Samsung and Apple schedule their next events. A review of the one plus smart Watch, the best feature Ever comes to Kindle Plus. Your tech questions Answered?
What is going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech.
Stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer the questions you send me, and believe me, you send me a lot of them, way more than I can answer in this podcast. Actually, I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. You might also see me on a TV station near you because it's not just KTLA. Segments go out to TV stations across the nation. Next our nation, we call it. That's the company that owns KTLA. They own a lot
of stations in a lot of different places. In fact, little tidbit for you, this is kind of a homecoming for me my second reporter job.
Ever.
I actually worked for the same company, so worked there for three years in Louisiana, came out to Los Angeles and worked at KATLA when it was owned by a different company, and then the company from Louisiana bought I mean, the company's headquartered in Texas, but the same company bought Ktla. How wild is that? So full circle for my career? Here, Wow, this week, what a week for crypto.
Man.
I don't talk about crypto a lot, cryptocurrency, but I mean it has been. It's getting to the point where you can't avoid it. So bitcoin is the big you know, cryptocurrency, and it's been you know, it's been going on for many years now. In fact, it's funny because I've got a friend who has been talking about bitcoin forever. I mean, I'm talking way before anyone in the news is ever
talking about it. You know, every party you'd go to, every time you ever saw this guy at a poker game, crypto, crypto, crypto, And of course you know what do I do? Okay, Okay, it's too complicated, it's too it's not for my audience. It's too much. It's too much. And boy, I wish I bought some crypto and he started talking about it, because man, it is just it's been a wild ride for cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin. There's other cryptos as well. It's
not just Bitcoin. But I am now actually, the more I learn about this getting to be a bigger believer in it, because when you think about it like, Okay, so yesterday I wanted to send someone, you know, a couple bucks, right, and I was like, do you have zeld, do you have you know, Venmo?
Do you have this? Do you have that?
But if they had bitcoin, if they just had some sort of like bitcoin, you know, if I could just send them that.
That'd be so much easier.
It's universal, it works with everything, It works across every country, it works across every phone, every everywhere you go. It's just crypto. And so I'm in. You know, Tesla is accepting crypto. Elon Musk is a big believer. Then we had Coinbase go public this week, and you know, when you look at the numbers of people using Coinbase, which you know they kind of facilitate. It's kind of like a way that people can buy and trade crypto on
their platform. And so when you look at the numbers of how many people are using Coinbase, it's just phenomenal. And clearly this is not just a tech thing or a tech nerd thing, or a you know, random people kind of thing. This is this is becoming big. So I'm going to follow it more closely and just continue to kind of get smarter about it because I think the reason why we're not seeing it take off in such a huge way so fast is because banks in
the government don't really have a handle on it. You know, they don't really get to control it, which is a little bit scary for them because it's not really controlled by any one entity. And that's the beauty of it, but it's also flies in the face of everything we've known about money for so many years. Let's get started with the first part of the show about the one plus watch. This is, Oh my gosh, I feel so
bad for OnePlus. So, you know, like most things, they send it to you before you say anything, and you know, I get to use it for a week or two before anyone else. And so I'm sitting here using the one plus watch. And I had such high hopes for this watch because it's a one hundred and fifty nine dollars smart watch, it works with Android devices, It looks amazing. It's got every sensor under the sun. So you want oxygen, You've got oxygen sensor. You want a compass, You've got
a compass on there. You want running GPS, all onboard everything, This thing has it all. And it's got a nice big screen it's round, it looks like a real watch. But I'm using it and all I'm missing the entire time is my Apple Watch. And you know, it's really bad. When I'm testing something and I actually take it off to go back to my regular device in the middle, and I just put it back on just to test it. That was really bad. That's when I knew I was
having some trouble with this watch. So bottom line about the watch, Okay, Like I said, it's got everything you need.
It's got the microphone.
It's got a little speaker so you can take calls via Bluetooth. It's got storage for songs, so you can store, you know, up to five hundred songs on this thing. Transfer process is really slow since it's over Bluetooth. To be fair, transfer process is really slow in the Apple Watch, you know, but it happens in the background, so does it It does on this you know, it happens in the background on the one.
Plus watch as well.
The Bluetooth was actually really strong. Connection charges really fast. The battery does last very long, up to two weeks, I'd say a week if you're doing a lot of fitness tracking. Now about all those censors. The fitness tracking was a mixed bag because I took a run that I typically take over and over and over, and it was like a third alright, let's see it said it was probably like two miles.
Versus like four that it's typically.
So the GPS data was not very good, and I was like, well, is that because I didn't have the phone with me? But you're not supposed to have you don't need the phone with you.
I do something wrong.
So again you just start thinking because there's nothing out there about this watch. You know, I'm reviewing it before anyone writes anything about it. So I'm just like, okay. The heart rate monitoring, I had it. You know, I took a cycle class the Peloton and I had the one plus watch next to the Apple Watch. They both seem to have the same heart rate, so that was good. But then it's like, you know, the automatic tracking work. It flipped on eight minutes into a walk, which is
just like the Apple Watch. You start walking, you know, a couple of minutes later, I'll say, hey, you're taking a walk. You want to record it? Sure, it's IP sixty eight water resistant. So again all these things are like perfect. I'm like this could be the perfect Android smart watch, and after a week with it, I'm just like, ah,
I you know, here's where the trouble started. I could not figure out, for the life of me how to change the time to twelve hour time versus twenty four hour and I email one plus finally and they're like, oh, that'll be a future software update. No, you can't have a watch that doesn't really work with the time. I understand. And you can say.
Rich can't use military time.
