Pixel 6 and new MacBook Pro models unveiled

it happens. So a couple things this week, Big big tech week. Oh my gosh, so many events. We had an event on Monday for Apple Virtual of course, and we had an event on Tuesday for what was the second one? Then it was Google, and then the third one was Samsung.

all stay at the Marriott. It was fantastic. If you've listened to me on the show, I don't know I've ever talked about this, but I've always been a Hilton person and I've always pooh pooed Marriotts. I don't know why the Marriotte was so nice and it was like just a basic hotel, and so now I think I got to switch my allegiances to the Marriott. But I

try not to play the points game too much. I really don't because I don't want to get like suckered into like all these different little schemes that these marketers do with the points. So I do try to like stay I got. I did get suckered in with Hilton. But anyway, long story short, Marriott was nice, Irvine was nice.

testing them out. I've got some thoughts. I'll put them in a future TV segment, But the bottom line is these sunglasses have gotten so close to actual just regular sunglasses that you can put on and kind of forget that there's a camera in there except for battery life and transferring all the pictures. That it is a very

compelling new way to capture video and pictures. And I don't know if it's there just yet, but I will say it's pretty phenomenal what they were able to do in a form factor that is pretty much typical sunglasses.

it could be the MacBooks. But because the pixel, well I don't know. I'm gonna start with with Google because I've been talking about this on the podcast for so long. How I can't wait to switch to this pixel? And I got to say number one, I'm just gonna get this out there. Google really just kind of like threw me under the bus with this. I don't know why.

I don't know what I did to Google. I don't know what I said, maybe my last review of the I need to look at my review of the Pixel five and see what I said, because they just exed me. They did not communicate with me about this press conference. They did not send me anything. They did not send me the phones to review. And when I say they didn't send me the phones to review, I'm not kidding. They sent a pair of Pixels to every single person

that has a YouTube account. It seems so every single person that I see on my Twitter timeline has a gift from Google. Thank you Pixel, Thank you Pixel, Thank you Google. I mean, people that don't even review review phones, people that have never even used a Pixel are getting these. They're given them out like candy. And here me, someone who runs a national tech segment, did not get one

to review for it. Now I had to ask them and they are like, well, well, we'll look at your request and see what we think and get back to you.

most people at five hundred bucks. So I don't know anyway, So that's besides the point. Let's talk about what the Pixel is all about. You know, the Pixel is all about a great camera, great software. But now Google is adding their own profit cesser into the mix. They call it Tensor, and they're saying it's going to be much more powerful this time around. And that was really what was lacking in the Pixels of years past, is that it never felt like a very powerful phone. In fact,

they admitted it in their keynote. They said, we always built the software around basically not very good hardware, like low powered hardware, and now, for the first time, we get to build software around high powered hardware, and it just opens up a whole bunch of stuff. So Number one, the prices on these phones are pretty amazing. Six hundred bucks for the standard one and then nine hundred for the Pro, which has a bigger screen, faster refresh rate.

But the camera set up is pretty identical, except the Pro has a zoom camera whereas the standard one does not, and it's got this weird design They call it a camera bar, but it's just as weird, like shelf on the back of the phone for the camera.

jewelry and watches. They do kind of a fun thing with some of the colors, you know, it's got Android twelve on it, and this big thing about material you where it kind of like matches the whole theme of the phone to your wallpaper. That is not a selling point to me, but it's cool. They've also extended the security support update to five years now. That's a pretty big win in my book, because that means if you purchase this phone, you can pretty much use this thing

for five years. If you're a casual, average user that just wants a nice phone that takes great pictures. Five years, that's do the math. That's a great investment. It says they capture one hundred and fifty percent more light compared to the Pixel five, four times optical zoom up to twenty times zoom with their super res The front camera records four K video. It's got this magic eraser feature

that automatically deletes things from your pictures. It's got various modes to like help you take pictures of your kids without them, you know, having blurry faces or whatever. They also tweak the camera so that it gets appropriate and proper skin tones for all skin types, not just one group of people.

to call business. It will look at like where you're located and know that if you say Al's car shop, it knows that you want the Al's car shop near you wherever you are, and not just some random place like I've asked serious stuff and she'll find stuff like thousands of miles away that makes no sense.

and Japanese. So that's really cool. You can get all those language interpretations done even offline, which is really nice in some cases, like the first time I ever went to Japan, what a nightmare. It was because my phone didn't work and everything was just tough. And nowadays everything works everywhere that I've seen and been. But anyway, but the translation stuff is pretty.

be great. Right now, they have this weird embargo going with all the people that they sent the phone to that where they can't show pictures from the phone. So this is a phone that's known for amazing pictures, and Google told all ten thousand people that it sent free phones to don't post any pictures from this phone. That's weird.

Why did they do that, I don't know. So October twenty eighth will get it in stores, and we'll probably get a better idea once the embargo lifts and people can actually post stuff from.

can offer, Susie, And Vice Salia, Vice Salia. I was just there in Vice Salia, Susie, I could have said hi and answered your question in person. Susie, here's my thoughts on this. Just ignore the jelly roll issue. I doubt it's a big deal. I just it's one of these things where let me see what so I mean, it's one of these things where who came.

to the Apple Store. You can pick up one of these little iPad minis and feel it and go to a website that you would typically go to. Go to a website with a long article, scroll through.

so many people there to help you. We went into Chipotle last night and for dinner, which, by the way, the brisket was delicious, and I've wanted to try that for a while. But I'm telling you, the place was like it felt like I was on life it was on life support. There's like three people working the entire place. And I mean, we've seen this over and over with a lot of places where it's just tough to get help right now, but the Apple store doesn't have that problem.

There were so many people everywhere I turned, Hey can I help you?

the M one Pro and the M one Max. And bottom line, I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time on specs, but these are processors that Apple has ditched Intel to make their own processors. They started with the M one last year and it got great reviews.

People went nuts over it. Now they're coming out with even higher, higher end versions of this processor, the Pro and the Max, which supposedly are gonna be even better, and I'm sure they are, because I don't think there's one reviewer that didn't say the M one was amazing. So the fourteen and sixteen inch MacBook Pros, they've got a new.

Apple took everything away in the last couple of years, and now they've brought it all back, all the features that the pros wanted, and so I'm glad they listened to people. Let's see what else. I forgot to mention something. I've got the ports. Oh yeah, touchbar. Touch bar is gone. Now this is a feature that I did not I begrudgingly bought my laptop with the touch bar on it, and I did not want the touch bar, but to

get the features that I wanted in my computer. I had to get the touch bar, and so I got it. I've never used it. It's horrible, and I am so glad it's gone with real keys now because there was just no use for it. It didn't make sense for me to have this thing on my computer. Clearly I was not I was with a lot of other people.

was going to hand down my computer to him. He can hand down his computer to my littler kid, but I feel like we don't need to do that right now because it's computer. Plus, I kind of just want the fourteen hundred bucks towards the new one because I'm looking at spending a lot of money here in the next couple weeks, but that's it. Those are coming out on Tuesday, October twenty sixth.

kind of funny. Like people give the notch a hard time on the iPhone, now they can give the notch a hard time on the on the laptops as well.

are really nice on these. Also, they're sweat and water resistant, which is kind of funny because how many people in the world have used their AirPods while working out and never had a problem or in the rain or something maybe in the rain, but working out, I mean sweat.

your air pods, which is nice. They also have this four sensor on the stem, which I'm not a big fan of, but it's just how it is.

they're not. And so these are just the standard AirPods now and those are kind of like the main features. Let me see if I left any features out on their AirPods. No. Five minutes of charge will give you an hour of use, which is kind of nice if you ever like, pick up your AirPods and they're kind of dead and you want to, you know, go on a run or something. One hundred and seventy nine dollars, so not cheap, not cheap at all. One hundred and

eighty dollars. Now they are cheaper than when AirPods first launched. They were one ninety nine, and so you're getting more for your money for less. So if you look at it that way, look on the bright side, you're you're winning. Tuesday, October twenty sixth is when these come out. So to answer your question, Saban about AirPods, you want to get

them now? The new ones, the third generation, they do not have noise cancelation, and I would say, actually, my preference are the AirPods three because I think the Airpod's three will feel better in your ears if you don't like that closed out kind of like when you put the AirPods pro in, it's like sh you're just like sealed up, you know what I mean, your air You're

there's nothing getting in your ears, nothing getting out. It's like a very like underwater feeling that I'm personally not a fan of, which is why I don't really wear the AirPods like walking through the airport and stuff, because it's just not that comfortable for me. But the AirPods three, I think will be a lot better because they don't do that. They don't seal out your ears. Now you do lose the noise cancelation. So if that's important to you,

