Apple might fix your device for free ditching, so nos for Google Home, my little experiment, t Mobiles new TV service plus your tech questions answered?
What's going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. And it's also the place where I answer the questions that you send me, and you send me a lot of them.
Believe me.
I'm Rich Demiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Did I already mention that I think I did? What's going on? I am recording this at a slightly different time than I typically do, so if I'm a little off during this show, that is why it's a much earlier time than I normally do this. But that's because I'm speaking to a usc class today, and of course it's via zoom, because you know, that's how things are done these days.
But it'd be fun so anyway.
Lots of stuff going on, you know, We've got just the tech world for the holidays. Is like, I've never seen so many gadgets in my life.
And maybe it's just.
Because there's so many different variants of these things now, but I just feel like it's been a lot. I mean, we've got new consoles, we've got new cable services, we've got new phones. And it's not just like one phone, it's like two pixels. It's not just like one Samsung. We've gone through like six Samsungs, not just one one plus phone. It's been like three one plus phones, maybe two. So I'm getting through a lot of that stuff, and it's been a lot of fun to test it all.
Today is the day that the iPhone twelve Mini, the iPhone twelve Proms, and the home Pod Mini are all available for pre order. Now, I know that people love to pre order things, and in the case of an iPhone, you kind of know what you're gonna get most of the time.
But and I am very fortunate.
That, of course, I get to play with a lot of this stuff beforehand, so I have a very good sense of what it's all about.
But I actually can't imagine. Well that's not totally true.
I was gonna say I can't imagine ordering stuff sight on scene, but I have done that in the past, especially. I remember I ordered the gosh I think it was the Pixel wasn't called the Pixel back then.
I think it was just the Nexus.
But I remember I was in Russia for a you know, a segment. We were covering a show over there, and I, you know, the new the new Nexus was unveiled and I ordered it sight on scene from my cell phone while I was over there, and you know, it came in a couple weeks whatever.
But anyway, so I get it.
And if you're getting an iPhone twelve, now, if it was a Mini, I'd probably want to see it. If it was a Max, I think, you know, you kind of know what you're getting in the in the twelve, you knew what you're getting. The home Pod, I mean at ninety nine bucks. I think that is going to be a really really big seller this holiday season. So looking forward to testing all that stuff out. Something I have been playing with though, is T Mobile's new service,
T Vision. This is their answer to cable TV. A couple of years ago, I did a segment on T Vision, which was much more complicated. So we went to this hotel room in Westwood, it was the w Westwood. They had it all set up there and it was their version of cable TV, and it was very, very complicated because you had to have this in your area.
They had to.
I think they had to come to your house with Cox Cable put the box in and it was great and it was really cool. But the problem was like who is going to do that? And so that's what I said in my review, and I said, you know what, I think in a year or two, this is all going to be delivered just to anyone through you know, a set top box, you know, like an Apple TV. And sure enough, that's what we have with T Mobile T Vision. So I was testing this out and it's
it's a couple things. So it's basically a cable streaming service kind of like YouTube TV or Sling, but it's T Vision, so it's T Mobiles version.
It starts at ten dollars a month.
It's a little misleading because you know, they they talk about all these great features, but for that ten dollars a month feature or price point, you don't get the DVRs. You have to pay five extra bucks a month on top of that. So for ten dollars a month, let me give you the levels they've got. So they've got tee Vision.
Let's see.
The easiest one is Vibe. That's the ten dollars a month that gives you thirty channels plus two simultaneous streams. Then you've got t Vision Live, which I think more people would get. That's forty dollars a month, and that features thirty plus channels including sports and news. Then you've got t Vision Live TV plus everything's plus these days that gives you ten more channels. That's like forty channels including regionals, football and golf. That's for fifty dollars a month.
And then you've got t Vision Live Zone, which gives you everything that's at sixty dollars a month. That's the one that I tested out. In fact, actually no, I tested out. Wow, I tested out the top of the line with Stars, Showtime and Epics, which is all even more expensive. So the package that they showed me, of course, okay here, so the package they showed me was the Live TV Live Zone, which was sixty plus Stars plus nine. That's sixty nine plus Showtime eleven. That's seventy, that's eighty
plus Epix that's six. So the package they gave me, of course, was eighty six dollars. I only had it for a week or so. But see, this is the interesting thing about reviewers, and you know what we got of course is top of the line, so when I'm scrolling through, it's like, whoa, there's so many channels on here. But it's also exactly the same price as cable at that point, So the vibe at ten dollars a month, I do think is pretty compelling. I'll tell you the
channels you get. You get AMC, Animal Planet, BBC, America World News, b ET, CMT, Comedy Central, Discovery, DIY, Food Network, HGTV, Hallmark channels, a whole bunch of those, a whole bunch of let's see IFC, Investigation, Discovery, bunch of MTVS, Nickelodeon, Nick Junior, Nicktoons, Open Network, Paramount Sundance Teen, Nick, TLC, Travel Channel, TVLand, VH one, and we TV, a lot
of Viacom channels there. But the reality is, if you just care about your kind of entertainment programming, like the fluffy like HGTV stuff, for ten bucks a month, that's pretty good.
Now.
I will just say personally, I have been without cable for a couple of years now. I can't imagine subscribing to cable to me. I just don't see the point of a thousand channels on my TV just streaming all day long. I've got all the streaming services, and yes, I subscribe to a lot of them, but to me, that's the way it works. I don't need a grid with a whole bunch of stuff just on TV. Now with my local news, I do have an antenna so I can watch KTLA and other sorted local channels, but
that's it. And that's fine because that's for live news that is streaming and at a certain time. But to me, if I'm gonna watch an episode of house Hunters or whatever, why not just undemand it. Why do I have to tune in halfway through?
And I get it.
What I've been doing with this T Vision is flipping through and it just reminds me of kind of like old school TV, like growing up in my house where my parents used to just my dad specifically, we just flip through channels and just find something to watch. That is not the way of the world for me personally anymore.
But anyway, I.
See a big, you know, a big upsell with this T mobile T Vision because you can get it on all the set top boxes except Roku. They also have their own dongle, which is fifty dollars. They'll probably give that away to certain customers, and you know, it's an easy upsell. You're in the T Mobile store and of course they're you're upgrading your phone, and they say, how much do you pay for cable? You say, I don't know, eighty bucks? They say, how would you like to pay ten?
And next thing you know, you're on the T Vision train. So anyway, I do think what they did with the service is excellent. It's slicked, the DVR is great, everything's fast. It works just as good on my Chrome Cast TV as it does on their dongle.
But I just don't need it. And it's fun.
It's been fun to have, but I just, you know, I don't need that kind of amount of stuff all the time.
I'm good with my you know.
If I want to watch a movie, I just go to HBO Max or wherever else's streaming.
I'm fine with that system right now.
All right, let's get to the first question of the day. Steve says, love your podcast, never miss it, Thank you. I bought an Apple Watch Series five. I like most aspects of it, but I don't like how it handles messages. I don't like to save messages on my iPhone. I delete all conversations at the end of the day. Wow, that's extreme. On the Watch app on my phone under messages, I've selected mirror my iPhone, but the watch does not mirror my deletions. Do you know how to have my
watch truly mirror messages on my phone? If not, is there a way to clear off all the messages on my watch with one instruction instead of having to go through the cumbersome procedure of deleting each conversation.
One by one. Thank you, Steve in Beaumont, California. Interesting. This is Steve.
You touch on an interesting thing with text messages because I go back and forth with texts, thinking I should keep them forever as a record of everything I've ever said to someone in my life, which is kind of cool because you know, like it's kind of funny. I have Google Voice and that I've never really deleted messages
from because it just saves them forever. So sometimes when people text me through my Google Voice number and they get it wrong instead of texting me my personal number, it'll come up like a conversation from like seven years ago, like the last time we talked on Google Voice, And it's really fun to kind of look back and see what you were saying. But I totally get text messages are also meant to be ephemeral, and you know you can delete them at the end of the day.
That's fine.
What I think you need to do is go in and I will say, I Messages is really funky. I don't think it's very perfect, but you know it's supposed to sync, and it didn't until maybe two years ago or a year ago. But what you need to do is go onto your iPhone and go into Apple id iCloud and then messages where it says apps using Eyecloud and make sure that's turned on. And once that's turned on, that's called messages in the cloud. It should sink your changes from your phone.
To your watch.
I found that I'm having a tough time with that right now with my computer. My I messages are not truly sinking, and it's kind of weird and it's kind of bugging me.
And right now I'm looking at one.
Two, three, four messages that I've looked at on my phone that are still well, let's see here. Let me I'm gonna just look at this one and read it. Okay, So it did just sync up and let me see if I delete this one here, and uh, let's see if it deletes from my phone. Delete and let's see one Mississippi two, Mississippi three, Mississippi four, Misissippi five.
Okay, still not deleted. So yeah, I don't know.
Maybe they don't like to it, should delete it, but it just didn't on my phone, and I just deleted on my computer. So that's the best case scenario is to try to do it like that and make sure that all those things are turned on. And that's the best I can say, Steve. But I message is a thing that I don't think I'll ever figure out in my entire life.
It is.
It's very tricky, and you know, it's just one of those things. It's like the Apple mystery. Everything with Apple, I feel like, is so mysterious, Like I have no idea, like my email address I signed up for years ago, all the stuff that I've stored in the cloud, like I don't even understand how to access half of it, whereas with like at with Android, like okay, I've got my photos and Google Photos, I've got my notes there in ever note like I can tell where things are.
