Apple reveals new products including the latest iPhones, and yes, I was there, the way that MGM got hacked and how you can avoid the exact same fate, the new scam that involves your local sports games, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on on Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and
the place where I answer your questions about technology. After all, I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun and it shouldn't trick you. Phone lines are now open. Here we go triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a call, or you can also email me. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV, hit the contact button, send your email.
It goes right to me. I will mention some of those on the show today and also in the feedback segment. If you have something you want to tell me, you like, something you don't like, something you just want to chime in, give me an email. Guests this week on the show, Lisa at A Chico of Cnet. Lisa tests a lot of mobile phones. I met up with her at the Apple event. We talked about the new iPhones, all that good stuff. So Lisa will be joining us a little
bit later. And a good friend of mine, Mark Saltzman, USA Today columnist. You might have seen this guy on the TVs at Costco at one point. He's everywhere. Mark Saltzman will be talking about the new iPhones as well, and he says something that he's got a hot take about iPhone versus androids, So you definitely want to stay tuned for that. Well, this week, there is only one thing in the news, and that is the Apple event.
New iPhones, new Apple Watches, what else, oh, new AirPods And the big, big news on all of these devices is that Apple has finally followed the ways of the rest of the world and gone USBC. It has been a long time coming, and they did not do this out of the kindness of their heart. As much as many of you love Apple, and you know, I like certain aspects of this company, they didn't just choose to
go USBC. They would have stuck with their own proprietary stuff forever if it wasn't for the European Union saying Apple or pretty much everyone, you gotta go USBC. It's better for the environment, it's better for people, it's better for the consumers to just have one cable that works
on every device. Now, over the years, in just my short history of covering tech, let's see, we have had USBA, we have had USBC, we have had micro usb B, we have had lightning, we have had thirty pin connectors, we have had barrel connectors, we have had oh my gosh. Back in the day before USB happened on computers, there were all kinds of different ports and things to plug stuff in. I mean, it was just you never knew you got a new printer, you had to plug it
in with some sort of weird cable. Nowadays, thankfully everything's USB. We have really taken that for granted, and this is probably going to be a temporary thing for Apple. I feel like they're moving towards a wireless future for the iPhone and it's just a matter of time before they do away with that cable altogether. I mean, realistically, we're not even transferring data with these cables anymore unless you
need to. Most of the time, people are either plugging in their phones just to charge them, or at this point you're just wirelessly charging. And even the cars, you know, it's all wireless car play, it's wireless Android auto, more and more less of a reason to plug in these phones. So what's new about the iPhone fifteen, Well, break it down. You've got the iPhone fifteen and fifteen plus. These are pretty much the base model iPhones they get. Yet last
year's Pro model features Dynamic Island. That's that little pill shaped bubble up at the top where the cameras lie on the front facing of the phone. They've made that into a little infotainment space so it shows things like, you know, what you're currently playing, if you've got a timer, things like that. So last year that was new on the iPhone fourteen pros. Now it's come to the iPhone
fifteen base models. Forty eight megapixel camera. This is the first time we've seen a forty eight megapixel camera on the base model iPhones, so that's new, and they take photos by default at twenty four megapixels, so you're getting a much much higher resolution picture and theoretically much better
camera quality. Crash detection already on there, Satellite connectivity already on there from or actually that's coming to there as well with triple A. So if you have one of these phones, Apple really leaning heavily into the sort of it's going to protect you in the worst case scenario situation. The things they did not bring to these base level iPhones no high refresh rate on the screen, so the Pro models have one hundred and twenty hrtz refresh rate.
I know this gets a little nerdy, but basically, when you are moving and swiping through the phone, everything's just buttery smooth on the Pro models. Not so much on the iPhone fifteen and fifteen plus, although if you're not used to that, you probably don't even notice that. But if you're in a family that has a Pro model of the iPhone and a regular model and you switch
between them, oh yeah, you definitely notice. Let's see, Oh, portrait mode is also AI now, so you know how you have to switch to portrait mode if you want to take one of those pictures with the blurry backgrounds, You no longer have to do that. You literally just aim your camera at a person or a pet. AI says, oh, we're going to collect extra information about this picture so you can later make the background blurry. That's kind of cool.
The screen is twice as bright. The other thing they did not ring is always on, always on display, not coming to the base model iPhones. Always on display is probably one of the handiest features of the iPhone on
the Pro models. That's sticking to the pros. Prices start at eight hundred bucks nine hundred dollars for the Plus models, and there's still no telephoto lens on this device, so you get an ultra wide and a standard but because it's a higher megapixel camera, they can crop it to two times, so it's almost like a real zoom lens, but without an extra lens. So that's the iPhone fifteen.
Now for the Pro and the Promax, these are the more interesting of the models because this is where Apple has decided to really put out all of their best features on these devices. So the Pro models have this new titanium frame design which makes them lighter, and yes, I've held them, they are definitely noticeably lighter. They're also
very smudgye on the sides. They also have this new action button, so instead of that little switch that lets you switch between mute and on mute, mute and Ringer that is now a customizable button, which is really really handy. You can customize it to do nine different things, everything from starting a voice recording, starting the camera. You can
also just leave it on Ringer silent mode. But the thing that's really interesting is that you can now set this to do a shortcut, and that means it's pretty much unlimited. It's a button that could be yours. You can make it do whatever you do. Most on this phone, you can set that as a shortcut, and that's a rarity for Apple to let you set any sort of thing your way. They barely do that on the iPhone.
It's their ware the highway most of the time. But now the fact that you can customize this action button with shortcuts, that is a huge pro move and one that I applaud Apple for. Now here's where it's not so nice. The cameras are diverged yet again. So if you're going the Pro and the Pro Max, the Pro has a three time zoom. The Promax gets a five time zoom, and so if you want the most zoom on an iPhone, you have to go with the Promax. And it's nice. No, it's no Android ten x zoom
that they have on the S twenty three Ultra. But it's a nice start and for iPhone users, again, I'm not going to compare what Samsung is doing to the iPhone because they are just in totally separate motes. At this point. You're either iPhone or you're Android, and yes, you can compare and contrast, but the reality is, if you're an iPhone person, you're probably deep into Apple's ecosystem
and you're not considering switching anytime soon. So five time zoom if you used to have three is really nice. USBC as well on here is also faster, so you're getting a faster USBC data transfer twenty up to twenty times faster than lightning. And what's that good for? If you're shooting like big giant video files or raw video files, the stuff that pros are doing on this phone, it's going to be a little bit easier to transfer to your computer. You can also set the default focal length
twenty four millimeters, twenty eight millimeters, or thirty five. Again that gets a little nerdy, little pro but again, these are all things that if you are a pro iPhone user, they're really good. They're really good updates, and you're going to be very happy with these updates. Later on, the phone is going to get a software update that's going to get it let it shoot video in three D. They call it spatial video. And that's all getting it prepped for that new headset that Apple's going to have
next year. Now here's where Apple did something a little bit questionable. The prices are unchanged from last year. The Pro starts at nine to ninety nine. The Pro Max now starts at eleven hundred and ninety nine, and last year technically it started at eleven ten ninety nine, So technically the price is one hundred dollars more expensive, but you're getting two hundred and fifty six gigabytes of storage
on that eleven hundred and ninety nine model. They no longer have a one to twenty eight gigabyte model on the Promax. So needless to say, yes, the price is the same as last year, but there's not a cheaper option this year, so it starts at a more expensive price. So semantics there for sure. But and this comes in a couple of different colors blue, black, white, and titanium. I think the natural titanium is a way to go this year. It's a nice natural color, and you're probably
gonna put a case on it. I may go caseless this year, just because I don't know. I'm just feeling like I might. And this is a really lightweight phone, so it's very easy to manipulate in your hand. So that is the update from Apple on the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Pro and the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Plus available in stores on September twenty second, already available for pre order. Some of you listening may have already pre ordered, and so you already have your ship date and all
that good stuff. But I will say, just to kind of top this off, we are going to talk about Apple a lot throughout this show. Probably gonna be a lot of questions from you about these new iPhones and these new Apple devices. Plus our guest are going to talk about him, so we will go through that, plus
much much more on the show. Coming up, we're going to talk about the way that MGM got hacked and hopefully you can avoid the same scam we've got our guests, uh and producer Adam actually has a story to tell about how someone very close to him fell for a scam. Something that you are getting in your email on a daily basis, and so he's going to explain exactly how his family member fell for that scam. And it is quite scary because it can happen to anyone. But first
it is your turn. Give me a call triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a ring. My name is rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology and so much to talk about this week. Anytime Apple does an event, it's I mean it's fun to go. I mean, obviously I went up there.
It's you know, two days of just madness. There's a just a who's who of everyone in the tech world is up there in Coopertino, and it's fun. It's like it's like part homecoming. You see all your friends, you see all the people that you know from YouTube and from around the world. I mean there's there's tech people from every corner of the earth that fly to Coopertino. And by the way, with only about two weeks heads up, Apple sends out invitations for their events just about ten
days before, so they keep everyone guessing. And this year there was really not a lot of surprises. But the fact that we got the USBC on the iPhone that we've been wanting is a big deal. I think that that's going to be great for just streamlining gadgets because now pretty much every modern gadget uses USBC. And so it's going to take a while because people are not going to switch overnight. They're not going to all get the new iPhone. But as time goes on, things will
get fits out. It will be easier to pack, it will get easier to you know, you're in the back of a taxi and you need to charge your phone. It's no longer a do you have an iPhone or an Android cable. It's just one cable. You're in a hotel room, you want to plug into something, and it's just one cable. So it's kind of like just the way that things should be. And I get why Apple didn't change it earlier because they had a good thing going.
They've got the Lightnings. It was their proprietary cable. They made a lot of money on it. But now that it's USBC, it's going to be a lot better, and I'll talk about some of the other products too that they announced, including the Apple Watch Series nine, the Apple Watch Ultra, and the air Pods. Plus I'll have some guests to talk about that as well. Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Dominic and Coasta Mesa. Dominic. You're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, I got a quick question. I don't know if any some of my friends are having this problem too. I have an iPhone thirteen and when I go to Instagram, you know, you go to your stories and you put a song over your stories on Instagram.
Sure, and it comes up for.
A second, like it goes on where you can hear it, and you're like, okay, down, great, I'm gonna post it. And then you go back and it says song unavailable. And that's happening, I think to a lot of people right now. And I went on YouTube and try to google it, and they said, and I didn't do it yet, like go and start stop your Instagram or close I don't know, is it close it or restarted?
Maybe forced close it?
Maybe?
Well here's the deal, so I have now. Did this used to work?
Yeah?
No, it did work then, And I don't know if it had to do something with them last iPhone.
Yeah, all I know is that Apple.
Since the last iPhone update, my iPhone has been going nuts. And it's it's really really kind of like, I'm not one of those conspiracy theory people, like, I'm not like, oh, Apple's messing up the phone, so I upgrade. But at this point, I'm really feeling that because my phone, I'm not kidding, yesterday it was nearly unusable. The battery has crawled to a like it's just you charge it overnight, you wake up, it's a one hundred percent and ten
minutes later it's at eighty five percent. After I I check, you know, a couple of apps. And so here's my thought on this whole Instagram thing. I have seen this happen. I get so many emails from people specifically about music on Instagram stories. It seems to be all over the place. Now. Instagram is one of these apps that is updated very very frequently, Like I'm talking on a weekly if not sometimes twice a week basis. So there's always a change
happening on Instagram. And I have heard about music issues on Instagram for a very long time. I have not found a rhyme or reason to why these things happen on Instagram. It seems to do with a software update. It seems to be different people's models of iPhones, different software that it's running. Just you know, they're doing this fast, and so I think that they're not one hundred percent testing it on every model, and sometimes things break when they push out an update. So my advice dominic is
to number one. If you want to try to get this working again on install Instagram, turn off your phone, restart it. You can ask Siri, Hey, restart my phone, restart it, reinstall Instagram. You should come back up with the app. You may not even have to log in again,
and then see if it works that way. If it's not working, I would just keep an eye on the app updates, which you can check out by opening up the app store, and you can do tap your profile in the upper right hand corner you pull down from the center of the screen, and then you can check your app updates. If you have an update for Instagram,
run that update and see if that helps. But quite honestly, I think this just falls into a matter of time where it will be fixed if it continues to happen after a long period of time, then there's definitely something wrong. But I just tested it on my phone. It works, so the feature is not broken on a worldwide basis, but it could just be something that's related to your personal setup. Thanks for the call today, Dominic and Costa Mesa. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. More Rich on tech right after this Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Jamie is in Corona. Jamie, you're on with Rich Hi.
Rich, thanks for taking Mike call.
Sure.
Hey, I'm a Google user and I.
Use a search on Google a lot.
And it came back with no wanting to know if I want to sign up for a generative AI experience in search and that the interactions are saved in my activity even if web and app activity is not enabled stores up to twenty four hours.
Blah blah blah.
You know, I know there's no such thing as privacy, but is this making it even worse or would this be a fun thing?
Well, first off, the Genera of AI is basically Google's answer to chat GPT, so Google, okay, you know they've leaned heavily into AI, but it's very confusing because they have it in so many different places across their products. So what you're talking about generative search is once you say yes to that, a new search result will appear above your search results. So if you search for, you know, best places, all right, let's just say, let's just say
the Beatles. Like I was mentioning the Beatles history. So if I search for that and I've got this enabled, you know, I'll see all of the little snippets and results that Google typically offers up, but at the top, I get a generative AI summary about the Beatles, and I don't have to click through a whole bunch of websites. It literally writes almost a report like you would if you were in school about the Beatles. And you can
do this across any topic. It's handy for shopping and so I will tell you it is incredible and I would recommend turning it on. So if you want to turn this on and you're on Google, it's open to everyone at this point, just go to labs dot Google. So if you go to labs, I know it's weird that there's no dot com. If you go to Labs dot Google, it will bring up what's called Google's latest Experiments, And there's a whole bunch of different experiments you can do.
And so I would turn on the one that is SGE, which is the search with generative AI. So that's again Labs dot Google and SGE is the one that will get you these new results I'm talking about, and I think they're very handy. That's one. Now, the second place you can go is barred B A R D dot Google dot com and that's another opt in. Now, to answer your question, Jamie, is this less private than other things?
And the answer is yes. So if you look at bard now, when you search anything on Google, it's going into a database. Now, whether or not they save that information and link it to your account as a different is a different question. But what they're saying is when you sign up for this, there are different rules about the searches because this is an experiment and they're trying to teach their AI what people search, what they click on,
what they read, how the AI responded. So in this case, it is a little bit different than your typical searching on Google. And so yeah, you do give up a little bit more, and I would be a little bit cautious about putting any personal personal information into these AI search engines. And that's across the board with any of them, not just Google. So if you look at Google's barred, it says a big bold thing on my screen right now says human reviewers may process your barred conversations for
quality purposes. Don't enter sensitive information, and you can click learn more and will tell you all about the privacy policies of this whole situation. But I'm glad that you picked up on that. I'm glad that you're noticing this. And I think that this generative search is really handy. I think that it's been incredible in fact, on your iPhone. If you want to see this stuff as well, download the Google app and it will put this stuff at the top of your results on the iPhone as well,
And it's really really handy. So I say, go for it, but just know Jamie that you want to be careful with the information that you're putting in there. And also just the fact that, yeah, there may be a human that is reviewing what's going on, because they're still teaching these systems and you can see if you go to SGE privacy, it will tell you. Let's see Google SGE.
I got to find out where the privacy policy is, so I will put that link as well on the show notes so you can see exactly what's happening with that. Good question. Good question, Jamie and Corona. Glad you're checking that stuff out. So I'm sure you've heard about this whole MGM casino hack. I'm not going to rehash everything that happened, but you know, as a cyber attack disrupted the hotel, casino and website operations for a long time. The hackers claim to steal and encrypt some of the
MGM data. They demanded ransom payments, and reports say that MGM fell to what's called vishing, not phishing, But this is vishing, a convincing phone call impersonation. Vishing is a type of attack. It's a type of phishing attack, but the name stems from voice and phishing. So basically, the scammers pretend to be someone, often a legitimate business, and trick you into giving up your private information or access
to your bank accounts. A lot of times this happens in the real world, not just to big companies, But it happens to you and I when you click a link on either social media or an email or something pops up on your screen and says, hey, call this number to fix a problem. And the technician that's actually answering the phone is a total scam artist. And this happens with phone calls that you get. This happens with emails that you get, a lot of emails that we've
gotten recently. It may say, hey, confirming your subscription payment to Norton Anti Virus or Spies geek Squad. It's a four hundred and ninety eight dollars. We'll be charging your card on file in the next three days. Oh, if you didn't want this, just call this number and we'll fix it up and we'll make sure it does you don't get charged. But when you call that number, that's when this scam happens. Hey, producer Adamy there, I'm here, rich, How you doing this? I'm doing great, but I'm angry
because this happens a lot. And I know that this happens to smart people. You had someone in your family recently fall for a scam to this degree.
Right, Yeah, my dear sweet mother who's seventy one years old and not very tech literate, but she does learn a lot from you from listening, but apparently not enough, because I awoke to a text message a few days ago from her saying I got an email from Norton LifeLock saying I've been charged four hundred and ninety nine dollars and they gave me a number to call, and I.
Keep calling, but it's busy. Uh help, That's what it said.
Because I always tell her, before you do anything with these emails, run it by me.
And I'll let you know.
Don't call numbers and emails ever. You know, I don't click links.
I slept.
I had my phone on airplane mode for you tech heads out there, oh wow. And when I right when I took it off, when I woke up, I saw this text. So I immediately call her, and she's not answering. It's going to voicemail. So I'm imagining she's on the other line because she doesn't even really know how to switch over if you're getting another call, yeah you, So in my mind, she's given out all her information set
on the phone while I'm on the other line. But eventually I get through to her and what had happened was in the email there was a number to call that said, if this four hundred and ninety nine dollars charge has been made an error, call this number and we'll refund it.
So she called the.
Number, thinking she's doing something right, like, oh, let me clear this up.
And she finally gets through and the guy. The guy convinces her to download a remote screen sharing program and proceeds to guide her to her online banking page. But oh my god, here's the beauty of it, though rich she is so tech unsavvy that she doesn't do online banking, but doesn't even know that. So this guy was like telling her go to you know, who's your bank, Okay, go to the website.
Wow.
But she couldn't get in, and so he said, here, call your bank, and he wrote a script on the note after he took control of her computer. He wrote a script on the note pad.
Oh my gosh, which I saw because I looked at her computer, and it said like, hello, my name is Baba, and here's what I'd like to do, like giving her the step by step directions on how to.
I'm having problems getting into my online can you help me? And she actually called her bank and said all this and they said, you don't have online banking, and uh, she hung up and then I got through. So the real bummer was that also on the note notes app, he had put like a form that I imagine they used that was just all your information, please fill this out, so name, address, last four of the sosh birthdate, and she filled it out. So luckily, once I learned of this,
we immediately took action. Everything's been frozen and stuff. But man, like you say, she is, she's not, you know, a dumb person. But I grilled and asked her what the deal was and it was like why she never thought this was fake?
And there were three main elements.
One was the high amount really freaked her out, and then there was something that said like if you want this refund, it's got to be within twenty four hours, right, so that was really effective.
There's also it's there's always a time element, you know, like where they're pressuring you to do something fast.
Yeah, so the high amount coupled with the time crunch. And also she'd been messing around on her Windows laptop and saw a Norton pop up like a week prior, and she's kind of paranoid about accidentally signing up for Norton because of those famed pop ups that.
We all get.
So she thought, oh, I did this by accident, and she talked to this guy and gave it all up.
But I don't think she's going to do it again.
So what do we learn from this? This this whole situation number, And it's scary when it happens to someone close to you. I'm looking at an email I got from a dear user, thank you for choosing our services. Your personal subscription geek Squad Care will expire today. This will be auto renewed. Please review your summary. Four hundred and eighty nine dollars will be auto debited on September fifteenth unless you turn it off. Please call us to cancel.
And here's the phone number. We should call this number on air and see what happens.
Can I do that?
