Zoom comes to smart displays, Bundling is the new old thing to do. Instagram copies yet another TikTok feature. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich Damiro 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 that you send me. And I've said this before, but during this pandemic, you are sending me a lot of questions. You know, I get it, your home, you got tech issues.
There's all kinds of stuff going on. And I'm here. I'm here for you to see me on TV. And you say, hey, let me send that guy a question. Sure, I'll take it. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, coming to you from home as usual. I have now been working from home full are a grand total of five months. I can't believe it. Can you believe it? I can't. Now at this point, I've got myself working from home, I've
got my wife working from home. I've got my five year old doing kindergarten from home, and I've got my nine year old doing his school from home. So it looks like we run a small office here in the DeMuro House, with everyone on computers, everyone on headphones, everyone trying to coordinate their schedules. And it's unlike anything I've
ever experienced in my life. And I'm sure you are going through something very similar no matter what you're doing, whether you have kids, whether you don't have kids, whether you're working, whether you're not working. It's an odd time. In fact, I was in Santa Barbara again. I know I was in Santa Barbara last time I talked to you when I did last week's podcast, but I went
once again. And I've realized that Santa Barbara is not very far from Los Angeles, and so now I'm expanding my reach of doing stories up there because there's some tech companies up there. So I've been going up there. So I was up there yesterday and at the end of my interview, I decided to get a haircut because it's much cooler in Santa Barbara than it is in Los Angeles, and they were doing the haircuts outside, and it's really tough to get a haircut in California right
now because everyone has to be outside. And so I
went to this barber shop. They said, okay, we could take you, you know, at this time, And I came back and I got my haircut, and I'm sitting there outside getting my haircut, just thinking, this is a time that people will talk about for the rest of their lives when I'm an old grandpa talking to my grandkids, sitting hopefully outside in a beautiful lake or beach somewhere, and my grandkids are hanging out and hanging on me, and I will be like, you know, I got a
haircut on the street once because you couldn't go inside get a haircut, and there's hair everywhere, and there's just people. I mean, it was a whole It is a whole scene. It reminds me of something that someone would come by and snap a black and white picture of in like the twenties, and we would look at it and think how silly it looks. But there I was, in color, sitting there on the street in twenty twenty, getting a haircut.
So it was just a really interesting experience. And this whole thing has really made me very introspective on life and what we're all doing here, and what we're doing for our jobs and our families and just Oh, it's just quite quite quite interesting when you really break it down. Well, let's start with the first story, which directly relates to this whole pandemic, and it is zoom. Zoom is coming to smart home displays. Zoom is coming to Amazon, Echo
Show Portal from Facebook and Google, Nest Hub Max. This is brilliant. This is something that I'm so glad as happy. Not that everyone has these in their homes, but a lot of people do, especially probably the Amazon Echo Show Portal from Facebook, not so much Google, nesttub Max, probably to a lesser extent. But the good news is you will be able to do zoom on these smart displays, which is fantastic because it frees up your computer screen so you can do other things on there while you zoom. Now,
it's not going to be ready just yet. Zoom on Portal is coming the soonest in September, but that's probably the least useful because people don't really have portals. As far as I know, zoom On, Echo Show and Nest are going to be available by the end of the year. And this is going to be all integrated with Alexa and also with Google Assistance. You can just say, hey, h Google, join my next meeting and it will join.
It's great and I love that these companies are actually opening up these devices to third party software where it's not just Google Meet on the nesttub Max, and it's not just well Alexa had Zoom or Amazon Echo had Zoom to begin with. Portal from Facebook had Messenger, but I'm not sure they had anything else. So good job, and I think that this will actually hasten the adoption
of some of these smart home displays. The one I'm most excited for is actually the Facebook Portal TV, because I can't believe that there's no way to zoom on TV right now, and that would be the ultimate. So you can just sit there, probably not for work so much, but for personal just sitting down on a Friday night having sort of a little happy hour with family or friends. The TV is the place to do it, and hopefully we'll see that as well. All right, let's get to
our first question, and this question comes from Sharon. She says, I want to get the ring doorbell from my house. Is it secure? I saw the video cameras on TV that people can hack. There is a ring doorbell and second generation and a third I don't know which one is the best for me. My doorbell is now wired. And if you want to submit a question, by the way, just email me hello at richontech dot tv and we'll
get your question into the show. So what's the difference between the Ring Video Doorbell two and Ring Video Doorbell three? I had to actually look this up on the website because I was not aware that they had a third ring doorbell. I have the two, I did have the one. The two gave me slightly better video, and the three is one hundred and seventy nine ninety nine. Oh wow, there's a video doorbell three plus? I mean, how many different doorbells do you need? What's the plus do? Now?
The plus is two hundred dollars are premium battery power doorbell with advanced security features, including improved motion detection, with an additional four second preview of each motion event. You'll automatically start recording before you even receive an alert. So what is that mean? That's that's interesting that it's like recording twenty four to seven anyway, So do you need
the two or the three? I would say I personally would go with the three, not because the two is bad, but the two's been out for a while, and if you're installing one of these things, it's the kind of thing that you keep for a while. You're not sitting there. People are not sitting there upgrading their video doorbells every year like their smartphone, or every even every two years, or even every three years. This is the kind of device that you put outside your front door and you
leave it there until it stops working completely. So for that reason, I would go for the third generation of this doorbell, because even though the second one is going to be cheaper at one hundred dollars, I would probably pay the extra hundred dollars so that you can have the latest and greatest that that ring has been working on.
Because why get something that's two years old. I don't know when the second generation came out, but why get something that's that old when you can have what's new and keep it for long hopefully, So I think the three what it adds is better Wi Fi. So the two only has two point four gigahertz Wi Fi connectivity, five gigaherts is going to give you a more consistent and higher quality Wi Fi signal. So that's one reason for the three, and Let's see what else does a
three do. Let's see the three also gives you, let's see here, advanced motion settings, so rechargeable, quick release. Oh okay, so there's a The battery also comes out faster on the three. Yeah, I'd go with the three, just because you know that way you have the newest one, You're gonna leave this thing on your door till it fails. So that's what I would do, Sharon. And when it comes to security, I think, you know, a little bit of this security stuff was overblown in the media because
it's easy. You know, it's scary. Oh, someone could tap into your doorbell. I think that Ring has done a pretty good job of securing these things in various ways, including they now require two factor authentication, which means when you sign up for a Ring account, you have to put in some sort of secondary verification, which is usually a text message or I'm not sure if they support two factor authentication apps, but no matter what, it's gonna
be secure. The problem is a lot of people are using their same tired, old password when they would set up one of these devices, whether it was a Ring or any sort of video doorbell, and people hack into them because they figure out that your password is password one two three. Don't put password one two three on something that's securing your home. That's just not smart. Don't do it. Let's talk about the Galaxy Note twenty Ultra. Last week I said that I was loving this phone.
This week, I have my actual review since the embargo on the review is up, and I can finally talk about it for real. Let's just put it this way. The Galaxy Note twenty is the best Android phone out there. There's no doubt about it. It's the ultimate Android. You can't get better. In fact, my only issue I have two issue use with this phone. One is not even related to the phone, it's really just an Android thing.
And the other is just that it's so honk and big that it's not comfortable to manipulate in a way that I like to use my phone a lot. And I have to think about it when I'm using the Note twenty Ultra because it's just so big. And I'm not going with a Note twenty because it's got the plastic back, it's got the lesser camera, and it's got no microSD card slot, which I don't really care about, but I want the best of the best, and that's why I want the Ultra. But let me tell you
about it. So I've been using it for a couple of weeks. I dropped it once very hard. I did have a case on it. It got a little scratched up on the screen. It's got a twelve megapixel ultra wide camera, one hundred and eight megapixel old wide angle camera, and a twelve megapixel telephoto camera. The camera is so flexible and so awesome that you will just have I just couldn't stop taking pictures with it. It was that great. Now a lot of the problems with the AUTOFOK have
been fixed. I still find that it's a little tiny blurrier for closer up pictures than the iPhone and phones that don't have this camera setup. So the iPhone, the pixel even the one plus shares the same problem that the S twenty Ultra does. It's just a little bit blurry when you take these kind of pictures at close range. I'm not sure why it's. It's you have to take a bunch of pictures and compare a lot of cameras like I do to really notice it, but it's there.
The spen is super improved. It's got reduced latency, which nobody's I don't notice that. Samsung app Notes app is great. You can write on PDFs. They've got this cool audio recording feature that lets you sink what is being said to what you're writing. So you can just tap the word you said and you'll hear whatever that person said
at that point. So if you're writing down a phone number, for instance, in a or you know you're in class and you're writing down notes, you can tap to that portion of that whatever you wrote down there and you can hear what the professor said. If you missed a name or something. It's auto straightens your handwriting. It sinks to the cloud back to the camera. Excellent. Point and shoot photos that look like a million bucks. I mean the pictures I was taking on this thing, they're just gorgeous.
I mean they really are. Low Light was a little bit of a challenge, but I find that it still does pretty good. It's just not necessarily going to get it on the first time every time in low light, especially on the selfies, but most cameras can't. Let's be honest, it's a problem. Low Light is a problem. Video quality is awesome, does a really good job with that battery life, no problems there at all. Five G kind of a
non starter right now. I have not tested at and T five G in this phone, which I need to do. But T Mobile, I love the idea of five G in this new network that T Mobiles building. I just did not see performance that was worth subscribing to T Mobile five G four or switching to a five G or anything that really impressed me, to be honest. In fact, it was actually quite painful. The five G network in Santa Barbara in Los Angeles where I live. Clearly they
just don't have it yet. So it's or maybe they do, it's just not at my house. I don't know. It's just five G is not that big of a deal right now. It will get better. So here's my biggest problem. Social media. I am on social media. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, and I'll be honest, it's painful to use social media on the Note twenty on Android. And this is every Android phone compared to the iPhone. The iPhone, social media is so beautiful, it
just works perfectly. I don't know what the problem is with social media on Android. In fact, I did a Instagram Live at a place called Blaze Pizza. I was shooting a story there and it was so terrible looking when I looked at the video after I had gone live that I had to delete it because it was so bad. It looked horrendous. Now I'm wondering if it has to do with T Mobile and the Tester SIM that I have. T Mobile default to four EIGHTYP video for most things. I'm wondering if it has to do
with that. So if it's if it's just not sending through full quality video when I upload, because it's somehow limiting it. Now, I thought that was maybe on just streaming, like if you're watching YouTube and stuff, but I don't know. Maybe it's on the uploads as well. So I'm gonna test it out. I'm gonna put in my Verizon SIM and see if it helps. But I'm not sure. And if it does, great, then all this is moot point.
But I'm not sure because it seems like every Android phone I test social media just does not look as good. And let's see what else, So what I recommend it? No, twenty Ultra is not for everyone because it's so big, Like would I give my wife this phone I'm not sure. I think she would say, Rich, you're crazy. This thing is so enormous that you can't use this day to day. I drop it. It's too big. It's like it's not pocketable.
So I think this really appeals to a certain type of person who sort of wants that really powerful device that does everything, but is maybe going to replace their you know, maybe at times their laptop and also a tablet. It's a great device, but I'll just leave it at that. It's a great device if it appeals to you. I find really no flaws with it, and the only thing is it's big. When you put a case on it,
it's even bigger. Starts at one thousand bucks for the Note twenty, thirteen hundred bucks for the Note twenty Ultra, but you get it all and it really is the best Android phone. Before I move on to the next question, let me just say one thing. The Galaxy S twenty lineup is getting a lot of the features of the Note lineup, which is really cool. They're coming out with one I are one UI two point five and with Samsung,
and this really annoys me with them. I don't know why they do this, but they announce and they've gotten a lot better with it, but they announce the software updates and then it takes forever for it to reach your phone, whereas with iPhone they're like, oh, I always fourteen's available today, You go into your settings and boom,
it's there. Samsung not the same. You could wait they announced this today, as I record this on August twenty first, and you could be waiting till September fifteenth, and you
might not see it on your phone. Now hopefully that's not the case with this, but anyway, they are adding the twenty one to nine aspect ratio in eight K. They're adding the ability to control your smartphone's mic direction and also use Bluetooth mics with the S twenty lineup the whole notes thing I just told you about with the writing on PDFs, the audio bookmarks, the wireless decks, and some Wi Fi things where you can share Wi Fi if you have an iPhone friend, you know you
can share. Like if you're trying to log onto a Wi Fi network and you have an iPhone and a friend is nearby that has that password on their phone that they've already logged into that Wi Fi, I'll be like, hey, do you want to share with Rich he's nearby, and you just tap and boom. So that's that's now on the Samsung's and then apparently a reminder app you can preset time and location for upcoming meet. I didn't even know there was a reminder's app on the Samsung, but
there you have it. I think Samsung's doing a really nice job. Let's put it this way, and I the state of affairs when it comes to Android. There's a lot of like Android devices out there. I think Samsung is killing it right now. At this point in time, I think one plus is killing it. They're so close with their camera, the pixel I am severely disappointed in except they seem to be really taking the low end of the spectrum with their Pixel four A. And I
haven't tested it yet. I have not gotten one yet, so but I'm sure it takes amazing pictures. And for three hundred and fifty dollars, that is the Android phone to get if you want a cheap Android phone that's just gonna take amazing photos. Let's see. Next question comes from Martha. Martha says, hey, Rich, I hope you're well. I've attached a screenshot of the MacBook my son just purchased. He didn't really check into spec, so I'm wondering, how
can we make the storage last? Because of course we can add more, but uh with let's see, it's not as easy on laptops as is desktops. No matter how big the storage is, things are eventually going to get filled. Can you share a review or personal tips on this MacBook? Was this a smart purchase? He's using it for college classes are just getting started. On a side note, I did tell my son to email you this question before he purchased it, but of course he didn't listen. Lol.
We love your reviews or we watch your reviews on KTLA all the time. Two thumbs up, Martha. I'm looking at this screenshot. Let's see, you got a thirteen inch MacBook air Space gray Retina screen, Core I, three eight gigs of memory, two fifty six SSD Intel graphics, backlt Magic keyboard, touch ID trackpad. Yeah, a thousand bucks. I think this is going to be just fine for college as long as he's not doing you know, even if
he is doing video editing, it'll be fine. The storage, I mean on my laptop, I only have I've told this story before. But when I bought my new MacBook, the sixteen inch model that came out with a new keyboard, I wanted it so badly. I am an impatient, impatient person, not an impatient like I'm not doing surgery on myself,
but I am an impatient person. And I of course you know when you did the when the computer first came out, if you wanted a one terabyte drive, you had to wait because you would have to get it shipped from Apple. Well, of course I can't wait, so I just had to go into the store and get the off the shelf version, which was only five twelve gigs. And of course I'm not happy for myself for doing that. Wait, am I telling a lie right now? Maybe I did get the one terabyte. Let me check. Maybe I wanted
two terabytes I got. Let's see, where is my storage? Yeah, I did get a terabyte. Okay, I'm totally lying. I wanted two terabytes. Okay, just scratch everything I said. I don't edit this podcast, so I'm not gonna edit that out. But I totally lied. I got a terabyte. I wanted two terabytes, so I was able to download my entire Google drive on here. I still can't do that whatever. So maybe it was the memory I wanted more of.
I can't remember at this point, but I the good news is when you're buying a laptop, this is the advice for everyone, spend your money on the hard drive and the memory, because especially with Apple, it's tough to upgrade those later with a lot of their devices. But it's you know, it's just one of these things where you're never gonna be like, oh, I wish I had this hard drive space. No, you're always gonna want more. Even with the cloud, which even with this two fifty six,
I think he's gonna be fine. Eight gigs is fine. Sixteen is of course better because the more gigabytes, the more memory you have on your computer, the more programs that you can keep open, and you're not going to slow your computer down to a crawl. My computer, even though it's a brand new MacBook Pro Core I nine, it's you know, sixteen gigs of memory and a gig a terabyte of hard drive, it's still just literally stops working.
Sometimes I can't handle what I have open. Right now, I have open Chrome, this little notes app called Bear that I love. Ever note mail, let's see what else. I've got messages, I've got Telegram, I've got Microsoft to do quick Time preview and Zoom. And sometimes I have Safari open as well because I use that for my The word press on Chrome has gotten so slow I actually physically can't use it anymore to do my posts
for ktla dot com. So I open Safari because it's just cleaner and it doesn't have any extensions on it anyway. Just spend the most you can on your memory and your processor. Obviously Core I three at the minimum. You know, the higher that I five, seven, nine, whatever is always going to be better. But you know RAM and hard
drive always always always get the most you can. Speaking of buying a computer, I got this little email from CompUSA, remember that place, comp Usa, when we used to have choices. The pandemic has really it's just opened my eyes to
the fact of how reliant I am on Amazon. I have been trying to purchase another euro Pro for the longest time, and it's just out of stock at like the three stores I can think of to order it online, which is best Buy Amazon, And I even use like Google shopping to see I'm like, maybe there's a place of not thinking of and it's really tough to think outside like Walmart, dot comden. I mean, what are the places to shop online at this point for like electronics,
and there's only a handful. And so CompUSA was a store that went out of business. Now they are a comparison website and I guess they launched last year. Let's see we blast oh two years ago. I guess they relaunched their website two years ago and they just got blasted by I'm guessing all the blogs saying it was just a sad affiliates affiliate deals. Well, they went back and they kind of said, you know, what, what can
we do to really make this better? And I think they did a good job because I'm looking at it and it's kind of a cool website. Now. So here's what they did. They are now creating a value engine for every tech product category. So, for example, for laptops, they break them down to their individual components, and then they break those components down into benchmark scores and they convert those scores into a value. Then they compare that value to the actual sale price of a laptop, and
then they order them by that. So what does that all mean? It means that they break down the components. So maybe a computer that has four gigs of RAM and a one terabyte hard drive is selling for five hundred dollars, but a computer with sixteen gigs of memory and a one terabyte drive is selling for fifty dollars more. That's actually going to be a better deal because it's only slightly more expensive, but you're getting a lot more.
So if they're doing what they're saying they're doing, which it looks like they are because I'm on Compus Slash Laptops and their top model right now one hundred percent for their amazing deal calculation, and then it gets a
little fire, which I'm guessing it means that's hot. This is a Lenovo Idea Pad three fifteen point six inch Windows laptop with an AMD rise In seven, eight gigs of RAM, five twelve gigs of hard drive, and a Vegas seven model for five hundred and forty nine dollars, which I think sounds like a fantastic deal, so I think their little system is working. And then you have the next model on their list. This is from eBay, which I personally wouldn't buy a computer from there, but
the next one, and that's from office depot. And the next one is another Idea pad five fifteen point six with a rise in five two fifty six eight gigs and it's got that's only four to seventy nine. Anyway, I think they're doing a good job. So they say that this is highly automated, and some of the deals are getting to their homepage even before places like slick Deals. So you can go here to their homepage and see kind of what their little computers think are the best deals.
And right now some of their top deals are top phone is an iPhone tenns max unlocked sixty four gig for six hundred and twenty dollars, which sounds pretty good. That's an eBay that's somewhere I probably wouldn't well, I guess I would purchase a phone from there. Then they have top products from Amazon. I don't know. I think this is pretty cool, so CompUSA dot com, if you want to check it out, tell me what you think.
I am going to add this to my list of sort of places where I check for deals on a daily basis because I love seeing deals like Microsoft Xbox one wireless controller forty six eighty eight, and I know that's a good deal because I paid sixty dollars for that, so I can hook it up to my Apple TV. And let's see one more thing. I just want to make sure that when I actually click the deal it is working. Oh, it even gives you a little when you go to the deal, it tells you how much
it's it's priced at various sites. So I can see that it's four seven bucks at Amazon, sixty at BNH, and at a stock at best Buy. Now let's just double check those because sometimes these sites, when you go to the website, it's not real and yep, hmmm, well they probably sold out. But it does say at Amazon. See when you go there, the price is not really there. It's still sixty bucks, and BNH is sixty bucks, and so it's actually not the price that it says it is.
So anyway, I'll have to do some more research and kind of just follow that for a little bit. But I do love my deal sites for sure, and so I will be checking that out, and you know, if you find a good deal on it, hey, not everything's gonna work. And I'm not saying that this is something that I should discount, because even if I go to the best sites out any aggregator site right now. Sometimes when you go there, the price is just gone. And
that happens with Honey with all their price comparisons. That happen sometimes with not so much Slick Deal because they're pretty good. But some of the other websites, it's just you go there and the deal is gone, and that's just the way it is. So anyway, all right, let's do another question. Oh, there's the sound question from Greg. Greg says, hi, Rich, hope you and yours are well. Quick question? Is there a way to not use the
mail that comes installed on iPhone? When I click on an email link on a website, it sends me to the mail app. I wonder if it's possible to link to my Gmail app. Thanks in advance for your help, Greg, Greg. No, there's not a way to do that, not right now, at least in iOS fourteen. There will be a way. In iOS fourteen you will be able to set a default email app and also a default browser app, and that's going to be pretty handy. I wish they would
have done fault. What was the other one? I want? Oh? Default maps that they need to do for sure, but it's a start. So in iOS fourteen, which will probably launch in let's see September October, you'll be able to do that, and so far, even on the betas, I haven't seen anyone that this feature hasn't rolled out yet on the betas, but it's a start and I'm curious to see. I mean, I don't really click a lot of email link I guess it would help if you're trying to go from an anyway, so you'll be able
to do it soon. Let's put it that way right now. The best way if you want to do this is you'd have to download the Chrome browser on your iPhone, and I think if you clicked a link in Chrome browser. Google has gotten really good with what's called deep linking. So if you're using Gmail, Chrome, and Google Maps on your iPhone, pretty much it's a seamless experience between those
apps to boomerang you between them. So if you click a link in Gmail, it will bring you it will open that link in Chrome if you click I'm assuming if you click an email link in Chrome, it'll bring you to Gmail. And same thing with Maps. If you click any sort of mapping link in Chrome or Gmail, it will bring you to Google Maps. Versus Apple Maps, but that's where they're starting iOS fourteen defaults, so you be able to do the browser and again the browser
and mail. I think they really need to do that with the navigation app, especially because right now on iOS you can't say, you know, navigate to wherever on the maps app, It'll just bring you to Google Maps. And also music will also just bring you to Apple Music. But there is a way around it. You can say,
h SERI play Taylor Swift on YouTube Music. You have to say that at the end, and I find it's not very good, but it's still it is there, So you can say on Spotify, on Google Music or YouTube Music. You just can't set a default wor it'll just do that automatically. All right, let's talk about another story, bundling. I'm gonna do two stories in one because these bundles
are just getting out of control. And the reason why these big companies like you to bundle is because they think we're dumb, and we kind of are because it's really tough to keep track of bundles, and bundles make things very sticky. For instance, I have a bundle with my Verizon account of Disney Plus and also Apple Music, so I get those for free. Disney Plus was only for twelve months, but that's changing. And everyone has a bundle. I mean AT and T does Spotify and HBO Max.
You've got let's see, T Mobile does Quibi and Netflix they kind of started it, Sprint did Title, Hulu, and I don't know what else, so they're all doing it. And then you've got the bundles from everything else, so you know, does your There's just so many bundles to keep track of. But they do that because it's confusing and it also keeps you subscribe to these things because
I'll give I'll give you an example. When I sign up for my Internet they switched my my HBO Max from me paying for it to now I got it for free. But I was very hesitant to do anything with my HBO Max account because I didn't know how it work. I was like, ah, if I switched it over, like do I have to sign up for a new account? And they actually AT and T was pretty good about my email address. As soon as I popped it in, they said, oh, we noticed you already have an account.
We're just going to cancel that and now give it you for free with the same email so they were pretty good. But with some of these other things, I don't know, like right now with Hulu. So let me
give you the news and then i'll explain. So now on these Verizon plans, they now include Disney plus Hulu and ESPN plus Forever and that's a Disney bundle and this is in the Play More and Get More Unlimited, and they also ditched the ten dollars monthly fee for access to five G But the problem is on their plans they show four lines, so the Get More Unlimited for four lines is fifty five dollars a month, but realistically it's eighty dollars. Like for me, I have two lines,
so it's eighty dollars each. They should really show the different line prices, not just four, because fifty five is like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. No, it's not fifty five. That's if you have four lines, fifty five times four is two hundred and twenty bucks, right, do I do my math? Right? So anyway, if you have the bottom line is if you have a Verizon plan like I do, you have to go in and kind of see you might as well if you're already on the Get More
unlimited like I am. You might as well get ESPN Plus and Hulu included, as well as Disney Plus. The problem is, I pay for Hulu with no commercials, so I'm not really sure how that's gonna work if I sign up for this bundle. Do I just have to pay extra five bucks a month or whatever it is the differential to get the no commercials? I don't know. But again, it's like it takes brain power, and it takes time, and it takes research, and it takes effort, and you got to log in and so these things
sound great, but it's for the consumer. It's just a lot of work. But if you do it right, you can get things for free. The only thing they did change was Apple Music is now not necessarily included with every plan. Some of them I think drop down to just six months. So if you have Apple Music included, you might want to just be careful before you sign up for one of these new plans. You may not
get that included anymore unlimited like I do forever. It might just be for six months, which would not be good. The other thing is Apple TV Plus now has a bundle if you subscribe to Apple TV Plus, which I'm not sure there's any paying subscribers out there. I think everyone's still on a free plan like I am, because I bought the iPhone last October, so mine's coming up
in October. Probably. Be honest, I'm probably not going to pay the five bucks a month for this because I don't have a show on Apple TV Plus that I'm liking right now when I was watching Morning Show. Fine, but I don't know. We'll say, but if you have Apple TV Plus, you can now get a bundle including CBS All Access and Showtime for cheaper than you would.
It's kind of two and one. So CBS All Access is ten dollars a month, and that includes, by the way, the no commercial version, which is kind of cool, and then Showtime is eleven, so that'd be twenty one dollars if you purchase these separately. If you subscribe through Apple TV Plus, it would only be ten dollars a month, so you would save if you have both of these ten dollars. But again with that caveat that, you have to be an Apple TV Plus subscriber, and you also
have to figure out how to log in. It looks like you can log in using your Apple TV account on let's see iPhone iPad. I don't know. You gotta log in through Apple TV, the Apple TV app, which is available on certain devices like Samsung and LG Smart TVs, Rokus, and Amazon fireTV devices. Apple TV app is launching on Sony and Visio later this summer. See how complicated this all is. It's like just keeping track of all this
stuff is a lot for me. And again, if you are on that bundle, you're saying to yourself, well, that's a pretty good bundle. I'm not gonna cancel Apple TV Plus, but do you really need the five dollars a month for Apple TV Plus? I don't know. Next question from Mark. Mark says, hello, Rich, I'm still working during this pandemic, except I am in my home office. My adventurous side wants to hit the road still knowing I can open my laptop in places that don't that typically don't have
cell phone service. Is there a device that would provide me data or Wi Fi in places like a national forest that typically a signal that typically cannot catch a signal. I don't think so. If you're you know, my immediate thought was, oh, just get a hot spot and I will tell you about a hot spot that I recently featured on KTLA, which I think is really it's called the I don't know if I mentioned this last week on the show, but it's called the ZTE max Connect.
And what I like about this hotspot is that it's unlocked, so you just buy this hot spot and you just pop a SIM card, prepaid whatever, as long as it's a GSM. I think I did mention this, and you can pop it in and it you know, you can use wireless internet from this provider, and you don't have to have a contract per se. That's called the ZTE
max Connect. Now that was my initial thought as an answer to this question, but he's saying he wants like a national forest that you can't get a signal, and now there's not really gonna be a way to get a signal outside of a cell phone signal. In the future, yes, maybe we'll have the laser or sorry the yeah, is it laser delivered satellite I don't know, satellite delivered laser internet Maybe in the future, but right now, no, if you can't get a data signal, you're not gonna be
able to get data as far as I know. If someone knows anything different that I don't. I mean, yes, there's via SAT, but I don't think you can have you know you could do that, Okay, all right, I guess you could do it if you had an RV with a satellite that got the signal via SAT. But I don't think. I mean, I guess you could do that. Let me see viasat if you had how let's see internet. I guess if you had one of these on your there's probably is home or there probably is RV satellite Internet.
I'm gonna just google that that you could install on your RV and then you could use that as a hot spot. But again, it's expensive. I'm sure it's very Yeah. The first line of this this website I brought up, getting satellite internet with a mobile satellite dish for your RV is not a simple process. It's possible, but you're looking at thousands of dollars in equipment and a long term contract with up to four hundred dollars a month or more and subpart internet. So I don't think this
is the way to do it. They do have some various ways of getting it. But the other thing I would recommend in this article satellite Internet dot Com recommends it as well. Is from a company called we Boost. I thought it was, yeah, we Boost, which makes cell phone boosters we Boost, and I thought it was called Wilson Internet Booster. Maybe it is we Boost. No, Wilson's signal Booster. So check out those as well. Yeah, Wilson Signal User, uh Booster. So those are the ways that
I think you can probably get around that. So yeah, I mean it's not Look, it's not gonna be expensive. It's not gonna be cheap. It's gonna be expensive, and it's gonna be too much work. And I get it. You have this idea of driving around anywhere and just
picking up a signal. But look, you know, if you're in the National Forest, enjoy the national forest, and when you get out of the National Forest, find a Starbucks and work from outside there if you need a signal or you know, I went to Zion months ago and the signal was fantastic everywhere, including pretty much even in the forest. I mean there's it's pretty rare these days that you don't have a signal. I mean, you really have to be out there to not have a signal.
So that's what I'd recommend all right, let's see what we want to talk about next. I'll talk about this because I thought this is kind of fun. Another Apple story. Apple renamed. They introduced two new radio stations and they renamed their Beats One. I don't know if you listen to Beats one. I'm guessing you don't, because they say
it's very popular. Maybe people do listen to it. It's really cool and they have a great guy that does it, Zane Low is like their main I don't know if you call him a DJ or personality, but it's really cool and they do a great job. I mean, this guy knows everyone in the industry, and you know, he calls them up on FaceTime. Of course because it's Apple, I messages them, so he's connected. And they do a
great job. Apple Music are Beats one broadcast you know, live, and they really do a good job of getting behind the music. Well that's gonna be renamed Apple Music One. And then they're also launching two new live streaming radio stations called Apple Music Hits and the one that I'm excited about called Apple Music Country. And for the past couple of days since they launched this, I've been listening to Apple Music Country NonStop and it's awesome. They're broadcasting
out of Nashville. If you have Serious XM, it reminds me a lot of the Highway, but it reminds me of the Highway yet run by kids in high school
or college, like almost like a college radio station. Because all of the DJs right now are so excited that they have this new job with Apple and so it's like it's very It's not like the guys you have on on Serious XM, Stormy Warren and you know these other guys that are very you know, you know, everyone knows them in Nashville, and they're kind of they've been doing it for a long time. These new folks on Apple Music Country are kind of like excited that they're
there and doing this new cool way of broadcasting. And it's not really broadcasting because it's through the iPhone or however you have Apple Music. So anyway, I've been listening to it. I love it. It's great. I don't know if I'm gonna get my wife to switch from the Highway, but what I love about this it's also free, so you can listen to Apple Music Country, Apple Music Hits, and of course B to One even If you don't have a subscription to Apple Music, you just open the
Apple Music app and you can do it. You can also install it on Android, but when I noticed on Android when I installed it there is that it does look like you have to sign in to be able to access the stream. So it's free, but it mostly seems free on Apple devices iPhone, iPad, car play Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac HomePod, and you can ask Siri to play Apple Music one, Apple Music Hits or Apple Music Country. I'm a country music fan, so I like that and
I love. What I've realized about listening to playlists is I've always loved radio. I'm a radio guy, and I love DJs. Not the Hey, I'm Jack the Whack and we got another set of fifty minutes of NonStop commercial for eight meals like coming up. I'm that. I used to like that, but now what I like is more of Hey. Bring me behind this music a little bit. Tell me about this song, give me an interview with this soundwriter or this songwriter. Tell me what the message
is behind this music. Explain this music a little bit. My biggest problem when you're listening to these playlists on Spotify and all the various music services. It's just one song into the next, and I have no idea if that's a new song, it's a song that's fifteen years old, if it's an experimental song they downloaded off SoundCloud, I
have no idea. There's no reference point when you're listening to a playlist, and so by listening to a live streaming station with someone behind the microphone, you can actually get a little bit more information about what you're listening to. And maybe it's just getting older, but I like that. I want to hear what the story is behind this song and why I'm listening to it, and so that's what Apple Music Country is all about. That's what the
other stations are about. That's why I do love Sirius XM. When I'm in my wife's car, I don't have it in mind, but she's got it in hers and I do like it. I like every time I listen, I get a little snippet of something. And that's also why I like terrestrial radio, because it is that exact thing. You're hearing a live person tell you something and you're just getting little snippets here and there, and so for that reason, check it out. I think it's really cool
and hopefully you do too. All right, Let's see if I can get to one more question. Let's see. Fred says, Hey, Rich, I watch your segment on a local station in Sacramento, must be Fox forty. And I used to use wonder List as a two do app. What do you recommend as an equivalent for personal use on an iPhone? Thanks? Fred, I would recommend wonder List went out of fashion because Microsoft purchased them. They were a fantastic to do app and I love them and I used to use them
as well. But Microsoft bought them. They kind of, you know, dismantled it. I think it's gone by now. And they actually came up with a really good app that's very very similar called Microsoft to Do and I love it. I use it. I actually write out my to do list. But I to Microsoft to Do is the best to do list that I've found. And let me explain why
they don't nickel and dime you. When you download Microsoft to Do List, you get all the features without having to unlock in app purchases or pay up this or do that. I mean, I'm not even sure if there is a way to get extra features for paid products.
I don't know, maybe there is. But I also use it because I can have my team member team members on here and I can assign things to them and they can see their to do list and complete them and I don't have to see you know, I can remember what I assigned them to do or ask them to do, and I can oh yeah, let me let me ask them about that. So Microsoft to do. It works on iPhone, it works on Android, it works on
your desktop, MACPC. It's fantastic, highly highly recommended. It recommend it, and you can also attach files you can I mean, there's just so many. The other thing I love about it they have this feature called my Day. So let's say you put all in this the way I do my to do list. Let's say you put a whole bunch of stuff in your to do list, and then the next day, all that stuff just lingers there. What I love about Microsoft to Do is that they move all that stuff to kind of like your tasks, but
then your day is clean again. So it's just a really nice way of kind of remembering the things that you need to do and doing them on a daily basis. It's just really really well done. So Fred that's what I'd recommend, and it's inspired by wonder List. So all right, that's going to do it for the show. Let me just do two more quick little bites here. Instagram rolled out this feature called suggested Posts, which no one likes, but I called it on this podcast many months ago.
I can't find the clip because I don't really think about these podcasts once I'm done, and I don't do any sort of organization for remembering what I've said. But they have a feature that I called it. I said, Instagram is going to get more like TikTok, where you can just continuously scroll and see a whole bunch of stuff.
Well that's exactly what they did. So now when you reach the end of your feed, which is the end of all the stuff that you've been look you know, the people that you follow, there are now suggested posts from people you don't follow, but it's in the stuff that you kind of like to look at. So there
you go. You can now search. You can now scroll forever on Instagram, which, you know, it's kind of a weird thing because Instagram used to have this feature and they still have it that says, hey, you're all caught up at the end of your feed, and that was an idea, you know, that was a feature to keep you less glued to the app. Well they still do
that now. After that, they do suggested posts like oh you're all caught up, but here's some other stuff if you want to just keep scrolling forever and waste your life on Instagram, Netflix is testing. Speaking of wasting your life, Netflix is testing a shuffle play button. I mean, really, folks, are you this wasteful with your time that you need to just click a shuffle play button on Netflix? Now?
If you're saying rich, well you loved it on Hulu. Yes, I loved it on Hulu for Seinfeld and even other shows like Friends, Like I said, they should have an NHBO Max, they should have a shuffle button. Yes. If I love a show like a sitcom and I want to sit down and just waste a half an hour, I want to press shuffle because I don't want have to think about what episode to watch. That works. But
Netflix testing it is like, okay, so it can. It's a test, so not everyone sees this, but it's on your home screen and it will randomly play content it thinks you like. According to tech Crunch, This could be a movie or a show you're currently watching, something you've saved in your list, or a title that's similar to something you've watched that is too wide of a swath
of stuff for me. So just because I bookmarked a documentary, all of a sudden, I'm gonna say shuffle and I'm gonna start watching like an hour and a half documentary. No way, I think this is totally bananas, Like we need to be a little bit more mindful of how we use our time in this world. And a shuffle button just to let Netflix, you know, Carte Blanche play whatever they want in front of my eyes for as much time as they want to take up a mind No way, no, no no, And yes there's a time
and a place for all this stuff. But for me personally, I want to be a little bit more directed with my use of time. And so for that reason, give me shuffle on the shows on Netflix. And if you want, maybe even the hour long show is fine. If you have an hour to kill you just want to watch an episode of Law and Order, fine, that makes sense, But don't just shuffle everything on the service. And maybe, since this is a test, they will come up with
that situation. But for me, I mean, come on, that's that's like a little bit too much of an abuse of my time. But I see, I see the reasoning for it. I mean, I'm not totally saying it's terrible, but I to me, I want a little bit more direction. So all right, oh wow, oh no, what does that music mean? That music means? It is the end of the show. That went fast and I even went longer than normal. Oh let's see what do I say at this point? That's gonna do it for this episode of
the show. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to richon tech dot tv and hit the email button at the bottom of the page. And I'd also love it if you rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com. Slash rich on Tech What did m Let's see? Mjm Blues two four eight said, I've been listening to rich for a few years, and I love that he talks directly to you, like he
wants to help you and not necessarily help promote a product. However, if he's passionate about a product, you will certainly. I haven't read this yet, by the way, he will certainly stand behind it and help you get the most out of it. Well, thank you, Oh a Jersey guy with a world of technical knowledge. Great headline as well. All right, you can find me everywhere at richon Tech. My name is rich damiro On, behalf of everyone that gets this
show to your ears. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe, We will get through this, folks. I feel like we're getting there. I'll talk to you real soon.