I mean, come on, get with it, buddy, No, I don't use military time.
I love it.
Well, I don't love it because I don't use it, but I appreciate it. And you know, my brother is a big believer in military time, and it's annoying when you're not.
A military type.
I don't know how to you know, fourteen fifty seven Now, I know that's two fifty seven because I've been using the one plus watch. The saving grace is that the data from the watch goes into the Google fit app, which does slice and dice the data.
And it's pretty good.
I mean, everything on there was very good, so except I couldn't tell if the reading's were accurate. So long story short, when the reviews came out and I saw what other people were saying about it. We all felt about the same way. It's beautiful hardware, It's got a lot of sensors. The software is just not there. The accuracy doesn't seem to be there. Could it be fixed with software updates?
I think so.
Could you somehow add the ability to reply to notifications?
I hope so.
Could you somehow add the ability to make it light up brighter when you're in the sun?
I hope? So?
Could you make it so you can tap the screen to turn it on because it doesn't always turn on when you lift.
It, you know.
So it's like all these little things one hundred and fifty nine bucks available now. I'd wait to see if you know, this thing gets some software updates that makes it a little bit more usable and functional for daily use.
All right.
First question of the day comes from Gil. Gil says, hey, Rich, what are your thoughts about cybersecurity for devices like Norton three sixty? Is it worth looking into and possibly obtaining? Thanks?
Gil, have a magical day. You know.
I think it's it's a little heavy handed with the Norton three sixty stuff. I feel like when you install that on your machine. It just kind of takes over everything. And I think Norton is a good company. I think that they do have security front of mine. They've got
great folks that are researching stuff. But I feel like their approach is a little heavy handed when it comes to the amount of things that they want you to do, and the amount of pricing, and the amount of programs and the amount of you know, there's just so much going on. So personally, what I would do on iPhone, you don't need anything. So just you know, forget about iPhone. You don't You don't need any sort of security on
the iPhone. It's built in. Believe me. The only thing you need to do on the iPhone is make sure that you protect yourself from yourself, which means do not click links from unknown senders. Don't get curious when you see those links that you know you realize they're totally bogused.
But you're just like, eh, let me click. No, don't click.
You don't want to do that, So don't click the bad links and you'll be fine on the iPhone. Don't install software from third parties, which you can't really do on the iPhone unless you jail break it. You said, don't do that. You know that that's the main thing.
Don't fall for phishing emails. Those are the main things on the iPhone Android I probably if you want to, I would, I would definitely look into something for androids, so maybe like a malware bytes or in a vast and the website I like I've mentioned this before is avdashtest dot org and you might have to translate it
or get it select English as your language. But they've got a lot of security choices for Android, for even mac Os, which I still don't really think you need, but if you're you know, if you want to be totally secure, sure, and Windows and then you know there's nothing for iPhone, So I would say a vaster AVG for the Android phones, a vaster AVG for Windows users, and make sure that your Windows what is it called defender is up to date, So make sure you go
into your software updates and make sure Windows Defender.
Is up to date.
And then I would also if you want, you can run something like malware bytes on your desktop to see if it catches anything. But those are the main things Gil that I would do personally is just realistically the fishing I think phishing emails and any sort of you know scams. Those are are much more prevalent right now, and I think are the bigger danger than just random viruses being downloaded from the web right now. All right, good question. So to two big announcements this week? Oh
do I have a trumpet? Two big announcements this week? Apple doing a spring loaded event, and then not to be outdone, Samsung sent out an invitation on the very same day for their Galaxy Unpacked twenty twenty one. Now let's start with Apple. This was interesting because Siri spilled
the beans on the Apple event. So some smart folks at mac Rumor's notice that if you ask Siri, hey, when's the next Apple event, she would answer April twentieth at Kupertino, go to Apple dot com for more information, And.
She doesn't really talk like that, but that's my voice for her.
And so it was about, you know, maybe a period of eight hours where she was talking about this event that nobody had officially heard any word about from Apple, and then all of a sudden, right like clockwork, I think, nine am on Tuesday of this week, which you could be listening to this in twenty twenty seven.
So what does it matter the time or date.
But my point is, all of a sudden, journalists like myself and media folks and influencers and YouTube stars and Instagram amazing folks and anyone else who has a popular podcast in whoever Apple seems to like. This week, got an email that said, Hey, you're invited. You're invited to a public event that is on the internet for all to see and share.
You are invited, Rich Demiro.
Oh my gosh, thank you Apple, Thank you for inviting me to watch a live stream on YouTube.
Ah you rock.
I joke because typically these invitations that you get from Apple are actually very you feel very special hitting them because you know they invite a select group of people to their events up in Kupertino. But this is virtual, so you know anyone can watch it. And I don't get any special treatment than any I don't get a front row seat, I don't.
Get an earlier live stream. I don't get it.
You know what they should do, Apple free idea for you, the journalists that you invite to these virtual events. We get a feed that is sixty seconds ahead of everyone else. That means we can send out our tweets of all the new stuff just a minute before the average person. And that gives us a little leg up on everyone else. Right, our tweets can go viral because they're they're they're in the hopper sixty seconds before everyone else.
Do you like that idea? I love it? You know everything.
This one thing I've learned about being a journalist is that there's always a VIP section.
There's always a there's always.
Something better than what I get buying the regular ticket that gives me admission to something. You know, you go to a concert, there's always like a meet and greet before you go to the you know whatever, there's all some sort of VIP. You go to a hotel, you know, you stay in a nice room, there's always a nicer room. There's always someone that's getting treated just a little bit better. And I've noticed that over the years. So anyway, that's that's the reality. But anyway, so what are we gonna
have at this spring loaded event? I mean, what more do you want? We've got a good iPhone from Apple? Do you really need a new iPad Pro? Do you really need a new Apple pencil? Do you really need a new iPad Mini?
Yeah? For the kids. Absolutely, So that I hope they have new air tags.
They've been talking about air tags now for like twenty seven years with Apple, so I think the air tags thing. I talked about it last week, how they're they're expanding that find my with the chipolo. Do you need the air tags? But yes, people want their Apple stuff, so those are going to be exciting.
New AirPods.
I mean, the AirPods are perfect. The airpod's pro or just about perfect. New Apple TV. I mean the Apple TV is perfect. It's it's like, is it any slower than it needs to be to watch Netflix?
I don't think.
So what more could they add ak video?
I don't know.
I mean it's pretty darn good iOS fourteen point five. That would be exciting because we can finally use our phone with our mask on and unlock using Apple Watch. But again, that only appeals to, you know, the folks that have Apple Watch, which a lot of people do. You know, New MacBooks, new that kind of stuff. I don't know if they're gonna have a new MacBook, but maybe maybe a new sixteen inch MacBook Pro, which would definitely interest me with that M one chip, but I'll
probably wait till the next generation anyway. So again, it's exciting. Apple events are always exciting. It's you know, as a tech journalist, when I cover stuff, Apple is king. I get the most response from Apple, uh more so than anything else I cover anywhere in the world.
It's just the way it is.
So now we've got the Samsung Unpacked twenty twenty one again virtual event. This is happening on Oh do I tell you when the Apple event is. Apple Event is happening on April twentieth. So if you're listen to this past April twentieth, go go in the past and listen. I don't know whatever Galaxy on pack twenty twenty one is happening on April twenty eighth, and they say the most power.
Can I tell you the tagline for the Apple event? Yeah, spring loaded.
Okay, so Samsung's is the most powerful Galaxy is coming soon now if you ask me as a tech reviewer, I just reviewed the most powerful Galaxy. I just sent it back, the S twenty one Ultra. I mean, wasn't that And by the way, you know these companies, I don't know what the deal is with Samsung asking for stuff back so quickly. I mean I barely had the phone for like thirty days, and it's like, I'm supposed to test this thing, and you know, it's like harassment almost to get these things back.
And I get it, you know, like, but can.
You give me a little bit more time to see how this thing evolves and use it just a little bit more in different situations. I mean, I might have wanted to compare it against the one plus nine pro, but I didn't really wasn't able to so.
Anyway, I digress.
Yes, um, Most Powerful Galaxy coming soon April twenty eighth. So teaser trailer was announced. Some are saying it's like Galaxy laptops. It's gotta be foldable phones as well in there, right, So that's what we have from Samsung. Most Powerful Galaxy that's on April twenty eighth. I will keep track of all of these events and of course talk about them if I feel like it in a future something. All right, long email from Jerome. I'm hoping you can remove my
confusion inso much. I'm not even sure I can keep my question simple, but I'll try. The bottom line, I'm spending two hundred and forty dollars per month on DirecTV. Shocked, No, not, I was spending that much for a while it should be. I'm trying to reduce my monthly bill and look into streaming options. I have the top of the package that DirecTV offers. It's one ninety a month plus monthly access charges for five devices plus service protection. Dude, cancel this today.
I also pay for sports and movie pack that pushes my bill to two forty. I want to lower my DirecTV package, return the devices and reduce my cost. I have two Apple TV devices, one's the new four K. I've downloaded all the apps for programs that we watch.
They work great.
In my Direct TV package are the channels that we watch and plenty that we do not. As you know, the lower the package, the less channels. In some cases, after an app after downloading to the Apple, we'll ask you for your TV provider. Obviously I entered direct TV. I'm often running there.
Here's the question.
Do I need to have the programming in order to work for the and do I need to have the programming in my package in order for it.
To work on Apple TV?
Can I switch to the lower packages that may not have the channel for the apps I downloaded and will still stream thanks in advanced drome. The answer is no, Jerome, it will not still stream. So what's happening on the
back end is it's authenticating that channel. It's saying on Apple TV, they're talking to direct TV saying, does Jerome is Droome subscribe to because we noticed that Jerome's watching a lot of Bravo app And next thing you know, Direct TV says, yes, Jerome is subscribed to Bravo and you can watch Bravo and miraculously all the stuff streams. And they say, now we notice that Droome is watching the what's another cable channel? I have no idea because I don't watch any of them.
I don't know. I couldn't even come up with one. I don't know.
So another channel, is Jerome authenticated to watch this channel? Yes, he has a subscription and that's included, and so yes it plays nicely. Now, next thing you know, you downgrade your Direct TV and now you don't have the E channel and or I don't even know what these channels are HGTV. I don't even know. I mean, okay, so you got those channels, and it's like, is does Jerome have HGTV And it's like, no, he does not, So HGTV does not play the programming, so Jerome it will not play.
But here's my advice.
You don't need all these channel It's two forty a month for DirecTV. Oh my gosh, get rid of the devices, send them all back, cancel it all. Start from the beginning. Now you said you already have all the apps. I guarantee you when you start looking at all this stuff, number one, you're not even gonna miss half the stuff that you're watching.
Number two.
You can find a service that maybe encompasses half these channels or a majority of these channels, like a maybe a YouTube TV for like eighty five bucks a month, and you might have you might have to buy some more streaming devices. If you have five devices for direct TV, and you say you have two Apple TVs, so maybe you have to buy like two more firesticks at like a cost of like thirty bucks each. But get rid of all this stuff, be done with the satellite dish,
and just subscribe as necessary to these different channels. You may find that Netflix, and you know a couple other things. Hulu might be just fined for what you need. The website that I like is called Untangled dot tv that will give you kind of a heads up. You type in all the shows that you watch. I don't know what's the show. I don't know any of this stuff because I don't watch any of this TV. So I mean Naked and Afraid? Is that still a show?
I don't know.
I'm just thinking of stuff that I've seen in passing. What's the other one below deck? I mean all these shows that, like, you know, people waste their time on. I don't know any of them, but people seem to love them. Real Housewives don't The Bachelor, I don't know, is that.
A show still?
So you know, just type in these shows. It'll tell you where they're airing, and you know, most of the time you can get them. My kids just started watching Lego Masters and that's on Hulu. A lot of this stuff is on Hulu. I mean, there's only a couple companies that own all this stuff anymore. Anyway, I hope I answered your question properly, But that's that's my advice. Speaking of my kids, Microsoft Edge now has a kid's mode, and this is fantastic.
It's a bit late for the whole.
At home distance education debacle we've been dealing with for the past year. But nonetheless Microsoft Edge. By the way, if you haven't switched, fantastic, people love it. I don't know why I have not gone back to it. I'm still using Chrome. My Chrome was slow for a real while. I think I've narrowed it down to grammar Ly, which is a plugin that I have which makes things kind of slow on Chrome. But I love grammar Ly, so I'm not giving it up. But it feels like when
I disable that, that's when my Chrome speeds up. The rest of this stuff doesn't seem to really have an effect on it. So anyway, Microsoft Edge, check it out. I mean, I know it's from Microsoft. It's this weird kind of full circle. We've gone from like everyone had Microsoft back in the day with the Internet Explorer. Then Internet Explorer was evil, and everyone downloaded the alternative, which was Chrome or you know Netscape Navigator back in the day,
and now we're going back. Chrome is now evil because of the way it tracks you. And now we're back to you know, Safari and Microsoft Edge and Brave and all these other browsers.
But it's great.
We have options, so choose one that works for you. Microsoft Edge is a great option. It's actually built on the same foundation as Chrome, so it has a lot of the same features and extensions, but it's just the privacy is just a little more tightened up, the speed is a little more tightened up. And they've got some really nice features in there, like a reading list feature which is really nice, a markup feature for like PDFs, which is really nice. So they've got some good stuff
in there. This is a new one. It's called Kids Mode, and so Microsoft says that Kids Mode basically is a one click kind of solution to keeping your kids safe online. And this is a huge deal with you know, I know my kids are always online now with the working from are the schooling from home, they're going back a little bit, but it's not full time just yet. But my one kid has has Edge on his computer and
he really likes it. He's got he's very advanced with this stuff, and so I like the idea of this Kid's Mode because you know, what they're saying is fifty percent of parents have this handoff scenario, which means, you know, you're using your laptop, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, fine, here use my laptop, and you hand it off to your kid, and now they're on an adult laptop with all these things on there that maybe they shouldn't have
access to, like Google Search for the full search or whatever. And so with this one click, you can now put them into a kid's mode and immediately it kind of locks things down on the Internet. And so you just have choose the appropriate age range, which is either five to eight or nine to twelve, and that's it. Now your kids are in this this kid's mode profile that
kind of does a bunch of things. It puts on the strictest tracking prevention, it blocks the majority of trackers, and then it restricts the websites that your kids have access to. So from the get go they say there's about seventy popular kid sites that are allowed, but you can customize the list, and then the kids in the older range nine to twelve have like a news feed that's appropriate for them. And then there's also fun stuff like custom themes like Frozen, Little Mermaid, Finding, Nemo Cars,
Toy Story, Coco. I can't wait to give this to my kid. He's gonna love it, except for the fact that's probably gonna block half the website.
See typically goes to.
But I love this. I think it's fantastic. The one feature I asked Microsoft if they had which they did not put in, which as a parent, is the one feature we actually need, and that is time limits on these websites. So you know that the number one thing you want to limit is their time on YouTube, or their time on scratch or their time on slither dot io. And it does not have that. And I said, you know, this is the thing we need. We need the time limits,
and yeah, they're getting back to me on that. So the thing that I'd recommend in the meantime, which we use here is called Circle and it's a physical device you have to plug into your network. But it's actually pretty darn amazing with the with the control you get. And I'll tell you it's a pain in the you
know what to set it up. It's a pain, then, you know what, for Dad and mom to actually watch things that we want to watch when it comes time to do that, Like let's say I want to watch a YouTube video in the afternoon, Well it's like, sorry, YouTube is already timed out for the day because my kids have used all the YouTube time. So I have to go in and you know, give myself a reward of thirty minutes extra of YouTube.
I mean it's like little things like that.
Now you might be saying, well, Ranch, I mean, why why are you on the same device or kids on? Well, if you got a TV in the main living room, you gotta lock it down during the day for the kids, but then at night you want to unlock it so that you can actually watch stuff. So there is a little bit of a back and forth with all these things,
but I like Microsoft's approach. The Kid's Mode is definitely something that I think if you're if your kid is using a device or your device, you should definitely download Edge and switch to it for your kid and just give them that little that it's that little peace of mind, even if you can't limit the time, just having the access, limiting the access to the websites. I don't you know. The other thing is like, I don't know what the deal is with with Google. I know you can change
the search on Edge. Of course it defaults to bing, but you can change that in the settings. I haven't gone hands on with this, so I need to check it out to see exactly how it works. Oh, we're just on the topic of kids, Paul says, Hey, Rich my high school daughter daughter wants to download art full app to share her artwork. Are there any other apps besides Instagram? I think she has talent. I'm her dad, though it doesn't count. Katila is awesome. Thanks Paul. Sent
from my iPhone. So I have to look up art full. It's not art full, it's art full, fol And it's an app for artists that is on both Android and iOS. And it looks like an Instagram, but for artwork. And I'll be honest, Yeah, maybe there's some artists out there that know about this, and maybe this thing is amazing, and yes, you should probably be.
On it if you're an artist. But just get her on Instagram.
I mean that that is the place when I think about you know, well, there's an app that's specifically for this. Well, it doesn't matter if the audience is not there. It doesn't matter how great this app is. I get pitches all the time for apps that are the better social media app, and the free speech social media app, and the better video app. It doesn't matter if nobody's there. You're you're talking into the woods, you're the echo, nobody
hears it. So an art I don't know anything, but let me look up the let's see how many reviews this app has. It's got one hundred thousand installs on Android and it's got two hundred and thirty seven ratings on iOS. So I don't want to knock Artful because I'm sure it's amazing. I'm sure the way they, you know, came up with this app is just fantastic. But the reality is, let's look up Instagram on iOS and Instagram on Android, and I will tell tell you that Instagram
on iOS and Instagram on Android. Instagram on Android has oh one billion installs. Instagram on iOS has twenty million ratings. So where do you think your kid's artwork is going to be seen more in this world? Instagram or Artful. Now, don't get me wrong, you can put it on both. I don't think there's any problem with uploading it to both of these. But get the audience on Instagram and that I know you said besides Instagram. So my answer is.
Null for you, Paul.
But the reality is, get on Instagram, build an audience on Instagram, and just have her figure out a way to build up that audience. She's got to interact with people on Instagram. She's got to follow some other folks that are sharing similar things. Just build that community. You know, Instagram doesn't just show your stuff to other people. You have to be a good part of the community for it to reward you. And that means spending time on Instagram.
So spend some time interacting with people, commenting on other people's stuff, liking other people's stuff, answering the emails that you get or the dms that you get. You got to be a good citizen and it will reward you by showing your stuff to more people.
All right.
Spotify this week released or unveiled their first piece of hardware. It's called the car Thing, And at first I was kind of like, oh, come on, Spotify, what is this? And the more I think about it, the more I actually think is kind of cool.
Now.
I take for granted, in my car, I have car Play and Android Auto, so it's easy for me to have my apps on my dashboard screen. But if you have an older car, you don't have that. So Spotify was trying to think like, okay, well, what can we do to help people that are in older cars that may just connect their phone via bluetooth, you know, listen to the stuff they want to listen to so car
thing is. It reminds me of the days of Serious when you used to have to get like a specialized player in your car, like I forget what they called them, but you know, you'd get it installed or you'd do it yourself. With an FM transmitter. I always got mine installed because that was like my dream. That was me living large back in the day when I lived in Shreveport, Louisiana.
I remember going to Best Buy and paying about three hundred dollars for someone to install the Serious XM head unit whatever it was in my car.
Now, not the head unit.
It was a it was an add on piece, but you know, cause I had the FM transmitter for so long, but now I had it actually installed in my car by a professional, and it looked so good. It would turn on when my car turned on, it would turn off when my car turned off. It would fire right into the back of my FM transmitter hardwired into my stereo system.
Oh it was so nice and it sounded oh so good. Back then.
By the way, Serious XM advertised CD quality sound. They no longer say that because if you've listened to some of the stations on Serious XM, oh they are compressed into a way that you would not believe. I mean, it sounds like robots talking on some of the higher end stations there, some of the higher channels.
So I always joke my.
Serious XM app when I'm streaming through there to my car sounds better than the Serious XM in my wife's car. I don't have it in mind, but it actually like if you listen to like kids Bop, that's one of the stations I know.
When you're a parent, these are the things you do.
Kids Bop sounds better when I'm streaming it through my app than it does from the satellite because kids Bop is so compressed. It's like, you know, I don't know. They must must be like one. I don't know what the compression rate is. What was it used to be, like sixty four kilobits per second or something.
I don't know.
It's like it's like one. Whatever it is, it's really compressed. They can fit more channels anyway. What was I talking about? Spotify car thing? So this looks like one of those units from you put it on your dashboard, you connect it to your power and then it connects your phone via Bluetooth, and.
I think that's how it connects.
It looks that way, and then they have a screen, they have a dial, and then there's four preset buttons, so it works in various ways. You can use your voice, so you can say hey, Spotify and then ask for a song, album, artist, station, playlist, or podcast. There's four microphones, so they say it works even when your windows are down. Then you have a dial, so you see this little screen you can dial to select, pause, play, discover, whatever. Then there's also the touch screen, so you can just
use the touch screen, or there's four preset buttons. Now this is when I thought it was pretty cool. The preset buttons are pretty darn smart. And so you get in your car, you press one of the presets. That could be for your podcast, your favorite podcast, that could be for your favorite station, that could be for your favorite album, favorite whatever. That's pretty cool and so I don't know, I love that. So the car thing is free. If you have a Spotify Premium subscription, you got to
pay seven dollars for shipping. Now this is not for someone who has car play, because they're basically saying no, this is for folks that don't have car play. Like if you don't have a screen. This is kind of the screen in your car, and the idea that Spotify says that's sort of faster than trying to use your
phone screen. Now, yeah, it probably is, but honestly, with all the clutter in your car, I would probably get a good high quality amount from something like a proclip USA and use that to mount your phone and then you know, you can control your phone because you can see the screen better. So that's what I would do PROCLIPUSA dot com and that will you know, it's not free. This this Spotify is free, but it's kind of it's a big, kind of bulky thing to have in your car.
I like the preset buttons. I will give it that. I wish that the phone screen had that somehow, but it doesn't. So anyway, you know, there's a waiting list too, by the way, so if you want to get one of these things, it's not like you can just order on Spotify immediately and get it tomorrow. That's not how they're doing it, So be aware. All right, Hey, rich I'm inquiring about your opinion on all the photo gadgets that flash flash across our Instagram. I have so many
photos that are not backed up to my computer. I would like to get them off my phone and save them. I'm in my early seventies, so I'm not keen on backing up anymore. I'm interested in the gadget fob that's fairly easy use on iPhone. I started following you on Instagram several months ago. I also listened to your input on KTLA.
No Facebook here.
Thank you, Chris B sent for my iPhone. Chris, I've got the perfect gadget. It is across the room.
Shall I go get it? Let me? Let me get it so I can talk about it. Hang on, Hang on, Chris getting the gadget. Can you still hear me? I'm getting the gadget.
Okay, I've got it right here in front of me, and believe me, I will be doing a segment on this gadget very soon. It's called the sand Disc I expand flash drive. Lucks Lucks Lucks, that's not lucks, but I used to have some chimes that would sound like a harp, but I don't have them anymore, so.
That'll be my lucks. Uh.
This is a brand new gadget just came out and it is fantastic and I think it blows away all those bogus photo gadgets are advertising on your Instagram feed because this is from a legit company, sand Disc. Sand Disc knows a thing or two about backing things up in storage and hard drives and flash drives and flash storage and whatever.
Now the beauty of this device.
They've had these before, but this one is brand new because it is lightning on. It's a flash drive that is lightning on one end and then USBC on the other end. The idea is that you plug it into your iPhone. It has special software called sand disc I expand Drive, which again, the software is going to better on this because it is from sand Disk versus some random company, and the software has been hit or missed
in the past, but I think it's gotten better. And what you do is you plug this into your phone. It'll even say, hey, you got to download the software to use this ken do you want to? And you say sure, And then you download the software. It says, do you want to back up your photos? It'll automatically back up your photos from your phone. It'll put them on this little drive and you don't have to do
anything more. You can just keep this drive in a safe place or you can then take the other end of the drive if you have a USB C computer and pop it into your computer and now copy the photos onto your computer. Now, I would recommend, and I always say this when I talk about photos, you got to have them in two places. Got to have them in the cloud and somewhere else or sorry, you.
Gotta have them. Just pick two places, whether.
That's two physical drives, two cloud places, a cloud place and a physical drive, whatever. Just make sure that your device, your photos are in two places. So you can if you want it to be really wild, Chris, you could buy two of these I Expand flash Drive looks. I don't know why the music doesn't fit, but you know, I got to do something when I say looks or uh and then just you know, do this twice and you know, back up your photos twice or copy them
to whatever you got. You get what I'm saying, right, So this device is the latest and greatest. They also make another it's just called the Sandis I Expand flash Drive.
I think it's whatever.
They have a bunch of models, so pick the one that's right for you, and that's what I would use. It's super easy, it's super simple and if the photos are still on your phone, that counts as your first place. So if you're not running out of storage on your phone, just keep them on your phone and then back them up to the flash drive and you are good to go. Chris, no more worries. Now you've got this little flash drive.
Just plug it in every month or every week, whatever, and it will figure out which photos it's already copied, it'll copy the new one. It's pretty pretty.
Good, pretty pretty.
Pretty good for my for my Curb your Enthusiasm friends out there. You know, I can never watch HBO ever again. Uh after the intro of the and then it's like in my mind it's gonna go boom boom boom, But.
I can't every single show. Now.
Maybe that's because CURB was like one of the biggest shows I watched on Maybe if you watched like Game of Thrones, maybe they did something there that you know, they're the intro went into the show.
I don't know.
I never watched it, so but for me, whenever I see that, it's always forever, forever going to be Curb Your Enthusiasm, Doom Doom doomaunna boo boop do I.
Lose everyone did I lose you yet? Are you still there? You know?
Look, this podcast is called rich on Tech, so you're gonna get rich on Tech now. I'm not gonna say rich on Tech and also weird voices and my thoughts on things and random diatribes and also conspiracy theories which I don't really.
Share, so I wouldn't really say that. Okay, where are we at? Kindle?
Oh my gosh, the Kindle has gotten the best feature in the world. The Kindle can now display book covers on the lock screen. I'm gonna give three dings for that, because this is quite possibly the feature that has been missing from the Kindle forever.
This comes from goodreader dot com.
I cannot take responsibility or credit for finding this feature, but here is the scenario with me. I am reading an amazing book on the Kindle and I can't tell you what the name is or who wrote it, or what the cover looks like because guess what, I forgot two minutes into the book, So people ask me, what are you reading?
I don't know.
It's really good and it takes me a while to figure out what the title is, who the author is. And it's because with a typical book you are looking at it all the time. It's staring you down the eat or down in the face, staring you in your face, saying rich, why aren't you reading me? Why are you still scrolling Instagram?
Oh?
I'm sorry, book, let me put my phone down, but I can't.
It's so tough. Why is it so tough to put my phone down? I don't know.
But now your Kindle can display the book you're currently reading. So this is in firmware five point five point thirteen point five. So check the firmware. I know you do that all the time on your Kindle. No, not really, These things just get random updates. But if you want this feature, go into your settings, check for an update
and see if it's five point thirteen point five. Then go into your let's see device options, Oh setting menus device options, and there's something new that says display cover. Make sure it's check marked, and boom, the cover of the book you are reading is now showing up on the book you are reading.
Should I say the ebook or the digital device?
I mean, wow, why did it take so long for this? Well, I know, because you know, Amazon sells ad space on the front of the kindles, so maybe they didn't want this now. The only thing that's unknown right now is if it works on the models that have the you know, the paid stuff, like if you didn't pay twenty bucks extra. So I have a Kindle. I haven't tested it yet. I'm going to see if I can get the lock screen to work. If it is, I will put a little video up on my Instagram at rich On Tech
or Facebook. You know what I've started to do Now, I'm just a martyr for work. So now I've started to make videos because it's okay. Here's what the typical scenario is. I make a video for you know in you know, horizontal, which is good for Facebook, but on Instagram they want things to be square or vertical, and so if it's square, it's got to be under sixty seconds.
But if it's vertical, it could be as long as I want, which makes my life a heck of a lot easier, right because I don't have to sit there and try to explain something in sixty seconds or less. So now I've gotten to the point where it used to take me so much extra energy to like read, you know, recut things to work for Facebook and Instagram. Then I just started recording everything under sixty seconds it's
Square'm putting them on both. But now I'm like, why am I penalizing folks that are watching on a particular platform by making, you know, a sixty second square video on Facebook when folks on Facebook are much more accustomed to watching longer videos, Or why am I not putting it full Instagram sixteen by nine vertical on Instagram when I can go longer and explain things better. I just have to frame it up better anyway, So my point
is I'm now making double the videos. So yesterday, for instance, I was at Lakhma and they have this giant rock that's just suspended over a kind of a walkway, and I did it you know this standard you know, horizontal way.
And then I'm like, ah, I want people to be able to.
See I hate posting horizontal videos in Instagram because they're too tiny and most you know, you're watching on a phone screen. You have to keep that in mind. I don't want you to have to watch a video that's horizontal. It takes up you know, a tiny portion, a quarter of the screen. And why when I've got this giant screen to work with, so you got to make it vertical? Did I just eat the word vertical? I said vertil vertical.
Uh.
We go through all this trouble of learning the English language and then we mumble our words, and I'm guilty of it. My kid is guilty of it. And I keep saying, let's not mumble. We have this beautiful language we use. Let's let's let's enunciate.
And when we talk, the faster we talk the faster. Wes to cut off all of these things.
And these people so understand us because we can talk so fast and people understand we're saying, but the reality is slow down a nunci eight. So there's this giant rock and I ended up recording it horizontal. Then I ended up recording it vertical, and guess what. The end result is beautiful because folks on Facebook get to watch it in this nice horizontal mode. Folks on Instagram can
see because it uses up the entire screen. Yes, it's vertical, so it's a little tougher to frame everything up, but you get you know, you get it, and it works. And so that's what I've been doing. So I don't know what my point was, but I guess I'm gonna have to do two videos on a Kindle setting because I want to make sure that people can see it in their native formats. All right, enough about me, All right, Tom says, Hey, Rich love KTLA. That's a theme going
on here. I followed you for several years and now listen to your podcast. Oh I better be on my best behavior with this answer, because.
Tom will be listening.
I accidentally deleted about nine thousand emails while using Outlook on my iPad.
Yes nine.
Wasn't paying attention to what I did. When I realized it, it was too late. Unfortunately, my Outlook settings were to mirror email on the server, so I lost everything.
I know.
iCloud offers backups on email, but I need to create an iCloud account I stopped, or an iCloud email. I stopped at this point because I did not want another email. My question is if I create this iCloud account with that store a backup of my Earthlink emails.
I'm open to your suggestions.
Thanks so much, Tom, Tom, here's the difference, or here's what you need to know. There are two types of email account settings. There is pop three and there is IMAP and ninety nine percent of the time it used to be every email when you would set it up on your phone or a device was pop three, and so all your emails would get downloaded to that device. Any changes you made would not be reflected on the server. Nowadays,
it's quite the opposite. I would say ninety nine percent of the time when you go through automatic setup with email, it's set up as an imap. An imap reflects the changes on the show that you make on your local device. So let me give you an example. Let's say I have an Earthlink account like you have. I just set it up on my iPhone and boom, I'm using my
email through the native app. I delete an email on my phone and I go to the webmail you know, webmail dot Earthlink dot net or whatever it is, and oh my gosh, that email's gone. It's in the trash. Well, it's because everything I'm doing on my phone is mirroring what I'm doing on the server.
And so it's a mirror image.
Now, if I were to change a setting on my Earthlink email and I did POP three, well, any changes I make on my phone will not be reflected on the server. So if I went to the webmail version, oh, all the emails I just took an hour to delete are still there?
Now? Why is that? Now?
For most people, that's kind of annoying because why do you want to do your emails twice? But for you, if you want to archive all your emails no matter what and not delete them accidentally, you would want to set this up as pop three. Now. Yeah. The other suggestion is to just keep it set up the way it is and just manage your emails and don't do select all and delete all because now that you know the difference, you know that whatever you do on your
iPad is going to be reflected on your server. So that's my advice is to just understand the difference between those and just you know, proceed how you want. If you want to set it up pop three. The problem with that is that you'll eventually run out of storage space on your webmail account. I don't know how much
Earthlink gives you. But if you're only deleting everything locally and organizing it locally, a if something were to ever change and you, you know, messed up your iPad and whatever, all of your work with your email over the years would be gone. So like all the emails you delete, you'd be like starting fresh. If you ever had to re download these things. So I personally just use some IMAP. I think it's very you know, it's the most efficient
way of managing my emails. And I just go through delete the trash every once in a while and just know that whatever you're doing on your local device is being reflected on the other side. And let's see we have uh, well, we have time for another question. Warren says, Hey, Rich, I really enjoy your podcast. You have any recommendations on a soundbar for at TCL thirty two S.
Three oh one TV.
It seems like the voices are drowned out by background music and the commercials are allowed. Hopefully there is one remote to control them all.
Thanks. Warren sent for my iPhone.
All right, so a TCL thirty two S three oh one, I'm guessing that that's a Roku TV. Let me look this up. Sure enough, Yes, it's a three series Roku Smart TV. So what I would recommend is what are called the Roku Wireless speakers. And this is fantastic because they work with Roku TVs. There are one hundred and fifty bucks and they are two speakers that are wireless and they're specifically made for Roku TVs. So these work with a roqu TV. If you have a Roku device,
doesn't work with them. I know it's complicated. If you have like a streaming dongle that you've you've put into your TV, that's a Roku not these speakers do not work with them. These work with Roku TVs from the factory. If you got a TCL TV it's got Roku built in, these speakers will work. I recommend them for everyone with Roku TV because they are simple, simple, simple, And what.
Does it say? Look at this?
Oh my gosh, this this matches up so perfectly, Warren. You said, it seems like voices are drowned out by background music and the commercials are loud.
What does it say on.
The Roku Wireless Speakers website, Immersive Sound for your Roku audio system, crisp clear dialogue and quiet's loud commercials. I think that sounds like it's a perfect solution. Now, did Roku make the dialogue muddy and the commercials loud on purpose?
You'd buy these speakers?
Oh?
I don't think so.
This is not a conspiracy theory podcast, but wow, these will solve your problems. The reason I like these is. They are simple. You plug them in behind your couch and boom, you've got two speakers on either side of you, and you've got speakers in the front from your TV, speakers on the side, or you can put them on the side of your TV, however you want to do it, but it will work. It's one hundred and fifty dollars. I would I wonder if these ever go on sale.
Let's see Amazon. Let's see if they sell them on Amazon. I'm not even sure they do. They may not, but I would do Yep, they do. Okay, so they're on Amazon for one fifty and I'm gonna pop them into a website called Camel Camel and see if the price ever goes down.
And sure enough, no, the price really.
Doesn't go down. So just buy them at one fifty. That's what I would do, and.
There you have it.
Roku wireless speakers is the way to go. That's what I would recommend and sticking to it all right.
One more question. Wow, we got a lot of bonus questions here. Jesse.
Hey, I follow you on Facebook. Is there a one site solution or discounts to subscriptions. I'd love to have a subscription to the La Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, and New Yorker. I'm not rich, so I don't what does that mean. I know I can read the New York Times through my local library. Thank you, Jesse.
Jesse.
I don't know of one site or solution for discounts, but I do know that you can get a majority of these through.
Okay, couple ways.
Number one, I believe the Apple what is it called Apple News Plus will get you. I don't know if Washington Post is part of it, but I know Wall Street Journal and La Times? Is Is Washington Post part of News Plus?
Apple? Let's see? Is it? Yes? It is?
Look at that so yeah, I would Okay, So I think Apple News Plus is your solution here, which is ten bucks a month, and I would use that. It'll give you Wall Street Journal, I think it gives you Washington Posts. I know it gives you La Times, New Yorker. I believe is in there as well. How do you tell if things are in Apple News Plus? Is there like a is there a way to like see all the publications Apple News Plus? It's probably like already on
my MacBook. But there should be like a list. Is there a list of Oh, there it is, see all publications. New Yorker's on there. Uh Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle. You didn't ask for that, uh Wall Street Journal. I think this is going to be the way to go. I mean, this is wow. This has a lot of stuff. I wish I should probably subscribe to this. The problem is, I'll tell you why I start subscribing to Apple.
But it used to be called oh my gosh, what was the name.
It was called Texture. That was the second name. But there's a name before that, and it was formerly called.
Oh my gosh.
I can't believe I can't remember this out. You'd think you're gonna remember things forever.
Oh.
It used to be called Next Issue. Then it was called Texture. Now it's Apple Newsplush. I'd love when I get a little history lesson into the podcast. But anyway, the reason why I stopped subscribing to Texture back in the day, and then of course I don't subscribe to Apple Plus News Plus is because if you were subscribing to three hundred magazines and newspapers, what do you think you're doing with every waking moment of your life. You are looking at all those magazines and newspapers. There's so
much good content. So if I was ever gonna read a book, I had to, you know, get rid of this subscription. Ah, this was a good show. I think it was a good show. That's gonna do it for this So to the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer. Two ways to do just that. Go to richon Tech dot tv slash podcast hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail we may use it on the show. Or go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech and
hit the big blue send email button. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. We got a new review just the other day, and I'm looking it up on my phone so I can read it to you. It was from Let's see right here Perky Bunch. Five stars. Perky Bunch says learning new Tech. I enjoy listening to Rich He has a good delivery. I learned something new from each podcast. Keep up the good work. Thank you,
Perky Bunch. I appreciate it. So if you want to rate my podcast and here you're rating spoken on the show. Go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. You can find me online everywhere at rich on Tech on social media no matter where you live in the US. You can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku, then scroll all the way down to the tech section and watch all of my segments my TV segments on demand. It is truly a special experience.
My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I will talk to you real soon.