Is that legal? I got a tealment. I guess they're on the radio. Okay, So don't fall for this stuff. It happens. It's out there. It's happening on a daily basis. And here's the thing. It knows no bounds. You can be a very smart person and have this happen to you, because these scam artists are spending the entire day, their entire lives are social engineering ways to get you to fall for this stuff. They use the things that we
know and they trick us with those. And look at if MGM Casino, If an employee at MGM Casino can fall for this and take down the entire operation of a multi billion dollar corporation, why do you think your company puts that little message on your emails that says this is from an outside person, not in your organization
because it's that scary to them. They know that they are just one step away from an employee giving away a two factor authentication code or getting into the VPN or whatever they're doing to get this this hack to happen. And they know it's scary these companies. This is why you have to go through those training situations and those you know. Hey, can you spot a phishing email? So please be aware and do not call these numbers. Do not click a link in an email to log in.
Do not call a phone number in an email. When in doubt, go to the website itself directly and look for the phone number and call it that way, all right, phone number for me triple eight Rich one oh one. Thanks for sharing your story on them. By the way, uh eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Do you have a question, Give me a call. This is Rich on Tech. Jeff is in New York City. Jeff, you're on with Rich.
Quick Questions. So we've been having kind of trouble sleeping my life and I and someone suggested earbuds you know that go in the air that can help, you know, maybe soothing music or not your podcast, but I.
Like yours, but one that it may put you to sleep.
Who knows, no, No, I love your show, so any suggestions, I know both used to make them not anymore. You know, there's so many online. I was just figured maybe you guys.
Have experience with it or something, so I I okay. So it's funny. When I was little, I used to sleep with like a radio under my pillow. I mean I think a lot of people did. And I you know, I'm from New Jersey, So I used to listen to Z one hundred, probably a show that was a little bit it was like a love lines kind of show.
You know.
They were answering questions about stuff that when I was young, it was very interesting to hear about. Anyway, that's what I would fall asleep to, but that was with like a little kind of radio under my pillow. So there's a couple of ways you can do this. You can do I've seen all kinds of different things, and you're right. So Bo's had a pair of sleep buds that were really really popular. For some reason, they discontinued them. The odd thing about the Bo's ones is that they don't
actually play music. They just play like sort of like a white noise kind of thing. But the good news is some Bo's employees have started up a company called Oslo Ozlo and they're bringing back very similar sleep buds with very similar technology. So if you want to check out those ozlosleep dot com now. And what I was going to say to complete my thought is that I can't have something in my ears when I sleep. Some people can, some people can't. So there's different types of
these buds out there. Some of them actually fit in your ears. Some of them are soft, and you know they're comfortable when you're sleeping. I don't find that to be very comfortable, but I'm just giving you some options here. So There's a pillow you can get called Solely sol I and this is a sleep headphone pillow, and so you can sleep, you know, on your side, you can sleep on your back in different positions, and this pillow kind of wraps around your head and you can put
the music into the pillow via bluetooth or wired. It just depends you know how much you want to pay. And all these things, by the way, are not cheap. I mean, if you want to get a cheap pair of your buds that you can sleep in, sure you can search Amazon. And the top one is these sleep band headphones. Those are about twenty dollars. They've got forty eight thousand reviews. That's probably where i'd start, just to
see if that's something that you would like. This is a brand called Perry Tong p e r Y Tong, not a brand that you've heard of, but it's the overall pick on Amazon. If you just want something cheap and simple and easy. It's kind of like a headband with bluetooth. And so that's that's something you can use
as well. The other thing, the other recommendation comes from my friends at Wirecutter Lauren Dragon over there, she tests all the headphones and earbuds, and she likes these Soundcore by Anchor, And if you've heard of Anchor, a lot of the tech people like this brand. They make a lot of charging stuff and their brand for audio is called Soundcore. They make what's called the Sleep A ten Bluetooth Sleep earbuds, and again there are a hundred bucks.
They're not cheap, they go in your ears. They don't look comfortable to me. I haven't tested them, but I guess a lot of people sleep. And then they have high ratings. But those are another option, and so they look a lot like the Bows earbuds that I was talking about. So those are a couple of options for you. If you want something that's just wired, I'm sure you
can just type in Sleep earbuds on Amazon. And with Amazon they've done a pretty good job now of showing you what's sort of the best mix of highest ratings, the least returns, and the cheapest price. So the overall pick. There are the Sleep earbuds that are just twenty bucks. Again, they don't look comfortable to me, but you know, if you're trying to sleep and you're trying to have something that's in your ears, these are some of the options that you can do. So I gave you a pillow,
the bows and the soundcore. Oh the other one other thing another one hundred dollars. Sleep band Acoustic sheep is another one that Wirecutter recommends. But again it's a band. It goes over your head, but it's a hundred bucks. Of course people like that. The ratings are not that high on that one, so maybe I would skip that. But of course you can put a little speaker under your pillow as well. That's another option of how to get that audio. But or you can just use your
phone next to your bet. I've done that in the past. Just turn your phone on, put on some sleep or you know, podcasts, whatever you want, and there you go. All right, Jeff in New York, thanks for the question. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one and sure, fall asleep to my show, fall asleep to the podcast version you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology, talking scams, talking how to avoid scams. Plus we're talking Apple. Lots of new Apple products, many people pre ordering there were some issues. You would think that Apple, such a big company, would have pre orders down by this point, but apparently people still had issues with pre orders early in the morning. You know you're gonna get the phone eventually. You don't need to necessarily be there the second, you know whatever, it's exciting. I know, I know,
I know. All right, let me give you a couple of takeaways. A couple other things they mentioned at the event. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one is the phone number if you want to hop on the line chime in. You got a question about technology, you want to ask me about a product, you need an app recommendation, anything, Just give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
I do these things on my Facebook page. Ask me anything, and it's like the questions come in fast and furious, and then I always end it with hey, by the way, call me on the radio show there too. Apple Watch nine is the new version of the Apple Watch. And the big thing about this Apple Watch is that it is believe it's Apples like first carbon neutral product, which is a pretty big deal, and it's going to get this new feature called double tap, and you can check
it out on my Instagram at rich on Tech. It's pretty cool feature. It lets you tap the main button on the screen just by tapping your two fingers together. So if you want to start a phone call, end a phone call, start a stop watch, whatever you want to do, that's the main button on the screen, play pause, whatever, You just tap your two fingers together. And it's using the blood vessels. It's actually looking at the veins in your wrist. It's looking for the constriction of the blood
to figure that out. And that's all made possible apparently by the new processor inside the S nine sip chip. And they said that it's really good at monitoring all day long, and so it's got the power to do that, and so it's a kind of a neat new feature. Only available on the Apple Watch nine and the Apple Watch Ultra two. It's not coming to the previous Apple watches apparently. Let's see they also have this new Oh, Apple ditched. Apple ditched leather completely as a company, no
more leather. They said, we're done with it. We're gonna be carbon neutral by twenty thirty, so we're not doing leather anymore. So their new material is called fine Woven. And I played with this material. It's definitely does not
feel leathery. It feels more like almost like a swede or like some sort of like almost like the you know, like when you unvelcrow something like that backside of the velcrode almost feels like that, not the part that's like the plastic gee part, the other side, like the felty part. So that's the new material. It's called fine Woven. And I asked them if it was like waterproof, because it was you know, fake or you know, synthetic or whatever. It is recycled, and they're like no, so I guess, yeah,
I don't know. Apple Watch Series nine starts at three hundred ninety nine dollars. The se starts at two hundred and fifty dollars. Those will be available on September twenty second. Not a lot of new features. The screen is brighter on that the battery stays the same. They've got a new thing called smart Stack, which is like a way to look through all of your notifications and things like important upcoming calendar events on there. Then you've got the
Apple Watch Ultra too. This is their you know, their top of the line Apple Watch. Again, it's got that new chip, it's got that double tap feature, it's got a three thousand knit display which is fifty percent brighter than the original, so it's much much brighter. It can also it's got a expanded altitude rain so it can go from negative five hundred to nine thousand meters and still I guess function properly. Let's see what else, eight
hundred dollars. Still, the price is the same, The battery life is the same, thirty six hours or seventy two on low power. And it's a good look and watch. I you know, the Ultra is really like, you know, if you want if you're kind of like the sports enthusiast, the hiking enthusiast, the biking enthusiasts, you need your battery to last a long time because you're using a lot of GPS tracking on this device. That's the watch to get. So a couple more announcements. Let's see AirPods Pro two.
These now have USBC so it's the same exact AirPods except they've got USBC charging on the case. Now, can you just take your old air pods two? Your AirPods Pro two and put them in a new charging case. No, you cannot. Apple's not selling the case separately in typical Apple fashion. Now there is a workaround, but I don't know if it would work, because you can file like a warranty claim and say you lost your case and maybe they'd send you the USBC. But I'm not sure.
So the other thing is they've got this new adaptive Audio mode, which I did have a chance to check out. It's quite incredible. So it mixes noise cancelation, it mixes understanding if someone's trying to talk to you, it mixes it makes the audio louder or softer, depending on your surroundings. And it's really really good. It's using AI. So the bottom line is with these new AirPods Pro too, there's
no more putting them in and taking them out. You can pretty much leave them in all day long if you so desire, and this adaptive audio mode will just change the sound that you're hearing to adapt to whatever you're trying to do. If you're listening to music and all of a sudden things get louder outside, it's going to bring the volume up. If you're listening to music and things get softer outside. You walk into a quiet park, it's gonna bring the volume down a little bit so
your ears aren't blown out. If you're trying to talk to someone and you start talking to them, it will adaptive so you can hear them. I mean, it's really really impressive what they did, and I did a full demo of that and it was great. Two hundred and fifty dollars, still the same price. They also have a new USBC EarPods, which is a wired version of ear pods.
Those are nineteen bucks. Lots and lots of options. Lisa at a Chico from c net will be breaking down some of her thoughts on these new Apple products very soon. All right, let's go to Steve in Orange. Steve, you got a story about how you got scammed?
I did get scammed this week this week. Yeah, I'm looking at the scammer right now. He's online on my Facebook messenger. Oh wow, I'm not talking to him. But I've been doing computers since the eighties, and I started a business doing computers, and pretty much now my clients are all their seniors in eighties and nineties, so I've seen it all long. Yeah, this particular one is an offshoot of the Facebook stuff. I don't do social media, so I'm not that smart, so maybe you can some.
Of this in.
But what I what it appears to have happened, is someone cloned a Facebook account. They didn't do anything with that. They went to Facebook Messenger, jumped into one of the groups that I'm a member of, and then threw up. It was like ten thirty nights they used to throw up, Hey I got a new laptop today. I don't need my old one. If anyone needs it, I'm happy to
give it away from you. It was coming from somebody in a Facebook group that I'm a member of, and because I'm a member of that, it also had a couple of names of my friends that are on my Facebook that are also members of that particular group. It appears to me the person the scammer was reaching out in a public way, not an individual way, and just throwing out, hey, if you need a new laptop, I've got one. I'm gonna get you know, get rid of it. So I typed in, yeah, I could use an Apple,
you know, I can use the MacBook. Sure, And then he he wrote back, and he waited like an hour, and he said wrote back and he said, yeah, okay, you can have it. Just give me I'm going to look at the FedEx. Give me your ads, and i'll tell you what the shipping's going to be.
So we did that.
He said forty five dollars and I said great. So I was pretty sure it was a scam, but I was playing along with having fun. I wanted to learn. And then the next morning I wake up and he says, I'm at FedEx and there's a picture in the Facebook Messenger. By the way, have you seen scams with specifically Facebook Messenger? Is that a normal thing?
Oh?
Yes, Facebook Messenger scams are all over the place. I mean, this is why, this is why people like to hack Facebook accounts, because then they can pose on the account like it's a real person. Because if they just set up a fake account, Facebook figures it out very quickly. But if they take over someone's account, you know that has some history, it's much more authentic to the Facebook server. So anyway, so okay, so we got the he got the picture, and what happens.
So he just said, I need some sixty five dollars for sales tax and they want insurance. And I said, well, I don't want insurance, and there's no sales tax when you shift something, so I said, and he goes, uh, And I tried calling him. I hit the little messenger phone thing and it rang one time, and then he says, I'm driving, and then uh, I can't talk to you. And then I wrote back. I said, well, I'm not going to send you more money until I talked to
you on the phone. And then he wrote back, oh really, that's what you just said. Oh really, and then I said yes really, So that pretty much ended it. I didn't carry it farther than that. I called PayPal and they gave me my money back, which is, you know, shout up to them. That was great.
Wait, so you paypaled this person money?
I did.
I pay pal him the forty five dollars, even pretty much knowing it was a scam.
I will just want to see you were learning.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I don't do social media. I know about Facebook scams. I didn't know about the messenger part in a in a group, so I don't think he was targeting me. I think he targeted probably five a lot.
Yeah.
I just say it was interesting. It was just very new to me. And so anyway, and I called PayPal and they got into and the person that that was on this list, my friend that knows the friend that this person's representing. I talked to him and he says, guys a great and we chatted about that. But that was after the scam. So and I don't know that the person who owned the Facebook account. I mean, I
don't know what you do once you've been cloned. But right now the hacker is still on the messenger with me, and I could.
Talk to him.
But in any event, it was very elaborate. If you did go into the room and then throw it out to people, I would think the moderator would just pull it off immediately. But in any event, yeah, I got my money back and he was literally his mistake, in my opinion, was trying to get.
More money, right, and they got greedy, Yeah.
Got greedy. So I just thought that was interesting and people might well, I heard you guys talking about scams, and I thought that people out that I might want to know about this Facebook messenger.
Wow, that's wild. Thanks for the call, Steve, appreciate it. Really just these scam artists will will know no limits to how they figure out these things. And again there. This is why they like to hack Facebook accounts, because then they can pose as a trusted friend or someone that you know. In fact. I and it's funny that Steve said that he he was engaging with someone. I'm engaging with someone right now on Instagram who is pretending
to be someone I know. And so he's like, hey, Rich, how you doing.
I said, oh, good to see you.
Oh my, I missed you at the last Apple event, which I know he wasn't there. And he's like, I'm like, what's new with you? And I mentioned his job and all this stuff's and he's sitting there, you know, chatting back and forth, and I'm kind of, you know, seeing what the endgame is. And already I got one where he said, hey, I'm dabbling more into the digital.
Space, especially crypto.
I'm doing really well with my portfolio of seven hundred thousand dollars. I wanted to ask if you've looked at that side of things. I said, oh, yeah, I'm very interested. Because now, of course he's going to try to get me down this crypto thing where he gets me to buy some crypto. Maybe I hand over my account numbers and all this stuff, so we'll see where it goes.
I do not recommend that you engage with these people because it can get out of control, it can get out of hand, and it's probably just not a good idea. I'm doing it just to learn and like kind of Steve did it just to benefit ourselves and benefit my knowledge. But in general, do not answer the phone for these people. Do not click on links in the email, do not
respond to the text messages. The more that you do this stuff, and the more you respond and engage them, the more that they will stick their friends on you because they know they've got a live one, and so you don't want to do this stuff. By the way, good good website to a checkout is the BBB Scam Tracker BBB dot org slash scam Tracker. It's a great place to research the latest scams and also look up
the latest scams. You put in one keyword, I'm gonna put in Messenger and let's see if someone mentions, oh yeah, Facebook, Messenger all over the place. So again it's a very easy way to kind of research scams. BBB dot org slash Scamtracker. I'll put it on the website. Rich on tech dot tv in the show notes. All right, coming up, more of your calls at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Let's see, we'll talk about some of
the other items in the news as well. So, got a lot of calls today, so we're getting to those. You're listening to rich on Tech. Lots of ways to find me online at rich on Tech is my username on Instagram where I'll hang out the most, probably on Instagram Stories, Facebook, Twitter, slash X. I'm also on threads and that's the name of the podcast. If you want to download the show to listen to later, just search rich on Tech in your favorite audio app. You can
do that. And I kid you not. In the time we've been talking about all these scams, I actually just got one twenty one minutes ago to my email that says concerning your refund and it's a geek Squad my purchase details once again. This time it's only for four hundred and seventeen dollars. The one that I tweeted out earlier was for four hundred and eighty nine dollars in nine nine sense, so this one's a little bit cheaper.
Oh and it's going to renew once September sixteenth. So we've been getting a lot to talk about scams in this show. It is just wild how many of these things are happening out there. But if you want to go to my Instagram and see some of the stuff that I've been posting. I've got a lot from the Apple event, including what the new USBC looks like when you plug it into the iPhone, kind of a joke that I posted that people are like, really, it looks
like plugging in anything. I know, that's kind of my point. And then I've got hands on with the new iPhone fifteen, the fifteen Pro. I've got the different colors of the iPhone. I've got pictures from the Apple event. I've got the double tap feature. I've got oh, this is kind of fun. Actually, I posted yesterday a Starbucks deal in the app. And then this this is wild. This glass that you can put on your iPhone. The guy takes a hammer to it.
It's a small hammer, and then he takes a giant hammer and it's the glass is just fine, Like that's a screen protector I want. But of course if you drop it probably would be you know, all over the place, and speaking of scams. By the way, a good website. If you want to train your loved ones on these things, send them the website scamspotter dot org. Scamspotter dot org will help them identify scams. And it's all about the gift cards and the different things that they scam you with.
Coming up after the break, we're going to talk to Lisa at a Chico of Cnet about some of the new Apple products. First, let's go to Sarah in Ventura. Sarah, you're on with Rich.
Hi. Yeah, I was telling the call steamer that I was Okay, I was on a website or website. I downloaded the YouTube this is them to your home screen and then it appears on the screen and then you just tap it and then it goes to that website. Is that a bookmark?
Yeah, it's like yeah, it's a homescreen book mark.
Okay, it's like that.
Okay.
So I collected a bunch of YouTube ones and then I was losing it and then it disappeared and I tapped undo, and then it kept disappearing on a few of them, and then the undo wouldn't work. So then I went to downloads on pictures. I had and I just went down the row clicking them, and as I did, they were all disappearing.
What kind of tablet is this?
Or what kind of device fan Sung tablet okay.
And so things are just generally not working on it.
Well, they they disappeared, the downloads. I mean, I went down the row and I'm like, oh, that disappeared. And I picked on the next picture, it disappeared.
I put on that what app were using for the pictures?
It was just downloads?
Okay, maybe they got disappeared.
And and one was a PDF. They were different different so.
It's all in the It sounds like the downloads got deleted. If you ask me, I think that they were still listed in the files, but they got deleted. If I were you, I would restart this. I would run any software updates on it, both in the system software updates and also in the app store. Make sure everything is up to date, and then you're probably gonna have to
re download these links again if they went away. There's also a way you can lock down your home screen on Samsung devices in the home screen settings so that you can't mistakenly change it. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here on location in Cooper, Tino. We just got out of the big wonder Lust event here at Apple Park, and joining me now to talk about it all is Lisa at A, Chico senior editor at c NEET. Lisa, you cover a lot of phones and different gadgets.
What did you make of today's event?
Yeah, absolutely so.
I think what really stood out to me about today's event is the big focus Apple.
Is putting on the iPhone Pro.
We saw a lot of the biggest changes have arrived on the Pro rather than the regular iPhone fifteen, but also a lot of features that we saw on last year's iPhone fourteen Pro.
Are now on the regular iPhone fifteen.
So that just kind of shows how Apple kind of uses the Pro as a kind of as a way to kind of showcase new technologies before they've become more widely available on other phones.
So that was interesting.
And then I also thought the new Apple Watch updates were interesting as well.
So it's interesting the ultra kind of moniker because we've seen this with Samsung. They typically did that with the Note before they brought features to the regular of s series, and then even with Apple, the Pro Max has always been kind of a way for them to do this, but now they're doing it even more. And then, of course now we have the Apple Watch Ultra. So why do you think they're doing this.
I think Apple is really trying to expand the Apple Watches appeal. For a long time, I'm the Apple Watch was kind of seen as the smart watch for people who care about fitness but aren't athletes or runners or scuba divers. A lot of that audience would really go for maybe something more like a Garmin Watch or a polar Watch. So this is kind of Apple's way of saying, hey, we're capable of that sophisticated health tracking too, that sophisticated fitness tracking.
So the fact that.
They're already releasing another Ultra after introducing it last year, I think says a lot about their commitment to that space.
Let's talk about the iPhone fifteen and fifteen plus. These got the dynamic island, the forty eight megapixel camera, and last year's processor, so a lot of the features that were on the high end phones last year now made their way down to the entry level phones.
Yeah.
So you know, based on my first take of what I've seen today, it really seems like the iPhone fifteen is kind of like the iPhone fourteen Pro, but without that stainless deal design and without that extra telephoto camera. And it's really interesting because, like I said earlier, you see the influence that these more expensive phones have on the broader lineup, and I do think that all of these changes, taken together, really make the iPhone fifteen feel like a.
Bigger upgrade than the iPhone fourteen. I feel like this is the first time in.
A long time that we've seen really big updates on the standard.
iPhone also comes in multiple colors, including pink, which is new this year, and it has that usbcport on the bottom. Is that going to be a big change for people.
Yeah, I mean it probably will be because a lot of people are used to using the lightning connector that's been around for like ten years on the iPhone now. But I also think it'll make things a lot easier for people. You don't need a separate cable to charge your laptop and your phone, and the same goes for
your iPad if you have a newer model. A lot of them now have USBC, So I think it just made a lot of sense for Apple to make that transition, and of course they had to make that transition, but I do think it'll make more sense for consumers as well.
One thing they did not improve on the iPhone fifteen entry level is the screen refresh rate. Now this may be something that's super techy, but you know, if you look at the screen on the pro version versus the regular it's not quite as good.
Yeah, so the regular iPhone still has not inherited that high refresh rate, and I do think, you know, obviously, there are some things that Apple has to keep exclusive to the pro in order to make it different from the regular iPhone, and I guess the refresh rate kind of fell into that camp. I do think it is one of those features that is really nice to use once you use it, but if you haven't used it, you might not be missing in as much.
But I will say high refresh rates.
Are becoming really standard across most phones, including Android phones that are cheaper or the same price as the iPhone fifteen, So it is a bit surprising. But you know, also again Apple does have to keep some differentiating factors when it comes to the Pro and the regular.
iPhone, iPhone fifteen and the fifteen plus the fifteen starts at eight hundred dollars, and I believe that's for one hundred and twenty eight gigabytes of storage. Now let's move on to the iPhone FA fifteen and fifteen Promax. This is where they put a majority of their new features, including that new titanium frame. It's got this action button on the side which is programmable, which is cool, five times zoom on the Promax, and of course a new chip the A seventeen Pro. What do you make of
this device? Do you think it's a pretty good upgrade?
So I think most of the time when you're thinking about upgrading your phone, it depends on how old.
Your current phone is.
This does seem like a fairly big upgrade for people who are upgrading from I would say an iPhone Pro or a regular iPhone that's at least two to three years old.
That said, it's hard to say without having used.
These devices yet, but I do think this is where we see some of the more interesting new features, like the action button, for example. I think that kind of
speaks to who this phone is really for. It's for that person who wants more customization, maybe for the person who is a bit more productivity oriented, kind of like Samsung's Galaxy S twenty three Ultra, right, Like, yes, that phone has a powerful camera, but it also has a giant screen and a stylist, which is for people who you know are being more productive.
And I don't want to say Apple is doing the.
Same thing here, but maybe their answer to like the customer that wants to be more productive on their phone and do a lot of things is having that action button and that higher refresherrate on the screen, and.
Of course the better camera.
It's also kind of making people choose the Max if they want the highest zoom range on an iPhone, because now the Max has the five X, whereas the regular one just goes up to what three?
Yeah, So I think again, like the the pro phones are for people who do feel like they need that extra camera and that extra zoom. I think that's why we tend to see a lot of those upgrades on the.
Highest end device.
So it's not a surprise that Apple's kind of maintained that strategy again this year.
A couple other upgrades here. Apple Watch Series nine. This got a new double tap gesture, which they say requires the new processor, so it's not going to come to old Apple watches with a software update, tell me about that fature.
Do you get a chance to try it out?
I did get a chance to try it.
So basically, what this feature does is you're wearing your Apple Watch. Let's say you have something in your hand and you can't touch the screen.
You can basically perform this gesture that is a double tap.
You just tap your index finger and your thumb together twice and it controls the screen.
And I do think it's really interesting. I don't know if it's going to be enough to convince people to upgrade.
I don't know how often I'm gonna find myself actually using it, but I do like that Apple is kind of thinking about new ways to use the watch because it just feels like a bit of a fresh take from what we usually see, which is usually just more health oriented features, which is great and it's a big part of why people buy the Apple Watch, but it's nice to see something that feels a bit different as well.
Apple Watch Ultra too this is you know, it also gets the new double tap feature. I like how they said the battery life is. They didn't say the same, they just said it's still great. Battery life, so they didn't really improve the battery life, so that didn't really change. Did anything really change on this I love the new watch face. Did the Ultra two get any true improvements?
I think the S nine chip is probably the biggest improvement, and again that should bring faster performance double tap faster series since it's it can do the processing on the device for certain queries. So I think to me, this really read like a refresh of the Ultra so that it has all of the same performance enhancements as the Series nine.
There are a lot of rumors that the Ultra would come in a new black color. That did not happen. Pricing stays the same eight hundred dollars and also cellular is basically included, like you, not the service, but the cellular chip. You can't get the Ultra without that. He tests a lot of devices. How do you feel the state of mobile is at this point?
Phones have looked the same for a really long time, and we're finally starting to see that be different with foldable phone. Samsung has been doing this for a while. Now,
we're seeing Google jump on board. We're seeing other companies release more devices like Motorola that are foldable, Apple is the main outlier, but to me, the iPhone fifteen Pro with the new titanium design and things like that, and even the regular fifteen, which you know, like we talked about, has a bunch of new features from last year's Pro.
These phones do feel different than their predecessors in a way that's a bit bigger than usual, and part of me wonders if this is, you know, also part of an effort to stand out and get people talking about their phones at a time when foldables are not necessarily becoming a hit because a lot of people still aren't
buying them and they're still extremely expensive. But it's just interesting to see, I guess, a different approach and a different take on a device that has largely stayed pretty much the same for the last like ten to fifteen years, aside from processor improvements, camera improvements, bigger and better screens, all the things you.
Would expect, and yet people still love them. Lisa at A Chico from scenet Thanks so much for joining me today.
How can folks find your reviews online?
So you can go to cnet dot com and my name is Lisa at Chico, so you can find my work there and you can also check out seen it across all of our channels on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and we're there as well.
Thanks so much for joining me. More rich on Tech headed your way. If you have a question about technology, give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. If you can believe it, this music was generated by AI Stability.
AI.
They're known for their uh Ai image generation tool. They have launched Stable audio, so they know they're known for Stable diffusion. Now they launched Stable Audio. This is an AI product that lets you generate music and audio. All you do is you type in some text and it will come up with audio based on that text. And so for this one, I typed in, let's see what I say, warm Friendly inviting opening music for a radio show about technology, and this is what I came up with.
So this was trained on Audio Sparks, so this is a library they trained it on via partnership, so it's actually legitimate. You know how there's that whole debate with AI about how they're training these models. Well, they use legitimate sources for this, so that it's legitimate you can actually generate for free twenty second clips. If you pay you can do ninety second clips, and if you pay you can actually use the clips for commercial purposes. So
really interesting, But this is just the beginning. Stableaudio dot com is the website. Let's see how much does it cost to upgrade to pro? So for free you get twenty tracks a month up to forty five seconds okay they're wrong in their press release here, and then for twelve dollars a month you can make up to five hundred tracks up to ninety seconds and commercial use. So what do you think of the audio? I mean, it's not bad, you know, And if I think you know,
this is the beginning. So if you learn how to prompt these things, it's all about with the AI. It's all about how to prompt you know when you want to do something. And keep in mind the first time you do something with AI, like if you're chatting with like chat GPT, you can always like ask to rephrase, like you can say like if it writes something back to you and you don't like it, you can say, hey, can you add this factor? Can you elaborate more on
this angle? Or can you add this or take away this. It's almost like a back and forth chap. It's really really handy. Phone lines triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to Rick in mission viaho Rick you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call. My wife and I both use max Book Pro thirteen inch late twenty twenty with the M one chips, and we were thinking about upgrading to the max Book Air fifteen inch for the M two chips. I wondered if that was a good idea or if we really didn't need to do that. I'm kind of wondering how much BRAM we should do
is right now? We have sixteen Mega RAM on the MacBook pros and we both use a lot of apps at the same time and often get the little message that we're running out of RAM.
Yeah, I get that.
Yeah? What?
Okay?
So you've got the M one chip in a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, oh, MacBook Pro okay, and you're trying to think about switching to the MacBook Air with the M two right ooh okay? Um, well, you know the Pro is going to be just better in general than the Air. So are you doing any sort of like video editing on this thing.
Do something video editing.
Kind of one of the bigger screen is what I was looking.
Yeah, I hear you on that. I've got I've got the MacBook Uh what do I have? The MacBook Pro thirteen inch M two So I bought it right when the two. But it's the M two pro so I was fourteen inch, sorry, fourteen inch MacBook Pro.
So.
I mean here's the deal. I think that you're going to take a step down, are you is your processor the M one or is it M one pro? Just M one okay, So I think you're going to take a little step down with the processor because it's an M two versus the M Sorry, you're going sorry, You're you're taking a step down on the MacBook Pro version. So the Pro is obviously going to have some better things inside, better stuff going on than the MacBook Air.
So I think overall you're going to take a little bit of a step back.
Now.
The screen size is going to be nice, that's for sure. The M two is you know, if you look at the numbers, according to Apple, eighteen percent faster, thirty five percent more powerful on the graphics, and the you know, the AI engine is forty percent better, and of course the memory is better, so you can get up to twenty four gigs. Is where you noticed on your MacBook situation?
Yeah, and I did.
I mean, that's that getting that to twenty four I think it's another four hundred bucks or something.
That's no, it's you have the same problem with sixteen megs on the air that we do on the pro.
Well.
I mean, look, I think that most I would say most people probably have the sixteen at this point. That's kind of the default for the Apple I think it's the default for the laptops. That's what mine has. You know, it's one of these things where you know, in some aspects you're taking a step forward with the newer computer, the newer M two, but in some aspects you are taking a step back because the architecture of the of the air is just not as fast in general as
the pro computers. So you may notice that it's fine for what you're doing, you may notice that it's not as good because of what specific tasks you're doing. Especially you know, when it comes to the M one chip versus the M two, more memory is always better, but and more screen size is always better. Are you trying to replace two computers or one two? Well, well, maybe start with one and see how it works. Is this like a business that you're running off these things?
