Math is key when it comes to bundle plans

of weeks before the holidays. We don't have much time to shop and it is quite the interesting year because the pandemic has sent everything topsy turvy upside down all around. Uh, but still people want to get those gifts and the smartphones keep coming. The rest of the tech keeps coming, and it just keeps getting delivered to me. So I will talk about it because it's important for you to know what people think of this stuff before you spend

your hard earned cash on it. And one thing that I have been playing with for the past couple of weeks is the iPhone twelve. Last week's episode was more just a discussion with Apple about it, and I can give you some of my thoughts on it. So what can I say. I mean, it feels like I'm using last year's iPhone, except it's faster, the camera seems a little bit better perhaps, and the battery definitely has taken a nose dive. I noticed that sort of by the afternoon,

I'm down to like thirty percent, and it's noticeable. Versus my old phone. It would I wouldn't even think about the battery all day long. I mean, it just wasn't even an issue. But again, you've got the iPhone twelve and the iPhone twelve pro lots of people have them in their hands. So the five G, I will say I like having, even though I have yet to sort

of see it impact my daily life. And yesterday I was in downtown Los Angeles where they have the Ultra wide band on Verizon at least, and this is like the absolute fastest five G you can find anywhere. And I was driving to my segment and I had to stop because on my car it said five GUW. I said, ooh, what's that? Let me stop and do a speed test, And sure enough, the speed test was absolutely the kind of the fastest speeds I've ever seen on a smartphone.

I think it reached about eight hundred, which is pretty darn fast, when typically you might see one hundred, and if you're on just standard LSE, you probably see something closer to like twenty maybe sixty at the highest. So eight hundreds pretty good. But it's just in a tiny

area of downtown. Hopefully that that will be in more places, and it really made me think when this five G is in a place where it is that fast everywhere, if that ever happen weapons I mean, that is life changing because now you have the same speeds that you can use for your home network. You know, you can replace your your cable internet with something that is wireless and there's just no barrier. I mean, you can upload and download huge files in seconds. And so now the

cloud becomes your storage facility instead of local storage. And now that opens up a whole bunch of possibilities for computers because now you don't need a high powered computer with a lot of storage, because five G lets you do whatever you need to do in the cloud just as fast as it is on your system. Let's see the design of the phone. I really do like it. It's square, It's nice and square. The twelve Pro that I've been using is very easy to hold in your hand.

It's I think it's the perfect size. Originally I was going to purchase the twelve Pro Max, but I'm not sure that I need that anymore because the twelve Pro is such a great size, which is the same size as a twelve So I'm sure some people will like the Mini when it comes out on November thirteenth. That's a much smaller phone that's too small for me. And then the Promax might be too big for me at this point because I'm now so used to this easily pocketable size right in the middle of the six point

one inch screen. So I'm digging it. The software, I'm still having some issues here and there with a couple of little software things. Ceramic shield. I have not been able to test because I'm not dropping this thing just to drop it. But I will say that all State did some tests and let's see, so they do what's called all State is now they own Square Trade, and so they do their drop tests and they say that they did drop it from let's see what was their tests?

I think it was six feet yeah, about six feet, So the iPhone twelve performed better than any previously tested smartphone. So that's pretty good right there. During face down breakability drop tests, the ceramics shield old screen improved durability. Although both device is the same damage after landing on a rough sidewalk from six feet, the twelve Pro and the twelve flat side design appears to improve durability when dropped

on their rear panels. And the bottom line here is that if you drop your phone, chances are it will not just shatter the screen as in years past, perhaps as easily, but it will still have issues. You know, well, I should say the phone is going to perform just fine. It's the look and feel of it. The you know, is going to be all scratched up and all messed up. So you still don't want to drop your phone, but the reality is you may not have to get a screen repair if you do, so I like that. Let's

see what else. Night mode definitely improved on this camera. But I will say I took this phone out. You know, I've been testing a lot of phones lately, so I one night my wife was out, so you know, of course on board and the kids are out and So I took the Samsung Galaxy S twenty f E, the Pixel five, and the iPhone twelve Pro, and I just took them outside in a whole bunch of low light scenarios and I took some pictures of the moon and the stars. And I will say the iPhone twelve is great.

I think that it's the simplest. It gives you the best picture in like a very fast, easy way. But the S twenty FE, which is five hundred and ninety nine bucks or six ninety nine depending on whether it's on sale, I gotta say, performed very well, and especially in the night mode when you toggle that on on Samsung, it doesn't always toggle on by itself, or on the

iPhone it does, which is kind of nice. But when it's on, it worked pretty well and I got pretty much very similar pictures that I was able to get on the iPhone on that phone, very similar, I wouldn't say exactly the same. And on the Pixel, the Pixel is still good. But the Pixel this is my problem, and I guess I'll get into my Pixel review as well. The Pixel five. I love the pixel. Google's phone holds a place near and dear to my heart because I

just love the Google operating system. I love Android, especially the way that Google does it. It's just perfect. It's so smart as a smartphone, whereas to me, the iPhone not so smart, but it's much more of a creator device. So when I'm looking to make something for Instagram or Facebook or go Live, like I am here, the iPhone is really what does it And the iPhone also has

all the accessories, whereas the Pixel. You know, I went shopping for a case to see what kind of cases are on Amazon, and I found like one rinky dink case and it's like eh, and it's just also so small, even though when I put them side by side the screens are similar. For some reason, the Pixel just seems tiny in my hand, the Pixel five and it just seems delicate and like just not very full powered, whereas

the iPhone. When the iPhone is in my pocket, I feel like I can conquer the world because it is. It feels like it is the stand device that does it all and everyone knows about it. And it's kind of sad that everyone just assumes use an iPhone and they don't even give these other brands a chance. So

