iTunes, comes to Amazon's fire TV thoughts on the Pixel four After using it for a week, Verizon gives Disney Plus for free surveillance at Outback Steakhouse. Plus Your Tech questions Answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about this stuff I think you need to know about happening in the tech world. I'm the reporter at KTLA TV in Los Angeles, and joining me as always is producer Megan.
Hello, Howdy, my.
Trustee sidekick who has a new way of introing herself every day like this. I think every week you should just have a different Yeah, I like it. Howdy. She's got her cowboy hat on, hair, cowboy boots and it's kind of is it stage coach this weekend? Is that what's happening?
Nope?
No, just just like that.
Look sometimes it's just the vibe.
Okay, So you know that I have been struggling. We're talking about the Pixel. You know, I been struggling all week because I got the Pixel and I have the iPhone and I'm really struggling on which one to make my device the next year, I know, and I keep going back and forth every day. Like some days, I'm like, oh, the Pixel that it's so great. It's it's yeah, it's Google, it's so googly. It lets you choose your to fall apply. And then I go back to the iPhone. I'm like,
but everything works so nicely. And iPhone works with my watch, it works with my computer. So I don't know every I was literally driving to the Apple store yesterday to buy you know, so I get these review units from the companies that I can keep for a little bit of time. But if I really want, you know, the phone for me, I go out and buy it. And so I have the devices, but they're not mine, right,
And so this is where it comes in. Like every day I'm just like, oh, maybe I just buy the Pixel thousand bucks so much cheaper than the iPhone, you know, fifteen hundred.
So I don't know, I but you've bought every iPhone that it has ever been, Yeah, right, so it would be kind of crazy for you to not buy this iPhone, rightly.
Did I buy the se I don't think I did. The iPhone that was a little one that was like the little tiny one.
I think that doesn't really count.
But my old phone was kind of like that, like I remember it was. I think it was the iPhone five before what was the one? I don't know, they changed the design, but it was basically like the se was.
The Okay, well, I think you need to get the new iPhone.
That's my that's your I know, that's your vote, and.
Then one day you can put them all in like a special like museum in your house.
I know that would be cool. Room. Well, let's start today. I'll give you some more of my thoughts on the Pixel four and using it, but let's start today with something that I find fascinating and I love that this is happening. It's good for consumers. Apple TV Plus is or the I should say Apple TV app is coming,
or let me just start over. Apple TV app is now available on the fire TV stick and the Fire TV Stick four K, which is a huge deal because I mean, I guess it's not that big of a deal anymore, but it's still kind of nice to see that if you have and a fire stick, you can now get the best of Apple on that fire stick. And there's no other way to describe it except it's
really cool. So for the first time ever, you can directly access your iTunes, movies and TV shows and rented or purchased through this app, which is available on the fire TV stick and the Fire TV Stick four K. And the other side of this is that the fire sticks are really cheap, and so you're basically getting the beauty of an Apple TV in a firestick that's like
a quarter of the price. Now you're not getting all of the apps that Apple TV offers in the Polish I think Apple TV is probably the best streaming device out there. It's just the most expensive, so most people don't gravitate towards it unless you're a diehard Apple person.
How much is it?
It's about two hundred dollars, and the fire TV stick is closer to like forty, And then you have rokus that are closer to you know, good one forty to fifty. They're one tops out at ninety nine. So again, do I think this is cool? I think it's cool for two reasons. Number one, you can access all your old you know iTunes stuff. Now, the reason I say that's not that big of a deal is because if you
had movies anywhere, you could already do this. You can link up your movies every Anywhere account to your iTunes account and then access movies anywhere through your fire TV. But the real reason why Apple is doing this, it's not because of your iTunes stuff. It's because Apple TV Plus is launching on November first, and they want you to be able to watch their new shows. Yep, and that's why they're doing this. And are you looking forward to any show on Apple TV Plus because I am.
I know you are. I think I'm looking forward to the morning show.
Yeah, we gotta watch that. I mean we're in morning TV news everywhere. I mean, your grandfather worked in morning or he wasn't morning show?
Was he was?
It was like the evening.
News, right yeah?
Side Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a that's an inside baseball term, right right, you've got the morning shift, you've got night side. Night side probably works with any job. Overnight is pretty standard, right yeah, totally. Anyway, So if you have a fire TV, you can go ahead and
search for Apple TV. Ironically, who would have thought that would have ever happened, Or you can just ask Alexa find the Apple TV app and there you go, sign in with your iTunes, Apple iCloud account, whatever you call it, and there you go. It is The app is available right now, fire TV stick second generation and fire TV Stick four K, so recent fire TV sticks. It's coming soon to the fire TV Cube, the fire TV third generation pendant design, and then Toshiba and Insignia Fire TV
Edition smart TVs. It is not compatible with the first and second generation of the Fire TV or the first generation fire TV stick. So basically, just search, just search your thing and see if it comes up. If it doesn't, your thing is not competing.
I think next.
I you know, it's funny because I was wondering about that. Did they did announce Roku at their event, and so they're probably, oh, hold on, it looks like it's already available there. Oh cool, cool, Yep, it's already already. Apple TV has landed on Roku.
So that was that today too.
That was October fifteenth, so a couple days ago. Okay, So here's the beauty of Apple. They are pulling out all the big guns for this. They're like, look, we're gonna be everywhere. We don't care, We're just.
Gonna be he I mean, they got Jennifer Aniston to join Instagram, and she was notorious for not being on social media, so they're pushing it.
They were all right.
So this next question comes.
From next question? Do we do a first question?
Sorry, this first question comes from Jennifer. She writes, Hello, Rich, I'm planning on I'm planning to purchase your latest Tips for iPhone book for my mom and boyfriend for Christmas, as I am not a tech savvy individual. Will there be a new update for the book before Christmas? I love listening to you on Handle.
Oh, Bill Handle in the morning. I do KFI on Tuesday mornings at eight am with Bill Handle on Wednesday mornings at five am with Jennifer Jones Lee, and it's always fun. You never know what they're going to say. Well, I never know what Handle's going to say. I know what Jennifer. Jennifer's you know, she's kind of by the book, you know, but Handle, you never know. Yeah, So thanks for listening there, but no. The book is called one hundred and one iPhone Tips and Tricks Unlocked, the useful,
time saving and fun features in iOS thirteen. It is available right now on Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle and also Kindle Unlimited if you have a subscription of that it's free to read. And will there be an update. No, it's ready to go. It's iOS thirteen. I updated it over the summer and it is all ready to go. So thank you Jennifer for purchasing this for your family. I expect a lot of people will do that because it's such an easy gift for the holidays.
It's like you got an iPhone, you want to know more about it, boom by the book. So I do appreciate that, and yeah, the updates are there, so I think I think you'll find that it's even better than the book that I wrote last year, which was pretty good. It was tough to top that, yeah, but I think I think I did a pretty good job. Let me talk about the Pixel four, segueing from Apple back to Google. So I've been using the Pixel four for the past week, and I have the Pixel four XL and I will
say it's an amazing phone. It is. I put this in my in last week's show the title was Google or pixel puts the Smarts in smartphone? And after using it for a week, one hundred percent. I mean, I was telling Megan this morning, how just simple things like this where you know, when I wake up, my alarm goes off at an ungodly hour, and you reach over to turn off your alarm well with the Pixel because it has that motion sense technology where it senses if
you're nearby it. Actually I keep saying dim, but it is. It lowers the volume of the alarm as you put your hand over it. It's just such a nice little touch.
Yeah right, yeah, I know that's because it's it's not as a is like hearing it. You can like slowly love with volume right now.
I did worry that I would do that and then fall back asleep because it right, don't actually turn it off. But it's just little things like that, and there's a million little things like that on the Pixel Now. I watched all the Pixel reviews on YouTube and they all came down to the same thing. All the iPhone loving YouTubers basically said that this sucks because there's no wide
angle ultra wide angle lens, which I agree with. I think that was a major miss on Google's part and it really annoys me that there's no ultra wide angle lens and it might be the reason why I don't use this phone. The other thing that they got on is the battery life, which on the Pixel four is apparently terrible on mine, the pixel for Xcel, it's not horrible, it's not amazing, it's just fine.
Okay.
In fact, if you're in your car for a little bit each day, you know, like for me, it's like between things, I'm kind of like, when I drive to my shoot, I'm in my car for like half an hour. Yeah, that's enough for me to top off my battery. When I drive home a little bit, you know, twenty thirty minutes, w whatever, that tops off my battery, depending on how far I'm going. So to me, it's not that big of a deal.
Trickle charging, is that what it's called. Yeah, but that's meant for like electric cars, Yes, but.
It works with phones as well. The other thing that everyone's saying is that the face unlock is too fast, which I would agree with, and it's also too good, and it unlocks the phone when your eyes are closed, which is very insecure. So on iPhone, the face unlock will only unlock if you are looking at your phone. Well, there's two ways. Your eyes have to be open, and you can also have an option for attention, which means if you're not clearly giving your phone your attention, then
it won't unlock, which is smart for security. This phone just doesn't do it. Now. I will say, when I had my Halloween little shin dig and I had makeup on, I was a Dracula, it did not recognize my face and I was like, all of a sudden, I was like, my phone just stopped unlocking, and so I thought that was really funny. And so again it's weird because it unlocks when your eyes are closed. But if you your face looks a little different like a dracu.
If you look like Dracula, right, it's not gonna should have shot a video of you trying to unlock your phone.
Oh, I should have missed opportunities in my.
Life when I'm at your Halloween shindy, that.
Would have been good. So bottom line with the Pixel four is that it is the best Android phone you can get today. There is no doubt about that. I have no qualms recommending this phone to anyone who wants an Android. Is it better than the iPhone eleven? Pro? It is not. And the reason it's not is because the as much as I love the Google Smarts, as much as I love how great the camera is, the iPhone camera at this point has gotten really really good,
and the Pixel camera is not. I don't it's it's above it in certain ways, but not overall, you know what I mean. Like the iPhone camera just gives you more flexibility, the apps are better on iPhone, and the Pixel has a million little tricks that are really cool. But I think one comes down to if you're an Android person and you like what Android has to offer, which is doesn't give you all Apple stuff shove down your throat, then this is a perfect phone for you.
And that's the bottom line. There's nothing wrong with the device.
You think it's better than like a Samsung phone.
I think that these again, the Samsung is closer to Apple in the fact that it has more features available, like it's kind of like everything is thrown, you know.
But I think the what I love about the Pixel is it's just simple, and it's just there's a there's a there's a stillness in the simplicity, right, There's a and there's a it just feels like it is doing what it needs to do without doing a whole bunch of extra stuff, And the Samsung sometimes feel like they're doing a whole bunch of extra stuff just to give you what you want. Right, and that's kind of like the way I feel. So there you have it.
Interesting.
All right, let's get another question. All right?
So this next question comes from Lauren. She wrote into you on your website, which is Rich on tech dot TV. All you have to do is click the contact link and you can send Rich your question. So Lauren asks, what's your take on using credit dot com to check on your credit score for free? Is it that good of a website or do you know of a better one for free?
Ooh okay, So I like this question. It's a good one, very unique question, Megan good good find. So she asks about credit dot com, which I've never heard of. Oh okay, so let's see. Credit dot com is get your experience credit score for free, and it says no credit card required ever, and checking your score won't hurt. So you know, I don't I don't have a problem with this credit dot com, but I don't know anything about it. I don't know who they are, I don't know what their
deal is, who they're owned by. But I imagine that they're trying to eventually sell you something, which is we're more than just a free credit score. We can give you credit cards, credit reports, credit repair, credit scores, and loans. So again, nothing is free, and by putting your information in here, you'll get your credit, but it's oh, it's experienced credit score by the way, So it's just one
of the three. So you know, I don't know much about them, but I don't I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I will tell you I have tested other services, and the one I do like the best is called wallet Hub. Wallet Hub, and the reason I like this is because they are totally free. It's a great app. And what I like about them is
they do offer some level of monitoring. And I remember that I was getting a new loan or a new credit card or something whatever I did, I open up a new account and they were like the first to text me and said like, hey, this account was just opened or whatever. Someone checked your credit and so I thought that was pretty good. Credit karma is also big, and let's see what's the other one, credit sesame. So again,
there's a lot of these things out there. I think that the main thing is that you want something that does not require a credit card and something that's not going to oversell you. But check out wallet Hub. I really like that one. You see it advertised on TV a lot. Maybe you don't want that one because that means if they're advertising on TV, they're spending big dollars, which means they want to make big dollars in return. Right, you got to be careful.
Now, you got to be aware.
And I have one of those in mind, because there's a one that's on TV all the time you see at the gym. The other place to go is Annual Credit Report dot com. And that is the one that is officially licensed by the government or whatever you call it to give you your free credit report once a year from all of the major carriers. So I would recommend that you do that once a year. Just download your report and just that's it. It's only Annual Credit Report dot com.
When do you check.
I haven't done that in a long time. To be honest, I don't use credit very much, so I don't really have a re so you know me. Yeah, So anyway, that's uh, that's it. I'm a I'm a cash guy. I'm a Dave Ramsey fan, so cash is king to me as much as I can do that as much to my wife's chagrin. Actually, I just not well be careful. I don't hear. Here's my rule thumb. And I've mentioned this before. If my card is leaving my hand, generally, I'm giving a credit card. If it's not leaving my hand,
self service, whatever, swipe, it's my debit card. And I just met one of the dads, one of the dads that Lindsay was out to dinner with a couple of our girlfriends and she's like, oh, Dave Ramsey came up. And one of the dads is a huge Dave Ramsey fan, one of the husbands, you know, and she's friends with the wife. And I was like, Oh, we're gonna have so much to talk about. So I saw him out on like a weekend, and I was like, we got
so much to talk about. I'm like beans and rice, rice and beans like we were talking about were And he's even more hardcore than I am about it, because I'm kind of like Dave Ramsey light okay, because if you're a true Dave Ramsey fan, you would not have a credit card at all.
I've never heard of Dave Ramsey, so.
I he was more like in big cities, you don't hear about him as much. But when I lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, kind of like you know, more middle of the country. He's much bigger there. Very it's kind of Christian based as well, so there's a little bit of that element going on. But I will say he changed my life, oh following what he lives by, so good to know. And sadly I did not get to meet him when
I was at the radio hall whatever. Anyway, there's a time when I was standing right near him, I didn't get to meet him. Oh was that an event? But anyway, all right, let's move on to Disney and Verizon. So if you are a Verizon customer, you just hit the jackpot. You just got twelve months of Disney Plus for free. And in case you haven't heard about Disney Plus, it
is set to launch on November twelfth. It's gonna be the new home for all things Disney movies and TV shows that includes Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and more. Apparently, Verizon Wireless is kind of like the you know partner, the wireless partner on this thing, and so you now have access. Here's the catch. You have
to be on a Verizon unlimited plan. Now I am so now I will get Verizon, or I will get Apple Music for free from Verizon, which is ten dollars a month, and Disney Plus which is six ninety nine a month. So I'm getting seventeen dollars a month out of my two hundred dollars month a bill that I pay. That's amazing getting a seventeen dollars return. So anyway, and here's the thing, a lot of people are wondering because they signed up for three years of Disney Plus. They prepaid.
It was one hundred and sixty nine dollars as I kind of an early adopter thing, So what's one sixty nine divided by thirty six? So that brings it down to four to sixty nine a month. So a lot of people jumped on that instead of the six ninety nine. So they're wondering, Well, wait a second, you told I did that before I heard about this Verizon deal. And so the good news is my pal over at CNBC, Todd Hazelton robotod on Twitter, he tweeted that he did talk to Verizon and Disney, and you will be able
to stack those deals. So if you did buy the three years, you can still get the twelve months free of Verizon and then your three years will start after that.
Oh well, there you go.
Great deal. And I think just to sign up, you'll get an email from Verizon, but basically starting November twelve, so there's nothing really to worry about right now. But in a couple of weeks, google that or go log into your Verizon account and kind of sign up.
Okay, This next question comes from John. He asks is there a way to project Netflix or whatnot to a TV? I have a Samsung S nine plus and I have an older flat screen TV with no Wi Fi.
It's so funny questions like this. They seem so complicated. But then I'm like wait. So immediately what came to mind was chrome cast. I was like, okay, Crome cast is like, how much does a chrome cast these days? It was like twenty five dollars back in the day. Let's see thirty five dollars. So I immediately thought thirty five. I was like, Chrome casts. Why would you not? Because he says that he's saying that he his TV is not a smart TV. There's no Wi Fi. Basically he
means there's no smart TV. So I was like, well, what I mean? Chrome cast, Right, you plug it into the back of your TV. Yeah, a Roku. But Roku you can't necessarily mirror your TV. He's your phone. He's saying he wants to do it from his phone.
But if he right, which he can, But why doesn't he just get a fire TV or a Roku.
Well he could and comes up Netflix.
Yeah, it's just like another way.
But I'm answering his question, which was he basically wants to mirror or kind of use his phone to drive the experience on the TV. The best way to do that is chrome cast. You plug it into the back of your TV. It's thirty five dollars, and you connect that to your Wi Fi and you'll get everything. I mean. Chrome cast has pretty much all the major services supported, and again, your phone becomes the remote control for that device.
Love it or hate it personally, I think it's great for certain uses, like if you have a picture on your phone you just want to fling it to your TV. I call it flinging it, you know, just showing it on your TV. That's great. And I do have chrome casts in all my TVs in my house, but I don't use them for streaming. Ninety nine percent of the time.
To be honest, the only time I use them for streaming is when Google sends me a coupon for a ninety nine sent rental and then I'll just rent the movie through Google play Store and sling it or Chrome cast it to my TV.
Got it.
So that's I think the simplest way. Thirty five bucks. There you go, easy question, good, good one. So let's see speaking of smart TVs, and I'm sure once the news gets a wind of this, you'll hear this everywhere like the mainstream media kind of thing. But on December first, some old models of rokus are losing their ability to access Netflix. And before you get all scared, all I'm telling you is that it probably does not affect your Roku. And these are old school Roku players, Like I'm talking
the ones that first came out. They could be as long as ten years old. Oh wow, So if you have a ten year old player, it's probably time to upgrade. Anyway. The place I think I would see this coming into play is like if you have an airbnb or like a basement or a playroom where you kind of grandfathered
an old player there. That is when you might run into a problem because it's not your main TV, but it's like your beach house and you have this old Roku there that you just brought there, and now it's like, oh, this doesn't work, and you're wondering why will you heard Rich say that some of these are not supported. It's no, you know, they're not trying to get you to buy a new one. Roku's are so cheap they don't care if you buy one. You know, they'd rather give it away.
They're making money on the ads so and the services that you buy through them. So anyway, I'm not going to go through all the player names, but it's like the Roku twenty fifty X, the twenty one hundred, the two thousand C, the Roku HD, Roku SD, Roku x R, and Roku x D. I did just go through.
All the names, cover all your bases. This next question comes from Tina. She asks Rich, I really need help with making a video with music for my best friend's memorial as you passed away last month. I have an iPhone ten R. Please give me any tips you can. Love Katie lay watch it every day.
Well, thank you. Sorry to hear about your friends, and if you are going to embark on making a video. It sort of depends. I mean, this is my life, this is what I do. I love editing videos on my phone, on my computer. My phone is my favorite way of doing it if I can. And I'm guessing since it's for a memorial, you're going to have a combination of primarily pictures and maybe a little maybe a couple of video clips set to music. That's what I'm
guessing that she's looking for. And so I think, look, if you are a full time editor or someone with a lot of skills when it came to editing, then I would say to use Adobe Premiere Rush, and that's what I use, and that's going to give you or I mean final cut obviously. But she wants it on a phone.
She said, yeah, she's an iPhone ten R.
So there's a couple of ways. Okay, So if you're looking at a phone, I would say, look, if you want to have the most control over everything, you probably want to use something like Adobe Premier Rush, or you can use something like iMovie on the iPhone, which is gonna be fine. In both case you're going to get a great, polished production.
And iMovie is free on an iPhone.
Right, I believe so. I think it used to be like five bucks, but I think it's I think it's free. Now. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's free. So you can do that, but again that's gonna take a lot of kind of effort and a lot of figuring out. I think the easiest solution for you is a program called Magisto m agi Sto, And what they do is that they kind of make the video for you. And what they do
is you kind of give it a whole bunch. You've feeded a whole bunch of stuff, You pick what theme you want, you pick some music, and it will use AI to kind of pick out the best parts of those clips and to put them all together. Now, on the flip side, if you have Google Photos, you can do the same thing. And Google Photos allows you to just select a whole bunch of photos and videos and or and then just say make a movie. And if you want to try doing that, you just literally go
into Google Photos. So if all your stuff is in Google Photos, I would try that first and just go into Google Photos, select a whole bunch of photos and and then from there, let me just do this on my phone, select plus sign and then it says movie, and you hit movie and it will create a movie, and then you can go through and change the theme and all that stuff. But I think between those two apps you're gonna find that you'll be able to make
a little memorial. Sorry for you're lost there. All right, let's move on here to Outback. I thought this was interesting. Outback Steakhouse in Portland, Oregon is serving up a side of surveillance with their bloomin onions. And this is a Wired story on this new service called Prestovision. This is a artificial intelligence and machine learning program that is leveraging the security systems that are already in a lot of restaurants, security camera systems. It sits on top of those systems
and it analyzes stuff. So the idea here is that restaurants already have these surveillance cameras included in the restaurant installed. Yeah, so we just intercept that footage with our software and we analyze what's happening in that footage and okay, so what can they do for the first at this restaurant they're analyzing when they're analyzing the lobby And if you have you ever been to an outback no, I haven't. No,
I love Outback. So at Outback, the main thing that happens is it is empty for the entire day until rush hour for dinner, and at dinner at five to seven pm, boom. You can't get in there every single day. That's just the way it works at out Back Steakhouse, okay. And so a bunch of people are sitting there waiting for tables. And what happens when you go into a restaurant and they say, oh, it's going to be an hour and a half. Wait, what do you do? You wait? No, you walk out the door.
Now you leave, you leave.
And so that's what they're going to start doing. They're going to monitor how many customers decide to leave rather than wait for a table, and this will help them, I don't know, figure out some analytics about that, how they can make that system better. Prestovision says it can also be used for a lot of other stuff, but that they're not doing with this restaurant. But it can be used to see if a customer's drink is almost empty and needs to be refilled. It can see how
often servers check on a table. It can be used to see all kinds of stuff. I mean, imagine all the things you can interpret from seeing what's happening inside a restaurant. Yea, it can see how long it takes for a server to clear plates off a table after a diner has stopped eating. All these things, and so imagine you're the manager of this restaurant and you get a little report at the end of the day, says Megan took seven minutes to clear plates from tables after
diner's finished, whereas Rich took less than a minute. Who do you think's going to get more shifts and more tables and a pat on the back?
Definitely Rich.
So you can see why not everyone likes this kind of big brother intelligence, right right.
You can also see when people dine in dash.
Yeah, well that's I think for the surveillance cameras. I think that's why they're there for stuff like that. Yeah. Whatever, But this is just adding an extra layer on top. And we did a story. I don't think you were
producer yet, but we did a story. And I think the trend that we're seeing is that all these software companies that are using AI and artificial intelligence and machine learning are saying, huh, there are a lot of security cameras already installed all over the place, fast food restaurants, banks, workplaces. How can we use that footage, which is normally just looked at when something bad happens, like a robbery or
someone slips and falls and sues. How can we use that footage to analyze what's going on at that place of business and somehow use it to make more money to evaluate the employees. I mean, it's it's getting crazy, yea. The cameras are already there. So we did one long story short with a it as a security company that was using AI to figure out if people like pulled a gun out, so their security footage or you know,
software could immediately were you here at the time? Okay, so the mall would be like it would like literally text the mall people because now there's people watching all the cameras but they can't see everything. But maybe it identifies something suspicious. Someone puts something weird in a trash can. Boom, it sends an alert to the mall security saying, hey, you might want to go check that out right now, even before human can notice that. Yeah. So it's fascinating
and also kind of scary. Surveillance society. It's happening, folks.
That's frue crazy that we can do this now.
When there's money and or lives at stake and or efficiencies, it will happen, all right.
This next question comes from Gauge. It's a very simple question. He just asks, should I set my Mac to update automatically?
Very simple question, very simple answer. What do you think? My answer is Megan knowing me as.
Well, Ah, I feel like yes, nope and no? Oh classic?
How you know I'm a control freak?
Yes I do?
Am I not?
Yes?
Okay, No, I am not letting anyone update any of my software without me knowing. Don't ever let anyone update your software automatically, and I'll tell you why. A. There could be issues. B you're giving up control of your device. Let's say a software update comes out and it's horrible. Everyone's saying how bad it is. Don't you want to waste a month? Two months? Oh? Yeah, my computer is sitting here. The Catalina came out two weeks ago for Mac os and I'm still not updated because I'm not
letting it update automatically. Yeah. Maybe Catalina doesn't even do that because you know it's such a big update. But I have my computer all the time, is bugging me to do these updates. Now, I will say, for security reasons, always do updates. Don't be one of those people that is against updates because I don't want I don't like how things change. Everything changes when they do updates. I'm getting all these emails about iOS thirteen, how people hate
this and they hate that. Well, guess what you got to move forward with the times right right?
Isn't that contradictory.
No, what I'm saying is I want control over when I choose to do the update in a timely manner. Got it. There are some people that will sit on iOS eleven for a year because I don't want I was twelve. I've just heard them. It doesn't make their phone as good. Yeah, don't do that. Don't be that person.
Yeah, don't be that guy.
But at the same time, you are in control. You should be in control of your software updates. So very simple question, very simple answer. But again that's what you want to do. Do the updates on your time when you can sit down and nah, you know, and you can sit down and update your computer and not just wake up and all of a sudden get that message that said room your computer was updated overnight. Who wants to wake up to that and all of a sudden, now you're at work and you got to figure out
all these changes to your computer. Yeah, no, you do it at a time when it's good for you. Have I ranted enough?
Yeah? I think you're good.
I like how you got that answer wrong. But if you would have thought for like one more second, now you went too quick.
I'm all attired today.
If you would have thought for one more second, you would have gotten the right answer for me, because you know me very well. Okay, what should we move on to.
I'm out of questions, by the way, you're on Well, okay.
Well there's more. Let's see Ring. Okay, this is kind of fun since Halloween's coming up. Ring and Nest are doing fun stuff for Halloween. And we knew this was coming. And I'll tell you that what they're doing, and I'll explain why I like one and not the other. But Nest is sort of Google's version of the Ring video door bell. It's not as popular, but they have it, and you know, people that are in the Google ecosystem
kind of like it. I do not have one personally, but they are doing special chimes and ring tones for Halloween, and so you when someone rings the bell, they hear a vampire, a monster, haunted house, cackling whatever, or if you have a Google Nest speaker or a display like one of their Google Nest Max or whatever hub whatever they call them, it will also make the sound on that, which is really cool. Great love that and this is not apparently this is the first time they're doing this,
but not the last. So it sounds like for the holidays, they're also going to do fun stuff like little jingle bells or whatever when you ring. So that's it's a great use of this technology. Why does your doorbell have to sound like a doorbell? Now? Ring who? They have obviously the most popular video doorbells out there. They're doing
something similar. You can change the ring tones on your phone and also the chime, and so if you're not familiar with ring, or maybe you are, they have this thing called the ring chime which plugs into your house. When I first got my ring, it was amazing, and you know, I got it of course like the first out of anyone. So I'm like using this thing and the first time we realize is like hold on, if a babysitter is in our house and someone rings the doorbell,
how do they hear it? Because at the beginning, it will only rang your phone. Yeah right, and unless you were super close to your front door and you could hear it outside, you don't hear it. You wouldn't hear it. And so this vexed me. I was like, wait, what how is this a They It just was a big oversight. And so then they came out with the ring chime
and I was like, ah, that makes sense. You plug it in anywhere in your house and when your doorbell rings, now the chime makes a sound, yeah, just like a classic doorbell now to rings defense. If you had a wired doorbell and you wired it that way, it would still ring your old chime, right it had in your house, but in my house we had a wireless one anyway before.
So anyway, so the way Ring is doing it is you can have Adam's Family or some other funky you know, Halloween sounds, but they only ring the chime or your phone. Guess who's had a look the person?
Yeah outside, Yeah, they don't hear it.
They don't hear it.
There's like no you know there's no fun, there's.
No payoff for them. So I think hopefully Ring will realize this and get it right for maybe like future. But I think the problem is the way the Ring doorbell is programmed. They physically can't change the actual you know, what you hear outside. But anyway, so there you have that. Let's see what else do I want to talk about. We can talk about this because we went here together. This school that we visited that makes you lock up your cell phone at the beginning of the day, and
it's called Yonder. And maybe you've been to a concert that uses these cases. Maybe you've been to a movie screening if you're in the Hollywood area. That's the first time I encountered it, but I think most people encounter it at a concert or some sort of comedy show and there it's a case that locks up you put
your phone in there. So the way it happened to me, I went to a Disney screening of I think it was Cars three, and immediately I get there and you're like walking in, They're like, all, I put your phone in this case. I put my phone in the case, like they lock it. I'm like, well, what was that? Like? Oh, you got to keep you can keep this, but your phone is locked up for the whole screening.
I'm like, what, So did they like grab your phone?
They didn't grab it, just put the case out and they said you got to put your phone in here, and I slipped it in. All of a sudden, they closed it. I was like, and it happened so fast. And this was a couple of years ago. Yeah, never heard of this, And I was like, wait, what just happened. I thought it was a Faraday cage case which locks all signal in and out. So immediately I was freaked out. I was like, oh my god, a my phone is
gonna die. Yeah, because all the signals cut off, so it's gonna be searching for a signal this whole movie. B Did I turn off the ringer? So if someone does call me, is it gonna ring? So? Is this I was basically nervous the whole movie. Yeah, And now that I know more about yonder, it doesn't do anything weird with your signal, So if you do use it, you probably want to turn your ringer offs your phone because if if your phone rang during that movie, you
wouldn't be able to turn it off. So We went to this school, Riise Koyang High School in the Westlake district of Los Angeles, and all the kids there in the morning have to lock up their phones.
I think that that's amazing.
You like it?
Yeah, I do.
So I'm gonna do that to you here when you get to KTLA in the mornings.
So then when you text me, I'll just.
You can find ever you can find it on your computer.
Well, then can we lock up your phone too?
Nope, I need it for my job.
Okay.
So they gave us. Yonder gave us two cases, two pouches, and the little unlocked mechanism, which if you remember, back in the day, they used to have these security tags on clothes. Are you too young to remember that? You ever remember you would buy a piece of clothing, they would put it down like there would be like a plastic tag on there that they would put on this metal thing and it would detach.
Yeah, they still have that.
They still have that.
Yeah, okay, you don't shop a lot.
Well no, nowadays A lot of the a lot of them are the tags RFID in they build them into the price tag or into some sort of even at gap, it's just in a in a label sewn into the shirt.
No, I like have a sweater from I don't know, like ten years ago that like I can't open because if I try to open it up, it would like splatter.
Oh you stole it.
No, they'd forgot to take it off. Yeah, I stole it.
Yeah, it has the ink inside. Ye. Yeah, if you break it open, like it splatters all over. And so the idea is that you would be marked as a criminal.
Yeah, exactly exactly.
But the funny thing is Yonder gave us this just as a as a loaner unit. So clearly we have to give it back. But I don't think I'm gonna give it back. I think I'm gonna keep it. I'm just gonna keep this like unlocker mechanism in my backpack at all times.
Yeah you should. So.
Can you imagine if I ever encounter one of these like concerts, I can be the only person with my phone unlocked.
And I asked the CEO this question because I got to interview him and he and I said, so, like, what if you do break it and you're at a
concert and you're on your phone? And he was like, well, yeah, that happens, and people just look at you, and they're kind of like, dude, you're totally missing the point, you know, And I just what I respect, Like, I think that that that's the cool part is we are so obsessed with our phones that if let's say an artist wants you to use the Yonder pouch like to break it just because you want to like take a picture, it's kind of pretty lame, you know.
I agree, as a great point is that the whole, the whole point of this is to detach for a little bit. And I went, you know, we talked about this to Maren Moore Morris concert I went to a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't have any cell phone coverage there, so I basically only took one picture the whole night. And I will say it felt kind of good. Yeah. Now, when you're the only person not taking something, you feel left out. But if everyone is in that same boat and it's it's better.
Yeah, totally.
I'm still torn because if I go to an event that I'm paying for that I want to have a memory from and I want to take a picture, I mean, come on, yeah, you're taking that away from me. Yeah, And I get it. You can take pictures when you get outside of it whatever. And I do think that the amount of people I call it living through their cell phone screen at a concert has gotten out of control. Oh yeah, I mean literally everyone around you is watching
the concert through their screen. Yeah, especially on the best song.
It just looks so like when you if you're at a concert and you see everyone doing that and you just look around, you're kind of like, what what do you do? Like you know what I mean, They're not paying attention to the performance at all.
Have you seen the person doing like the Instagram story seventy five times to get it right? Or the selfie?
That's why I can't. I hate watching people take selfies because like when they when they take too many, it's like, oh, it's so sad, cringe cringey.
Cringe worthy. My Lindsay who told me. Lindsay I think was somewhere and she was at a pool and she was like, I'm watching this lady take no less than a thousand selfies every position of her face to get it just perfect. I forget where she was, but it was just.
No shame in the game.
Stop. I mean, it's crazy, you know me, I take no I take no more. Than a hund you'll take.
Like, yeah, like a five hundred, five hundred, look, I mean, and then we go through that, We.
Print out the contact she this is who he is. We go through with the monocle thing, yeah, look through, and then we post it to Instagram.
Photoshop, yeah, any face tune, any wrinkles.
But I'm not going to sit there and just take a thousand. I mean, that would be crazy.
It's yeah, it's weird, it's strange.
All right, that's going to do it for the show. We got some housekeeping. I am going to be filling in for Leo Laporte over the next two weekends, So November ninth and November. Sorry, why am I not going in order? November second and November ninth, so Leo is on vacation and I will be covering his show. So
November second and third, November ninth and tenth. You can listen on KFI AM six forty in Los Angeles from eleven am to two pm on Saturday and Sunday during those weekends, or if you live in a different city, you can check out tech guy Labs dot com and find a station near you. It's syndicated across the country. On pretty much every station or somewhere in America, no matter where you are. And let's see what else. It's always fun to do that. Yeah, it's like this podcast.
This podcast is like training for that show. Except the difference is it's live callers. So if you want to call me eighty A eighty A ask Leo during eleven to two cific on Saturday and Sunday, November second, third, ninth, and ten.
It's four hours straight.
Three hours. Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, three hours straight. But here's this little, dirty little secret of radio. And I'm only letting you in on this because you know you're my friends. But it's only nine minutes at a time. Even though it sounds like a long time, it's nine minutes. Okay, if you can't talk for nine minutes, yeah, get out of the business.
It's nine minutes. And then it's like you can definitely talk for.
Nine minutes, and then it's like eight minutes of commercial. So it's believe me, it's it's not easy, but it's definitely not as intimidating as it sounds. Yeah. And when they first went John up there, the engineer, when he first told me that, I was like, oh my God, that's so much easier than thinking about it as three hours on the radio, right exactly? All right, Megan, where can folks find your lovely little Instagram account and your Twitter?
Okay? Well my Twitter is at producer Megan. I mean, my Instagram's not really connected to work, but Megan mcmonagle is.
Oh, it's connected to work, all right, Okay, because you work here and you've got it.
Okay.
You can find me at Richontech dot tv and on Instagram at richon Tech, Facebook dot com, slash rich on tech again. My book is one hundred and one iPhone Tips and Tricks, available on Amazon right now. Thanks so much for listening. You can watch me on KTLA in the mornings if you happen to be in Los Angeles at five am, seven am, and nine am every day of the week. People always ask, do you do a tech story every day? Oh? Yeah, we do. Thanks so much for listening to you.