Should you take a walk on Amazon Sidewalk?

things happening in the DeMuro house. It is the slide to the holidays. I've been very busy with all kinds of reviews and testing and this and that, but I did do something with my own home network. I did upgrade to Eero Pro six, so this is Euro's new It's basically their top of the line system that you know. I purchased this myself. This is not a test for you know TV. This is just something I wanted because it works with gigabit Internet, which is what I have

at my house, and the Eero Pro six. I got a great deal because what they were doing was they were doing a trade in promotion where you got like twenty percent off if you traded in one of your old routers, and then they also had like a deal. It was like a Cyber Monday, Black Friday kind of deal.

up and working. I think it has something to do with two things going on every time when I switch my routers out, I am. I have like a million devices here that all latch on, so I use the same Wi Fi network and password, and so I think there might be some device that's keeping things like from working properly.

I'm just trying to iron out the kinks here. But anyway, I will continue to test that, and so far, so good. I think overall, I love that on certain phones, like especially the Android phones that I've been testing. There's like a little Wi Fi six signal on the in the Wi Fi bar, which I thought was pretty cool.

your Alexa. Oh there she goes, she's lighting up, listening nothing for you today, right now, Alexa stand down please?

And for me, I said, you've got mail, and I had to do you've and like I had to like write it in a different way, because you can't use any sort of punctuation, Like the apostrophe is not an acceptable character. So I spelled it like youve or something like that. And sure enough, when the mail gets delivered. Now I hear at a little chime in my office and it says you've got mail, and it's great. I mean, why would you not want that? I have been obsessed

with mail my entire life. And there's people, Okay, there's two types of people in this world. People that are obsessed with the mail and people that don't care. So there are there's a group of people in America that when their mail is delivered, they look forward to it and they do go check it immediately or they check it pretty quickly. I've used to be like the immediate kind.

Now I'm somewhere in the middle. I try to go like a week without checking if I can, But that's really really tough, but because I'm not really getting anything. I just like the idea of mail. I don't really get anything of substance, but except bills of course, which you know who.

kind of want to do that now. And then the other one is Why Is and I'll talk about them today in the show as well. Another app that I discovered this week was eXplorist, which I had not ever heard of, but it is an app that is on iPhone and Android and it's really cool. It's an app that sort of helps you discover cool places to take pictures. And I'm sure if you're a photographer, you've known all about this. But I'm not a big photographer, but now I want to be because I'm looking at this and

it's just super super cool. So it's cool because it gives you locations that are nearby. So if you're in a city and you want to take all the coolest pictures you can when you start traveling again, right, I need a sound for this podcast, because that's why it feels. I did travel last weekend safely. Of course, we went to solving and it was a nightmare, honestly, Like I I it was the straw that broke the camel's back

from me. Not that I'm traveling a lot, but I always have this idea of yeah, I could still do stuff like yeah, and no, I just it. There's a lot of people there and it was just not fun. It was like, you know, you had to eat outside in the freezing cold and this and that, and it's just it was not fun. It made me realize that I like my safe space here at home throughout this pandemic. This is where I've lived and I've nested, and I

just like it because it's my place it's safe. I know what happens here, I know it comes, I know it goes, and it just it's where I can be who I want to be, which is a home by right now. And I have dreams of going out of the house, but then you get out and it's like, you know, the mask thing and the you know, the all the social distancing, and it's just not fun. It's like not the way we want our world to be. And yes, I do think you need to be safe, so of course, if you're out and about, you need

to follow all those protocols. But it's exhausting, let's be honest. And so I just realized this weekend that it was just kind of exhausting and sad and I'd just rather be at home. And so that's where I'm gonna be staying from now on until these vaccines start to work on folks and whatever happens and these numbers go down.

from your home internet. So what they're doing is they're taking just a little tiny bit of your home Internet and sort of rebroadcasting it to the whole crowd. And yes, they're doing this in a way that they say is safe, in private and encrypted, and they're only using a portion of your band with less than five hundred megabytes a month.

And the benefit is that all of these Amazon devices and Tile devices at the beginning, and theoretically other smart home devices will always have a signal to latch onto no matter what.

finally it works. And now this little device is off on its own and it's connected to your Wi Fi and it works just fine until your Wi Fi goes out, and now you have to troubleshoot, and now this thing doesn't work anymore, it doesn't respond. So Amazon's idea is that if they can create this kind of super network called sidewalk that's just always pervasive in every network in every neighborhood. When you open up that same Ring app on your phone or Amazon app to set up a new device, it says.

know how to reconnect because I can't get to your internet. Well, if sidewalk was around, it would just go, oh, Rich's Wi Fi is not working anymore. Let's latch onto this sidewalk network that we find here, and okay, let me go send it a notification to Rich, Hey this is not working. We need to reconnect. And then you go, oh interesting, okay cool, and or just self heals somehow, you know.

general thoughts, but I think it's pretty awesome. And yeah, you can sit there and say, Rich, I'm never listening to you again, because how dare you say that this is awesome? Because this sounds like an invasion of my privacy, and I get it, it does sound that way. But at the end of the day, what Amazon is trying to build here is actually pretty cool. It's a crowdsourced Wi Fi network that sort of goes anywhere and helps

a lot of people. Now, yes, it helps their products the most, and theoretically or later on, they'll probably have other products that latch on, and Amazon may or may not charge these other products to latch onto this network that's being crowdsourced by our free internet. But I like the idea of my tile working everywhere. And I've had tiles in the past and I dropped them because I mean, I got rid of them because they're just not worth it.

If if there's no phone in the area where your tile is It's just it's useless, and so what's the point. And with all these smart home stuff, I am deathly afraid of changing my Wi Fi password or network because all of my smart home devices will not follow through. Now if they were on this sidewalk thing. Guess what, Oh, you change your WiFi. You tell one time inside your app that you're changing your network credentials, and it says to all these little devices, oh, bing binging Rich changed

all of his stuff here take it. And so, yes, there are privacy concerns. I get it, but I also see the benefit of this network. If it is robust and it is working in a big way, I think it's pretty darn cool. So with all that said, the main thing that a lot of the tech folks are having problems with is the fact that Amazon is turning on this network by default. And I take issue with that as well. But I see why they're doing it. They're doing it because they want to make sure as

many products as possible are on board. Now, I mentioned it was Ring and Echo products. When it comes to the Ring side of things, it's this is the reason I did not show a video doorbell in my story on KTLA at all, it's because it doesn't affect the video doorbell for the broadcasting side of things, right, so the video doorbells are not going to be bridges, at least not now.

to do this, And I do agree that Amazon. I mean, they made the opt out instructions easy and clear, and they sent them to everyone, But give me a break. Ninety nine point nine percent of people that bought an Echo Dot for thirty bucks are not going to take the time to go into their Alexa app and switch this thing off. And Amazon knows that, and that's why they made this opt out and they said, oh, it's going to be on by default, by the way, And so I do take I do take issue with that.

But at the same time, as a tech reporter, this is why I kind of, you know, made this a big deal on my social media and on KTLA and my other stations, because people need to know about this and they need to opt out if they're not comfortable. I'm not saying I'm not telling you whether you should be comfortable or not. I'm just telling you how I feel. And if you feel that same way, opt out. It's

pretty easy. Just go into the app, open up your Alexa app, tap more, tap settings, tap account settings, tap Amazon Sidewalk, and switch it off and you're out if you don't want to be a part of it. But you know, if you do want to be a part of it. And this is you know, Amazon and all these tech companies, they try a lot of stuff, not all of it works. This may not take off. Who knows.

As more of the mainstream media get gets word of this, you know, it'll probably blow up a little bit and people know about it and it'll be aware, and then maybe enough people will turn it off where it just doesn't work for Amazon and they'll have to figure out plan B. But we'll say they have enough products out there and enough people out there that won't really understand this that it may work and it will have some benefits and it will be free to people to use.

I hope, I mean it can't. Could you imagine if they use our internet to power this thing and then end up charging for it. I mean, that would be a problem. But anyway, there you have that sidewalk now, you know. Let's get to our first question on the show. It is from Deborah. Deborah says, do you like Edge Browser? Is it compatible with Max? Chrome has been having issues, Safari has beach balls. I heard you were using it testing it out. Thanks Debra, Debra, you are correct. I

have been using the Edge browser from Microsoft. In fact, it's what I'm looking at right now. And I never thought I would do this, but I did because Chrome was grinding to a halt on my MacBook, and it would do this weird thing where when I would first start up my MacBook and first start using Chrome, or actually just any time while I'm using it, it would just sort of freeze up and stop working, like literally just freeze and I couldn't do anything for about, you know,

anywhere from ten seconds to thirty seconds. And it got pretty frustrating. And so I dealt with that for many, many months, and then I was like, okay, let me you know, and it's just slow. I can't do my WordPress posts in it. It's just really really slow. Checking email became so slow. Gmail inside Chrome became slow. I mean, how does that happen? Not very good? So I said, all right, you know what, and I tried Safari. And I like Safari because it's very fast, but I feel

like it's limited with my extensions that I need. I need specific extensions that I use for my job, and I don't think I had all those. I'm not really sure because didn't really check it out. And so I said, you know what, let me check out Edge. Edge is kind of built on the same exact platform as Chrome.

It's Microsoft, which is kind of weird. But honestly, I've been very impressed with other Microsoft products, like I've been using Outlook, I used OneDrive, I used I used Microsoft to Do and I'm kind of like, gosh, I feel like Microsoft's doing kind of a nice job of things, and so let me test this out. I downloaded it

and it's been fast. It's been speedy. Yes, it is slowed down in certain aspects, like especially yesterday I was writing a blog post on word Press and it was it was pretty slow, but I'm beginning to think that's more of a word Press thing, and I, you know, anyway, I don't know if I'm gonna stick with it forever, but so far, I'm loving it and I think it's pretty great and I haven't missed anything from Chrome. The only thing is you do have to change your default

browser to Google if you want that. The other feature I really like, that's kind of cool. When I open up a new tab, it gives me this cool new tab page, which is kind of fun. They try to like push MSN on me, which I'm like, ugh, these stories are so gross. They're like I call them lowest common LCD Lowest Common Denominator stories. They're like these headlines that are just so click Baity and whatever.

Microsoft Edge. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's simpler. I wouldn't say it's cleaner, actually, but it is. It's just kind of working. So I never thought i'd see the day where I go back, go back in time to a Microsoft Internet browser. Okay, speaking of the future, Warner Brothers is just kind of blowing up Hollywood. It is totally changing the way that we see movies and it's gonna

be pretty awesome next year. So Warner Brothers is going to release all of their new movies next year on HBO Max for a month and this is.

Matrix four. So not every movie on here. I didn't mention everyone because I don't really know all of them. I don't really follow too many movies. But it just sounds awesome. I know they're doing wonder Woman. I talked about it that that's gonna be on Christmas Day, so I think it's really cool. So what they're doing is again they released the movie in the theater, it's gonna be on HBO Max for one month, and then it's gonna come off HBO Max and sort of go through

what they call the the platform Windows or whatever. So it's gonna go to like, you know, Video on Demand and then Blu Ray and then finally make its way back to HBO Max eventually, or maybe be sold to like different products like you know who Hulu or are what's the other one?

Why does Apple Music? Apple keep putting music in my music from a certain artist? You too, I delete it every time, but their music keeps coming into my music when I play my music shuffled. I've never downloaded any of their music. I don't really care for them. As far as I can see, I'm not being charged for the download. I'm just curious why music was added to my music. Great podcast, Keep up the good work.

to be at. They were at Oh my gosh, this was in twenty fourteen, and I was there and I remember they said, and now you two is up on stage and wow, okay, boom YouTube performs, which is kind of cool. And then they said, and by the way, we are gifting everyone their latest album in their Apple Music You open your iPhone and boom, it's magically there. And I'll admit I never really listened to it, and I didn't really care for it, but whatever, I mean, it was fine.

will help you get it out of your collection. No, you can't get rid of it by deleting it. It's just there forever.

oxygen monitoring, heart rate tracking. It's got water and dust resistance. It's got your activity tracking, it's got sleep tracking. It works with Google Fit and Apple Health, and it will also let you control the Wise products from your wrist, so that's cool. It works with notifications. It's got all the apps that it works with, so you can get the notifications you need on your wrist. And this is coming in February. I emailed Wise immediately. I said, you

got to get me on this list. You got to extend me one of these things as soon as it's available, because I'm going to get a bazillion questions about it. They said, sure, So I should be get this thing, hopefully early next year. It's shipping in February. Pre Orders are open now. You know, I find pre orders to be a tricky thing for the average consumer. I am I am privileged in the fact that I can get things before a lot of people and test them out and form opinions on them before a lot of people

have to pony up their actual hard earned cash. Now that's part of my job, so I mean, that's what I do. And it's a good thing at the end of the day for consumers because you know, I can tell you what you think in that timeframe of the pre order. Now, with a lot of pre orders, it's tricky because you're buying stuff sight onseen and with something like the Wise Watch, now it's twenty bucks, so it's

not that much money. And if you bought it and you hated it, yeah, you just return the thing, or even at the very worst, you know, give it to a friend, or you lost twenty dollars if you just stomp on it and say, this is the worst thing I've ever spent my money on.

So wise watch. Continue to kind of keep track of that one and just see how it progresses, because I have high hopes for it.

would recommend two things. Number one, if you have an iPhone, you can turn on a filter that's called filter messages from unknown senders, and that I believe is let's see, is that inside the phone app could be inside the phone Let's see. Okay, So go into messages and it says filter onknown senders.

it might be a third party. But if you want, you can switch to the Google one and get their spam protection and it is built right in and it's free.

look up how much a fire TV cube is. You can use a webcam on your TV, which means you can make video calls on your TV, which I've been waiting for forever. No one seems to have figured this out in a big way. Oh wow, Fire TV Cube is eighty bucks. I thought this was more like one twenty, but eighty dollars. Oh used to be one twenty right now it's eighty I might actually buy one of these things from my mom right now, because I want to do this. I want her to have a webcam on

her TV. If she's okay with it. I'm not sure I get it. It's a little privacy insensitive because you've got a you know, a camera staring at you on your TV all day. But you can get one with a little slider thing that you know, covers up the lens. You don't feel like big brother's watching you all day. But you plug the webcam into the back of the into the back of the fire TV cube. It says, oh, you plugged in a webcam. Here, let's set up video came and you can video call in a couple different ways.

say her name anymore. Anyway, you plug in the webcam and you can call someone with this app, so all they need is the app on their phone and you'd be able to call them, which is pretty cool, so you don't have to like you know, most people have like an Amazon account, so they can just sign in through that use it on their phone, or if you have an Echo device like one of their Echo display devices,

it'll work through that. And hopefully as this thing gets more robust, you'll be able to do more things like maybe use Skype or maybe use Zoom and call anyone that way. But anyway, it's very early stage. It's not

very simple. I don't think this is going to be the end all with this, but I think it's cool to have this as an option because it's pretty much, I think, at this point, the most inexpensive option for adding video calling to your TV eighty dollars plus a webcam, which is probably they gave a list of them that works, but could probably maybe get one for you anywhere from fifty to one hundred bucks. And yes it's expensive, but

it's still a nice solution. And I think the problem with all of these solutions are that is it something that someone that is not very tech savvy can sign up for and set up.

this thing up, and I just can't do that. So it's like this catch twenty two situation we're in right now, where we're getting these things that can help us communicate during this pandemic, but it's really tough to set up for the people that need them the most, which is people like my mom that I live far away from that I want to stay in touch with, but I can't go there to set this up for her, and

she's not doing herself. You need a compatible webcam, a micro USB to USB adapter, and your fire TV cube. Oh yeah, okay, hey, Mom, just pull that micro USB to USB adapter you got laying in the drawer there. No, of course she doesn't have that, nobody has that. I do, actually do I have micro USB to USB. Probably not, that's yeah, I probably don't have that if I can order it from Amazon. Kind of cool though. I love

the idea of video chatting on the TV. Also, the other aspect I like of this is that you don't have to switch inputs. Uses a fire TV stick, I would just switch her to the cube and now when I video call, it's just like while she's watching TV boom, video call incoming. How neat is that you don't have to switch inputs, whereas with something like a standalone device, like if you somehow created a webcam that sat on your TV that was able to plug into the HDMI,

you'd still have the issue of changing HDMI inputs. It wasn't it wouldn't always be on and ready to go to receive calls, because you know, even if the thing physically or visual visually, even if the thing made an audible ring. I mean, how many people are techy enough to like run over to their TV, pick up the remote, change to a different input.

I get it. There are ways of doing this, but you need to make it easy for the average person so that they can answer a call. The things we take for granted that just are very complicated for people that are not Techi. All right, let's see, Elaine says. I'm a senior that listens to your broadcasts on TV. I use a Dell computer and an iPhone seven. I'd like to buy a tablet, not an Apple, and would like your device on what to buy many thanks Elaine.

down to ninety dollars. So I would say it sells a lot at one nineteen, so i'd look for that price. And it has gone down to ninety over and over and over.

be able to install those easily. Yes, they can be installed, not easily. And if you're telling me you're not very techy, oh, you didn't say you're not very techy. You just said you're a senior that listens.

have Google Play. And at the end of the day, I'd say you're best served by going with the gold standard of tablets, which is an iPad three hundred and twenty nine dollars for the iPad ten point two latest generation, which is I believe the eighth generation three hundred and twenty nine dollars and many, many times you can find it cheaper if you just go on Google and just type you know, iPad and deals and yeah, ten point two inch iPad goes down to two ninety nine very often,

especially on on Amazon. And why I say that is because look, Apple invented the tablet.

think the iPad is going to do that. And I had a person email or tweet me and said they're still using their original original iPad from I mean, how many years ago did the iPad come out. It's got to be you know, ten years. Maybe I don't know, something something wild like that. Yeah, I was working at tech Meme, so I think it was ten years, at least ten years. I've been at KTLA for ten years and tech Meme was before that, so ten years. I

remember sitting there watching the unveiling of the tablet. I was not at the event, and Steve Jobs on stage and just you know, this tablet came out and I just thought to myself, Oh my gosh, they've done it again. They have changed the world one more time. They did it with the iPhone, now they're doing it with the tablet. And I remember going out and buying that immediately. It was this big honkin' thick tablet that just was like a slab of like thick bezel glass and thick aluminum

on the back that was like kind of brushed. I feel like I can't I'm trying to remember if it was like a brush like almost like a little grittier than the slick.

many years. And I switched to YouTube Music when the writing was on the wall that this was going away. But I'll tell you the one reason, the one reason why I used Google play Music over anything else was a single playlist from Songza and the playlist was called drum roll Please blogged fifty the most buzzed about tracks from the worlds of pop, R and B, hip hop,

electronic and indie. And the reason I loved blog fifty is because I felt like I was so cool knowing about every major popular song before anyone else in the world, and this was my secret way of figuring them out. I knew every song from every artist before anyone else knew about it. And why because I just listened to this blog fifty and it was what it is and

it still is. It's still around, it still lives on in YouTube music, but Blogged fifty looks at what all the bloggers are writing about on all these things, like remember I ever hear of like Pitchfork. I don't even understand what Pitchfork is saying when they write posts about things. It's like it just does. It's not even written in English to me. But yet somehow they know about the hot new artists that are coming out, and it's like

Pitchfork and stuff like that. They look at all their posts and then they come up with this playlist and you know, it's just the playlist that for me define music for so many years. I've gotten a little way from it because now I listen to mostly country music and thanks to my wife, and now I know every country artist, and I just have gotten away from like the Jenny Lewises of the world, and I'm looking through their playlist. BTS is on there, Megan the Stallion, Like

no idea, who that is? Miley Cyrus, I know who that is, The Weekend, I know who that is. Rico, Nasty Goodie Mob, Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're still around because Goodie Mob.

with us? And I was like no, and I like ran away because I was like so scared because here I am, this little college kid who had no idea what Hollywood was all about. Was like literally just off the plane from New Jersey, and I'm so scared of everything in Los Angeles and I'm like.

some experience makes. Right Now, I just say yes to everything, and it somehow sometimes backfires. Anyway, That's why I that's why I used Google play Music for so many years, and now I've tried Spotify. I also have a subscription to Apple Music, and you know, I use them for different things. Apple Music mainly for my watch, and I talked about how I got away from it, but I ended up breaking down and getting it again because of various things.

uber driver that doesn't pay five dollars a month for Pandora. Yes, five dollars is not much, but you don't know the financial situation of this person or what this person may be doing with that five dollars, maybe paying down credit card debt, maybe giving it to charity. I think young people are being targeted by companies with messages of just a few dollars a month, and as you know, it adds up quickly. I think a better message would be to give the uber driver props for saying no at

some point to monthly fees. Just thought i'd share my thoughts and perspectives. Thanks for doing what you do and making it easy to connect, Chris. Chris, I one hundred percent, one hundred percent understand where you're coming from. And yes, maybe my privilege was just showing through my words, and I totally understand what you're saying. And it's interesting because I was there when I was you know, coming up

through the business. I was broke for many, many, many years, and I can still tell you exactly what that feels like. I still am scared every day of you know, where I'm going to get my next meal, where I'm going to you know, how I'm gonna pay for this, How I'm gonna pay for that. It's also one of the reasons why I found Dave Ramsey in my life and made it my lifelong goal to not be beholden to debt and credit cards and companies that just love to

get you on this monthly payment. And I guess that's why I don't see the five dollars a month these days as so much of a big deal, because I know I can stop it at any time. And I always say, if I was, you know, unemployed tomorrow, I would Spotify's going, YouTube Music is going, every tiny little subscription, HBO Max. It's been nice knowing you, and it's happened before to me. You know, I have been I have been laid off twice in my life and I have

left a job once. And so I've been working for you know, twenty years, and in those twenty years, yeah, there's been some ups and downs, and I totally totally get it, and it's not something I talk about all the time. But believe me, I am very cognizant of you know, financial situations of people. And it's a reason why I don't like to judge folks for what they do.

it for me? You know, who's it for me to judge someone who may not be doing as well as I am. And so you know what, and no matter where you are on any level, that should be the case. And so believe me, I ate rice and beans and beans and rice for many years of my life, and the ninety nine cent pizzas and the free food. You know, I used to go to these events and if there was free food. It was like the most amazing thing of my life, you know, as a journalist, and it's like, oh,

what kind of cheap free eats can I have? And you know, it's just it's part of you know, journalism is not the most lucrative job in the world, and there are many other jobs that are not as not as great, and so no, I mean, my job is great. I love my job, and you know, it's been very good to me, and so I'm not complaining.

many many people can do because it is gosh. I remember when I was working in Louisiana, I used to get my paycheck and I was so so messed up with my debt and stuff that I used to have to literally pay the credit card companies by a cashier check because they wouldn't take anything else or a money order, and so I used to have to get my paycheck and secretly i'd run to the post office get my little money order and pay my credit cards because I

was paying them off. They were all frozen and done, and nobody would give me a credit card at that time, and I just it was so like, I was so embarrassed. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want anyone to know that I had this. Like now, of course, you know, many more people talk about debt and there's a million podcasts about it, and it's my biggest goal to stay out of it at this point.

mention it quickly because it's a new option. I don't know if everyone's going to take advantage of it or a lot of you are, but it's just kind of nice to know, especially since Google Photos is now going to charge. And I said on last week's podcast that now that they're going to charge, it kind of opens the door for everyone. And so there's lots of options. Now anyone who has cloud storage is on kind of

an even playing field. And Verizon is now doing unlimited clouds storage for twenty dollars a month, which is pretty interesting to me, someone who pays ten dollars a month for two terabytes.

whole Verizon desktop. They have a desktop app. I went and I downloaded it, and sure enough, it said, oh, which one do you want to sign up for? And I was like, wait, I thought I got some free Verizon cloud storage. I apparently don't anymore because on a couple a couple months ago, I downgraded my Verizon plan to save me twenty dollars a month, and I guess one of the things that was a casualty and that was my free cloud storage. So I no longer get it.

I couldn't even try this out without paying. Well, you can try thirty days for free, which I may do that, but I.

happy Thanksgiving and some quality time with your family. My wife, Sally, and I are looking for an audio system for our home. We are torn behind the Sonos and the new Apple Pods HomePods. We saw your report and now we're intrigued in your opinion, which would give us more bang for our buck. At this point, we're kind of leaning towards the Apple. Thank you for your insight, Adam. I did have the HomePods set up in my house and I

was so ready to switch over. But I'll be honest, it just became too much work and it was too complicated, and as good as Apple has made it for me personally, I already have my sons it performs better. And I sat there and I said, why am I trying to go crazy implementing this Apple system that is a little bit more complicated when I already have Sonos and it works with all my music services, and that's what I'm sticking with. So my Sonos system is old at this point.

All my speakers are out of date. I need to buy new ones. And I almost pulled the trigger on a Black Friday with their Cyber Monday deal and I didn't, but I will. I mean, because speakers are speakers. They still work. It's just I don't know what I'm missing,

but it just feels like I need something new. And the HomePods are great, and I still think if you have let's say, you know, if you're setting this up for the first time and you are super Apple centric, the HomePods are amazing and they're pretty darn good for ninety nine dollars for all the rooms of your house. It's just it's going to be a little bit trickier to set them up, like for the home whole home audio,

and it's not really that tricky. It's just once you're used to the way Sonos works, it's just kind of like it's just there. Sonos entire business is whole home audio, and so Apple has a lot of different things. They do them pretty well. But you know this the HomePods are great, and I can't recommend them enough. I think they're awesome. But you're saying, what's the most for your buck? I mean, I guess bang for your buck would probably be the Apple stuff. But I think the best whole

home audio solution is still the sons. So I hope that answers your question. I know I'm kind of like waffling here and you're probably sitting here going, oh my gosh, Rich, a couple of weeks ago, you're talking about how great they are. But you know, these things take a little bit of time to kind of figure out. And what got me with the Apple stuff is it just became a matter of like I didn't know which speakers were in the group where the volume was at, and it

became a little bit tricky. And so when things get tricky and complicated and I press play in the bedroom and all of a sudden, I hear the music blasting in the dining room, like, oh, what's going on here? And that's what caused me to just go and get all the Sono speakers back out of the garage, set them all up, and.

help other people discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech, or just submit your rating, you know, on iTunes or whatever you use, Apple Podcasts or whatever app. You can find me online at rich on tech. I'm on all social media networks there. My name is Rich Jamiro. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for being a part of this show. I do

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