And my marriage and family therapist with an online practice and.
The screen size, oh okay.
I think for her it's a definitely go with the air for sure. I think if she's doing a lot of zooms, she doing a lot of virtual stuff, a lot of appointments, and she needs the big screen size.
Yep.
Yeah, I think for her the fifteen inches of the no brainer. I think for you if you're if you're doing a lot of video editing or any video editing, I think that a pro computer is really where it's at. You can accomplish it on the Mac Booquare for sure, and the greater memory and the greater processor may be
fine depending on what you're doing. But for me personally, like I think the pros where it's at when it comes to video and if you're doing any sort of video editing, I do think that the pros are better. So I would say start with hers, maybe try, you know, try some of the things that you do on her computer. But for her, the upgrade is a no brainer for you. I think that the I know it's twenty twenty, I know that it's it's going on a couple years old.
But I might wait for your computer and just deal with what you've got, unless you're just at at your wits end with this memory issue.
But that's that's what I would do.
I know it's always tempting to get the newest, the latest, the greatest, the better, but Mac computers last a really long time. My last computer was, you know, minimum three years old. It did not have the M one chip, and I was still editing for TV on a daily
basis on that thing, and it was just fine. I mean, there's no I had no issues except for the fact that I just wanted the shiny new thing and I got it, and I kind of regret it because the screen size I went from was a sixteen inch to a fourteen inch, and I feel like the ergonomics on the fourteen inch are not as good as the sixteen inch. So maybe stick what you got until maybe they come out with the next level of processors or the next level of pros. See what they do there, and then
take it from there. Good question, Rick, It's always tricky with the with the computers the laptops, because it seems like newer is better. Speaking of laptops, chromebooks getting ten years of updates. So there's this big to do about all the schools that switch to chromebooks during the pandemic, and they had to throw a lot of them away because they just weren't lasting a couple of years with the software updates. So Google said, you know what, We're
going to do ten years of updates. So starting in twenty twenty four, that's next year, chromebooks from twenty twenty one on are going to get ten years of updates. So even if you have an old Chromebook that's made from twenty twenty one on, you're going to get ten
years of software updates. Now, they're not saying that this is going to be like, you know, operating system updates necessarily, but it's going to be it's going to be at least ten years of you know, well it says operating systems, so actually it will be this will keep these things stable secure. Google is also going to step up their repair process because a lot of people faulted these chromebooks for not being very repairable. So that's a huge deal.
So ten years of updates for Chromebooks will make more schools purchase them, make them more feasible for schools instead of having to swap these things out after three years four years. You know, kids go through the school for four years whatever five years, depending on the school, and they can keep the Chromebook the entire time. So that's a good thing. Thanks Google for doing that. Eight and eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You are listening
to rich on tech. Tesla milestone this week fifty thousand superchargers. We know that the world of evs is turning to Tesla superchargers. A lot of the new evs in the next couple of years are going to come with a Tesla charger inside, even though it's made by Ford or GM or Hyundai or whatever. They're all getting on board with Tesla's charging standard. And so Tesla announced this week fifty thousand superchargers. They painted it red actually with a
commemorative plaque to commemorate the milestone. So of course all the Tesla folks are looking for this thing apparently now I don't know if it's found. Maybe this article is older, but Roseville, California is apparently where it is. Tesla supercharger network expanded from just six stalls in September twenty twelve to fifty thousand around the world in September twenty twenty three. And I will tell you when you're looking at evs, I know I drive a lot of them. I test
drive a lot for segments. And the biggest issue with non Tesla's is when you get it out of your driveway. The charging situation. Now, if you're charging at home and you're charging at work, you can have any ev you want. It's when you're on a road trip that it gets really really tricky because if you're relying on random chargers, you may not find one that works, you may not find one where you need it, you may not find one at all. And so that is the big hesitation.
And that's also the reason why these car companies have all moved to Tesla's network of charging, because they said, you know what, you did it right, you figured it out, and it's already ready to go. So I think that's bad for the Tesla drivers because there's suddenly going to be an influx of lots of folks charging at these superchargers, so we'll see if they can keep up. Tesla Model
three is getting an update in twenty twenty four. For the twenty twenty four model, it's getting a feature that I could not believe was not in the car that I got, the Model three blind spot indicators. You know, you drive all these cars. Almost every car I test drive has a little red light on the mirror that tells you if there's a car in your blind spot. And for some reason, the Model three did not, excuse me,
did not have that. And now it has that, and so that's finally, I mean, this is like a feature that is like almost worth upgrading your car for it's so good. But the other thing that they do is they like make a warning sound if you have someone in your blind spot, but for some reason that never really works, so maybe someone really has to be in
the blind spot. But anyway, that's a that's a big, big new addition because the blind spot indicator lights, if you have them in your car, they're just so much better than any other system. Let's go to the phone lines here. Let's go to Jim. Jim is in Huntingdon Beach. Jim, You're on with Rich.
Hello, Hello, I'm here.
Okay, there, take take the phone off speaker. I hear you, but it's a little chaotic there. What's happening?
Can you hear me? Now?
I hear you now. Yes, you sound like a Verizon commercial.
No, my my wife is chatting. Okay, I'm I'm I work at home a lot, and I'm a patent attorney now retired, but I do get a chance to work with all cases and that sort of thing, and which we're dealing with large numbers of drawings PDF drawings okay on eight and hip eleven sheets of paper. And so you've got files and you were dealing with Windows ten and it has a thing on it called the explorer. So you want to look up look for a file.
You're using sport.
When you find a file and you pull a file up and shown the screen, then you think, oh, I want to modifly the drawing name. I want to go like this will be going into five, and that I'll add a five to one of the titles to five, that I'll have six to the next and seven. So when I look at them in a fly in a group in order then make I cannot make sense out, okay, Rather a bunch of jobbers, all of the.
Screen, all the the memory.
Now my problem is when you go ahead and uh and have these files and you call them up with Windows ten and Explorer, you find that you don't have when they're on the screen, you can't do a save that at least I hadn't figured it out. I haven't found out how to do a save as command the PDF document. So I have to go back and get the stake gout, you know, take the name off the screen. I'm interested in that dogment because you're going to modify the screen, but modify the time squire name.
So you're trying to Are you trying to rename the files? Natalie?
Okay?
So so okay, so what what program are you trying to open them up in as a PDF? Are you using like Adobe or using like Microsoft Edge?
No? No, I just want to find it and find it and then rename it.
Okay, but it's a PDF.
Okay, Then you got a problem because to get it up on the screen and then to rename it with a modified file name, you then have to go back in and then open it up with Adobe Acrobat or something like that. That is crazy, because I've been able to open file names with Explore and then rename them.
Okay, why why don't you do this? Here's a short cut. Here's a short cut. If you just find the file in your Windows Explorer. You know, let's say you have it in a folder, right, Uh, just hit the F two key and you can rename it whatever you want.
Where did F two come from?
It's on the top of the keyboard.
I know, I know where it is. But when are we supposed to know about that?
Yeah, well that's why you called me.
Okay, I mean, I'll.
Give that a try.
So that's yeah, that's the easiest way to do it. You just go, you open up Explorer. Yeah, I'm doing it right now on my computer, and I you know, and I agree. The save as is obviously a very handy functionality, and I believe if you would open it inside something like Adobe, it would let you do that. But I don't have that on my computer right now. But if you just literally highlight the file you want, and this goes for anyone that's on Windows, but if
you highlight Windows ten or eleven as well. But if you highlight in the in the file Explorer, so you know, if you just open up any folder, highlight the the icon of the or the file name, and just hit F two up at the top and you it'll immediately go to rename the file and you can just type in whatever you want. You can also right click the file and select rename, so that's another way of doing it. So just go right click and let's see here. Well
I'm seeing let's see open with favorites. I don't see it on there. I guess you can go to properties and change it there, but that's kind of that's that's too much work. The F two is probably the way to do it, So Jim, try it out. Stop cursing out Windows, and I think that's gonna be the easiest way to do it. You don't even have to open the file to rename it. Once you've got it in your file folder, just hit that F two key. So good question. I'm glad we were able to figure that
out so easily. Let's go to Darlene in Lomita, California. Darlene, you're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, how you doing?
I am doing fantastic. How are you?
I'm pretty good. My phone is an iPhone eight and it's not no longer going to get the iOS updates. So I'm being forced to get a new phone. I don't think I want to get the fifteen. So I want to see what you think I should do.
Oh okay, what do you do on your phone?
I'm retired. I play games?
Okay, So you want a big screen?
Probably right, well, not that big.
I mean, I'm fine with just getting a regular I don't need the proer plus. I don't think, Oh.
You don't, okay?
Might? I mean, I don't know. I'm asking you what I think.
Okay, I think you go with the plus. I think if you're you're telling me you're playing games, why would you not want more screen space? I think that the more real estate the better. You know, you're retired, you want to enjoy your phone. You probably use it for a lot of different things, So why go with the smaller screen when for one hundred bucks more you can have a bigger screen. Now, the phones that Apple is selling officially at this point is the fifteen and fifteen Pro.
Obviously we don't want those, so the older models that they're selling are the fourteen and the thirteen. So you know, it's kind of depends do you have a budget, Like, do you want to spend or not spend a certain amount.
Well, not really. I mean, you know, if I have it's a little more expensive and it's better, then I'll do it.
Okay.
So when it comes to the iPhone thirteen, oh, interesting, they're not selling the plus model. Oh that's interesting.
Okay.
So it looks like they're just selling the iPhone thirteen. So if you want to get the plus model, you got to jump up to the fourteen. So the iPhone fourteen Plus is eight hundred dollars and that comes in you know, a bunch of different colors, so you can pick those colors, and the storage is one twenty eight, which I think is more than enough for you because you're you know, you're retired, you said, so you're just this is more casual use. So do you take a lot of pictures or videos?
Not really, No, And I will be upgrading through Verizon.
You'll be upgrading through Verizon.
That's what I usually do because I don't know how to do all this time.
Okay, So if you're upgrading through Verizon, Now here's the thing. Verizon's deals right now are obviously going to be geared towards the new iPhone, So they're going to want to sell you the new iPhone. Okay, And so I'm looking at their deals so new and existing, so you you may just want to get if you're gonna are you gonna stick with Verizon for a long time.
I've been with them since they were.
Air touched, Okay, So it sounds like, so what I think you should do is take advantage of their existing customer deal. If you add oh you got to add a new line though, darn it. Existing customers can upgrade and get oh, here we go. You can get up to eight hundred and thirty dollars off the new iPhone fifteen. But you got to trade in your old phone, and your old phone's not gonna be worth much, so that's
not really gonna work. So what I would do is I would go on Verizon's website, see what they're going to give you for your old phone. You'll probably get You're probably not gonna get much, I'll be honest. The iPhone eight is not going to give you too much. But I think I think the best phone for you is probably the iPhone fourteen plus. And that way you get a nice big screen, you can play your games, you can look at your pictures. They've got a whole
bunch of fun colors. It's not the latest phone, but quite honestly, this is going to be a really solid device that's gonna last you years. So you're going to get your trading money for your old which is not gonna be too much. I can how long do we have, Adam? Okay, I'm just trying to see how much you might be expecting for that old device. Let's just see. Let's just
select a smartphone. Let's say iPhone eight. Ooh, Darlene, You're only gonna get sixty bucks for that phone, so it may be better to keep it as a backup phone. So but I would recommend the iPhone fourteen plus. I think if they can sell you like the thirteen plus, then you know, maybe go for that. But they they may do it. Apple doesn't officially, but but Verizon may because they may have stock of that still. But I think you go with the thirteen plus or the fourteen plus.
Either way, it's gonna be about eight hundred bucks, and I think that's gonna be a good, solid choice for you, and it's a good upgrade. It sounds like you've had this iPhone eight for a while huh, yes, yes I have. So I think you'll notice your pictures will be a lot better, your battery life will be a lot better. And you don't care about the new USBC. You're not like, you're not really caring to get that.
Not really, Nope, I just bought a bunch of other chords.
Well then there's your answer, So this will work with those chords. So I think that's the phone to get, and I think that you're going to be pretty happy with that. But going through Verizon, but ask them, you know, see what deals they have. They're probably going to try to steer you towards the new iPhone fifteen the iPhone fifteen plus. But I don't think you need it, especially if you just bought all those new cables. Thanks for
the call, Darley, and appreciate it. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Solving problems, changing lives. We're doing it all right here on rich On Tech. Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to Mark Saltzman about more of the iPhone stuff and more of the Apple stuff. You'll get his take on iPhone versus Android two. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you. Pat writes in, uh, do you know why the calendar on Samsung phones doesn't list Jewish holidays?
Good question.
So I just looked up on my Samsung that I keep here and sure enough nothing. So that's you know. I think there are calendar feeds that you can get, Like if you look at Google's calendar, they have like a default you know, holidays in the United States feed, but you can add more feeds. And so I just looked up online Jewish holiday calendar feed and it brought me to a website that's hgbcl dot com slash iCal and you can just import these for either iPhone, Google
or Outlook. And they have one with emojis and one without emojis, and it displays major holidays such as Rashashana, Yam Kapor, Passover, Hanukkah, does not include the minor and modern holidays fast days anyway, So that's what you want to do.
If you want to get.
Your specific religious holidays on your calendar, you can Google a website that keeps a list and has a calendar feed, So that's what you want. You basically want to look for a calendar feed and just Google your religion calendar feed, click on that. I would click it from your phone. It's probably easiest to do it from your phone because your calendar app will try to open that up, and
once you open it up, it'll be in there. By the way, if you want to manage your calendars, if you're using Google Calendar on your iPhone or Android, you can tap on the left hand side and it shows all of your different calendars, events, tasks, you know, all the different calendars you have. You can select those or de select those, and you can also change the color that those calendars show up as. And I've got tons that you know, I've got one for like the New
York Jets, I've got one for the usc Trojans. So you can have all these things on your calendar. All about getting that feed, and if you want to get rid of them, just go on that left hand side in the menu and just get rid of the calendars the calendars that you don't want. Same thing on Samsung. If you're inside the Samsung Calendar, just tap the left
hand side. There's like a little menu button and then you can see all the different calendars says MyPhone, Samsung account, Google, and you just go through and you can de select or select. Now on the iPhone, I wish I had my calendar app. I don't use the iPhone calendar app. I think it's poorly, poorly designed and it's been around forever. But there is the same thing on there. You can go into your calendar. I believe it's in the settings.
Let's go into the settings on the iPhone and you go down settings, you go down to calendar and same exact thing. So settings on the iPhone calendar, it says accounts and then you have all your accounts iCloud, Exchange, Outlook, Gmail, and then you can toggle the accounts you want, and then you can also toggle the calendars that you want, so you can do your default calendar. A lot of people don't select their default calendar and they forget and
it's like random things show up. So if you ever have a default calendar, and then when you go into the app, you can choose the calendars that you want. I believe it's at the bottom of the app, but they all let you do this. So the point is it's your calendar. You put the stuff on there that you want. If you want a feed of the holidays that you celebrate, put it on there. Let's see, let's go to Oh, we've got thirty seconds. We can't go a call, so we're not gonna do that. Oh, today's
Rossiashana as I'm heard? Okay, so do you say happy Rasashana? I don't know. Is that a thing?
Sure?
Okay? Producer Adam says sure. By the way, you heard the story about the iPhone, the France software radiation situation. So Apple's gonna issue a software update. They take issue with how France tested the phone, so they say the radiation is fine, it's just how they tested it. They're gonna issue a software update to resolve it. So you don't have to throw your iPhone twelve away if you're
worried about that whole situation. All right, Coming up, we're gonna talk to Mark Saltzman about iPhone, all the new iPhones, and what he thinks about iPhone versus Android. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here on location in Coopertino day after the big Apple event and joining me now to talk about
it is Mark Saltzman. You've probably seen him online. He's been in USA Today for many years as a columnist, also AARP magazine and maybe at Costco on those TVs.
Right, that is true. Thank you for having me on the show, Rich.
Thanks for joining me. So you're at the event like myself. So we've got new iPhones, new Apple watches. What is your overall impression of traveling to Coopertino for a show.
Like this, Well, it's you know, obviously fun as a journalist in the tech space to be here in person, see colleagues like yourself and witness these new devices here in year out. But that being said, these devices, as your listeners likely no, they're a lot more evolutionary than revolutionary. Anyone coming here or streaming the Wonderlust event online, if they're expecting something like earth shattering, it's usually not gonna happen.
It's more iterative, if you will.
That doesn't mean that the iPhone fifteen is not the best iPhone ever created.
It is. But if you've got, you know, an ifour iPhone fourteen pro.
Pro Maax, there's probably a little reason to upgrade. But impressive nonetheless across the board.
What's always interesting to me is that, and I cover everything just like you do. Whenever I cover Apple, I get the Samsung haters. Whenever I cover Samsung, I get the Apple haters. So why do you think that brings out like the worst in people?
I mean, these are just new phones.
Well they're phones, but they're the most used device that we have in our life. This is the one digital Swiss army knife that we all carry in our pocket. And because of that, it's an intimate thing, right, You've got everything on there, and so it's a very personal device, so we tend to get very territorial about it. You can't please everybody, as you know as a tech reviewer. But and there's certainly choice out there, which is awesome.
Right for Android, there's I mean fewer today now that if you have bowed out like LG and so on, but you've got the Pixel and Samsung and others. Only Apple makes iPhone, so you're stuck with you know, with that. But to many they want to stay within the Apple ecosystem. If they've got a Mac, an iPad, air pods and
the like, some of which require an iPhone. Apple Watch does, but yeah, you know, its it boils down a personal preference Android has some advantages, more choice, more price selection as well, more apps to choose from, and less let's call them safeguards. If you are more tech savvy and you want to get into the code and tweak things or download apps that are not just at the Google Play Store, you can do that. Apple's got what they call their walled garden approach where you can only download
apps from the App Store. But that's fine for many people who don't want to risk getting any kind of viruses.
Or anything like that.
Okay, so the iPhone fifteen and fifteen plus they're getting pretty much last year's pro features, that dynamic Island, that forty eight megapixel camera. Now they're going to be taking pictures at a default twenty four megapixels.
What do you make of these new devices?
Yeah, I like that the premium features trickle down to the more entry level ones, even if it is a year later.
And I'm personally I'm a fan of dynamic Island.
Yes, we've all teased Apple for having that little notch at the top of their screen. So their answer to that shy of having no notch at all like many Samsung's and other devices. Their answer to that is making it more interactive, whereby the app that you're using will give you information in that little window at the top of the screen. So if you're waiting for your uber, it'll show you how much longer it'll be until they get you. And visually you'll see like a little icon
of a car. If you want to see what git you need to go to to catch your flight, it'll count down when you're boarding and show you that, and then you can tap for a deeper dive. And there's hundreds of applications. I really like dynamic Island. But as you hint to that, Rich, only last year's Pro models had that. Now all four iPhone fifteen's have that. Better
cameras across the board. We do use our phone now as are for most of us a primary photography device, and it's our camquorder, if you will to use that out dated term. So yeah, bring it on and that makes anybody, and you couple that with AI, it makes anybody take fantastic photos.
iPhone fifteen Pro and the Pro Max. This is really where Apple is separating from the pack. This is where they're putting their newest, latest, greatest features, kind of like what Samsung did with the Ultra and also the note back in the day. This gets the new processor. This also gets the titanium design which makes it more lightweight. And also the Max will get a five time zoom. So oh, in the.
Action button, we should talk about that. Tell me about that action button.
Sure, if you have an iPhone fourteen Pro or a Promax, you'll know on the left side of your iPhone is a mute toggle switch. So essentially, when you need to have your phone be quiet you're entering a meeting or what have you, you conflict that that has been replaced with a multipurpose action button, where if you press and hold that little button for a couple of seconds, you can have your phone.
Yes, you can have it mute if you like.
So I think that's it's more versatile, So I like that if it's not much harder to use, which we'll see. If five times telephoto camera is awesome, that's only in the Pro Max model. It's a three times telephoto zoom for the regular iPhone fifteen Pro.
And hold on, I gotta interrupt you here because I know the naysayer is going to say, come on, Samsung has one hundred times zoom. They've got ten times optical, but Apple takes a more steady, slower approach to change.
It's not just a numbers game.
It's also the quality and size of the sensor and some of the computational photography elements that Apple introduces that Samsung.
Does as well. But yeah, it is an improvement for Apple.
I would still argue that Samsung optics are better across the board. I have not yet tried iPhone fifteen Pro Max in a real world environment.
Only at Apple Park, you know, outside of Steve Jobs theater where the lighting is really good. Yeah, right, exactly, you know it.
But no, I still firmly believe Samsung has better optics, and the haters can write me as well. But five times photo zoom lens is great because not only can you capture more detail from a distance, but you can even take an existing photo and then crop it and zoom in on it without losing much integrity of that photo.
So there's two sort of benefits to that.
Greater optical zoom in camera, and it would be remiss rich not to acknowledge. For all the iPhone fifteen's Apple has now adopted USBC, so it's more of a universal standard for the charging port underneath.
It was a little weird.
I have to admit to look at the bottom of the iPhone fifteen and not see a lightning connector. But as your listeners might know, this is not Apple's decision. The European Union has mandated that by fall of twenty twenty four, all consumer electronics products sold in Europe have to have this universal adapter or report, because that's what most people have. They're interchangeable, they're less expensive, it's not proprietary like lightning is. So I think it's a win
for the consumer overall. Apple maybe grudgingly made the change, and they at least adopted it a year early, and internationally they're not just selling a separate phone to Europeans. So kudos to Apple on that. It's better on the environment for in terms of electronic waste.
What do you make of Apple's environmental push. They pledged to be carbon neutral by twenty thirty. They spent a big portion of the keynote talking about what they've done in this area.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised with the amount of time they spent in that hour and a half wonder less presentation on recycling and sorry sustainability rather, And you know, I don't have all the data in front of me about how much Apple, being the world's biggest tech company and even possibly the world's biggest company just shy of three trillion dollars in market value, how much they are contributing to pollution and other issues like potentially climate change.
Very hard to gauge and pin it to on particular company. But they're making these concessions or these moves towards this carbon neutrality for I'm sure a few reasons. So kudos to Apple for trying to get ahead of that twenty thirty goal. In fact, the Apple Watch Series nine and the Apple Watch Ultra two, both of which were unveiled at the Apple event as well, are going to be
Apple's first carbon neutral products. If you buy the aluminum version of Series nine and pair it with a band like it's all numbers, right, So if you pair it with this special sport band with this new material, then it's truly carbon neutral. So it's a step in the right direction. I'm not going to fault to company for trying to make an effort, regardless of what their motives are.
Did you get a chance to try the new double tap to select gesture feature on the new Apple Watch, where you basically tap your fingers together and it selects a button on the screen.
Yeah, I did try that with the new Apple Watch Series nine. That new aluminum pink color is nice as well. I think that's going to be a hit. But yeah, I like that feature. So instead of having to squint to look at your small Apple Watch green in order to you know, hang up a call, or to snap a photo on your nearby iPhone, or to change tracks with your music, You're gonna be able to all do that with a quick tap of your forefinger and your thumb together on the same hand as your Apple Watch.
So I think that's super convenient and fast, and it also is great from an accessibility standpoint for those that may have dexterity issues, you know, they have trouble maybe touching a small screen. They may have you know, Parkinson's
for example, as some of my family members do. So I think that's a great feature that's only going to be available in the two new watches, but hopefully they'll roll it out and trickle it down to the other Apple Watches over time like they have with iPhones features as well.
Mark Saltzman thanks so much for joining me. How can folks follow you?
Sure?
Rich, So my website has a link to all my socials. My name again is Mark with A C. Saltzman SA L t z m an dot com.
More rich on tech headed your way right after this. If you have a question about technology, give me a call triple A Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven two four to one zero one, Rich de burou here rich on Zech. Hopefully you're having a fantastic day. I know, I am. I can't believe this show is already towards the end here, it's almost time for the feedback segment. So a couple of things I mentioned earlier. The Better Business Bureau has a new scam that is
happening when it comes to sports streaming. So spammers are creating fake streaming links for high school sporting events and posting them on social media, hoping that you would say, oh, let me watch my kids game on the on the internet. And then they say, oh, we got to log in, you got to put your payment information in and guess what, Nah,
it's fake. The links look like they're legitimate. They tag the schools, they tag the teams, but they're totally fake and they're trying to steal your personal data.
So what do you do?
Be cautious if you're looking for the game, ask your school, you know, look for a verified source, right, ask someone that knows, and don't just click on any link that you see, and especially if you put in your credit card information, do not do that. Now, some of these things may cost money, but you know, try to find a verified source. These links could have malware on them,
so definitely research that. Who would have thought. I mean, look again, these scam artists just try to find anything that we do and they put a twist on it to ruin it for us. This is why we can't have nice things. This is pretty nice though. Polestar, this is I would say. I've tried a lot of different electric cars. The Polestar is probably one of my favorites, after the Tesla. I love the design of it. It's owned by Volvo. Actually, Polestar two has integrated Amazon Prime
Video into their infotainment system. This lets you stream Prime Video content while you're parked or charging, not while you're driving. The Polestar two runs Google's Android Automotive OS, which has several including YouTube ways and a web browser. So it's kind of fun. Now you can watch you know, prime video stuff. What's a good show on Amazon Prime? I don't know. My wife was watching What's that one this summer I turned pretty or something.
I was like, oh, we should watch that together.
Do you ever have that thing where you say with your partner you should watch the show and they're like, I already watched it. I already streamed that. I already watched that movie. It happened with me. I watched the Adam Sandler movie on Netflix, and my wife's like, oh, we're gonna watch that together on Friday night. I said, nope,
already watched it on the plane. I feel like you really have to like converse with your spouse or your partner about like what you're watching so that they can you know you're in sync, and the ones who aren't just saying probably not a good sign for the marriage. Ring the relationship I should say, you don't have to be married. That could happen in any relationship. Ring has a new pet tag for lost pets. It's a ten dollars pet tag that puts a QR code on a
pets callar to help reunite pets. With or lost pets with their owners. This is not a high tech thing like an air tag. This is literally a QR code. So you put your pets information on the Ring app, and if someone finds your pet, the QR code is what they can scan to help connect you with your you know, back to your pet. So what's unique about this is that it's low tech. You don't have to charge it, you don't have to think about Bluetooth, Wi Fi,
sidewalk network, whatever. You just have to set up the information on one time. And once you set it up, what the secret here is that ring protects your personal information, so your phone number is not around your dog's neck. Now I don't think everyone would have a problem with that, like, but you know, you never know today's day and age, with all the privacy concerns, your phone number is kind
of like your main thing. So this in this case, they would scan the QR code, it would open up a page where it tells your information about the pet, but then it says, hey, do you want to connect to the owner, and they would facilitate a phone call or a text message, but all through like a secure messaging or calling syste them. So basically it never reveals your information, which is kind of smart, especially if you're just not wanting your personal information out there. Pre Orders
start now. Ships on October fourth, and it's nine to ninety nine and cruise. This is the robotaxis up in San Francisco. With all the issues, they are trying to do something nice to kind of get the attention off all the weird stuff that's happening. They have a wheelchair accessible version of their driverless Robotaxi, which I think is pretty incredible. So this has a retractable ramp and interior
space for a wheelchair user. They worked three years on this and they aim to provide mobility options for twenty five million Americans with disabilities. This is a huge deal. We've heard a lot about how driverless cars are great for people with impairments. This is a huge, huge deal because someone in a wheelchair can now call this car, it'll drive up to them. They can get inside and get wherever they want to go. So that's happening with crews.
They're going to start testing in October on closed courses and then twenty twenty four they'll try to get these things. At least you know it's somewhere where they can test these on the real streets.
But that's a huge deal.
All right, Let's get to some of the questions that we got online here. Adrian says, I've saved passwords on Google Chrome and I've always been able to access them with no problems. Today I went to view them and none of them are there. What happened? My connection's excellent with the internet, and I've tried multiple times. It's really frustrating. What's going on, Adrian. I don't think they disappeared, but
I would check at passwords dot Google dot com. If you have them saved on Chrome, they would also be there. Maybe your Chrome is not sinking. That's the only thing I can think of. I don't think they all got deleted. It would take a lot to delete all of your passwords, So check out passwords dot Google dot Chrome and see if they are there. If they are, then it sounds like you just need to get them back into your Chrome web browser by sinking them up. Jorge Dallas says, Hey, Rich,
I hope this finds you well. I find your info interesting and helpful. Thanks, and your professional opinion. Is Apple Care plus a useful additional benefit for this new iPhone fifteen. Side note, if you don't want your Apple lanyard and credentials, I'd love to have it autographed. Would be even better. So many people ask for my Apple lanyard. I got to figure out how to give that away. Do I think apple Care plus is worth it? Ooh, I know,
it's like a given, everyone gets it. I come from the standpoint of whatever it costs for Apple Care a month, just put that in a savings account and if you ever need to use it, now you have a whole bunch of money towards the repair. I find that to be a better situation because if you if you put a screen protector and you put a nice case on your phone, I mean, really, what do you need Apple Care for unless you lose your device and you have to get a new one. But then you know you've
got to have the higher level of Apple Care. So put the case on, put the screen protector on, save the Apple Care every month and put it in a separate account, and when you need to do something, then you can use that money. That's what I like to do. I know it's weird, tell Abella says on Instagram, I enjoy listening to your show, so much, so much info given.
Thank you. Jane shared a message from her insulin pump says it's not going to work with iOS seventeen, so something to keep in mind if you're upgrading your phone, if you have some sort of like medical device, make sure it's compatible. Randall says Rich. I've been using inexpensive AMFM radio with wired earbuds for a long time during sleep. I haven't been strangled by the wires just yet. Just sharing, no problem if it works for you, and let's see. Uh,
Gail says I. Good afternoon. I'm getting my chores done and listening to your broadcast. Oh my god, I can no longer listen without a pattern paper. So much information what Facebook, messenger scams, bbbscam information scamspoter dot org. Haven't even had time to look at your information about the new Apple items, although I did see your report on that hammer proof screen. Wow, keep it coming, although I
can barely keep it up. We did check Apple calendar does show the Jewish holidays, so yeah, there you go. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. Next week it's Amazon's turn. They are launching new devices. I'll tell you what you need to know about that. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time.
I do appreciate you spending it right here, little old mate. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Thanks for Adam for sharing your story. My name is richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon