A breakdown of Apple's announcements on iPhone twelve and home pod Mini, the best deals on the iPhone twelve, a helpful math app, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on?
I'm Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also where I answer the questions that you send me. In case you don't know who I am. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Thanks so much for tuning me in today. Hope you're having a great day. Can you believe we've been doing this pandemic thing for this long.
It's my seven month work from home anniversary, seven months in this little studio in my house that I set up overnight thinking this would all be done in like two or three weeks. I don't know what I was thinking at the time, because now when I think back, it's like, what did I think would change in two or three weeks. There's been a lot of gadgets, lots and lots of gadgets. It is really the time of the year when just so many things come out. I've been talking about a lot of them on this show
phones galore. So this week I've been playing with a Pixel five, which I actually put my SIM card into and I don't really do that for a lot of phones, but I really wanted to see, like could I make
this my phone? And I think the answer is no. Sadly, what else have I've been playing with the one plus eight T so the Pixel five we talked about on the show, it's kind of like the Pixel four A four A five G. I'd actually recommend that phone, I think for more people or most people, because it's got a bigger screen and even though it doesn't have the water resistance or the what's.
The other thing it doesn't have? Has a headphone. See, this is weird.
It's got a bigger screen, it has a headphone jack, but there's no wireless charging, and there there's no water resistance, and then there's a little bit less RAM.
So it's just kind of a weird thing.
Like you would think the bigger phone would be more powerful, better, but it's just not.
So the Pixel five has been great. I like it.
I think it's nice, but it's tiny, tiny, tiny in my hands. After going from the iPhone eleven Pro Max and my wife looked at the pictures I took last night at the beach, and she goes, Eh, what phone did you use last night? I don't like those pictures, so that's a bad sign if she doesn't like them. And I feel like the pixel is frozen in time. I don't think anything's changed on it in three years, Like the camera just feels like the same exact camera that we had three years ago, and so that's kind
of weird. But I do like the price, and I think if you like small phones, when it comes to Android phones, it's probably one of the best because it always just takes a solid picture. So one thing that I just have to hand it to the pixel. Out of all the Android phones, it takes a great picture every single time aim.
It at something.
There's just no thought. So if your kid is making a funny face, boom, you take a picture, it's perfect the first time, whether whereas you know the Samsung's and the one pluses of the world, you got to take a couple of pictures for it to really be good. So and in low light two the pixel is just really really good. Although I just feel like I'm spoiled by the iPhone because it's gotten so good with the camera that it's it's really good.
Now the one plus eight T.
This is a kind of a head scratcher because as I was going through my meeting with them and kind of learning more about this phone, it's like, wait, what so there's no wireless charging on this one and there's it's it's yeah, it's just a strange phone. And the camera's not as good as the one plus eight pro. So it's like this weird kinda I don't know. But it's got a great processor, it's got great memory. You know, it's like twelve gigs of memory, I think, so that's good.
But it's just I don't know. It's like and the camera's just not that good, and oh, this weird thing that's happening to me, which you know, you take a selfie and it's like blurry like half the time.
So that's weird.
But it's a seven hundred and fifty dollars phone. It's a nice phone.
I mean to me, my.
Preference with all androids is OnePlus. It's just I wish they would figure out the camera situation because I would recommend them to every single person in the world if they could figure out their camera situation. Bright light things not moving, it looks great. It's when you get into the more nuanced, you know, low light kind of stuff, selfies, pictures of people, movement, it just doesn't doesn't work as well. So anyway, we got lots of stuff to kind of
continue to go through. I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have on these devices, because that's the main thing is when you're deciding between a couple of devices, you know, let me know, and I can. I can definitely help steer that because I do spend a lot of time with these things trying to figure out which one is best and what one does better than the other.
But I will say, out of the three sort of mid range phones, you've got the one plus eight T, you got the Pixel five well, you also have the Pixel four A five G, and then you have the Samsung S twenty FE, which is a fan edition. I will say my pixels, the Pixels are the are my favorite for like sort of the overall like camera situation. I think that the one plus is the best for the software, and then the Samsung is the best for sort of like the speediness and just in general.
It's kind of a nice you know, it's a nice middle ground phone.
So anyway, I think you're just depending on your preferences, you'll be happy with any of those. But we're here to talk about the big news of the week, and that is the iPhone. Apple finally gave us the info on the iPhone twelve, so I'll go over the iPhone twelve and twelve Mini. Actually, you know, I'll probably just do all four of them right now.
So there's four.
There's two main models, and then within those models, there's two different sizes of each. So we'll start with the iPhone twelve that's kind their standard phone right in the middle, and then they have a smaller version, which is the iPhone twelve Mini. So the iPhone twelve has a six point one inch screen. It's got an OLED screen now for the first time in that kind of mid range. I guess you want to call it for Apple, and
you know last year's they had LCDs. Let's see, it's got the new processor, which is the A fifteen fourteen Bionic, which Apple says is like faster than any chip in a phone, and I do believe them, still has good battery life. It's got the you know, dual camera system now, so it's got the ultra wide and the wide camera. So the difference here is that you don't get the telephoto lens. That's the main thing here. Let's see what
else do you need to know about those phones? Oh, it's got the ceramics shield, so this is like a stronger screen. But like, let's be honest, who's not going to put a screen protector on their phone because it has that. That's just not going to happen. So you drop your phone either cracks or a dozen. I mean, it's not like, oh it, I dropped it ten times, it only cracked four out of the ten times. It's just you drop it once in a crack. That's all
you need to know. So hopefully you don't drop your phone too much, hopefully it doesn't crack as much.
What else?
It comes in four colors or five colors rather blue, green, black, white, red. And again you've got the regular and the mini. So the mini is five point four inches. That's pretty small considering the pixel that I'm carrying I think is a six inch phone, and so five point four in the pixel seems tiny in my hand. Five point four seems really small to me. Pricing is six ninety nine, seven ninety nine. And that's kind of it when it comes to those phones. I mean, it's it's it's.
Basically, it's it's just better.
Of course, it's faster, and oh it also has this new thing called mag Safe, and so these are magnets on the back of the phone that lets you attach a bunch of magnetic accessories, including a charging cable. They've got wallets, they've got snap on cases, all kinds of stuff. So it's cool. It's just going to make you spend more money.
On accessories, that's for sure.
Now let's talk about the big brothers or sisters, the iPhone twelve Pro and the iPhone twelve Pro Max. Now, originally I thought these were the same phone, just different sizes. But I did the Brian Tong's podcast Apple Bits XL and he mentioned that the camera is slightly better on the Pro Max. I didn't realize that. I thought they were just the same. You just had a choice of size, and it's like, okay, well, if you want the bigger one, you go big. If you want the middle one, you
go middle. And the iPhone twelve Pro is a six point one inch screen, so again same size as the twelve and then the Pro Max is six point seven inch screen and apparently with the Pro Max they made the screen bigger, but it's like the same form factor as my current phone, which is the iPhone eleven Pro, so they know they made the screen more edge to edge kind of thing. And this has the top of the line camera that Apple offers. It also has the
ceramic shield and the bionic chip they fourteen. It's got the ultra wide, the telephoto, and then the wide camera and the main thing to know here is that they've improved the cameras, especially in low light. They also added AlIdar, which is like a laser scanner that helps with augmented reality, but nobody's really doing that anyway, so you probably won't really care about that too much, but it does help
with low light photography, which will be nice. It also has Adobe Vision for video, so video will look better, but only if you have a way to play it back, so that's not really a thing that a lot of people care about. They also have what's this called Pro Raw, so if you're like a photographer that really wants to edit your stuff and sort of that raw version, you have that as well. Four colors here, Graphite silver, gold and Pacific blue. The phone is nine ninety nine or
one thousand ninety nine. The other cool thing they did here is that they finally finally made the base storage one twenty eight. They did away with that whole random thing where it would be sixty four and then two fifty six and so. But the thing is, the difference in pricing was not very much, so you're actually it was like, you're getting quadrupleed the storage, but for you know, only a couple bucks more. So it didn't make sense.
So finally it's one twenty eight based storage. My pick out of all these, and the phone I will probably be pre ordering, is the iPhone twelve PROMX in Pacific blue. I last year I bought the phone in the gray color because I got scared. I was like, well, when I sell it, it'll get more or actually it'll sell faster because it's gray and not green. And this year I'm kind of like, eh, whatever, I'll worry about.
That next year.
So there's the main things to know on the iPhone twelve. In an upcoming segment here on the show, I will talk about some of the iPhone.
Deals that the various carriers are doing.
They're very complicated, but you can get a deal if you work it. So I will tell you about those in just a moment, but first let's get to a question. Let's see where is my question? Okay, Jody says, Hey, Rich, I'm not sure you can answer this, but hopefully so. Suspended from Twitter for no reason whatsoever. Had the account for a long time, there was no warning. I've appealed but heard nothing but general thanks for the info. I've been told by many that it's not humans suspending accounts,
so obviously mistakes can happen. But then what I heard from someone with the same problems. She was able to retrieve her account from someone who works with Twitter. To get accounts back up, it costs a hundred bucks. I can't really afford to throw this money away, but I think, but I think without it, I'll never have my Twitter again, and I really like it back. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Of course it would be a scam, but several people claim it wasn't and they got their
account unlocked. Thoughts, thank you for your time. Here is my answer. Nope, nope, wrong one, that's my answer.
Absolutely not.
Do not spend one hundred dollars to get your Twitter account back. I mean, number one, I didn't know that people just randomly get suspended for no reason. So there could have been something that you did on your account that flagged it somehow. And long story, but this was
from many, many years ago. But I remember they did this thing on Twitter where at some point or sorry on Google, where at some point Twitter was giving them what's called the fire hose to tweets, where Twitter would feed Google a real time fire hose of everything people were tweeting, and then when you would search on Google for something, you would literally see all the people tweeting about that.
Now they do a version of that.
Now, it's not the same as it originally was because on the original one, the results page on Google would actually change right before your eyes and you see, you just see all these scrolling tweets of whatever you search for. They don't do that anymore. They do like kind of the top tweets now.
But anyway, so.
Back in the day, my Twitter, for whatever reason, would not show up in that fire hose, and so I reached out to Twitter and I asked them, I said, hey, you know, what's the deal, And they said, oh, let me look into it, and they came back to me and said, oh, your account was flagged for because you basically followed and unfollowed a whole bunch of people at once.
And this was back in the day when Twitter was kind of new, and so I was, you know, experimenting with various things, and I want to you know, you'd follow a bunch of people and then you'd want to clear out your account to start fresh. So I did that at one point, and so that kind of blocked me from Google. So anyway, Jody, I do believe that, yeah, maybe something could have happened here that you did not
really knowing why you were suspended. I would try to get it back going through the you know, logical chain of command, which you know, if you go to help dot Twitter dot com and you know, start there and just say, you know, hey, I can't don't have access to my account.
Try that first.
And then if you can't do that, just start a new account, use a different just use a different email address. No big deal. All right, good question. Now let's get to the iPhone deals. There are a lot. They are so confusing I can't really explain them, but I'm gonna go over them. In case something catches your ear and
then you know you can go and investigate. Number one, Walmart, they have up to one hundred and thirty dollars in savings starting on October sixteenth for customers who activate the iPhone twelve or iPhone twelve pro on an AT and T or Verizon installment plan through Walmart dot com or in store. Notice the words AT and T or Verizon. So clearly some sort of kickback is happening here, or maybe that's only who they work with.
Who knows.
iPhone twelve starts at seven forty nine on installment, which is a savings over the outright retail of eight seventy nine, and comes in black, white, red, green, and blue, which we know.
Now, let me compare that. Hold on, So.
We said earlier that the iPhone twelve starts at seven forty nine, and that's interesting because it says, oh, okay, so they're actually even fifty dollars cheaper than oh, no, outright retailer eight seventy nine.
That's weird. I don't know what that means. That's kind of strange.
Anyway, the pricing has been a little weird because at some point there was a premium for the unlocked phones on the unlocked phone and also the phone on T Mobile or Sprint. But now I don't think that's the case anymore. Anyway, Let's see what else. iPhone twelve pro starts at nine to forty nine on installment outright, retail is ten forty nine. Now see, now that's weird. iPhone ten twelve pro is ten nine. Oh, okay pro, So they're they're trending like fifty dollars more.
I don't know.
Let's see in addition, anyway, so that's Walmart. Then you've got Verizon. Now they made it big to do because Verizon's got the new five G. I actually got the five G on my Pixel five, and I'll be honest, so far, I've not seen a speed that's faster than LTE. But you know, I'm still kind of following that and seeing like what the deal is there. But I do have high hopes. I've said this before on the podcast. I do have high hopes for Verizon because I think
that they're gonna do five G really nicely. I keep getting a lot of information from T Mobile about how THEIRS is so much better, but again, when I've tested THEIRS, I have not really seen that with my own eyes. I mean, I think out of all the times I tested T mobiles five G, I didn't really get any signal that was better than any speed that was better than four G. All right, so Verizon, let's see what they're doing pricing. iPhone twelve starts at six ninety nine retail. Oh,
the Mini iPhone twelve starts at seven ninety nine. iPhone twelve pro starts at nine ninety nine. Okay, yeah, we already know all that. Okay, So here's their deal, an iPhone twelve for as low as free when you switch to Verizon, trade in select smartphones and sign up for a Select unlimited plan. So what that means is you have to have a really new smartphone like I'm guessing last year's phone like mine, or you know, one of the Samsung Galaxy S twenties or a note that is
from last year. And that's how you can get the iPhone for free. That makes sense, and you have to sign a sign as select an unlimited plan. Existing customers can get the iPhone twelve, let's see, for fifteen dollars a month when you do a Verizon device payment and select an unlimited plan when you trade in a select phone, so iPhone twelve for fifteen it's usually thirty three, so they're giving you like fifteen bucks.
A month for twenty four months.
Existing iPhone eight or eight plus customers can save two hundred and fifty dollars when you trade in and purchase a new iPhone twelve on an unlimited plan.
So there's your Verizon deals.
If you look, I mean, what's gonna happen is you're gonna go on your website or you're gonna go into the store and you're just gonna kind of say like, hey, here's the phone I got, what deal do you have? And then we have AT and T is offering existing and new AT and T customers on an unlimited plan a five G Apple device for zero dollars with an AT and T installment plan when you have an AT and T unlimited plan and a qualifying trade in. Again that word qualifying trade in. That means you have to
have one of the new phones to trade in. So the thing I think is funny, I mean it's I don't know, it's just so funny. Okay, T Mobile, Now this is an interesting deal. You can get two iPhone pros with two lines of unlimited five G data for just one hundred bucks a month. That sounds pretty compelling, but again, it's like this whole thing where you have to say on for a certain amount of months. There's a lot of fine details that you got to look at.
Then they have get an iPhone twelve free or up to eight hundred and fifty with late or up to eight fifty off of any other model with late model trade in and new line of service. So that's nice that at least they say late model trade in. So
that's an interesting thing. So if I, let's say I wanted to switch to T Mobile, I could switch my phone, which you know, I don't know how much i'd get for my phone from, you know, if I just sold it on Gazelle or something like that or swap a but I can get eight fifty off the price of the iPhone twelve Pro Max, which is eleven hundred bucks. So I could theoretically pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a brand new iPhone if I switched to T Mobile, and you know, got a new line of service. So
that's not bad. That's not bad at all. Get five hundred dollars up to up to five hundred dollars off with a trade in. And now here's another interesting one. Customers that have been with T Mobile including Sprint for more than five years, can get two hundred dollars.
Off, so that's kind of nice.
And they can combine that off for with the five hundred dollars trading offer for up to seven hundred dollars off. So if you are a T Mobile customer and you've been a T Mobile customer for five years, definitely mentioned that two hundred bucks off. That's a great deal right there. That's I think the only loyalty deal I've seen. So there you have it. Some of the deals on the iPhone twelve, Which one are you gonna get?
Let me know, all right, Melba, says Rich.
A while ago, you did a segment on credit bureaus and getting the three major credit reporting companies to give a free report every twelve months. Who do I write to get the free reports? Is at annual creditreport dot com. I just want to make sure before I give up my info to any website, please let me know who to write to. Thanks so much, Melba. Now I looked up this segment and this was a little bit ago. It was November sixth, twenty seventeen, three years ago that
I did this segment. But it's fine. Here's the things I looked at. Number one, I looked at Credit Sesame, and Credit Sesame gives you a free credit score that's updated monthly. It gives you a complete view of your loans, so you can see your debt to income ratio. Credit Sesame also gives you real time alerts about changes to your credit plus ways to improve your score. Credit Karma lets you see your monthly score, but from two different companies,
TransUnion and Equifax. You can also get credit alerts to see what's affecting your score, and you can do something called a direct dispute, which helps you correct mistakes on your report. And then finally, I looked at wallet Hub, which is my personal favorite. It's the one that I use. It gives you access to your full credit report. In addition to your score, it also alerts you about changes, and it gives you up to date information because your score is refreshed on.
A daily basis.
It also gives you a credit analysis plus a look at the credit cards that you'll likely get approved for, so I like the wallet Hub the best out of all three of these, but they all, like I said, I mean, they all offer sort of different things. I would not sign up for all of them because you don't want your information out there, you know, as much
as possible. Now, if you just want your credit report, Melba, like you were mentioning, you can just go to Annualcreditreport dot com that is run by the three major agencies. And I believe, like you know, the law kind of makes this. They have to do this. This was a law that they passed. But oh wow, look at this during the times. Sorry, just eight before this show, so I'm like breathing heavy in this mic.
Sorry about that.
During these times of COVID nineteen, accessing your credit, assessing accessing your credit is important. That's why Equifox, Experience, and TransUnion are now offering weekly online reports. So and Melbur you said to write in, I would just go on the website. Make sure you go to the right website, Annualcreditreport dot com, and you can request your free credit reports and it takes just a minute, and you put in your information and you will get what you need
and you can kind of look through those. But again, I would also, i you know, sign up for one of the other ones as well. The websites and those are a good way to kind of keep tabs on things. But good question. Let's move on to another Apple announcement, HomePod Mini. This was not really a surprise if you were following the rumors, but you know, a couple of years ago, Apple launched a HomePod, which was a very
expensive speaker for the home. I don't even know if i'd call it a smart speaker because it was really just a music speaker that had Siri and then you know, eventually got some podcasts and stuff like that. I mean, it was supposed to be smart, but it just Apple does not really do a lot with the smart home right now.
They're trying, I know.
But anyway, the HomePod Mini is three point three inches tall. It's small, and the best thing about it is the price ninety nine dollars. It'll be available in white and space gray, and it does work with various services, Apple Music, podcasts, radio stations from iHeartRadio radio dot Com, tune in, also Pandora and Amazon Music coming soon.
So what does that tell you?
It shows that Apple is actually trying to work with some of these third party services instead of just pushing everyone to Apple Music, which was basically what the first one did. Well, now you can use these other services. But did you notice there is one big thing missing That is Spotify and Apple. Apple has a lot of friends, but they also have a lot of enemies, Spotify being one of them, what is epic with Fortnite being another one.
Google their sort of frenemies. With Amazon they've cozied up to. There's a long time when you could not buy Apple stuff officially on Amazon. Then they sort of came to terms and now you can, so that's good.
Who else.
Microsoft they're good friends with. They've actually really cozied up to Microsoft. They probably don't see them as a really big challenger because they don't have any phone or search engine or anything like that.
So anyway, the HomePod Mini looks p cool.
I think it's probably going to be one of the hottest gifts this holiday season because it's so simple. Oh, this person has an iPhone, I can buy them a home Pod Mini for ninety nine bucks and maybe discounted a little bit over the holidays. You know, these companies work in a little bit of like you know, a little bit of room. It's like when you get your coffee, you know, they say, oh.
Do you want a little room for cream?
Sure, and they always leave a ton of room for some reason. How much cream do people put in their coffee? But it's kind of like the pricing on these gadgets, especially during the holidays.
They leave a little room for the cream, and that cream.
Is the discounts they know that are inevitably going to happen over the holidays, and so they still make their profits, but you feel like you're getting a better deal even though they kind of had the idea that these things might be discounted. That's kind of what I see with now. I don't think Apple's going to discount the HomePod Mini. I think the third party retailers will, like the best buys of the world. You'll go in there for you know something, and oh you can you can bundle a
home Pod Mini for an extra eighty nine bucks. I think that'll be the price, by the way, not anything less than that. What else, It's got some interesting little features that are going to either you know, be out of the gate or eventually coming. But it'll work with Apple devices, so you can pick up an incoming call on it, listen to music on the Mac or.
Use your Apple TV with them.
You can also listen to music on the iPhone and then bring your device close to the Mini and it'll hand off the music without missing a beat.
That's kind of cool. This is kind of neat too.
They're gonna when you hold your iPhone near your home potter, if it's close to it, your iPhone will show personalized listening suggestions without even having to unlock your phone. That's actually a really cool thing because when I come home. When I used to come home from work before I just you know, stayed home all the time, there was a cool thing where, you know, I would always just turn on the same music every day when I came home on Sono's and it was a whole big thing.
You'd have to unlock your phone, you got to open the so nosapp, you have to group the speakers, and then you gotta, you know, pick the music you want. And this seems a lot easier. Then they have this intercom feature, which is really cool. You basically say something. You can send an intercom message from one home pod to another that's in a different room or multiple rooms,
and the voice plays on the various speakers. It also works on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, CarPlay, so if you want even yeah like AirPods, Like if your kid has the AirPods in, you can say dinner's ready and it will broadcast every one of your things, no matter where your family is. That's really cool. Then there's ambient sounds. They've got rain, fireplace stream and more. And you can
set a sleep timer so they stop playing. Automatically Find my helps you locate your missing iPhone, iPad, iPod, touch and all your good stuff.
My kids do that all the time.
They will ask their iPad where the other one is, which I don't even know you could do that, but they say, hey, where's you know, the other iPad and it'll chime. Then you've got web search results from HomePod Mini can be sent to your iPhone for easy viewing musical arms and that kind of reminds me of like Google Assistant. I still think the Google Assistant is probably a better thing, but so many people have iPhones. This is going to be a real no brainer for that ecosystem.
HomePod Mini, like I said, white and Space gray, ninety nine bucks. It'll be available on November sixteenth. Let's get to another question. Uh, Marcia or is it Marcia?
Marcia? Is it Marcia or Marcia? I've been a longtime fan of the show. I have a question.
My mom, who's in her seventies, lives alone and has been having some issues with balance, especially stepping in and out of the bathtub.
I was thinking of buying either a few.
Apple Home Pods, oh, look at that, Google Nests or Amazon Echoes to place around her house. I'm looking for devices she could use to voice activate, calling a family member if she fell, or nine one one if needed.
I know you're probably going to.
Suggest the Apple Watch for fall detection, but I'm looking for something else, as she doesn't always have her watch, she might not have her iPhone nearby to U Siri. Which product might think better? Do you might think be better? Is there another solution that you might recommend. I would recommend Alexa because Alexa has a feature called call for Help, which is specifically for sort of emergencies. It's not gonna call nine one. None of these things will call nine
one one, at least not right now. But Alexa does have a call for help feature that you set a person like a family member as the emergency contact and it will call that person. So again, cannot call nine one one. That is not right now in the cards, I don't think. But you can do this emergency contact, which is call for help. And that's kind of a natural thing to say. If you did fall and you couldn't get up, you would just say a call for help and you know, call a family member. And so
I think that's probably your best bet. And if you really want to outfit your mom's house, you've got you know. The Echo Dot was nineteen dollars over Prime Day and so you can. I paid thirty on a non Prime day. I think it retails for fifty, but don't ever pay that, especially during the holidays. They give out these things like candy. But yeah, just buy a couple Echo Dots and put them around and make sure you set up that future. I actually have a video on how to do it
on YouTube. If you just google how to set up the new Alexa call for help feature rich DeMuro or rich on Tech, it will come up and show you how to do that. It's pretty simple. I've tested it out here. It also texts them as well, and so.
Wait does it text them?
It's been a while since I did the video, but I think it does text them and that's uh, that's part of it.
Do I have it? You know that.
Alexa emergency contact Now.
That's so that's what that's how it works for help.
It's a brand new and potentially life saving feature, but you have to set it up first.
Here's how calling your emergency contact now.
To start the name use this feature. And it's not a text message. It does send a text message. Yep, okay, so it does. So, yeah, that's that's what I would do. I mean, I think that's going to be the easiest way to do it. And again, like I said, it's so inexpensive and simple that that's that's the way to go.
Good question.
Oh, I should mention, by the way, depending on when you listen to this, I will be doing a panel for KRO, which is an organization focused on advancing sort of the quality of the lives of seniors. So it's all about doing stuff for seniors. And I will be speaking at their symposium this year, which is virtual on October twenty fourth, and it's totally free this year because it is virtual.
Last year it was.
A big event, a big, big event in gosh Long Beach and it was great. A lot of people came up to me afterwards. We talked about robots and all this stuff. So I'm leading this on Zoom and I'll be going through all this stuff so exactly what I just did in that question. My symposium thing is called Innovative Ways to Stay Connected. So I'm gonna look at robots, I'm gonna look at Alex, I'm gonna look at all the Amazon Show, all those things that you know, the
HomePod everything. I gotta add the HomePod Mini to my presentation now because that's brand new. But I'm gonna talk about all that stuff and all the apps and all the video chatting stuff and Zoom and so if you are curious for your family members or yourself.
You you know, tune in and it's free.
You just have to sign up before so oh, registration closes on October twenty second.
So anyway, check it out.
It's a kro dot org k e I r O dot org. Of course I will link it up in the show notes. All right, this is a really neat app that I did a segment on KTLA about and I did it on my Facebook page and my Instagram and my YouTube. My YouTube is really sad because I don't. I've never I've never gotten followers on YouTube, Like I've never tried.
To build that.
So it's really funny to me that, like I can post the same exact video to YouTube and get three hundred views that I can post to Instagram or Facebook and get you know, tens of thousands of views, and so it's just kind of funny. But I've never I don't advertise my YouTube. I just put it out there people.
That find it.
Sure, it's great, and it has been growing over the pandemic. I may have twenty thousand followers there, so that's cool, but I don't. It's not a thing like I don't have a relationship with those people. It's not like I'm sitting there like a YouTuber like doing a video every week.
You know, maybe one day, but not right now.
And so you know, my primary focus is TV because that's you know, that's my job. The social media stuff is just fun and I love it because I can interact with people in a real time basis and so, you know, and I have grown a following on Facebook and Instagram. But anyway, I digress. The photo math is a video or an app that solves math problems. And this is really cool because I know kids can cheat
with it. Don't worry about your kids cheating, worry about how this can teach them how to do the math problems that you may have problems with, or you may have an issue with, or you need some help figuring them out. But it's really neat. It uses AI to snap a picture. You snap a picture of it with your phone and instantly it, you know, figures out what the problem is and it shows you, step by step how to solve it. Now there is a caveat here. The step by step stuff is just okay. If you
don't pay, it's like pretty simple. But if you pay, which is anywhere from ten dollars a month to sixty bucks for the year, obviously you you know, you pay less depending on how much an advance you pay, but or how much you prepay, I should say, but it's really really cool to watch the I sign up for the Plus as a you know, free trial, and it's just so cool to watch the animations because it brings back the concepts of math that I have forgotten.
And I explained this in the video.
But you know, if you had to do something like, you know four fourteen divided by two, You could figure that out in you know, two seconds in your head that that's two oh seven.
Right. Let me just let me just make sure that I got that right, because I don't want to.
Four to fourteen DIVI two, Yeah is two oh seven, Okay, just making sure I don't want to say that. And then it's like, Rich, what are you talking about? But this will show you how to do it. Remember long division, like you have to write all these like I forgot how to do that until this app showed me. The app does all kinds of problems, from algebra to basic math. It does common core, which I know in California is
a big deal. I don't really get it because that's not how I was raised, but it somehow is the weird way they do math nowadays. This solves one point five billion math problems monthly, and it's not new. Don't say, Rich, I can't believe you're telling me about apps that have been around forever.
You know nothing.
I'm smarter than the tech guy. Yeah, I get those emails, but this isn't. Look I'm just telling you something when I looked it up in my email. Yes, I had downloaded this app like years ago, but you know, there's always new people coming on board the rich On tech train, so I want to bring you guys on board and tell you what's going on. And even if you weren't following me five years ago when I first might have mentioned this. Anyway, It's called Photomath. It's available for iOS and Android.
Check it out. It is really really cool.
Gail asks, is it best to turn off my home PC when I'm not using it? I usually only use for a few hours in the morning, turn it off and go to work. I have a desktop Windows ten PC with an external backup hard drive. What do you suggest, thanks, Gail. Well, Gail, first off, you get a star.
You know what.
One of these days, one of these days, I will remember what these sounds are assigned to on my soundboard. My friend Balb Brian would be so ashamed of me if he ever heard this podcast. And thankfully he does not tune in because he's not interested in anything I do professionally. But he, you know, he does sound for the Adam Kroller Show, and he, you know, has a
million sounds at his disposal and his whole thing. I mean he's made a living on the fact that he comes up with these really good sounds very fast, and I can't even get four sounds right. There we go, So, Gail, you get the gold star for using an external backup hard drive.
I love that you're backing up your computer.
But when it comes to turning off your computer every day, I would say, no way. You don't want to turn off your computer every day. These computers are meant to stay on, especially at desktop. It can stay on forever until you need to restart it for a software update. It's not I think that the power use is negligible, and I think that the bigger thing you should be concerned about is the majority of times that a hard drive is going to fail is upon startup. So if
you're doing that every day, not very good. So I would leave it on. Make sure you check your settings in the energy panel, and make sure that you have your you know, hard drive go to sleep, and your computer monitor and all that stuff go off after a certain amount of time of non use or you know, go to sleep after a certain amount of time of unused or non use, and that I think is a better way, and you can let me know. I mean maybe that's my answer. Now, you know, maybe you have
a better answer. But I don't ever turn off my laptop. I don't think I've ever turned it off in you know, in ten years. I've had different laptops. But I'm just saying I don't ever power it down. The only time I power it down is if I'm going on vacation and I'm leaving it home, I will power it down. And so I think you should do that too. But otherwise, now leave your computer on during the week and it should be just fine. Now on Google, you can hum
to search. Google introduce a new feature that lets you hum, whistle, or sing a melody to the Google app, which will then figure out the song. That's kind of cool. Let's see. Let's see if I can do this. I have my phone right here with Google Assistant.
Let's try it.
M m mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmm.
Okay, that did not work at all. Okay, what what's another song? Oh, let's try another one.
Here we go.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Oh okay, I see what's happening here. You have to see that's a problem.
Let's try this. There we go.
Mm hmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmm mm hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Okay, we're waiting there. Okay, it did not get that.
Okay, So here's how you have to do it, because that that was the first time I've ever done that. You have to tap the voice search and then start humming and it will recognize that you're making some sort of noise and then it will say, do you want to search a song? You tap that little button there and then you start humming more. You got to sing for ten to fifteen seconds. According to this Variety article,
it did not work. It said los manyati los minyatas, which I mean I assumed that you figured out I was singing Happy Birthday. Let me try another one. Ready, I'll do We're other world.
M mmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Oh look at that, it got it.
We are the world USA for Africa twenty three percent match.
Good job Google.
That is amazing. Now I think that's cool. But I mean, this has been around for a long time. Have you ever heard of an app called SoundHound? Now, I know that Shazam captured the popular attention, but SoundHound was always out there, and SoundHound was I always thought better than Shazam. Shazam, by the way, was purchased by Apple and it's now built into iOS fourteen. But I always thought SoundHound was
cool because it had a slight edge over Shazam. And the thing about Shazam that's a little bit different that you might not know is that Shazam has to be sort of programmed to listen to these songs, like to understand these songs, whereas SoundHound you could hum something and it would figure it out. And so anyway, I think Shazam has to be fingerprinted. That's the word, right, Like the song has to be fingerprinted for it to be recognized. But anyway, it's still cool that it's built into Google.
Maybe I don't think Google bought this, but.
That's it. There you go.
Features currently available in English on iOS and in more than twenty languages on Android. Humm to search is also available through Google Assistant, which is what I just tried.
But pretty neat one more way to search Google. They are so smart. Let's see.
Matthew says, good afternoon, Oh, good afternoon, Rich. I'm in the process of buying a new home. I know, during a pandemic. That's crazy. My wife and I are trying to think of Prime day deals. Oh I'm a little late on this. That will serve me well in the coming months as we transition from an apartment to an actual home. We saw that the Ring Alarm fourteen piece kit second generation with Echo Dot is on sale, which
seems like a great deal. Do you know if this is their newest model or if they plan to update it. Should I wait for a new system or pull the trigger on this one? Ring seems like a great system. I am excited to add the always Home drone to the system when it launches next year. Really love the podcast in your enthusiasm during this dark year, Matt, Well, thank you, Matt. I do try to stay enthusiastic, but
I'll be honest, some days it is really tough. You know, Like some days I wake up and I feel like I can take on the world. Other days I wake up and I just want to crawl under a rock. So I'm like, is this really still happening? So if that's happening to you, I think that is perfectly normal. Now I am a little bit more enthusiastic than the next guy or the next person.
In general.
I've always been like that, you know, I kind of roll out of bed with a spring in my step, and you know, just kind of like see things a little bit more positively than some people. But this has been a true, true test of my positivity and enthusiasm. Believe you me, matt On to your answer, I would say, absolutely, one hundred percent, get the Ring Alarm. I was actually thinking of transitioning to this myself. When I look at the landscape of security out there, I think that Ring
has the most momentum behind them. When you look at the gadgets that they have in their arsenal, there is so much to choose from. They are continuing to evolve. I know some people don't like them because they're owned by Amazon, but don't let that distract you or deter you. I think that the Ring Alarm system, this second gen, which has not been out for too long, maybe a year or two, is amazing. They've got the video doorbells down,
they invented that genre. They've got smart lighting, They've got you know, the I mean, just so much stuff, what else everything? I mean, they really just have so many things, security cameras, So I think at one point I am going to I will eventually switch over everything in my house to Ring, just because I feel like they they've got it going on, and I think that that's kind
of like where I want to be. Whereas the security provider that I'm currently with, it's like it's been great, but it's kind of like it's it's a little bit tired. And so I think that Ring is exciting, and it's just a matter of like sort of money. It's like I have to decide one day to to kind of you know, spend the money and all this stuff which I need. The new alarm system, I need, you know, new cameras, everything.
You gotta get all this stuff.
But they have so many great cameras that stick up cams, all this stuff. Look at this, and even with your alarm system, you've got a flood and free sensor, smoke and carbon dioxide listener, panic button, motion detector, the I mean, you also have that little sensor for your mailbox.
You've got the stick up camp. You got so much going on.
So yes, I would one hundred percent, and thank you for your kind words and good luck with the new house.
It is a blessing. It is amazing.
It is so cool to have your own house because you can actually do stuff that you never wanted to do in your apartment, even though I'm still scared to put a hole in my wall.
Oh what a fun show? Oh no, is that it already? Ah? Why do these Why does.
This music always have to come up so fast? That is going to do it for this episode of the show. If you'd like to submit into question for me to answer, just go to rich on tech dot tv, hit that email button at the bottom of the page, or just send me an email directly Hello at richontech dot tv.
Also, I would love it if you.
Would rate and review the show that helps other people discover it somehow, some way, I think, And a lot of you did this last time, so thank you if you were one of them. Go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on tech. I know that a lot of you did it because I get a cease and desist order from Rate this podcast dot com who says until you start paying, your link no longer works. So they let a couple of people do it for
free every month, and then they cut me off. So let's see, let's see how many people rate this podcast dot com. They don't tell me how many people do it through there, but they just tell me when the switch is shut off. So let's see pricing. So for free doesn't what is the pricing?
Oh?
Free plan five reviews a month, so I guess five.
You did it last month. At least uh one of those reviews is very nice.
Dan cal v says, I have been listening to this podcast for quite a while. I'm an it tech support geek. I support the servers, workstations, printers, networks, iPhones and iPads at work. Whenever Rich reads a tech question, I often have a solution. It's not always the same solution, but it's nice to hear other ideas. My solutions often involved making changes to the registry, editing or deleting files the
average person should not touch. This show does a great job of announcing software and gadgets that will be released soon. His reviews helped me decide whether or not to purchase a particular item. Keep up the great work, Dan in Roland Heights. Dan, You're awesome. Thank you so much for that review. Thanks for listening to the show, and please just tell like one hundred more friends about it. Thank you just kidding. You can find me at rich on Tech.
That's real fun. Me on all social media's. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening, watching Stay Safe. I will talk to you real soon