I would go with the AirPods pro. But otherwise I think that pretty much that's the big differentiator between these two devices. And so I think that between those two things, you know, I mean not gonna it's let's see, I'm trying to see if I have some information on these AirPods that are that I can go into a little bit more depth here.

the separation alerts. They do have the The charging is the same, The ip x four is the same, but you get the.

a phone that you can customize the color on. Samsung says they tested thousands of color options and identified hues that would perfectly complement each other no matter the combination, which is handy for a guy like me that cannot match if my life depended on it. The result is a palette of forty nine possible color combinations for the Bespoke edition of the z Flip three, customers can mix

and match to create their own combination. You've got phone frame options of black or silver, and front and back colors of blue, yellow, pink, white, or black. You can also register to replace your device panel with new colors at Samsung dot com. So that means you can keep pace with your evolving style. You gotta be really uh, that's that's that's a bit much. So. The Bespoke Edition is one thousand, ninety nine. It comes with twelve months

of Samsung Care Plus, which is kind of nice. You're covered from accidental damage, including a screen replacement, water damage, and back cover replacement. Could also get up to a six hundred dollars trading credit. And the regular flip I believe.

a big old hold on. Let me put the volume up here. Definitely not true. I don't know where you saw this rumor, but it's not true. If you go to the iOS fifteen web page, this is when it tells you all. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, it will tell you all the phones that iOS fifteen is supported on, which iOS fifteen just came out. So if this was true, then the iPhone ten would

not be listed on this page. And by the way, it is, and a whole bunch of phones before the iPhone ten are still supported all the way back to the iPhone's success. And so you've got success, you've got seven, you've got eight, you've got there's no nine. And then you've got ten, so you've got, like, I think, at least two more years, three more years before this phone is not supported, more like three years. So I don't think that that's going away anytime soon. But you know,

this is what happens. We see all these rumors and memes and stuff online, and we you know, it's tough. There's a lot of misinformation out there. It's just the reality of kind of like people being able to share whatever they want, which is great, but it leaves us to be the fact checkers. And when you scroll through, it's like I'm scrolling through social media and I'm reading something and I'm.

new software, they don't really do anything, all right. Moving on, Apple has a new voice only music plan. This is called the Apple Music Voice Plan, and you save a whole bunch of money. It's only four ninety nine a month, which is amazing. Who doesn't want to say fifty percent off of a standard subscription that's more like nine ninety nine a month. And by the way, mark my words, music services have held steady at nine ninety nine a

month for a very long time. So I would not be surprised if we see them go up in price.

I just feel like we've been hovering at that. I mean, Spotify has been out now for I mean many years. Let's see Spotify launch date July twenty twenty July twenty eleven. So July twenty eleven, you're talking ten years at nine to ninety nine a month, I think we might be seeing a price increase. So I would be careful, just you know, put that in your budget, but just budget ahead for you know, the twelve extra dollars for the

year or whatever. If you're like me, you're paying for all these various services because they're all don't know.

to play like kind of a mix. But no, you can say a specific song you want, but it all has to be through your voice and you have to use Siri. And this works on all your different devices car Play, AirPods, HomePod, whatever, iPhone. But it's five dollars a month, four ninety nine, and you can't you know, I kind of pressed Apple on this. I'm like, well, so I open the app, and what happens. I can't type in like an artist I want to listen to. And I don't think I got a straight answer, honestly,

but it sounds like that's the case. Like when the app will be different, it will be tailored just towards this voice plan. So we'll see how this works. I mean, if I was a single plan user, like if I was just by myself and I just had a music plan, i'd probably do this because why not for to say fifty percent of well, I don't know, I do like browsing playlists, and so that's.

got beast Mode. It took me so long to play the beast Mode playlist because I think I talked about this before, but they have this big old muscle guy on the front, and I was like, well, that's not me. So clearly this is for like guys in the gym, like doing like hard weights, right, like lifting all that.

Like my kids grew up with you know, Google all around, and so they just ask it everything, whereas for me, like I'd still rather type in my questions unless it's something that's like super easy to answer, Like they'll ask very complex questions that I'm like, there's no way that Google can answer that. And sure enough, if it can't answer it, like in a simple way to just read a web page with the answer, I mean, it's pretty good actually, but there you have it. Did I digress?

Dare I digress? Uh? Let's see Bab says good morning. Everyone says good morning to me on their emails because they see me on TV in the early morning, and that's when they are like, oh, yeah, I should email that guy and ask him a question.

it's what resonates the most with people. There's two things that resonate with people online. Actually three that I post. Number one is things that are like gadgets, Like any sort of new gadget that's new and unique. People love to see it, and they love to see me go on, go into the nuances of that gadget, so you know, taking it out of the box, showing you the gadget, like just going over like what's different, what's new, what's unique, showing you the ports on it.

You got to be kidding me. And then I realized, like, oh, there's a whole world of people out there that don't sit there and think of the iPhone tips for their entire lives like I do.

just helped you, you know, grip your phone better. Now I don't have that. I don't really use that anymore, but I've I've replaced it with my new favorite, which is called the Tentacle, and it's this is kind of an octopus looking thing. It's a little mount that has suction cups and it's also flexible, and so you put

your phone in it. You put your phone in there, and then you kind of just grip the bottom of it and you can easily use it to move your phone around and watch stuff or to record stuff, i should say, And it works great now.

of a mount? And I'm like nothing, I'm just literally holding it out. Just remember to not move. And shaking is also a big problem, because you know, people shake when they kind of like hold their stuff and they're a little bit shaky, and so that's a problem and you need to just be cognizant of that and to get over that. You can actually brace your arms, don't hold your phone. The further out you hold your smartphone, the shakier you're going to be with that phone, because

think about it, you're holding your arms out. It takes a lot of energy to hold your arms out and to balance into you know, your your your gyroscope, your human gyroscope in your body is like working over time to stabilize it, which I would guess is your core maybe and your arm muscles. But when you when you

put your arms in, you brace in. It will actually hold your phone steadier because you can now use your whole body as a way to steady things, and you're you're using the force of your whole body and not just held out arms. So keep your arms close tight to your chest, and that will be a great way to do. Uh to do that, And actually learned that tip from a friend, uh, Juan Bagnell. He also runs a YouTube channel called Some Gadget Guy, and he actually taught me that. So I was not aware of that.

I maybe was vaguely aware of my head of that of how to shoot like that, but I'd never had someone put it into words until we did a segment together about how to take better smartphone pictures. And he said, yeah, use your use your arms as a brace, like almost like a human tripod. And I was like, oh, wow, that's a great idea. So thanks Wan for that for that tip, and check them out. Some gadget guy he does, he's you think I get cranky? I love one for

his rankiness on his videos. He really he has taken on the establishment, that's for sure.

this all manually. So great example of this is a story my boss, my former boss, gave me a computer that was his and he said, and this was this was pretty big of him. This is this is the level of trust. And so he said, Rich, can I trust you to erase this computer and recycle it properly? And I said, yes, sure. And it was an old iMac and I'm not kidding. This thing sat in my garage for I don't know a while, a couple months, and I was it taxed me every day because it

wasn't easy. I had no original discs, I had no Internet. Everything was like old on this computer. So it wasn't I wasn't able to do the standard things that I do on my computer to factory format it, which involves using like like booting up from a USB drive or a DVD or a CD back in the day, and then getting into like disc utility formatting it.

on it. Now, this is a reason why I am a trusted person and why people often tell me their passwords and they do it because I don't. Even with like my mom and my dad, even though I have access to their accounts, I don't go into their accounts without asking them first, because that's a level of trust that I'm not just going to go in and you know, like if my mom, if she wants me to like check her credit card bill or something, I will not

just go in and look at it. I will say, Mom, I'm going in, or I say, can I may I go in and access your bill? At this point, sure, but I think that's a level of trust that as a tech person you have to have with people, because I don't just go into people's stuff and I don't just like anyway. So this computer sat there for I don't know, let's say, six months before I was able to kind of figure out how to do it, and I did get it. I did finally erase the whole thing.

I was so proud of myself, and then I was calling a recycling company to actually get it taken away and properly recycled, and so it all worked out very nicely.

Mac with newer Mac systems with Apple Silicon or the T two chip. My computer, I believe has the T two chip, the system is instantly and securely erased by destroying the encryption keys, and so is my computer. Oh yeah, a lot of computers are on this T two chip, all the way back to the Macmini of twenty eighteen, Mac Pro twenty nineteen. My computer, MacBook Pro sixteen in sh yeah, twenty nineteen.

plus Netflix to them. Thanks and advanced Dora Dora. I would recommend getting a It's funny how a lot of times when these questions come up, people go through like the most like complex things like just simple easy. I would go with a Fire TV tablet.

get a deal on this thing. I'd say at least twenty dollars off. And since you're buying two, you probably want to get Yeah, you probably want to get a little bit of discount on this so that you're not spending a whole lot of money on that. So three hundred bucks gets you the tablets, and then after that, I would recommend just going on Amazon and searching for the magic keywords of headrest mount holder Kindle Fire, and the one that I found is twenty one fifty. It's

got five thousand reviews. It looks pretty straightforward. It straps onto the back of your head rest and it holds the tablet and the kids can watch their shows. You're out three hundred and fifty dollars, the kids are quiet in the backseat, and Grandma looks like a major winner. So that's what i'd write. Oh, oh, Dora is your name? Sorry Dora, not i'ma I don't know where I got i'ma Dora. That is what I would recommend. And the Fire tablets can easily handle all those places to stream.

You can set your phone as a hot spot so they can watch stuff or better yet, you can just download stuff. I mean, Prime Video has a whole bunch of stuff for kids. You can download Disney Plus, lets you download, Hulu, lets you download, Netflix, lets you download. And it's really funny because I remember the days when Netflix said we would never let people download our stuff, no way, and sure.

if you use Apple Music. They're great if you use Siri. They're great if you have an iPhone. They're great if you have a small place and you want a small, little speaker to match. They're great if you want to put a speaker in every room for cheap. They're great if you want an alternative to Sonos. I don't have them running in my house just because I've got sons and I really like sons. But these speakers are fantastic. I bought several of them. I bought one for my

niece for her college dorm room. I bought one for my sister for her gym.

They'll be available starting in November. Next question from Laura. I'm looking for a good photo scanning app form my iPhone thirteen. Do you have a recommendation? Yes, it's pretty simple. It's called photo scan by Google. This is a an app from Google.

do you need to do on this? I mean, there's not much you need to do. So photo scan by Google Photos. It it takes four different pictures of your photo and it will merge them into one using Google Smart Ai and it will save it to your Google Photos or you can save it to your camera roll whatever. This is a very manual, very slow process.

want something a little bit more high powered. But you said you wanted a photo scanning app, so that's your that's my recommendation. Let's see scan slide it's there is a another company that's doing a lot with photo scanning and it's let's see what they're It's called photo Mine m y n E photo Mine, and so they make a photo scanning app that is called photo Mine, and this one was let's say, I guarantee this was just updated recently.

it was amazing. The only thing is you are gonna have an in app purchase, so they're gonna let you do a couple and then you're gonna have to pay so I think the payment is just par for the course. If you're scanning a bunch of photos, why not pay and you can do a yearly for forty bucks. You can do it looks like monthly for anywhere from you know. Just they've a whole bunch of in app purchases that I'm seeing, so you can choose the the subscription that's

best for you. But yeah, I mean, just check out one of those two. If you want something completely free, go with Google. If you want something you can try and it might be a little bit better, check out photo Mine.

or cryptocurrency. I should say, it's just a fascinating topic to me because it's like it's tech taking over one of the few things that government and banks and big business have a real stronghold on and we have not seen much change in this industry, and technology has a way of kind of disrupting things, and so far, the way that I use money has kind of stayed the same forever, except for the photo. You know, the Venmos

of the world and the paypals of the world. But realistically those are just layers on top of an already archaic system, and the banking system and all that stuff is not very good. Credit cards, banks, it's all very like old school very much, not digital very much.

it's not really controlled by anyone, which is also really interesting. Anyway, I say all this because bitcoin reached an all time high and a new high, I should say, and it's really on a roll. And the reason for this is because now Wall Street folks can invest in it, So they had this new ETF. If you're familiar with that. ETFs are kind of like a fund that you can invest in, kind of like a mutual fund, but a little bit more current, a little more digital.

that right. But basically, a whole bunch of people bought this fund, which makes bitcoin go up because other people see it, they're like, oh wow, So people actually think this bitcoin thing is around to stay, so they're investing in it. And so a whole bunch of people invested in this fund on Wall Street, which leads bitcoin to go up. And now bitcoin seems like it's well on its way to even higher numbers. And this is just

the first of several different funds. So there's going to be at least, according to the Wall Street Journal, two more and so two more big funds that let you invest in bitcoin without actually buying bitcoin, and so kind of neat. Now, apparently the Securities and Exchange Commission does not allow direct bitcoin investments buy these funds, so that's why they're ETFs, which kind of mimic the fund. So

hope my explanation somewhat got it. But the point is, you know, I would just take a look at this stuff, kind of follow it, kind of understand it a little bit because it's it's really interesting. I don't really understand the whole bitcoin thing to an extent that a lot of the bitcoin folks do, but I get the idea that it's disrupting things, and it's going to take someone like Amazon or someone like, you know, a big company to accept bitcoin as a cayman for it to really

get the ball rolling. We haven't even seen that happen yet, so once we do start seeing that happen, it could be, you know, a really good thing for this stuff. All right, let's get to the final question of the day. Nora writes about the Muama Portable Wireless router Muama Portable Wireless Router. I was wondering, if you know anything about this product, is it worthwhile? Is it safe to use? Being that it's made in Lithuania. I would appreciate any information you

might have. I'm definitely not a tech savvy person. I don't want to mess up my Mac or my iPhone. Thank you, Nora. All right, Nora, a quick I've never heard of this this router, but a quick Google search. Hmm okay, Let's see what the questions are. Which portable Wi Fi router is best? Is the Mayuma legit? What's the monthly cost? And does it work? And then the first the first website is the Muama Ryoku review, does it work or cheap portable Wi Fi? And where does

it come from? It comes from globalnewswire dot com. Let me explain something. If you ever see a quote unquote review of a tech product on a press release website like pr Newswire or Global Newswire or any newswire website, that means that the company has put out their own review as a press release, hoping to get it to percolate through Google so that you see it when you

search for something like this router. Now, if you search for a product that is legitimate, you'll see a review from the Verge, You'll see the review from c Net. From these reputable tech websites. Now, if you see a YouTube review. You can't really know if that's gonna be okay because anyone could put a YouTube review up. So if you see it from a trusted YouTube reviewer, that's a little bit better. But all the reviews that I'm seeing from this are basically yeah, nothing that I'm seeing

that I would trust. And so the bottom line, if you actually go to the website, get ryoko. It's just a four G router and that's all it is. And I would not get this router. If you want a router, you can go like a hot spot. You can go to your I don't even know why you need a

hot spot. Your phone should function as this. But you can also go to your carrier Verizon, T Mobile, AT and T and get a hot spot that works with your plan, or if you don't want to get those, I like the z zte zmax Connect and that is an unlocked hot spot that's about ninety bucks.

time for the end of the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, you can email me Hello at Richontech dot tv, or you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send email button, or you can go to rich on tech dot tv and hit the little envelope icon. I would also love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Write a quick line about what you like about this show.

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