I really love what Pixel does with their software. I feel like they put out a very underpowered phone for a creator, But for the average person who's just using their phone to take nice pictures and to answer phone calls and to do Google searches and to run your apps, it's just fine. And the price is going to come down over the holidays, So don't be afraid of the Pixel over the holiday season. Don't be afraid of the Samsung S twenty fe. I think for most people, I

personally really like the the iPhone. I really like the Pixel four A five G. I think that's a great combination of screen size and also what you can do on the phone with a camera. Although it just feels dated compared to these other devices, the Samsung just feels nicer in the hand, it seems snappier, and of course it has a lot, you know like it seems like it has more features. So I think you have a

good a good choice of phones this holiday season. If you're looking to upgrade, you can't really go wrong with the iPhone twelve the Pixel four A five G if you don't worry about the you know, fastest specs, and also the Samsung S twenty fe is near perfect and the only thing about that phone that bugs me is that they didn't put enough memory in it like RAM. So it's not It's speedy because as the newest processor, but I wish it had a couple more gigs of

RAM to really let it compete. But otherwise, I think that we are doing really well this year when it comes to phones. So if you have more questions for me, hit me up on social media at rich On Tech. I've been playing with all these devices, believe me. So if you have questions, let me know and I will do my best to answer them for you. Let's get to the first question of the day, Mike, Friend of the show. Mike says, Hey, rich I hope that you

and your family are doing well. If you haven't already heard, Quibi is shutting down it's service. I was very disappointed, as they had some very good programs to watch. I just paid for another month and no mention of a refund, so I guess I amount a few bucks. Anyway, you may want to get the word out on your program. I am doing well. Take care, stay in touch, Mike. Mike used to call into the show back in the day when I did live callers. Maybe one day I'll

bring that back. Yes, Quibi is shutting down. I just this makes me really angry because they spent about I mean they had a billion. Over a billion dollars one point seventy five billion is the number being thrown around. Just just give me a million of that and I will create amazing tech content for the next decade. With a million bucks. They spent a billion on a on a service that lasted six months. All I need is a million and I will do tech stuff for the

next ten years. So if anyone wants to fund that, let me know, and I am happy to take that million dollars and give you a reach turn on it. Because Quibi just went caput after six months, and you had such smart people running this, I mean Meg Whitman, Katzenberg. These people are are you know, they know what they're doing. But what they didn't understand is Number one, you can't charge people. Whatever it was I think it was five six ninety nine a month for this service and include ads,

no way. I mean I got a little free trial. I think it was ninety days to Quibi and there was no way I was going to pay six bucks or wherever they wanted. I think it was six ninety nine, when Netflix is like, you know, for the standard one, it's like thirteen dollars and no way, so quibi you just you just didn't get it right. Plus the other thing is, and I hate to say this, but they think that celebrities are going to bring in all the viewers.

And honestly, these days, people don't necessarily care about celebrities. They care about content. They care about their favorite personalities. So if you look at these folks on YouTube that are making a great living on YouTube, you go into a random household and you say, hey, do you know this person on YouTube? No, they have no clue. And it doesn't matter because that person on YouTube is not sitting there crying that they are not a household name,

because guess what, they are connecting with their people. That's the way I feel being on KTLA and doing all the stuff I do on social media. Ninety nine point nine percent of people have no idea who rich on tech is. And guess what, that does not matter. What matters is the one person that I connect with and help them with their cell phone bill, or help them choose their next computer, or help them get out of a rut with the software they need and their zoom situation.

That's what matters. And I think that these one to one connection on a much smaller scale are way more important than a big celebrity that has no connection to the person watching on Quibi, and that celebrity made a ton of money and they're on to the next thing, whereas these YouTubers, they are dedicated and they're much more connected with their audiences because guess what they have to be.

They're not just getting millions of dollars thrown at them, and then they don't care if the product works or not, or the service works or not. They don't care what Quibi's long term is. They get that million bucks and they're done. So Quibi really sad, but I don't think anyone's shedding a tear except for the folks that work there, which of course it's sad to see all these people out of a job. And I'm sure there's very smart people there. But they should have been smarter at the top.

They should have funded the rich On Tech Show and they would have had a hit. That's all I'm saying. They should have maybe mixed in a few people there there were not so big names and gotten them to sort of, you know, help the service take off. And by the way, it should have been free for a year. When they saw the pandemic happening. They should have known Apple did they made Apple TV Plus free. And do

you think anyone's rushing out to subscribe to Apple TV Plus. No. But the reality is it doesn't matter because they don't have to make that decision right now because Apple made it for them and they said, look, we're gonna give you all this content that's pretty awesome. And I think Apple TV Plus is coming out with some really good

content and it's starting to prove itself. And so by the time in February when people start having to make that decision to subscribe, they'll say, you know what, for five bucks a month, I think this has been pretty good to me. I'm excited to watch that on the Rocks movie. I'm excited to watch Greyhound. I love the Morning Show. I mean, we know that all you need is one good show a month for these services to be worth it, and that's the magic formula. And it

can't be that expensive. Quibi was way too expensive for what you got. And Mike, I'm sorry that you got no refund. That's unfortunate, but you know that maybe they Yeah, there's no proration with these things when you cancel Netflix or whatever. There's no no proration. All right, let's move

on to the next story. Let's talk about let's talk about the wyscam, because they came out with a new version this week, the Wysecam Version three, and I was a little upset that Wyse came out with a new version so close to the outdoor version that I just featured. And now all of a sudden they come out with the Wyscam V three that is indoor outdoor. Now there are some major differences between these two cameras, but still,

this one's twenty dollars. It's simple, it's plug and play, it works inside and outside, and it's at heart a similar camera to the one that they first launched, but it now works inside outside and that's a huge deal for twenty bucks. Now, the big difference between these two cameras is that this one is wired, so you have to plug it in to get the power source twenty four to seven, whereas the outdoor cam, that one was a strictly rechargeable camera that you can post outside anywhere

you want. So let me go over some of the features between the version, you know, the old version and the new version. So number one, the new version still twenty dollars and it's still, you know, a little tiny

camera that you plug in. The difference is the cord is now permanently affixed to the back of the camera and then there's sort of a breakaway point that is rubber insulated, so that enables it to be an outdoor camera because the two areas where the cord connects are sealed in a way that they will withstand the elements.

It's IP sixty five, so it is indoor outdoor. It's got a starlight sensor, which means you can actually use this without night vision, and it will take in so much light that you can get a color night vision shot. So you have to choose one or the other. Do you want black and white night vision or do you want just a lower light which takes in more but it's in color. You have that choice. Then they've got this dual ir system, which is kind of cool, the

infrared system. If you use this as a baby monitor, they actually have close up LEDs that are not red, so if you use it as a baby monitor, you don't have those LEDs blaring in your child's face. So that's kind of neat three options for mounting magnetic now, tripod, and screw, so there's more ways to sort of mount

this thing. Still ten ADP resolution, Still a thirty two gigabyte local storage, so if you want twenty four to seven recording, you pop an SD card in there up to thirty two gigs and it will just continuously record on that microSD card. Highly recommend you do that. Then you've got the cloud storage, which is free. So this will record motion and sound for twelve seconds at a

time with a five minute cool down. And what that means is that when it records those twelve seconds, it then goes into a hibernation mode for five minutes, and then if there's more motion, it will record again. So you may or may not capture exactly what you need with that twelve seconds, but that's totally free. You don't have to pay anything per month for this device. It's got a wider field of view at one hundred and

thirty degrees versus one hundred and ten. It's a little smoother playback because you get slightly more frames twenty frames playback during the day versus fifteen on the old camera. Fifteen at night versus ten on the old camera. It's got a much larger aperture, one point six versus two point six, so that means the night vision is gonna get much more light. Now it's gonna operate on the same frequency for Wi Fi as before. It is still just a single mode, which is two point four gigaherts.

I know a lot of you want that five gigahertz so you can connect it faster into your new router whatever, but it's still two point four gigaherts. I'm guessing cost is the reason there. There's also this little siren that's built in which is kind of cool, eighty decibels mini siren, and it sounds great. It's a nice little deterrent if you need it. And the two way talk is definitely in.

It's now sort of instead of just that walkie talkie two way, it is now much smoother where you can kind of open the conversation and both talk at the same time. So again that's the Wise CaMV three the way that wis does this, and I love Wise, but

this kind of bugs me. They do these pre order things where all these people hear about me talk about it, they order it, and they don't get their order for like another couple of weeks, and so they end up emailing me saying, Rich, I ordered this, I never got my order. But what Wise must do is get all these pre orders collected and then somehow either I don't know, but they So this ship date is mid November, so if you order it now, you can get it in

mid November. So there's going to be a three to four week lag minimum by the time you order to the when you get it, which is rare these days because we're so used to ordering stuff on Amazon and getting it the very next day. So it is it does throw people for a loop. I get it. But if you order something from Wise, just keep in mind you'll probably have to wait just a little bit to get it. Let's get to the next question here, and the next question is from Sarah good Day. I need

to learn more about Windows ten word and Excel. I'm out of work and needing to know more to apply for certain jobs due to the virus. I'm looking for remote jobs. I need to know more about Windows ten word and Excel. Objection already said asked an answer at this point. That's my old mock trial coming through. At this point, I cannot pay a lot for lessons more of a hands on, but books might be my only option. No, Sarah, if you have an Internet connection, you can learn anything

you want these days. Believe me, any piece of information that a human needs is online. Now I'm not saying you don't need to go to school, you don't need a real teacher, but if you need to teach yourself, we have never lived in a better time. There are millions of people giving away information for free. The number one place to look is YouTube. Go ahead, google Windows ten, going on YouTube and just search Windows ten tutorial, word tutorial,

Excel toutorial. Then maybe you need to do something with spreadsheets, Excel financial spreadsheets tutorial, get specific and you can learn a ton just from YouTube. Then you've got a whole bunch of websites that can also help you. And these are a bit more polished, maybe a bit more professional.

But LinkedIn has a great one which is LinkedIn Learning, and so they bought something called I think it was Linda, and you can just go on here and there's so much stuff, sixteen thousand free and paid courses, So just look for stuff that's free there and you can watch stuff on there and it's pretty good. Then you've got

other websites like you Demi, So you Demi is another one. Now, again, a lot of these websites are going to make you pay to really get the most out of them, but a lot of them do have some stuff for free. So skill share is another one. Of course, Sarah is another one. And again there's con Academy. I mean, there's just so much. What's the other one for kids? There's out School. I mean, there's just so many of these

online learning hubs that. Believe me, I'm learning Premiere Pro right now, which you know, our company switched to Premiere for editing. I used Final Cut for the past twenty years and now all of a sudden, I'm using Premiere overnight And how do you do it? Well, I'm just learning like everyone else. I'm sitting there, you know, going on YouTube and looking at things, and I'm going on just web searches. Hey, how do I do this? How do I export? How do I do I mean, there's

just it's a lot to know. And believe me, this is especially with the work from home stuff. Everyone's trying to figure this stuff out. So there. The good news is, Sarah, there are so many things to do for free. I have faith that you will learn and get a job. And the fact that you have emailed me means a lot because you are really really trying to get ahead. So good question and good luck on the job search. All right, what do we want to talk about next? I guess we'll keep on the Apple for just a

second here. I'm just going to talk about Apple one. So this is Apple's new bundle subscription service. It launched and it has three levels of subscriptions. So you've got the individual, You've got the Family, and you've got the premiere and let me go over which each one of these does. Individual is fifteen dollars a month. It includes Apple Music, it includes Apple TV Plus, it includes Apple Arcade and iCloud fifty gigs. They say it saves you

six dollars a month over purchasing these things individually. So if you're already subscribed to say Apple Music and iCloud fifty gigs, and you have TV plus boom, it might be an easy decision. Now. I think the only tricky thing here right now with these pricing plans is you sort of have to subtract. Let me see how much Apple TV Plus subscription pricing is. I want to see

how much that is. It's five dollars a month. Okay, so realistically right now October, end of October, early November, you have to subtract five dollars from each one of these to see if it's actually worth it. Because if you bought an Apple device in the past year, you are getting Apple TV Plus for free. So the individual plan would be ten dollars a month realistically, and that would actually be worth it because you're getting Apple Music and iCloud for that price. Oh wait, hold on, I

think you have to add five dollars. Let me think about this. Yeah, I think you have to add five dollars, so it'd really be twenty dollars. Oh gosh. This is when my kid asked me, you know, do I really need to know math? And like yes, So I think that you would add the five dollars because the TV Plus you almost have to take it out of the bundle because it's free right now, so you're not getting that value out of it. So really I would say the individual would be twenty dollars a month. Oh my gosh.

I don't know anyway. You have to kind of figure this out for yourself, add up the stuff that you're already paying for. So I'll give my example. So I would be geared up for the family plan right, this is nineteen ninety five a month. You can share it with up to five people. That includes Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, and two hundred gigs of iCloud. Now I pay right now, I only pay for iCloud

two hundred gigs. I get Apple TV Plus for free, and I get Apple I used to get Apple Music for free through Verizon, but I just downgraded my plan, so I'm saving twenty bucks there a month, and now I don't get Apple Music. But so Apple Music would be fifteen a month, Apple TV Plus would be five dollars a month, Apple Arcade would be five, and iCloud is three, so I'd be twenty five. That's twenty eight dollars,

and it's twenty dollars. So now I will say, now that I'm looking at this and I'm figuring it out written, I would take out that five dollars for Apple TV because that's free, So that'd be twenty three dollars. So that is twenty three dollars versus twenty, so it would be a savings of three dollars a month right now for me. But I currently don't subscribe to Apple Music, so I really that's where it gets a little tricky because I don't know if I need Apple Music. I

have a subscription to Google Play Music. So again, this is going to be very individual for you. You have to just do the math, add up how much you're spending on these things. And also something like Apple Arcade it's five dollars, but guess what if I scratched that out because I was a subscriber for a year, my kids didn't play it, So if you're not using it, it's

not worth the five dollars. So now when I add it up, I get fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen dollars total, which is actually two dollars less than the family So for me, I am not subscribing now. When I get into February, when my Apple TV Plus expires, and I add that extra five dollar, so eighteen plus five is back up to twenty three. Now I would be saving three dollars a month if I would like to continue with the Apple TV Plus subscription that way it's worth it.

And then of course i'd have to also use the music thing too. Premiere is twenty nine ninety five a month, thirty dollars. This is probably the best deal out of the whole thing. You get Apple Music from up to five people, you get Apple TV Plus, you get Apple Arcade, you get two terabytes of iCloud storage. So if you

hold all your photos in there, that's great. Apple News Plus which is ten dollars, and an Apple Fitness Plus, which I think is ten dollars as well, So that is going to be a really great deal if you are a super Apple fan and you have all of that stuff. But again, it's available now. If you want to access it and see kind of like what the offers are, go into settings on your iPhone Apple ID subscriptions and you'll see a banner that says get Apple one.

So again it's just a matter of math, and if you do your math, you got to figure it out and see if it's worth it for you For me, it's not worth it right now. And now if I was to consolidate a couple things, because right now I pay ten bucks a month to Google for the storage there, if I was able to switch over all my cloud storage to Apple. It probably would be worth it to get the top of the line one, but right now I'm not ready to do that. So again, it's a

very personal thing. But and these bundles are getting a little tricky because everyone's offering them, and it's kind of a problem because it just gets us more into the corner with these services where you can't. So for example, with my Verizon, I just went on and it took me so long to do this, but I was like, you know, now they have this thing where they give you instead of just Disney Plus, you get Hulu Plus and you get ESPN. But you know, I dropped down.

I used to get Apple Music included, but I said, well, I'd rather save the twenty dollars a month because if I get rid of Apple Music, it's really an net of five dollars even if I resubscribed. And let me explain that. So I save twenty dollars a month if I resubscribe to Apple Music for me and my wife, that's fifteen dollars a month for the family plan. I'm

still coming out ahead by five dollars. And my plan didn't really change with Verizon, Like, I didn't really get anything less, so I still have unlimited, I still have the same amount of hot Spot, So it really was kind of a no brainer. And I'm saving twenty bucks a month there at the least. If I resubscribe to Apple Music, which I like because it's on my watch, I will still be saving five dollars. And while I mention that before I get to the next question, let

me just say something. And I know this applies to about one percent of folks out there, but let me just explain one thing there. If you're subscribed to Apple Music just for your Apple Watch, right so, you just want to be able to listen to music on your Apple Watch, you don't necessarily have to do that. Now, we all know that Apple Music is the only service right now where you can download music to your watch. I belie maybe Pandora is the other one offline Apple Watch.

Let me see if Pandora works offline. Yeah, so Pandora does work as well, so you know, if you're subscribed to Apple Music just for that offline. So for me personally, I like to run with just my Apple Watch and I use the music that it downloads from Apple Music to my Watch. Now, I don't have that ability anymore,

but I will tell you what I do have. I have the iHeartRadio Apple Watch app, and I do have Cellular on my Apple Watch because I feel like if I'm running alone, you know, without my phone, if there's ever an emergency, I want to be able to you know, call someone, and so I use the This is brand new, by the way, from iHeartMedia. So if you use the iHeartRadio app on your Apple Watch, you can listen to live radio streaming through Cellular on your watch for free.

So again, I'm paying that ten dollars a month for the Cellular on my Apple Watch. It's unlimited. I don't use the music functionality on my watch at any other time except when I'm running, So to me, I'm gonna go as long as humanly possible with just as free iHeart Radio app because it's perfect. You know, I go on a forty minute run, I'm listening to forty minutes

of music. I'll be honest in the many times that I've used it, you know, I five or six times so far, I've only heard ads once, and honestly, they're only on the more popular stations. So if you're listening to like hit radio, Yeah there will be ads, but I listen to this country workout and I haven't heard any ads at all. Now, sometimes you might hear DJ for a minute doing something, you know, saying something silly, but it's been pretty darn good. And they've got some

great workout stations on here. So I'll tell you the ones that I subscribe to for the workout stuff I've got. And this is the other thing I don't think people realize about. iHeart Radio. They've got the local stations, but inside the app, if you really dig a little bit, they have the equivalent of satellite radio stations on their app that are not necessarily like you know, one oh four to three MYFM or Kiss FM. It's like a generic version of those stations that's almost like a satellite

version of that. And so it's really interesting. So they have something called like hit Nation, right, and so hit Nation is kind of like sirius XM Hits one and it's really fascinating. Okay, so here's the stations. I have Country Workout Radio, which I love. If you don't like country, then you're not gonna like that, but I do. Hit Nation is kind of like their top Hits that's just on on a total. You know, you listen a Hits

twenty four hour cardio mix, that's I think that's in. Yeah, twenty four hour cardio mix, which is kind of like again like a satellite radio station. Then you've got what's this other one? Come on, You've got to keep going to this every time I lower my wrist. You've got Today's mix, which is sort of just like a light pop station you might hear at the dentist's office. I always joke about that. iHeartRadio Country, which is fantastic Hit Nation Junior, which is kind of like good for the

kids in the car. Of course, KFI. iHeart Christmas, which is the best Christmas station out there. Katla's on there. Actually you can listen to that. American Top forty eclectic rock is amazing. I don't know the guy actually, when I tweeted about it, he tweeted me back, he said he's in La. He's like, oh, he's like, I actually programmed that station. Thanks so much for listening to it.

And then Coffee Shop Radio and that's also that's what I listened to on the weekends on Saturday Sunday morning, because you know, it's a little bit more laid back. But I'm telling you iHeartRadio has some really good stuff going for completely free, and I just think people ignore it or look over it because they think, oh it's free,

it can't be that good. But I'm telling you, if you've got cellular on your Apple Watch and you don't want to spend extra money and you want to just use your watch, I'm telling you down download the iHeartRadio app and it's it's fantastic. And I'm gonna try to get my wife on board. That's the only thing I may You know, it's a little tricky with her because she, you know something, she's known the Apple Music or the Apple Music for so long now it's a little tricky

to like kind of switch. But anyway, but check it out, all right, Do we have another question? Of course we do. We got lots of questions, all right, Uh, Marshall, Marshlley, Marcelli. I don't know, Marshall. Last week I was on a site that I have never been on before. I decided I wanted to purchase something. When I got to the part of paying, I hit pay and a pop up automatic pop pop up. This is when microphones go crazy with a pop pop pup, a pop up pop. This

is why I talk on the side. If you're watching on on the let's see if I talk here, pop up, pop up, pop up. Yeah, I don't know. I try to talk to the side so I don't get those pops automatically came up with my current credit card number. I was reluctant to go any further because I cannot understand why they could have managed to have a current credit card available for me to pick from. So now I'm wondering, if my tablet gets lost and somebody manages to to get into it, could they order like crazy

with that happening on any site? Should I be concerned? I would appreciate a reply thank you, Marshell, mar C H. E. L. E. Marshall, right, not Marcelli, not Marcelli, Marcel marcell anyway, So here's what I think happened on this website. I think what happened is it was something called Stripe, and it might have been a Shopify site as well. It could have been Shopify or Stripe. So there's a couple of these fintech companies, financial tech companies that are trying to make the purchase

process online as frictionless as possible. Why do they want it to be frictionless because the less friction means the quicker you will be to buy. Now, my biggest pet peeve is with all these food ordering apps, when I go to order and I got to set up a whole new account just to order a salad at some random new place that I found. What I love is when they integrate Apple Pay into the app, because boom, I don't have to sign up, I don't have to sign in. It's just like Apple Pay, Boom, all my

stuff is there, and it's it's super slick. So on the web that you know Apple Pay, maybe you know it's there in a couple places. But these websites are integrating what's called Stripe or Shopify, and what they do is you use your credit card on one website and it stores it in the background on the Shopify or the Stripe servers, and then when you go to another website that supports that shopping protocol, it automatically pops up with your credit card number and it says, oh, we

already have your info. Do you want to just buy? And you say, oh, whoa, that's a surprise. I don't know how you got that, but okay, And what they do is and martial to sort to answer your question. It generally, before you can make that purchase, they will text a confirmation code to your smartphone to allow you to make the transaction go through. So it's not just like the information is populated and then it goes in and boom. Anyone that's on that web browser can use

your info. It's realistically a combination of them having the information and then texting you for the authorization. Now it surprised me on a couple of websites, I've encountered this and it's like whoa. But I will say it's slick and it's kind of cool because the name of the game for me is I want to share my card number with as least places as possible because the more your numbers are out there, the more they are apt

to getting hacked. And yes, I get it, credit cards, you're not going to be liable, but the reality is it's still a pain in the you know what, and you don't want to have to deal with the headache of changing all of your card numbers and all the different subscriptions you have or whatever. So at the end of the day, I do like this system. I think it is frictionless, which of course makes you spend more money,

but I kind of like it. It's slick, it's nice, and it does make life a little bit easier, So I'm okay with it as long as they're being upfront about it. I did go to Stripe and see kind of like, if you know, I can like delete my card out of them, and I didn't really see a way to do that. Maybe it's not the one I was thinking. I know, Shopify for sure lets you, you know, store your number. But anyway, that's what's happening. I think I think you'll be okay. All right, what do I

want to talk about next? Uh? Should we talk about some of the biggest predictions for the holiday shopping season? I love Adobe Analytics during the holidays. They are so right on when it comes to their holiday shopping predictions. Here's how this works. They they work with a bunch of you know, major retailers, where at the end of the day, they the retailers sort of share their purchasing data with Adobe to gain insights, and so they kind of scan thing and whatever. Anyway, so there you go,

So what are their what are their predictions? Number one, US online holiday sales will total one hundred and eighty nine billion dollars this year, which thirty three percent year over year increase. Now I would have thought, you know, maybe people because they're not spending as much, it would have been lower. But here's what I think that means. I think that means that people are probably gonna spend less in store and more online because less people are

going out of their houses. Right now, Cyber Monday is going to remain the biggest online shopping day of the year, twelve point seven billion dollars in one day, thirty five percent over last year. Smartphones Americans will spend twenty eight billion dollars more on their smartphones, accounting for forty two percent of all online sales. And I've noticed that with myself, I've noticed myself picking up my smartphone more to do,

you know, to sorry. So I've I've noticed myself sort of shopping on my phone more because it is easier sometimes with these with these apps, okay, top anticipate and by the way, it goes back to that whole Apple pay thing. If I can use my stored payment, then

of course I want to use that. Most anticipated gifts and toys here we go, drum roll please, Rainbow Corns, q Titos, Little Live Pets, Star Wars toys and Lego sets, video games, Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, Call of Duty, Black Ops, Cold War, Spider Man, Miles Morales, Mario Kart Home Circuit, which I just tested out with my kids. I'll have a segment soon. It was a ton of fun, Super Mario three D All Stars. And then, of course you've got two new game consoles coming out, the Xbox Series

X the PlayStation five. And I think the Nintendo Switch is going to continue to sell because it's a blast. My kids love theirs. They're on Animal Crossing, and I got my little kid the switch light, which is just perfect, you know, unless you're really playing on the TV screen. I think the switch light is just fine. All right, let's take another question. Bob says, hey, Rich, are you still doing the newsletter? I haven't gotten one in a while and wanting to make sure that I haven't gotten

dropped from the list or something. Thanks Bob. Uh Nope, still doing the newsletter Rich on tech dot tv. You can sign up for it it's a substack newsletter. Substack is this great platform that a lot of people are using because you know, unlike something like Mailchimp, substack lets you send to I think as many people as you want for free. So I have, you know, a whole bunch of people on there. And uh, let's see how many subscribers on to the rich on Tech podcast or

newsletter twelve thousand, five hundred and seven. So twelve thousand, five hundred and seven of you and Bob, just checking for your email address, you are in there. So I think what happens is I do send it out every other week and so maybe that's why you're you know, missing it, or it could be going to spam, So definitely check your spam search for substack dot com and

see if my email is going there. But the good news is, out of twelve five hundred and seven, let's see eleven and fifty five of you opened it last week. So that's good. So there is a lot of I love doing the newsletter. It's a lot of work on my part, but I love doing it because it's again

another way to connect. So if you want to sign up, go to rich on tech dot substack dot com it's completely free, and it's it's just you know, it's a it's a rundown of like a lot of the stuff that I mentioned throughout the two weeks, in between the podcast, in between the newsletters, and it's just a good way to sort of keep up with what's going on. And that's it, all right, let's talk about Oh, this is really interesting. This is this is fantastic, especially for work

at home. Uh epoccam. Have you heard of it? We did a story on this a while back. It's an app that turns your iPhone into a webcam, and I believe when we did it it was just maybe is it Android and iOS? I don't. I think it's just your iPhone. Well anyway, Elgado, which is a great company that makes a ton of stuff, they just bought this app, and I believe let's see if they made it free. Is it free? It's eight dollars. Okay, so eight bucks.

But the reality is you can turn your old your current phone or you're you know, an old iPhone into a webcam ten ADP full HD. Oh you can use it for free or pro is eight dollars. So again, this is just good to know you can turn your iPhone or your iPad into a wireless Oh wireless, that's cool. High definition webcam for Windows and Mac Os works seamlessly with major applications like Zoom, Skype, Obs, Studio, Google, Meet,

Microsoft Teams to chat stream or record in HD. And so again, the fact that this was purchased by a big company makes it great because it's going to be supported. And so the one that I looked at before was good, but I think that having this company behind it makes it even better. So again, it's called epoch epoccam available if you need a webcam. It's just something good to know and go check it out. All right, going a little long here, but you know what, I don't care.

There's no time limits on this show. Let's see. Sou Foster says, I'm getting ads for apps that will print picks off my phone. I have several years of vacation picks, house stream model pictures i'd like in albums, and clean up my phone. What do you think of these apps? Ooh, well, I don't think you should be printing pictures and then deleting them off your phone. No way, that's not very good. So if you want just these things in little albums that you can put on your coffee table. Yeah, there's

a bunch of apps that will do that. Now, if you want to just clear up your phone, I would recommend the sand disk, I expand Go, or I would just download Google Photos to your iPhone, let it back up everything, and then it will delete pictures off your phone, but it will save them in the cloud. Now, if you're looking to just print pictures, there's a couple websites

I'll recommend. Number one is Groovebook. And I got to say, you know, I've been wrong on a few things in my time at KTLA, and Groovebook is one of them. I got an email from a guy named Brian at Groovebook back in February twenty thirteen. Alright, no sorry, January twenty fourth, twenty thirteen, and he came up with an app called Groovebook, and I'll be honest, I kind of blew it off. And he was like, oh, this is so great. You know, you can download pictures or you

can print pictures of your kid. It's an app that delivers let's see. Anyway, the long and short of it is I kind of, you know, didn't really do anything on it. And next thing. You know, guess who bought Groovebook for a cool however much money but it was Shutterfly and yeah, so rich didn't really get that one. Anyway, groove Book is a good one. Let's see what else do we have. Mixed Book is another one. Now I have looked at Mixbook. I did a little test book

with them. It was great. Chat Books I think is a husband wife team and they're really good. And then of course Google Photos. If you want to go with a big corporate conglomerate, you can print your photo books right from Google Photos. But I always mean to do this every month and I just kind of forget to do it. But I'd like to do more photo books because they are really fun to just have on your car coffee table and flip through and look at. But I always just forget to do it. But I need

to do that. All right, Let's see anything else I want to talk about before I get out of here. I did take a look at the Hummer EV the Hummers coming back as an electric vehicle. I got to see the prototype. If you want to watch it on my YouTube channel, just search Hummer EV rich on Tech and it should bring you up that video. But here's

my impression Number one. I thought it was pretty cool, and for a for a split second, I was thinking to myself, this would kind of be a cool truck for me to have, because you know, it's all electric, but it looks all cool and rugged, and here I am the tech guy. But then I heard the price, which is one hundred and twelve thousand bucks, and immediately no, I barely want to buy the Tesla for like forty. But the truck features a couple unique things. It's three

hundred and fifty miles to the gallon. It will recharge zero two one hundred miles in ten minutes if you got the super fast charger. It's got this crab walk feature which allows the tires to sort of rotate just a little bit and kind of shimmy diagonally. I didn't know. I didn't see any of these things demoed. What I saw was a prototype that looked like a truck, but I'm not sure if it even drove, to be honest, extract mode, which the front of the car raises up

six inches to get over like a big rock. And by the way, I'd never find myself in any of the situations where I'd need to use these features because I'm not going off roading like that underbody armor ultravision which has all these cameras up to eighteen cameras around the car or truck, I should say, to help you

spot stuff. What else? Three hundred and fifty miles to the gallon super CRUs which allows you to you know, hands free driving on two hundred thousand miles of roads, plus an automatic lane changing system oh watts to freedom zero to sixty and three seconds. And again this is going into production next year twenty twenty one, and it's going to beailable in twenty twenty two. The first wave

of reservations has already sold out. It was like one hundred dollars for the reservation, so it's not like that big of a deal, and who knows how many they actually had available. But to me, when you look at this versus say, the cyber truck, which I think is going to be like, you know, half the price, you know, it looks really cool. Look, this is for someone who

does not need to worry about the money. This is not someone who has to worry about where they're spending one hundred and ten thousand dollars one hundred and fifteen. You know, when you do all the math, it's going to be way more with taxes and all that stuff.

But it's cool. I like that GMS doing this. Personally, I would like to see them putting a little bit more effort into something like the Bolt, or maybe similar cars to that that are more reasonable for the average person, or maybe a good looking, you know, electric car, kind of like the Tesla is a great looking electric car if you ask me, the Tesla three, it's very simple looking,

but you know, maybe something more close to that. The volt and the bolt have a very unique look that is not for everyone, and so you know, it's just the way it is. Let's see one more question c S. I don't know how to say the name, but anyway, my laptop is a question. My laptop is a twenty twelve model. Do I need one that's more updated or should I just buy an eurosystem? I have one laptop, one phone connected to my modem. The modem is in a room separate from my laptop and phone. Can you

please advise me? I'd probably put the money towards the laptop and not the Eero. I think if your modem is in one room, next to the you know laptop. Your laptop's in the other room, and that's all you have connected. I think it spend the money on the laptop. It's twenty twelve, it's going on eight years old, depending on what kind of model it is. You know, it's

probably pretty slow at this point. So it works. But you know, I think that if you want to upgrade, you want a little bit better speed, and I think the Wi Fi connection will probably be inherently better on a newer laptop than it is on an older laptop. So that's something to keep in mind. There. Oh, that music means it is the end of the show. Can you believe it? That is going to do it. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to rich on tech dot tv hit the

email button at the bottom of the page. If you're on Facebook Live, stick around at the end of the show, I will talk to you directly. I'd love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Many of you have gone to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech to rate and review it, and Victoria from Lahabra Heights says been watching Rich on KTLA as far back as he's been on I look forward to his tips and now I

don't feel cheated if I miss his KTLA presentation. I just listened to his podcasts and I get far more than I ever did. Wait, that's not very good for my TV segments. Rich, I really appreciate all the effort that you put into your podcast. Thank you very much for your diligence. Well, thank you, Victoria in Lahabra Heights. I will say the KTLA segments are still the bread and butter, so don't stop watching those. But the reality

is I get two minutes on KTLA. I get an hour here and on social media, so it's a very different way of approaching it. In those two minutes on TV, I have to get across just the basics, just the best information for the average viewer. My podcast is a chance for me to take a deep dive into all these topics and really talk about the nitty gritty stuff that I think people should know if they're interested. You

can find me online at rich on Tech. Follow me on Instagram especially, that's where I'm putting a lot of effort these days. Of course, I'm on Facebook and Twitter as well. My name is rich Duirero, thanks so much for listening. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon.