LastPass makes major changes to free plan

you are having a wonderful, wonderful day. I know, I know not the best of circumstances in our world right now with this whole pandemic, but you know, people are getting vaccinated and the numbers are coming down, which is nice. It feels good. It feels like we're getting to a place where there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and I am excited for that. So thanks for doing your part. Ten years at KTLA, That's what I'm celebrating this week. Ten years at KTLA. I can't

believe it. I truly cannot believe that I have been at this TV station for ten years. So just to give you some perspective, when I joined KTLA, I had no kids, now I have two. Probably had a lot less wrinkles. Let's see what else. Oh, gosh, it probably went through two different cars, three different cars, perhaps, God. I mean just so many things. I mean, so much has changed in ten years. But I will say one thing is, oh, two different studios, I mean, you know,

different producers. I mean, it's really been interesting because when you're doing something for that long, it doesn't feel like that long. Like I can remember the day that I walked into KTLA, literally can remember the day. I could remember my first story. I could remember my first interactions with people I'll never forget. I wrote down everyone's name that I met in in an ever not note so that I could like go back and memorize names of

all the producers and all these people. And so I wonder if I could find that note because I had everyone's name, because I wanted to like make sure that I was doing the right thing. This was a big jump for me. And one thing that has not changed is really, you know, just well, I guess it has. I guess it's evolved the way that I do things, the way that I do my stories. I mean, I you know, I didn't really know what I was doing when I came into there. You know, I knew that

I wanted to do tech, but I wasn't sure. And now I think the biggest change is that I am so honed in on my stories and what I think a story on TV should be and who I think it should be for. And a lot of it comes down to just helping people like this podcast. Like I take for granted that I cover tech news twenty four to seven. It's all I think about. It's all on you know, saturated with every day, day in, day out.

And then I talk to a regular person and I realize that the stuff that I am just immersed with, they have no clue, and it's like wow. So this is why people like to watch the segment, because I am sitting here taking all this information in about the tech world and distilling it into something that you need

to know about. And that's for me too. I mean I do the same thing with people that I read and people that I look up to that you know, do nutrition or you know, like I've talked about this guy that I follow on YouTube, flave City, and he's the guy that I look to to find things in target that are good and healthy for you when you shop. And I don't know about that stuff, but he does because he's sitting there taking the time to go through

it all. And so again it's like this circle that you know, I cover this stuff and keep track of it so that you don't have to. And if you're a tech enthusiast, of course you're a little bit more involved. But most of the people that are watching on KTLA and our other partner stations are just I call them drive by techies. They're just watching the news and all of a sudden, my segment comes on and I explain, you know, the new Clubhouse app and they're like, oh, interesting,

I haven't heard of that before. But then all of a sudden they're at a you know, a little get together with their with their niece or nephew or whatever, and someone's like, oh, I'm using Clubhouse, and like, I know what that is. I heard it on the news and that's what it's all about. So thank you for ten great years. It's it's been awesome. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, so I'll be here for another couple

of years, you know. I mean, it's just continues on and I will continue to grow the product, grow what I do, and just continue to reach people in new ways. So thank you for being a part of it. All. Right, let's get started with the first story of the week. This is always interesting to me, so Samsung. Not a huge story, but Samsung this week announced that the features from the Galaxy twenty one are coming to the Galaxy S twenty and not every feature, but a lot of them.

And what I think is funny about this is that they don't really say this information at the beginning when they're selling the S twenty one because they don't want to give you that information. They want you to wonder, hmmm, is this new object eraser coming to other phones? I don't know. I guess I'll just have to buy the

new one. And so it's like clockwork that we see as soon as the initial marketing push is over, and it's been about four weeks for the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one series, now they're like, oh, oh, by the way, if you didn't buy one, we're just gonna give you some of those features and some of the features coming to the Let's see, it's the S twenty, S twenty plus S twenty Ultra S twenty FE which was a huge seller last year, Galaxy Note twenty series and the

Galaxy Z foll two and the Z Flip. So here's the update which is rolling out right now. It's called one UI three point one. You'll get an improved single take. I'm not a huge fan of the single take feature. I think it takes a lot of unnecessary pictures. But I could see how it could be useful in certain circumstances, like if your kid is jumping off, like, you know, a rock into the water or something, which why would your kid be doing that, you know, like they'd probably

be a teenager. Actually, I don't want anyone jumping off any rocks anytime. I see that. And I grew up going to lakes. Believe me, I've seen plenty of people jump off rocks into the lake. I just wasn't one of them. I'm just too like, I can't do it, you know, it's just not my thing. So bad example, But let's say they're blowing out birthday cake candles, then this is where you'd want the single take because with one shutter hit or you know, click of the shutter,

it will take some pictures. It will take some videos, it will take some white angles, black and white color whatever, and so you get all these variety of pictures with a variety of lenses all at once, and it's cool. But I find that you just get a lot of stuff that you don't really need. But there are definitely some circumstances where that would be cool. Object Eraser, which I think is just amazing. If you haven't watched my YouTube video on it, please go to YouTube and search

rich on Tech object Eraser Samsung. It's so cool. You take a picture, you go to object Eraser, you tap the thing you don't want in the picture, and it removes it pretty amazingly and effortlessly improved touch auto focus and auto exposure controller. I wasn't really aware of that one, but it's there. And then multi mic recording, which in pro video mode you can record audio through your phone and a connected Bluetooth device, so that's really cool. I

Comfort Shield, which is with blue light. And then Private Share, which I think is a very very great feature. So when you're sharing a photo from the gallery, you know this is from the native gallery, not like Google Photos. But if you share a photo, it will say there

will be an option to include the location. And I think that's really smart because, you know, especially if you're just sending a picture to you know, Craigslist or something or I don't know, whatever people do with pictures, you don't always want your private information in there because it shows exactly where you took that picture. So those are the features from the S twenty one coming to the S twenty So if you have one of those phones,

definitely check for an update. Those are rolling out right now. All right, let's get to the first question of the day. Hey, rich, First, thank you for all your help to all of us. I've been shopping for a computer for my mom. She just needs it for email, web search, and YouTube. Do you think this is legitimate? See the link? Have you heard of these guys? Seems too good to be true? What do you think? Thank you? Michael and Michael sent this long link from a thing called I'm not you

know what. Maybe I won't say the name of the company, but it's just some random thing that I've never heard of. The domain endzine dot top and you click it and let's see redirecting you to a MacBook Pro website I've never seen before. One hundred and forty nine ninety five for an Apple sixteen inch MacBook Pro with touchbar, ninth Gen, eighth core, Intel two point four gigaherts, sixty four gigs of RAM. Oh my god, this thing is maxed out

four terabytes SSD drive for one hundred and fifty bucks. Now, if you got this computer on Apple dot com, it would be about four thousand dollars, and this is one hundred and forty nine ninety five. Let's see add to Karte and let's check out, and let's see what the scam is here, because this is definitely a scam. So an order, an item you ordered is in very high demand, no worries. We have reserved your order so it doesn't

run out of stock. Before checkout, you have nine minutes and forty eight seconds, and they have a sixty day satisfaction guarantee over thirty two hundred and forty five successfully shipped orders, and you place your order, and I don't even understand what the scam is here. I mean, you're just basically getting scammed as soon as you check out here, You're not getting a four thousand dollars computer for one hundred and forty nine ninety five. There's just no way.

So I get it, and I think, you know, let's see what was it, Brian Michael. I think Michael was pretty smart in having his spidey sense saying something doesn't seem right here. So this is just totally now Here's how we figure out if this store is legit. Okay, Number one. You go to the page that this MacBook is on, okay, and I'm looking for anything. If you scroll down, I mean, it's got a screenshot of the

Apple website as the description. Then it's got random pictures of this computer that seem like they're from random people. You scroll all the way down to the bottom of the website and there's literally nothing, no contact information, no nothing. If you go to about us, congrats you found a place with the coolest items. We have spent years searching for creative, smart, and useful products around the world. No

contact information, no social media information, know nothing. This is a totally bogus website that if you try to purchase this MacBook from Number one, your credit card is probably off to some marketplace that people will be purchasing your number in seconds and you will never see this computer. So Michael, good job. If it seems too good to be true. It is. I see this stuff all the time. In fact, whenever I do a story on a product, people send me screenshots of those products and they say,

is this a good place to buy it? I found it cheaper? No, it is not. If you're not buying from Amazon, best Buy, you know these main retailers that you've heard of, it's probably not a good idea, especially if the price is too good to be true. I'm not saying you can't buy from a mom and pop, but you have to make sure it's legitimate. Look for the contact information, look for the return policy, look for a physical address, look for you know, social media links

to their Instagram and Twitter. If they don't have any of that stuff, stay away, all right. Good? First question, by the way, Michael, I would recommend a chromebook for your mom because if she is just doing email, web search, and YouTube, why does she need more than a chromebook. So I would specifically recommend the new Samsung Chromebook because they are coming out with a brand new chromebook. I think it's the Chromek Samsung Chromebook two. Let me see

computing and sal a Galaxy Chromebook two. It's five hundred and fifty bucks and it's a great chromebook. It's got all day battery life. You know, it's light, it's thin. I mean, this might be too much for mom, but it's just a really nice, brand new chromebook that I think Mom would like. And it's you know, the good news about this with Mom is that you don't have to worry about any sort of Oh it also folds

back as a tablet. That's even better. Yeah, five hundred and forty nine dollars Intel Celeron with US sixty four gigs of RAM and or sixty four gigs of storage and four giga by RAM. So you can get it in Fiesta red or Mercury gray. And you could even trade in a phone or an old tablet. So if you have an old tablet that you can trade in, let's say you have an old iPad, let's see iPad air eighty bucks off or an older iPad one hundred

bucks off. So do that. Speaking of chromebooks, according to geek Wire, chromebooks outsold max worldwide in twenty twenty, and this was at the expense of Windows computers. And this makes a ton of sense because the pandemic had everyone rushing to get a chromebook. People as I saw. I mean, many people are rushing to get some sort of mobile computing device for their kids or themselves. If you work for a company, clearly they're probably going to supply that

for you. But there's a lot of other people out there, and especially kids, and chromebooks really were the way to go for kids. There's a lot of very bad chromebooks out there, and I think people experience that. But I think, like I said, with this Samsung Chromebook, pay a little extra and get a better, proper chromebook. Don't don't spend one hundred and fifty bucks in a chromebook. It's going to be horrible. It's gonna last you less than a year,

and do the math. Spend a little bit more and get something that's gonna last you a couple of years, and that's going to not make you want to pull your hair out because it's so slow and so terrible. So let's see, Windows was down year over year five points from eighty five percent to eighty percent in twenty twenty market share. So Windows, when you think Windows, oh so sad Microsoft nobody uses them anymore? Not true. Lots

of people use Windows. Chrome up four point four percent, Chrome OS four point four points rather so six percent market share to eleven percent market share in twenty twenty. So when you think about Chrome Os, wow, it has a ways to go. And you look at mac Os up less than a point from six point seven percent market share in twenty nineteen to seven point five percent. So right now we've got Windows at eighty percent, chro

Home at eleven percent, or let's round these up. Windows at eighty one percent, Chrome at eleven percent, and mac Os at eight percent. This is according to IDC. And so when you think about it now, I live in Los Angeles, a very very MacBook centric town. You go to any meeting, what are people clickity clocking on the MacBooks? But they're only seven eight percent of the share, Chrome books eleven percent, Windows eighty one percent. So still Windows

has the lion's share. And it just depends what you need, you know. For me, I use Mac because I like to edit and the programs I use are on here and Windows is fine. I think it's I think what Windows is doing is really good, especially with the touch screens. I think that's amazing. When I use my MacBook, it's and my kid, one of my kids has a Windows computer. One has a MacBook and one with the windows, with the you know, the ability to touch the screen is

just amazing, whereas the one that doesn't. He is always trying to touch the screen, and there's so many times when that would come in hand and we just don't have it. So I think that touch screen is definitely a feature that Apple needs to integrate into their laptops. I don't know if it's gonna happen because they've got the iPad thing going on, but it definitely, it definitely

helps in many many circumstances. All right, let's see here we have got let's see Sherry, Hey, Rich, I received two voicemails today and an email telling me not to use my Apple device until I contact Apple. Is this some kind of a hoax? Stay thank you and stay safe, Sherry. Sherry, You're right, it is some kind of hoax. And I see this stuff all the time, and it's so exhausting

because these scammers are just never ending. And good example, I put on my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash Rich on tech I had another woman email me saying, hey, Rich, is this jit? I don't think it is, but just tell me if you think it is. And it was a screenshot of you know, an Apple case ID. Hello. Due to a problem with the payment method, we couldn't charge your account for your case and this, you know, goes on with this long case number that you know

they just made up. If you don't update your information in twenty four hours, your Apple idea will be permanently locked. Oh my gosh. To unlock Apple ID, please visit this link to log in with your Apple ID and update your billing information, and it gives you an Apple Apple dot com slash update slash billing which I asked the person who originally sent this to me to send me the actual screen, you know, the email, so I can

click the link. And I don't recommend that you click links, but if you're going to click links to see what they're all about, what you do on the iPhone is you press and hold the link. You don't actually tap it. If you press and hold, it will bring up a preview of that link, and then on that preview you can see in the upper left hand corner what the actual link is. Because just because a link says appleid dot com, that doesn't actually mean it brings you to

appleid dot com. What they do is they use that as the URL, and then they hide the actual link under that URL, and so when you click it, it's a totally different link, and it's usually bogus. And so in this case, the actual link when I pressed and held it to see the preview, is an ninety one dash S eight F four U five three sp dot uc dns dot org. That does not sound like an Apple website to me. And Apple is not sending these

urgent emails to you. Oh my gosh, you need to update your your credit card information where we freeze your account forever. No, they don't do that. I mean, all I know is I get no emails from Apple. I just get my credit card and actually, okay, so here's what was happening, truthfully, is that I, you know, I have all these little things that get purchased on my Apple ID, and it goes to an old email address.

I can't seem to change my Apple ID to like my current emails, so I have to use this old email address I never use, which I guess in some ways is more secure. But I really was trying to figure out, like I get these charges on my credit card or debit card for nine ninety nine two ninety nine, a dollar ninety nine, two ninety nine, a dollar ninety nine. It just keeps going, and I'm like, what are these charges for? Like, shouldn't Apple send an email to me

letting me know what these charges are? Sure enough, they do, but they were all going to spam in my old email address. So I created a filter on that old email to make them not go to spam and also forward to my current email address. And so now I'm getting all these emails from Apple and yeah, they just charge you. And you know they're not going to send you an email that says your account's going to be permanently disabled. I mean, that just doesn't happen. They're not

going to call you to tell you anything. That's just not how these tech companies operate. So if these things happen to you, and if you're listening to this podcast, you're a little bit ahead of the curve. So this is the kind of stuff you need to tell your family members and just make sure they're aware. Because I had this thing where my mom sent me a message on LinkedIn and it said, hey, Rich, just saying hi, And I was like, what, my mom is not on LinkedIn?

So I text her and I because I was like, oh, she must have gotten hacked. I text her, I said, Mom, did you text me through LinkedIn? Like did you send me a message? Because yeah, I just found my password, so I figured I just send you a message and

I'm like, what, okay. But the good news is that I actually did not sort of interact with her or do anything or you know, I wanted to warn her, like, hey, you got hacked, but I wanted to make sure so when in doubt, do a little research, check things out and uh, you know, find the source before you just hand over your information. Because these people are are really really just ugh, they just they never never end, all right.

Last Pass is speaking of passwords. Last Pass is a free or was a good free option for password saving, and now it is no longer because there basically is still a free option, but it's it's kind of worthless for the average person. And I say this because last Pass is now changing the way they do business for their free users, and it's kind of sad because so many people probably chose Last Pass because of this free

option that is now going away. And yes, you can still get a free option from last Pass, but it is so so cobbled that you're not going to want to use it because it just doesn't. You'd be better off paying for a service that actually works than this. Okay, so this is their blog post saying each week millions of last Pass users add millions of passwords and blah blah blah blah for more than twenty million users. They have twenty million users, and they have a free offering.

But they're making some changes. And here's the free offering change. In a nutshell. You now have to choose what types of devices you want to access your free passwords on. You can only choose one. You can choose either computers or mobile devices, but not both at the same time. So why is that a problem? Let me give you a scenario you have. You've got a computer and a smartphone and they both have last Pass installed in them, the free last Pass. Now, all of a sudden, you

only get that option on one. So you go on your mobile device, you choose that and you make a new password, and of course, because you're using last Pass, you're making a really strong password for this new website that you're signing up for. Well, now you want to log into that website on your desktop computer well, guess what. You can't just go to last Pass and have it automatically fill that password in on your browser, nor can

you copy and paste. You have to go to your phone look at that password, and you know, bring it and type it in on your computer and it's going to be twenty seven characters long and it's going to be a pain. So now you're just frustrated and you say, oh, I'll just break down and purchase last Pass premium, which

is what they're trying to make you do. Now, if you have a Mac computer and an iPhone, yes you can say, rich, can't you just copy the password on your iPhone and use handoff to paste it onto your MacBook?

Yes you can, which would work. But if you're using both of those services, then you know you can use my next solution, which is just to use iCloud Keychain, which is built in It's a it's a password manager that's built into the iOS and well the Apple ecosystem, and if you have all Apple products, that's what I recommend you use because it's free. I mean, you're already paying the price by being in the app Apple ecosystem, which is not a cheap thing to be in so

you might as well use it, and it's great. It's integrated into Safari. Now you're not going to get the robust features that a independent third party password management software will give you. But if you're just on Apple and you want a free solution, it works great. And yes, it works very nicely. So Last Past changing the way they do it. You got to choose one or the other.

You can see and you know, use your passwords on mobile devices or computers as of March sixteenth, So this is gonna have a lot of people either upgrading, you know, and paying for the premium, which is not that expensive. It's it's if you build annually. It's two twenty five a month. Twenty five times twelve is twenty seven dollars for the year. No big deal, but it's more of

a it's more of like a kick in the shin. Right, you signed up for this thing because it was free, and they kind of got rid of that trust because now it's like, I mean, there's still trustworthy business and I still think last Pass is good. And it's yes to twenty seven dollars a year. It's fine. I pay for password software and it's you know, it's fine. I've been paying for it for a long time and it's

great and I get my use out of it. But I'm just saying that I think a lot of people signed up for this because they didn't have to pay. And this is why when people always ask me, hey, Rich, what do you recommend for password software? I would always give them a couple options because I want them to

choose the best option for them. So in general, what I would tell people is, and if you've listened to this podcast, you've heard this, I say, a lot of people like last Pass because it's free or they have a free option. A lot of people like dash Lane, a lot of people like one password. And now the new one that a lot of people are using, and I might actually do a story with them, is called bitwarden.

And this one is an open source password manager. And of course I think they still have plans and pricing. So free is personal plans, free is zero, So I mean you can get that for zero and that includes two people. That's pretty good. Actually, oh that's business plans. Sorry, personal plans free. Okay, it's free, all right, So that's probably where you want to go. Now, let's see hold on, Yeah, Bitwarden is free across all devices, So there you go.

If you're looking to switch now, I have switched these in the past and it will hold on. I'm going through these. Yeah, we need to do a story on bitwarden because this is pretty good. So max users for free is one access to the apps, item storage, unlimited sync across all your devices is. Yes, you cannot share things, so you have to have a family account for that secure password generator. You can't attach a gig of files that you have to pay for encrypted export so you

can do that. So what I was saying is these password management programs usually have an export feature where you can export and then import your password to another one. So if you're thinking of leaving last pass, I would take a good look at bitwarden. I have not used it personally, but it looks pretty strong and I like that it's open source, two step log in. It supports that. Now it doesn't support let's see. Yeah, so I think

Bitwarden sounds pretty good. Otherwise, it's ten dollars a year for the premium and forty dollars a year for the family, So I think this sounds like a great alternative. I've gotten so many people on Twitter to tell me that they're using Bitwarden. And by the way, you know, I struggle with this privacy stuff. I don't think it's a great idea to advertise which password manager you're using. Now, I get it, you're you're not you know on TV. You're not a major, you know, celebrity or someone that

you know whatever. My point is, I think that it's fine to telp your friends and family, but I wouldn't post it on social media because why give the bad guys one extra step to figuring out where to target you? Right, So that's my advice. And you know you're you're listening to the rich On Tech show, so that means it's my advice on this show. I'm just telling you what I think, and that's what I think. So there you have it, Sandy says Hi. I used to watch you

all the time. Unfortunately we moved to Bakersfield. I stream occasionally. What website do you recommend to find the cheapest flight? Also our Tuesday's cheaper round trip. I need to fly from lax to Dallas Fort Worth tomorrow. Any suggestions, Sandy? Well, Sandy, this is a great question, and you know I use to fly a lot. I haven't. I've only flown once in the last year, which is just wild to me.

I can't wait to get back up there. But I only use one website, and that one website is Google Flights, and that's flights dot Google dot com. I don't think you need another website to search for flights. And the reason I think that is because Google is the best when it comes to finding the cheapest flights, the way you can slice and dice flights, even just popping in a place and searching and finding suggestions on where to

go that are cheap. So right now, if I look from Los Angeles and I want to let's I just want to do a one way ticket somewhere, you know, in the next six months. Let's just say in March, I can now look at an entire map of the US, and let's say I want to go NonStop. I only want to go NonStop. This map continues to change with all of the information that I'm putting in. Let's say I just want to look at skiing. Now it changes to skiing, and I see that I can go to

Aspen for three hundred and thirty five dollars. On Wednesday, March seventeenth, or I can go to Reno on Wednesday, March seventeenth for thirty nine dollars, or I can go to Portland for sixty nine bucks. Let's say I don't want skiing. Let's say I only want to fly on a certain airline because I am with Star Alliance. Now I can see just those flights. So I think Google Flights is just the best. It is so amazing, it's so easy. It's the only thing I've used to search

for flights for as long as it's been around. Now I have actually booked a flight through Google Flights. But most of the time it links you right to the specific carrier, and in some ways it'll even find you cheaper flights because they call these hacker fares, which hacker fares are fares that maybe leave on one airline and come back on another airline, and so that's on there.

I mean, it really is good. So check out Google Flights, and to answer your question, I probably missed your flight that you needed, but you know this is what I look at, and you can save your trips, you can watch trips, you can. I mean, it's just so full featured that I love it. I just and you wonder where is Google get this information? Many years ago, they bought a site or I don't know, it was a company called I think it was called it Google Ita or is it x I think it was Google Ita

Ita software Matrix by Google. So Matrix is from ITA and they bought this a long time ago and it's basically the software that all the travel agents used to use, and now Google has it. And of course the best thing about Google is that the the information around the flights is not just one thing. They're using so many signals to help you figure out these flights that I

just think it's brilliant. And I know I love Google, but this is just one of those examples of how big data just really wins for the consumer when it comes to booking these things. And yeah, there's some ads and stuff, but the way that you can slice and dice the fly data is just so amazing to me. I don't you know, Kayak does a good job too, But I think there's a lot of there's a lot of like noise on these other websites, and I think that Google Flights is just kind of the cleanest and

the easiest for me to understand. So that's the only one that I look at. And my personal favorite feature is if you are flexible with your flights, look at

the calendar view. So if I type in the flight that I always do, which is LAX to EWR, and then I put round trip one person, first class, of course, just kidding, I wish, but you know, you can put in economy, premium, economy, business, or first and then you just click instead of choosing a date, you just click and wait a second, and the calendar populates with green

numbers showing the cheapest days to fly. And if you just pick those two days, so if I want to fly there right now, I would go, Okay, March first is out. Second, Okay, I gotta go to March ninth, which is ninety five dollars. Oh ooh, March tenth was even cheaper, So I'm gonna reset the calendar. Let's go

to March tenth. And then I wait a second on the calendar and I wait for the return dates to light up green, and the cheapest return date is the fourteenth, and I can go round trip for seventy nine dollars. Oh my gosh, seventy nine dollars for round trip to Newark Okay, Now this is on Spirit Airlines with one stop in Florida. I am not gonna do that, so I'm gonna change it to NonStop, which is again. And now I can go back to my calendar and check

for the cheapest dates. Press reset one more time, and I'm looking at all the dates and the cheapest is one ninety seven. And if I go on March fourth to March seventh, eighth, I can go for the whole week if I want fifth through seventh, and there we go one hundred ninety seven bucks round trip. So that is how I search for flights, and you gotta be a little flexible to get those cheapest dates. But I just love how they show you all this information, So check it out. That's the way I do it, and

I hope you love it. All right, what should we talk about next? All right? I talked about this a little bit last week. I'm not going to spend too much time, but I got a question about do you install antivirus software on your iPhone? And on this podcast for many years, I've been saying no, no, no, you don't need it, and I got to thinking, oh gosh, what if I'm giving people the wrong information all this time, right, Like, what if I'm totally wrong about this? So what I did?

I went to a cybersecurity expert, Kevin Tatavosian. He runs a company called cyber Duo here in Los Angeles, and I said, Kevin, what is the deal with antivirus software on your iPhone? And my heart was like a little bit shaky because I was like, oh my gosh, what's his answer going to be? Have I been giving out the wrong advice all the time? And he said, after a little bit of like one little breath, he said, you don't really need it, and here's why. And I said, oh, okay,

I've been giving people the right information. Here's why, and it's exactactly what I have been saying. He said. His term was that apps on the iPhone live in separate containers, which makes them secure. The way I've been explaining it is that each app is sort of sandbox. And if you think about a sandbox, think about a sandbox with really high sides. The sand isn't going anywhere. You can plain that sandbox as much as you want throw the sand around, but as long as those sides are high,

you're not gonna get the sand outside that box. And this is the way you can think of of iPhone apps. They are sandbox, which means they've got really high sides, which even if they're getting all wild and crazy inside that sandbox, they're not going to affect other apps because the way iOS is is engineered, it's everything is sandboxed on its own, so one app can't reach out of that sandbox and grab onto another app the way it can on a Windows machine or even a Mac computer.

And so that's why I've said, you don't really need this stuff on your phone, and you especially don't need to pay for it. So that's that. Now. The other thing you did say is on Android, and I've been saying on Android, I was a little bit waffly. I don't really think you need it, but there's definitely more potential for apps to interact with each other on Android,

and that's what he agreed with. So on Android, I probably would recommend if you are, you know, someone who may click a link that's bad, or someone who may be downloading stuff that's bad. Not bad, I mean, like mau, you know it could be potentially bad, like you just don't know, like if you're setting up your phone for a family member that is less than tech inclient, you might want to put antivirus on there because it might click a link in one of these text messages that

is less than smart to click. And so there's a website called what is it called avtest dot dot org that kind of ranks all of these antivirus software for both the laptop and the or you know, desktops and laptops. And why is it coming up in German? Weird? Okay, let me get that English. So anyway, they I recommend a VAST and AVEG, which I would concur with. I've heard good things about them. I did install them on

my Android phone. The only thing I don't like about them is I don't know if this is an Android thing, but they have to have a persistent notification to work all the time, and I hate that. I hate persistent notifications on my Androids. And what that means is it's a notification that never goes away. It just stays there forever, and it's like a vast is running and protecting you. And I'm like, okay, I get it. Can I just

get rid of that? I don't want you there. But I think because of the way this operating system is engineered. They have to have that notification so that it can run all the time and basically take over in a heartbeat if you click a link that it needs to scan. So I think that's why. But there's other antivirus apps out there. You can check the av testavdash test dot org if you want to see what's good for you.

And I think my Windows computer, you know, my advice for that stands as well, which is, you know, if you have a Windows computer, just update your software. They've got Windows Defender built in, so you know, use that. And uh they recommend this website called on Lab a h N lab. I've never heard of that, but that's what they recommend. And then a VAST and AVG so I would go with one of those. They actually rank okay, so they rank Microsoft Defender way down. They rank it. Yeah,

it's like tenth on the list. So maybe you want to put, you know, one of these other ones on your Windows computer. They're free, so you know, it should it should help. But anyway, that that's the advice on the the iPhone antivirus. Don't worry about it an iPhone if you have an Android probably and if you have a Windows computer, you might want to look into it. And if you have a Mac, I don't really think you need it on the Mac just yet, but that

could change as max continue to get more popular. All right, Raymond sent a very cryptic email. All it said was how to save data and numbers. That's it, And I'm guessing he means he's switching to a new phone. Oh oh, his subject line did say upgrade phone. Okay, so upgrade phone, how to change, how to save data and numbers. So I get it. You're switching phones. You want to save and it says sent from Inxfinity Connect application. So my advice, if you have a phone on iPhone, you can just

back everything up to the iCloud. So if you have an iPhone, back everything up to iCloud, you can use that. Or if you have one of these third party apps, like if you have like Verizon or like AT and T and maybe T Mobile has one as well. They have like these cloud apps that come included usually with like a you know, the higher end subscription plans, like an unlimited plan, and you get like a little maybe a little bit of cloud space on there, but like

there's like a Verizon backup Assistant app. Okay, so if you yeah, how to use backup assistant, so they call it Verizon Cloud Slash Backup Assistant. So most of them haven't installed. If not, you can install it by you know, searching for backup Assistant. So I wonder if they have backup Assistant for iPhone. Let's see iPhone. I don't know if they do. They may, it looks like it might

be just Android. But anyway, so the point is you can you can use one of those, but I think your best bet on iPhone is just to use iicloud. Make sure everything's backed up into I Cloud. Doesn't cost you much if you're just doing data in numbers. You can also use Google. So on Android you can download the Google one app. And so if you download Google one, even if you're not as paying subscriber, you still get

fifteen gigs of storage for Google. And the Google one app has really upped the anti lately because it will it will save the things that you need, which are your contacts and your I think it does. Let's see what does it do? Let me see Google one. Oh on Android or iPhone? So on iPhone it will back up your contacts, calendar, photos, and videos. So if you just have a couple of things, you can back up all that stuff, which is really cool. So you have this on iPhone and Android, and it does the same

on Android. So I would use Google One. It's an app and Google Play and also on the App Store for Apple and you get fifteen gigs. That's probably the easiest because you can just back up your contacts, you back up your calendar, back up your photos, your videos, and boom, it's all there. It's in Google. It's safe. And then when you get your new phone, download that Google One app and just bring it back to you.

Now this is a little confusing because it also if you're signed into Google, you can back up all your contacts and stuff to Google, and of course your calendar. But I think that this makes it a little bit clearer that you are backed up, and I think that that's an easy way to do it, and especially if you're helping migrate like a friend or a family member, that's an easy way to do it as well. So I think people forget about these apps, but they are

out there, so just search for them. And then there's of course third party apps, which you know you have to be a little bit wary about those, because you know, you are talking about your calendar and your contacts and giving access to the items on your phone. So just be a little bit more aware. If it's like a random app that you're, you know, downloading to back up your contacts, you want to use a trusted source in

that case, because these are your contacts, all right. Quick housekeeping note, Apple TV is now Apple TV app is now available on chrome Cast with Google TV. And when I posted this on my Facebook page, I was like, I don't even know how to explain this because here, let's let's break this down for a second. The Apple TV app, which includes Apple Plus, is now available on chrome Cast, but only chrome Cast with Google TV. Do

you see how many things are mixed in there. It's like, I don't know what you're talking about, Rich, So breaking it down, Google TV is the chrome cast that came out. I think it's called Chrome Cast with Google TV. This is the fifty dollars chrome cast that came out. I think it was last year, maybe October and maybe earlier, but I bought one immediately. It has the best way I can describe it. It's the only chrome cast that has a remote control, so that's the way I describe it.

If your Chrome Cast has a remote control, that's the one that is sort of an all in one system that I think is a great streaming device. And in fact, this was the one app that was not available on chrome Cast with Google TV that I wanted, and I ended up going back to my Apple TV. But now I may go back to this because I really like this device for various reasons. It continues to get better. The thing I did not like about it is that the apps take a little bit longer to load than

I would like. It doesn't seem to be as snappy as Apple TV for loading apps. And my wife she noticed that too. She's like, oh, Netflix takes a long time to load. And so you know, if you're not getting access to those those racy scenes in Bridgerton like right away, I mean, you know, people get a little oh my gosh, what's going on. I need need to get my Bridgerton fixed, right if you watch Bridgerton, which I didn't, I'm just joking because I know that there's

a joke because it's like the racist show apparently on Netflix. Anyway. So Apple TV app now available on Chromecast with Google TV and The reason I say this is because it includes Apple TV Plus. So the first thing you could do with the Apple TV app is access all the items that you've purchased over the years on Apple TV or i should say on iTunes. So all the movies that you had, like if you're building a collection, you can now finally access them through this Apple TV app.

But more importantly I think for more people is the Apple TV Plus of ability to you know, ability to access those items, which those are TV shows like ted Lasso, the morning show Greyhound, which I did watch with Tom Hanks. It was a pretty good movie Palmer starring Justin Timberlake.

I did not watch, but I've heard it's decent, and there's a lot of random stuff like for the kids on there, like the Snoopy show, which my kid I'm trying to get him to watch that, but they're so obsessed with Minecraft that it's like tough to take their eyes off anything said Minecraft. I did. I did successfully get rid of Roadblocks, though I will tell you that in my home Roadblocks is limited to one hour on

a Saturday night and it's worked out. It's it's amazing these these kids, the resiliency when they don't have something, they don't really miss it, and yeah, I get a little, you know, a little whining here and there. Oh, my friends are playing roadblocks. Well yeah, and guess what. When I talk to your friend's parents, they all say the same thing. My kids are addicted to roadblocks and I

don't like it. And so, you know, it's this, it's this honeymoon period with roadblocks where parents love it because oh, my kid is so into this. Oh my gosh, it's like I can take a little breather here for one hour, two hours, three hour, four hours, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, unlimited hours because kids can stay on that unlimited. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in my life, because when I was a kid, you watched the show and you

couldn't wait to get back outside. Yeah, we were couch potatoes on certain occasions, but for the most part, we were outside all the time. And I know him sounding like old man Rich, but I am. I'm getting older and I'm realizing that some of this stuff is not very good for our children. Now. I'm guilty of the fact that I don't just let my kids go outside and play for hours without me being out there. But they can go in the backyard and play and it's like,

come on, you'll survive. My kid the other day told me when I said go outside, he said there was cat poop on the lawn somewhere. And we don't have a cat, but there's some cats that run around the neighborhood and they leave, you know, the little surprises for me on the lawn, which is horrendous, but it happens. And I'm like, really, the entire backyard is ruined because there's one little area where a cat went to the bathroom. Yeah,

I don't want to step in it. Okay, okay, stay away from that area because you know, Dad didn't really feel like going to clean it up. I've had to do that many times on our on our property. But uh, you know, anyway, I digress. But the point is, I don't know what the point was. But Apple TV Plus is now on Google TV, and yeah you can get it and limit limit roadblocks time. That's that's my advice. Limit the time we have they So the funny thing

is now they're playing Minecraft. They get they get I think it's two hours of Minecraft a day, but they found this game on Minecraft, which I think looks a lot like roadblocks called egg Wars, and now they're just playing nah. So it's like I give up. You know, It's like they just they just channel their energy into these little games, and I get it. All the kids we played games. I used to get a Nintendo thumb from playing RC What was it RC pro Am? Is that it was it RC pro Am? Yeah? RC pro Am.

Oh gosh, I'm really dating myself. Oh gosh. RC pro Am was developed in for Nintendo in February nineteen eighty eight. Oh god, yeah, but I used to get Nintendo thumb from playing that. In paper Boy, we used to play that forever and all these other video games. But you know, you had to go into the basement and you know, you came up to go outside. That's what we did anyway. All right, let's take another question. Enough of my complaining.

Mario says, hello, oh, how appropriate. We just talked about Nintendo And his name is Mario. Hello. My son is fourteen years old and loves to sing and likes to create his own sound slash music and is now combining it with videos using a light motion app. I don't know that one, and for making music he's using Soundtrap. Can I suggest, Can you suggest what I can get him to expand his interest looking for under three hundred dollars.

We don't have an Apple computer, just an HP Chromebook, and he has an Apple phone, Mario, So Mario, my advice is to get him an iPad. And I know, oh, Rich, you only like Apple stuff. Oh my gosh, we stop recommending Apple stuff. Well, I mean, look, this is the best. You're saying you want to spend three hundred bucks. An iPad is three hundred and thirty dollars usually on sale. The latest generation is about three hundred and so look around a little bit from a reputable place. Even Amazon

has it for three hundred. Generally, Google search iPad deals and click the news and look for the bloggers blogging about these deals because they like to blog about them because they get a little cut of the product, and you know the purchase price, and so you win and they win, and we all win because they're tracking these prices for you, and you don't have to go search in Google for these random places. They'll they'll do the

math for you. So get them an iPad. And just there are so many amazing apps on iPad that can work with music and I think garage band is on there for free, so he can start there. I've never figured out garage band, but if but he's fourteen, so he will and you'll find he'll find so many things. Now he can use the microphone on the iPad to start. But I would recommend you probably want to get them a little microphone that he can plug into the iPad. There are plenty that work with it. You might have

to get an adapter. You might not, but I would say, uh, you know, they do have a USB to lightning adapter for the iPad. Get them that and just do some research. Look at Blue Microphones. They've got some really inexpensive microphones for starters, and I believe one of them will plug into the iPad. So if you look at microphones and you know they've got this snowball mic for fifty bucks,

let's see if that is compatible with the iPad. Because let's see, uh this is Let's see can you use it with the iPad features and specs, USB output, plug and play with Mac and PC. So let me just google Snowball Snowball mic iPad and let's see if it works with it. How to use Blue USB microphones with an iPhone or iPad. And the answer is, it looks like you can. They confirmed to work with Apple Lightning to USB and USB C T USB adapters as well as USB on the go technology. So there you have it.

You can get a little it looks like interesting. You can connect it to an iPhone. Wow, Okay, there's a lot of different Yeah, so just get the USB Lightning to USB adapter and boom you're done. So that's what I recommend. So you're talking four hundred bucks for a

full setup and he can grow from there. And now, the microphone that I recently reviewed, which I am just in love with, is called the Tula mic to Ula and I'm not saying that you have to get this overnight, but it's a two hundred dollars microphone that records into itself, but you can also use it as USB. And I have not confirmed if it works with I'm sure, yeah,

I'm sure. You can plug it into an iPhone with the with the adapter as well, So with that he can record music by itself and then he can bring the audio files into iPads. So I mean, there's just a world of possibility here. And I love the fact that your son is doing this because let him be creative, let him make stuff, and I think the iPad is going to be the best way for him to get

started doing that. Eventually, you want to get him a MacBook, But these these kids, I'm telling you, they are mobile first, and he may not need a MacBook to do it. He may be able to do everything he needs to do on this on this computer, so on this tablet rather. So that's that's what I re commend. All right, Let's see, uh, let's see. Let's see what do we want to talk about next. We got that, We got that, We talked about that. Okay, let's talk about this one real quick.

In Google Maps, really cool feature. You'll you will be able to pay for parking meters inside Google Maps. And this is like a no brainer. I every time I pull up to a parking meet, it amazes me that I have to find a quarter in my car and pay for that parking meter using a quarter. Now, yes, a lot of the parking meters around here in Los Angeles do take a credit card or a debit card, But why do you even need to take that? Why

we all have smartphones. Put a QR code on that parking meter, bring me to a page that lets me pay for that meter with Apple Pay instantly, no sign up, no nothing, nothing, just let me pay. And yeah, there's a whole bunch of these companies that have set up these systems that are super complicated where you gotta sign up and sign in and download an app, and it's such a pain that every city has a different system. Just give me a QR code, let me scan it

and let me pay. Let me pay with Google Pay, let me pay with Apple Pay, let me pay with Samsung Pay. Is should just come up in the browser. Oh we see you're at parking meter two seventy five on North First Street. Would you like an hour of time or two hours of time and boom you pay? Maybe that's out there, but it's not out there in a big enough way. So anyway, I say this because Google Maps is now letting you pay for parking meters

from inside Google Maps. And so now when you park at a meter, you can look for a pay for parking button that appears when you get near your destination. And this is okay, but I feel like this is a little bit of an in between technology. We're going to get there, but Google's trying and What Google's really good at is like taking you know, because there's so many of these providers out there that are doing parking.

What they are good at doing is taking all of them and integrating them into their app and saying, it doesn't really matter who's doing the back end processing of this parking meter. We're just going to present a big pay button to you and you press it and boom, you're done. And that's basically what they've done. So they're working right now with up two organizations. One is a

Passport and one is park Mobile. I did a story with park Mobile many years ago in Hollywood when they outfitted a whole bunch of meters in Hollywood with the park mobile technology and it was great. This was at least probably five, six, maybe seven years ago. And you know, now Google is just making it easier because how many people are actually gonna, you know, go to a new city say, oh, that's cool, they use park Mobile. Let me let me download the app, let me sign up,

let me sign in. No, half the people don't do that because it's too much work. So if it's in Google and they're just using park Mobile's back end network and then on the front end, it's Google Pay. You're in Google. It's all signed in with your email address. You already you already have a you know, Google account. Boom. It's easy. More people use it. So I think this is brilliant. I love it. I hope they expand it. Hopefully Apple Maps will do the same thing, because Apple

Maps is very similar. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps are understanding that people are using these apps as a one stop shop for everything, whether it's finding a restaurant to eat app. Maybe not so much yet, but it's it's happening. I get the idea that you type in Seattle and it gives you everything you need to know about Seattle. Not just driving directions in Seattle, you get biking directions, you get transit. So the other thing that Google is doing in Google Maps is letting you pay

for your transit fares. So they're working with over eighty transit agencies. Now, going back to my days when I lived in New York City, I will tell you that I could not half the problem of living in New York City when I was there is there was no such thing as Apple Maps or Google Maps. There were, there just wasn't, and so you would have to there was a website or I think an app called like Hopper or sub hoop or subway hop or something that

you would before you went somewhere. You go on your desktop computer, you type in your destination and you would print out subway maps like directions to get to the place. And now when I go to New York City, I feel like I own that city when I'm on Google Maps or Apple Maps, because it tells me exactly which train to take, where the station is, how much time it's going to take me. And with this new update with buses and trains, you can pay for your fare.

So that's the other thing is that, you know, if I was ever buying like a let's say I went to San Francisco for the day, you'd you know, it would tell you you need to take the bar to this station, and it would tell you how much it is, six dollars, eighty five cents, whatever it is. And now you'll be able to tap there and actually buy your fare right from Google Maps and save that in your little wallet and just show that or scan it or whatever that you do for Clipper when you get there. Brilliant.

Same thing, you know, Las Vegas, you take the Monteroail. It says, oh, you can take the monorail. You buy your monorail pass right from within Google Maps. Now I'm not saying, I'm not confirming that those two things are indeed supported, but I'm just giving you an idea. You go to Japan and it's like, oh, I need to take this train to wherever, and used to need this. It's called a sweek a card and maybe that's integrated now. So again it used to tell you how much it

would cost to get there. Now the next level is to actually let you purchase that fare from right inside Google Maps. You are so ready, you don't have to deal with these little payment terminals inside the you know station. Oh gosh, let me tell you a quick story. Oh

my gosh. I was in Japan once and I don't know if I took the wrong train or whatever I did, but I exited the train station and for some reason I'm trying to remember this story, but I could not get back into the train station because I did not have a valid fare card. So whatever I did, I really screwed up. And I don't know what I did,

but long story short, I ended up. I ended up, and I thought I was gonna be arrested, And oh my gosh, this was like the scariest moment because I had to go through the exit and literally go to the exit that I came out of. I had to go the wrong way and buy my fare card, and like I was like a salmon swimming upstream amongst all these people, and I had to buy my fare card to get back into the station so that I could take the right train that I needed. And I don't

really remember the circumst answers. All I remember is that it was very complicated and I had no cash, and I it was like a whole big thing. Because in Japan it's changed a lot. But back in the day when I first started visiting the financial system, like they did not take like American credit or debit cards anywhere

like they do now, like they used to. You know, now it's gotten a lot better with tap to pay, But back in the day, Japan was very advanced and everything was taped to pay, whereas American credit cards were not, and it was it was either tap to pay or like a chip card, I think, and American cards were swipe and I just you just didn't have anywhere where you could swipe anywhere. It just didn't. It wasn't a thing,

and so I think that's what the thing was. I needed cash or I needed a Oh my gosh, And I'm just thinking about it now because I haven't thought about the story in so long. But it was so scary that I just thought I was gonna be thrown in a jail over there because I went through the exit and I forget what happened if I ended up asking one of the people if I could do it or whatever it was. I did it and it worked and I'm still here. So but oh my gosh, that

was That was a bad, bad feeling. All right, Do I have time for one more question? I don't think I do. I think it's uh. I think it's that time. I think it's that time when you hear this music. That music means it's the end of the show. I didn't get to talk about everything I want to talk about, but I never do. That's why you gotta follow me on social media, rich on Tech. That's where I talk about, you know, random things from time to time. That's gonna

do it for this episode of the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, Just go to rich on Tech dot tv slash podcast, hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, or go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech, hit the big blue send email button, or if you want to just bypass all that Hello at richon tech dot tv. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. I did recently get a new rating, which I will

read to you right now. Yeah you could see. I don't prep for this because it's taking all this time to bring it up here it says. Mariott on January seventeenth, said the host a great show, five stars. The host is knowledgeable and interesting. I always learn something from every podcast. Thank you, Pe Mariette. Appreciate that. If you would like to rate this podcast, just go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech. You can find me on all social media at rich on tech. I'm Richidmirol.

Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe, I will talk to you real soon