Wow, that's surprising. And even when no one else is in the home and the internet using the internet at all.

We have an expensive two hundred and fifty megabits per second Internet plan, so I don't believe that's the problem. This is driving me batty, especially more as more and more of our TV time utilizes these streaming services. So here's my question. Do I buy a new smart TV thinking it's just a problem with this unit, or is it time to move to something like a fire stick? Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Jennifer in Laguna Hills, Jennifer,

Laguna Hills. Wasn't that the TV show? Didn't they have that? Was that? It? Yeah? Laguna? Oh maybe it was Laguna Beach? What was it? Or maybe it was The Hills. What was the show on MTV? Let's see MTV. Yes, it was called Laguna Beach. There was The Hills and Laguna Beach. Maybe the Laguna Beach was a spin off. Oh my gosh, I'm really dating myself. How old was this? Two thousand? Oh my gosh, two thousand and four to two thousand

and six. Oh my gosh. This like got me through my small markets when I was working in like little cities like Shreveport, Louisiana, or maybe I was in New York at the time, but it just watching shows about La was like a crutch of mine because I just like, oh, I want to be back there. But they always make these shows look so good. I mean, they really do. Like LA never looks so good except in these shows where they they shoot the sunset at the right moment.

And don't get me wrong, LA is a beautiful place, but they really hype it up in these TV shows and they get it at the they catch it at the exact moment that when you see it at that moment, you think it's awesome. So okay, so let's see, let's see, let's see. Let's uh, let's what am I talking about? This visio stuff? All right? So I digress on this show so often? All right, So the TV's five years old,

I'm I'm. I think it's odd that this is happening, and I think it's especially odd that is happening on both your wired internet and on your Wi Fi. So I that's so odd, And I don't think it should be happening, because if you're wired, there should be no audio video issues at all. The only thing I can think of is that it's the TV itself and it's just a laggy TV because it's just not very high powered. Now it is five years old or less, you said, so I'm guessing you know four to five years old,

and I can't say I have a smart TV. I do have a smart TV that's that old a Visio actually, so I should try this and see. But I never use the smart side of it. And this is why I'm a fan of picking your TV and then you know, sort of getting one of these sticks to put in there. I think, you know, if you get a Roku TV, it's built in. If you get a fire TV, it's built in. But I mean, I think that number one,

I don't recommend getting a new TV just yet. I mean, you can solve this problem for thirty five dollars potentially. So what I'd recommend, like you said, get the fire stick, plug it in, set it up, set up your streaming apps, and see if it happens. If it doesn't happen, and fine, you just bought yourself a couple more years with this TV. If it does happen, then I would say, it's probably a problem with your Wi Fi. And if it's a problem with your Wi Fi, then I think you need

to look into what's going on on your network. Is there a some sort of bottleneck on your network? Is there some sort of interference on your network? Move your router to a new place, or maybe reset your entire router, reset your cable internet box, whatever you want to do to get everything sort of back to square one to see what's going on. If you're not having problems with

ther other devices, then that's probably not the issue. But yes, get the fire stick, try it out, see what happens, and I think that you know, you'll get a new lease on your streaming life. So this is why I like these streaming sticks, because they're upgradeable very easily. I mean, I've got a TV that's, you know, pretty old too. Both of my TVs are pretty old, and I use an Apple TV on one of them, a Firestick on another, and then an Apple TV on another one, and they're great.

And I also have a I had a Roku setup and you know, just for testing. And you know, every one of these platforms has their pros and cons. But what I like about them is whether you go Apple, fire or Roku, they're all going to be updated regularly.

So this video TV, it has its own platform. I think it's like smart cast or something, which is fine, and a lot of people have videos, but let's be real, when people talk about streaming services sticks they talk are streaming boxes, they're talking about Roku, they're talking about Fire, and they're talking about Apple and sometimes Chrome cast. So Visio is in there, but it's just kind of a distant in there. And so yeah, they're updating apps and

they're adding apps and they're adding features. But realistically, these main platforms are going to be updated with the best software and the fastest. So try it out, Jennifer, let me know what you think and hopefully you get your No. One wants to be buffering when you're watching stuff. That's not fun at all. All right, let's talk. Wow, we're this far in the show and we haven't even talked about the iPhone. So iPhone fourteen event is confirmed for

September seventh. I got an invite to the event, which is happening at the Coopertino campus, which is cool. I don't know what the format is gonna be. Last time we went up there for WWDC it was outside. Oh okay. Well, according to nine to five Mac, they say the in person component will take place in the Steve Jobs Theater.

There you go, okay, so huh interesting. So with that said, it sounds like we're getting back to a slightly standardized Apple event, which typically you go in there, you sit in the Steve Jobs Theater, live on stage, they demo all the stuff. I don't know if that's gonna be happening or if this is still gonna be taped, but and then and then they let all the journalists out into an area that has a hands on area where it's kind of a free for all where you go

hands on with all the new devices. They're just, oh, my gosh, so many people fighting for not fighting and for real, but just like trying to get their hands on these devices so that they can be among the first to tweet them out and get their coverage for TV and radio and all this other stuff. That's what the lineup is. So iPhone fourteen, we're expecting a couple

of new models. The tagline for the event was is I should say is far out And it showed sort of an Apple logo swirling around made of stars or in the space. So this has led people to speculate what the new iPhone will have as a feature, and some people have said it's going to be a zoom lens. Some people are bigger zoom. Some people have said it's going to be astrophotography. Some people have said it's going to be more megapixels, so we don't know, and we

never know until it actually happens. There's so many rumors, there are a dime a dozen, but the reality is, I think at this point all you need to know is that the iPhone event is happening on September seventh. If you're thinking about buying a phone, maybe wait until then because prices do change, or you can kind of get the full scope of what your availability and what your offers are. And also, you know, we should see a new Apple Watch, maybe some new iPads, maybe some

new MacBooks. You just never know, but typically this event is reserved for the iPhone and Apple Watch. And so that's what I expect to see the iPhones this year. And I don't want to get into too many rumors because there's just so many of them and I don't really care about them until I hear until I see

it for myself. But the rumor mill says that the lower model phones, the iPhone fourteen, will keep the same processor as a thirteen and maybe get a little bit of improvements here and there, but the iPhone fourteen pros will be the ones that get a much better processor, much better camera. So we will see and I think and the iPhone Mini is going to be dead, so we'll see what happens during this event. But again it's

happening September seventh, the expected on sale date. And again this is a rumor is that the iPhone fourteen would go on sale in September fourteenth, which makes sense. It's a Friday, it's the fourteenth, it's the same day as the model number, so that all makes a lot of sense. Stay tuned. I will be there at the Apple event to bring you all of the updates. All right, next question here, uh Roger, Let's see this doesn't look like

a question, more like just a mention. Hey, Rich, I wrote to you for your recommendations to replace the iPod and iTunes. Well, most of the candidates were basically the same, so I went with a Sony Walkman NW one five A for two main reasons nostalgia, the og of portable cassette players, and the cool cassette tape screen saver. Since again for my usage, all offered basically what I need. Yes, it takes some time to get used to and how to operate it, but so far I'm successful in purchasing

and downloading songs. I need to see how to burn CDs then tran for it to the Walkman. I see it's similar to a file directory and a PC. Just drag and drop. Anyway, I just wanted to get back to you since you were so kind and gave me a list of your replacement choices. Thank you and see you on the tube. All right, Well this is an interesting uh, Roger, this is an interesting choice. So the player that you got is three hundred dollars, which is expensive.

It's it's basically all screen on the front. It's a small uh that's cool. It does have a tape screen saver, which is cool. It's a Sony Walkman. But the new Walkman has a micro SD card on it. And this is for the person who I guess does not have an iPhone, does not want an iPhone, does not want to use their Android device as a music player. You want a dedicated MP three player, and there could be a lot of reasons for that. I'm not sure what you need this for or why you wanted it, but

I can't remember the original email. But you're right, it's just a dragon drop and so I get a lot of emails from people saying, rich, how do I get my songs off of the iPod? I've got an old iPod sitting around? How do I get my songs off? I can't seem to find a way. And the answer is, there's not an easy way. Apple made these devices one way for some reason, and I don't know if that was for you know, file sharing or copying or you know, what's the term the DC what is it copyright stuff?

I don't know why did they do that. I'm not sure, but they did. And so yes, there's some apps that will help you, you know, crack into these things and liberate your music. But you know, something like the Walkman that you have, it's just a simple drag and drop one way or the other. You can drag it on, you can drag it off, you can delete, you can do whatever you want. And there are some apps that let you do this with the iPhone. They're not as

there's still one way. But an app I really like that is super simple is called Walter w A L w A W hold on, let me find exactly how it's spelled. W A l t R w A l t R Walter Pro And what's cool about this app from soft a Reno is that you can drag and drop pretty much any file onto an iPhone or an iPad and it will put it in its place where it needs to go. So whether it's an MP three file, I mean really the other thing is any format. So this the formats that this works with is pretty pretty amazing.

Let's see, do they have a list of formats that they that it works with. It will, It will transform it into a the proper format and put it right into the app that it needs to go in. So if it needs to go into Apple Music, if it needs to go into Photos, if it needs to go into you know whatever, it will go there. So it's kind of a cool little app. Highly highly recommend it. Oh interesting, it's on the Oh wow, Okay, that's anyway. So they have a lot of little things that they

can do. And they also have a new free app called files by Walter, Simple File Manager for your iPhone to quickly drop and share files across any iOS app with I message app built in. That's really cool. So I think that this is something that anyway, if you it's not going to get the stuff off, but it's going to help you easily get stuff on because I know they changed the way that iTunes works and so it's a little bit different these days and it's not as supported. So this is a super simple way to

drag stuff onto your iPhone. And it sounds like Roger. You don't need this because you are on the Walkmanded the Walkman Bandwagon. Once again. It's kind of fun, it's different, and this is you know, there's a lot of different folks out there, a lot of different ways to do things, and you found a different way. So good for you. All right, let's talk about fibit. Fipbit has a new fall lineup. They've got three new products that are coming out.

I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time because these are sort of, you know, iterations on what's already working. If you like the fitbit, everyone's waiting for sort of the pixel watch, and they're also waiting for when Fitbit becomes you know, just gobbled up by Apple and just are gobbled up by Google completely and they start just making these like Google devices. So right now

they're still kind of keeping that fitbit world. There haven't there hasn't been a huge takeover in software by Google, but I'm sure there's a little bits of Google blended in just taking a look at these. There's three. There's the Inspire three, which is sort of the cheapest band that I think most people will buy. It's basically the classic fitbit tracker, but with a lot of features. Now, I mean, this thing's a hundred bucks and you get

so much stuff. You you know, can track your activities, you get ten days of battery life, there's all kinds of metrics that it'll it'll track. There's no GPS on board, but it's simple. It's easy. If you're just trying to track your steps, your basic activity, it's going to be perfect. Then you move up to the Versa four and the Sense too. The Versa is kind of like they're middle of the ground device. It looks like an Apple y, maybe not as expensive and not as full featured, but

it's fitness focused. It's got forty exercise modes, real time stats, the GPS is built in, Active Zone minutes is built in. You get six days of battery life. It's thinner and it's lighter. And the new wristbands that they have on these things, I mean, they really took a page from Apple, and they look identical to the Apple wristband, So I mean,

you know, people like to copy a good thing. The Apple wristbands when those came out were just brilliant, and now we're getting to see those on the fitbits as well. The Sense too is the most advanced. This is basically a health focused smart watch. This has more than six days of battery life, helps you manage stress, which I think is pretty cool. It tracks your heart rate health with sensors that can detect a fib It's got heart rate variability, which is good. If your heart rate goes

really high or really low, it'll notify you. It's got skin temperature which is really neat and rumored to be in the Apple Watch or the new one. And it measures your stress all day long. So that's kind of cool. Now, what about the prices on these things? So I mentioned the first one is the Inspire threes one hundred bucks, the Versa four. Let's see how much this one is. Versa four is two hundred and thirty dollars and the

Cents two is three hundred dollars. And they all include that six month premium membership you know the name of the game. These days is all about subscriptions, so you do have to pay for a subscription eventually if you want the premium stuff, which you probably will break down and do. But again, these are an option if you don't want an Apple Watch. I think these look pretty great. I like the idea of these. I like them as an alternative to the Apple Watch if you have an

Android device. I think that the pixel Watch is going to be good, and I know a lot of people are waiting for that, but I'm not sure, and I don't know. Maybe it'll be better than the fitbits, but I think Fipbit has been doing their thing for a very long time. People are used to the Fitbit, and so I think that these have evolved over the years to be exactly what people need when it comes to just basic fitness trackers and also a little bit more. And so the pixel Watches is more of a smart

watch versus these. These are sort of more fitness focused first and then they also do some smart things. But we'll say, lots of options for people. Whether you get a Fitbit, whether you get the Samsung Watches, whether you get the new upcoming pixel Watch, or the Apple Watch, which is sort of the og and still I think is one of the better things out there. But there's so many options that I think whatever's best for you and you're happy with, that's what you need. All right.

Let's get to the next question, and this one Carol says, Rich, do you know if any of the new fitbits with heart rate monitor can sync with the fitbit dashboard on PC? And so that question goes right into the last thing that I just talked about. And let's see what I found this article from nine to five. I wasn't familiar with this app, this desktop app that Carol was talking about, but I assumed because most of the companies are getting away from desktop apps. It's not very often that we

see desktop apps anymore. Most of the companies put their effort into web apps, and that's kind of the reality. Even on my computer, there's no Google Photos app. I have a what's called a Progressive web app a PWA that is installed on my computer. But it's it's basically when you click it, it just opens up a web browser into the Google Photos app. And I've got the same thing for Outlook. So I think it's easy, it's simple, there's less installation on your computer. And because so many

people use chromebooks anyway. A lot of those are similar, like you can do you can do so much on your on the web these days, like all these you know, nobody downloads like a photo editing program anymore. They just use Canva or they use you know, something on the way web that helps them edit or trim or do

something to their picture or crop it whatever. On our phones, you know, it's the opposite because the iPhone has made the apps so prevalent, we haven't seen as many of these web apps take place on the iPhone now on Android for a little bit there, we saw that trend where you know, oh, you can do anything with the web apps on the iPhone on the Android. But yeah, Android's the same way. They it's all about apps on the phone, so phone apps desktop more about the web

and what you can do on the web. So when I saw this, I was like, I don't really think that they're probably gonna continue with the fippit app for the desktop, And sure enough nine to five Google says fippit is removing the Mac and PC sinking and transfer music this year. Looks like it is going away. On October thirteenth, twenty twenty two, so you have a little bit of time to do this. But otherwise they want you to use the fippit app on Android and iOS.

But Carol, bad news. I don't think these new products will well do that, that's for sure, because it's just again it's all about the the web apps and it's all about the apps on your phone. Good question though, all right, speaking of apps on your phone. Oh, the

free ride is so over. I mean, I know you've been seeing all the prices go up on just about everything, but also you know all these things that we took for granted, for free online, all the apps that we use, all these free products and services, Like, for instance, I've been using this free app or this free website called

promo dot com. They have this great image resizer that you pop. You drag an image onto it, and it resizes it for every single social media network you can imagine, whether it's Twitter, whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook LinkedIn, but not just resizes it it, it resizes it in

all the different formats for that social media network. So for instance, on Instagram, when you drag it in, it'll give you a profile pick that's three twenty by three twenty it'll give you a square picture ten eighty by ten eighty. It'll give you a landscape post ten eighty by five sixty six. It'll give you a portrait post ten eighty by thirteen fifty. It'll give you a square ten eighty by ten eighty. It'll give you a reels ten eighty by nineteen twenty. It'll give you an IGTV

cover four twenty by six fifty four. So it's a really handy way to you know, adapt a thumbnail for basically anything you need it for. And I use that for so many years or however long it's been around, and then one day I go to use it and it's like, oh, sorry, you got to sign up to use this. Now it's still free, but it's like, okay, there's a little bit of friction there. And now every time I use it, sometimes I'm logged in, sometimes i'm not.

So again, this free, totally free public product went behind a login wall. It's not a pay login wall, but it's still a log in wall, and so it's just a little bit of the friction. They collect an email address. Now they can market to me. I've been getting email saying sign up for you know, a paid product from us, and it's just like ugh, same thing with a lot of other products. It's just the thing that's happening is that these companies want to make money. And so I

say this all because Microsoft Outlook. If you use their email app, they are going to be showing more ads inside their app. So according to nine to five Mac, they have about five hundred million users around the world. I'm not sure how many of those are free users versus paid users. I use Outlook, but I have a corporate account with it, so I am not going to see ads. You have a corporate account, you're not going to see ads. If you have a standard account, you

will see more ads. So if you use Outlook with another account or your own free account, you're going to start seeing more ads, and not just in the other inbox, because I guess they were always sort of lingering in the other inbox. Now they're going to be inside the focused inbox. And the focused inbox is where your most important emails live, so that means you're probably gonna see these ads more often because they're they're mixed into your regular emails. And so so again the free ride is

over this Microsoft, big company. A lot of money. But they're sitting there saying, We've got a lot of users of this app, and so far it's been a free lunch for them. But why, I mean, they're using something that takes us resources and energy to update and to patch and to keep you going. And so now we're going to show them ads and by turning these on or turning them up, they are literally just printing money that can be used to maintain this app or add

to the bottom line of Microsoft. So Microsoft Outlook, if you're using it for iOS or Android on a free account, just keep in mind if you start seeing those apps, say, oh yeah, Rich mentioned something about that, but if you're on a corporate account, you should not see those. And apparently the Outlook app only showed ads in the other tab for free users. But yes, it will be coming to the focused tab. All right, let's get to the next question of the podcast. So many questions, Robert says,

iPhone thirteen anti virus app. We just purchased the iPhone thirteen and updated the software. Should we also purchase Norton three sixty or McAfee. I apologize if you've already addressed this, but I'm currently caretaking for my husband and very often unable to watch TV. I appreciate your knowledge regarding the Apple Uh Robert, So, um, do you need an anti

virus app on your iPhone? I don't think so. I think that spending money on something like Norton three sixty or McAfee is kind of a waste of money for your iPhone because the iPhone, I've said this before, does not work in the way that your computer does, and therefore these apps can't really protect you against anything. Now, if you're running everything through a VPN, perhaps it can

catch a malicious link or something like that. But the reality is the way that these the iPhone works is most things are sandboxed, so you're not going to have a huge problem with an app interacting with the rest of your device unless there is a major, major exploit

on your device, and that's a whole other issue. But for day to day random stuff, most of the time, your biggest threat is going to be a phishing email or a phishing text, or a text that takes you to a malicious website, and maybe these apps can protect you from that, but I don't think that they do a very good job of that on the iPhone. Just

due to the architecture of the iPhone. I think you're better with something like Chrome that's actively trying to protect you with various scans of the links you're clicking in that kind of stuff, So I don't think you need it. I think that more importantly, you should be aware of what you're doing on your phone, and I think that you should be keeping the software on your phone up

to date. I think that's the most important thing here, is make sure that you don't have any vulnerabilities on your operating system or your apps by keeping them up to date. And that is I think the most important piece of the puzzle here. So save your money, no need to get these apps on your phone at least, and just you know, just be aware of what you're doing. And I think you should be okay, all right Wordle?

Who is still playing Wordle? Are you? I'm not. I kind of stopped, but maybe I'll play again now that it's kind of installed on my phone. Wordle is this app or this it was a web app? Talk about web apps that people see. This is where it kind of caused some confusion. When Wordle first came out, it was only available as a web app, and you had to kind of add a bookmark to your homepage on your iPhone if you wanted to play. Otherwise, you could

play it on the website on the desktop. And then what happened was, when Wordle first came out, everyone said, ooh, there's an opportunity here. We know that people are gonna be searching the app store for Wordle, so let's make fake Wordle apps. And so they did, and some of them were malicious, some of them were just whatever. Some of them tried to get you to pay. But Wordle

was never available as an app until now. And now New York Times bought Wordle for about a million bucks or something in that area a couple months after it launched, and they mixed it into their games offering. Now, Wordle is built into the New York Times Crossword app. You may or may not have this installed already on your phone. I do, so I opened it up and sure enough, there's Wordle. And the cool thing about this, it's available

Apple Google Play. If you are a person that likes your streak, you can now log in and save it, save your streaks and your stats, or a free New York Times account, which if you have that pretty simple you can also pick up where you left off on any device. So I was not a big wordle like streak person, but I think there were some issues with if something changed and you, like, I don't know, deleted the bookmark or cleared your cookies or whatever you did

on your phone, you would lose your entire streak. That no longer is the case. If you have a New York Times account, you can use various devices, You can see your streak, you can save your streaks, all that good stuff. Not much more to say about that. It, you know, it's just a matter of is this game. Does this game have the lasting power of a fun game like a crossword puzzle or Sodoku or any of these other games, these word games that come and go.

It seems like people are still playing it. I don't definitely don't see the tweets like I used to. I mean, there used to be a lot more tweets about this stuff. But you know, things come and go and it's still fun. It's inside the app. I think that's gonna make it a lot easier to access for a lot of people. And so yeah, go check it out. If you've got the New York Time. It's not the crosswords app. It's the crossword app New York Times Crossword App. There's no

plural there. iOS and Android wordle is baked inside now, so go check it out. Patrick says, hey, Rich, we're heading too England. In England and Ireland in September October. My Team Mobile gives me unlimited data in both countries. Some bills will have to be paid while we're gone. Do you know what will be the most secure? My iPhone hospat our hotel Wi Fi. Thank you you've been

a great sources I prepare for this trip. Patrick. I don't know if I read this question in the last podcast, but if I did, I forgive forgive me, but yeah, I would use your iPhone hot spot for sure. Now, I think you'll be fine on the hotel WiFi. But it's always best to be safe and secure if you're doing banking. So if you're doing banking, log it in, go ahead and use your iPhone hotspot. That's going to

be the safest way to do it. If you're using a hotel Wi Fi, you can use a trusted VPN to do it, or you can just do it and take your chances. You'll probably be fine. But I would. I would. I think it's safer if you're asking this question to use your iPhone hot spot if you have that option, So uh yeah, that's you know, the hot spot is the cellular connection is always going to be the most secure connection to a website. Hotel wi fi, I know, it's scary anyone can see what you're doing

on public wi fi. Not exactly true, but especially most of the websites nowadays are encrypted, so they may see that you're visiting that website, but they should not be able to as long as that's a secured transmission, they should not be able to see what you're doing on that website. So again, they can see you visited the website, they may not see what you do once you're on

that website. That's a big delineation there. But again, because it's a public network, because it has access to a lot of people, or a lot of people have access to it, there could be some malicious actors on that site or on that network, and they could have installed something that intercepts the traffic or whatever. So just to

be safe, I would go with my iPhone hotspot. But in general, hotel WiFi is going to be just fine for what you need to do, like Netflix and surfing the web and checking your email and all that good stuff. I think you're going to be okay with that. But when end out, use a VPN or use the iPhone hotspot, and that will be a much more secure way to do it. Tim says, I just listened to you talking on your podcast about Fire versus Roku. Oh yes, I

talked about it in the last show. I said how they're both pretty much equal, and I said that Roku was kind of like the Switzerland of streaming services. But he says it is unfortunate, but Fire does not support the spectrum map. I tried to siload it with three different versions. It did not work, by the way. I've had the fire stick and it was very slow. Then I got the Cube. But it's much faster, more ram better,

and faster processor regards Tim. Yeah, Tim. Some of the and this is what I don't like about Amazon is that they sell these really really cheap fire sticks, which people gobble up, especially during Prime Day and this, and that they're like ten dollars, twelve dollars, you know, they're twenty five dollars on a regular day, and they are so slow right out of the gate, and it's like they're just infiltrating so many people's homes to these super

slow streaming sticks. When if you spend the thirty five bucks or the fifty five dollars for the max I think it's called the max, which is when I got or yeah, better yet, the Cube. The problem is when you're looking at these fire sticks, you don't realize the average person doesn't realize that there's such a huge difference in like the processing power and memory on these things. And so you see twelve dollars for a firestick versus one hundred dollars, and you're like, why would I spend

one hundred dollars for the same thing. I don't need all those extra fancy features. Oops, I don't need all those extrape just drop my iPhone. That's why I always like to have a case on my phone. You never know if you're gonna drop it and scuff it. But the point is, uh, yeah, I agree, you get the cube, get THEE at least, get the fire TV Max and that fire TV Stick Max. I think though, get the four K version, like I think they're all four K at this point, but get the highest one. You can afford,

because you're gonna you're gonna. It's gonna be the loading times of the apps is really where you notice it once it's streaming, not that big of a deal. Doesn't take much to stream. It's more about switching between apps and loading apps and downloading things. That's when you're really gonna notice a difference. Now with your question about Spectrum, you're right. There is no Spectrum for the Fire TV, so you gotta go Roku if you are using the

Spectrum app. A lot of people. If you have Spectrum, you are going to be streaming some cable stuff through Spectrum. So yeah, if you want that and that's a priority, definitely go with Roku over Fire. But good insight there, Tim, Thanks for adding that. All Right, Before I go, let me just talk about TV chef Giata. So I talk about this last podcast. I never remember, but I think I met her after I recorded my last podcast. So

this is what I love about my job. I get to meet people in real life that I never thought I would. And I talked about this with Cris Bianco, the Pizza Guy, a couple of weeks ago. Now it's Giata. I'm telling you there's something about rich and tech with food. I'm not sure what it is, but it's definitely there. And I've been doing a lot of robots making food restaurants and the impact that technology has had on them. But it's clear that there is a link between food

and technology. And so I talked to Giada, got to meet her last week and she was really really great. You know Jiada from the Food Network. She's kind of up there with Bobby Flay, Giada, Guy Fieri, and who's the other one, oh, Rachel Ray. These are like the OG's of the Food Network. These people have built empires. I mean, I'm talking empires on their TV shows. And I say that not lightly. I was watching the h I subscribe to Discovery Plus so I can watch this

new show with Bobby Flay and his daughter. The show name is Bobby and Sophie on the Coast. So I haven't met Bobby Flay's daughter, Sophie in person, but we chat on social media. She's very nice, and you know, it's kind of cool to watch her up and coming rising star as her dad has kind of you know,

been around for many, many years. And anyway, so I was looking at last night, just browsing Discovery Plus, which I subscribe to to watch their show, and which I got free through Verizon by the way, so if you have Verizon, it might be including your plan for a couple months. But I say this all because there were like twenty six seasons of Beat Bobby Flay, which I was like, Wow, that's a lot of shows. And then I was looking at Guy Fieri who has Diners, Drive Ins,

and Dives, and he has so many shows. And then Giada, she's been doing this for fifteen years on Food Network, so so many. Anyway, these people have built a great brand for themselves and really really cool stuff. And she was talking to me about her new website, Giazzi, that sells two hundred Italian specialties. So of course, if you're Giata, everyone wants to know, well, what's the pasta you're boiling, or what's the olive oil that you're using, or what's

the olives that you're serving at your party. And so now she's like, huh, I should make a website with all these curated products, and she did. So these are all products that she got from Italy and and now she sells them directly to people, and it's just kind of a cool thing. Now Here in Los Angeles we have something called Italy which sells a lot of these Italian products. But again, even when you're there, you're like, way,

which olives do I get? So if you live in a place that doesn't necessarily have that, like somewhere in you know, the rest of the US or outside of New York or Los Angeles, this is a cool thing that you can go to Giada's website and say, oh, hey, I know Giada likes these olives. I'm gonna buy them or this jam or these cookies. I had one of these Amaretto cookies. I say Amoretti. It was so I love that Ani. How do you say anni eas or anazette?

I guess it's anisett anazette flavor. Not everyone likes the anazette flavor. It's like a licorice flavor. I love annazette. Anything is just it's my favorite. I just love it, like the you know, the black jelly beans I love during Easter. I love Stella. Dora has these Anazette cookies, which I guess are kind of an imitation of what Giada gave me for real from Italy, and it was just so good. Anyway, So I love that flavor. It's a very like you know, not many people like I

like fennel. Fenel is a very similar flavor. It's kind of that black licorice flavor. Right. If you like that, you know you'll like anazette or vice versa. So anyway, why do I tell you all this? It was just cool to meet her, just kind of fun. And we talked about social media, we talked about tech. I'm always, you know, fascinated by a celebrity who's done very well for themselves, but you know, they still have an iPhone and they still sit there and they have to post

on social media. Yes, some of them have teams that do it, but you know they still have to kind of come up with ways of doing this stuff. Even if you're you know, celebrity on TV, you know, you gotta have some sort of presence these days. So it's kind of fun. If you want to watch my story with Giata ooh, I tasted this this cheese with lemon honey. Oh so good. It was so delicious. You had this antipasto spread that was just amazing. It like, looks so cool.

It's a whole tape. I also learned that Charcuterie is French and Topasto is Italian. So the things that you learn and the people that you meet, it's why I continue to love what I do. It's not just tech, it's the world, It's everything. Ah that sound does mean that is gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, you can go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the

email icon. I'd love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Go to the listening app of your choice. Write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, download the free ktla plus app on Apple, TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and you can watch all of my tech segments, including

the one with YadA, on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here. With me. I'll talk to you real soon.