With iCloud, it's just this weird abyss.
And like, right now it's telling me that I've all this storage taken up even though I'm not really using iCloud photos, and it's just like, what's.
Going on here? I don't know.
So I did a little experiment. Moving on now, let me take a sip of my tea.
Here. I did a little experiment.
And I was thinking that I'm kind of getting sick of sons because it's kind of gotten a lot slower over the years, and I also feel like the voice stuff is kind of fun to have. And so I have a couple of these Google Homes around the house, and I figured, you know what, let me take a little deeper dive into this. Let me actually replace my Google my Sonos speakers with Google homes and see what happens.
So I don't have enough Google Homes for all of them, but I replaced a couple of the main ones and I put the speakers in the garage. And this is just a test to see, like could I use Google Home instead of Sonos? And there are some benefits. I think the pros are that I can buy these speakers for way cheaper because Sonos, you know, you're looking at minimum two hundred, whereas the Google Speakers minimum you know,
they go as low as fifty bucks. But you can you know, the one I want is like one hundred, and I can get them in various sizes. So for a small area, you know, I can just put one of the Google Home minis there. But for a bigger area, I can go with one of their new Nest audios
I think they're called. And so, you know, now my soundbar is still Sonos, my surround system in the living room is still Sonos because I didn't want to replace all that and you really can't right now with the Google Speakers, but I read a rumor that that's coming, and you know, so here it is. What I've realized in the past couple of days is it is very nice to be able to come home and just say, hey, Gee, play you know, some music, play some music, and boom,
the speakers come to life. I found that grouping the speakers is way more complicated because you can only do it from the Google Home display.
Right now.
They don't have an app that lets you do that, which is really annoying. And I've noticed that the sound levels are very all over the place compared to sonos so Sonos, I could group the speakers and I could put the sound at a nice clip that would just sound really nice and mellow throughout the entire house.
And with this I'm just not finding.
Either it's the speakers don't fill the room as much, or it's either really loud or really soft, and I can't really find a good middle ground. So it's a tricky And of course my wife doesn't like it as much because she's finding it a little trickier. But you know, I told her, I said, you know, just start with like a couple of commands, you know, like play you know, the highway on serious XM, and you know, like simple
things like that. And I also like the fact that with sons you can go through and find like the playlists that you like, like, you can favorite them, and it's really easy to start them, whereas with the Google Home speakers, I really like that I can directly play things from my apps. So if I'm on Spotify, and part of the beauty of like Spotify and Google play Music is that it surfaces playlists that it thinks you'll like based on the time of the day. And so
if I'm focusing on work in the morning. You know, I open up the app and there's a work playlist and you know, nice focus instrumental kind of thing and you know, boom Whereas so NOS doesn't really do that. It's just it's just your stuff that you've played before
and that's it. Also, I've noticed that when you do cast to speakers, since I have so many of them in my house, including like the Google Chrome casts, it's like there's so many targets when you go to cast something like when you say like, oh, send this to that speaker, I'm like looking for like ten minutes in this in the scroll, like wait, is that is that living room TV?
Or is that living room screen or is that living room speaker? Like what? So that's a little tricky.
And again my note here I have is that the music doesn't seem to be as ambient as it is with Sons, Like Sons clearly has the audio acoustics down and Google may you know, maybe I'm just getting used to it, but it's you know anyway, So I don't know if the experiment's gonna last. Personally, I do love that I could outfit my home for a lot cheaper, and it took me a while to build up the Sono speakers and you know.
We'll just see.
But I kind of like it is easier to kind of start the music. It's just tougher to group the music. And that's the main that's the main trouble I'm running into. Otherwise, it is fun to have the speakers. The only other issue I see is that when you have multiple Google homes, they all sort of react when you say hey gee, and it's like this little fight for who's gonna respond, and it's not always the speaker that you want. So I'll keep you posted on my little Google Home slash
Sonos experiment. All right, Dillia says, I dropped my iPhone eleven Max pro Promax and cracked the back side glass. What can I do to fix it? No insurance, Dilia. There are so many places you can bring this. So the first one is a company called I Cracked, and I Cracked actually comes to you.
I don't know if they're still doing it. Let's see if they're.
Doing it right now with uh um, yeah, they are still doing it even though so yeah, so less than an hour they will come to you and the pricing. Let's see if they Let's see what the price is I'm gonna put me Oh wow, it's not available on my zip code? Uh oh do they like oh uh oh oh.
It looks like oh you know what, Yeah, it looks like I cracked has really.
Oh it doesn't. Let's see locations. Oh do they not do this anymore nationwide? California? Interesting? It says they do California, But I just put in like three zip codes and it.
Did not come up.
So hm, anyway, okay, they are still doing it nine oh two one oh okay, says it's not available at in this time, So maybe they're just not doing it right now with the uh, you know, the whole COVID thing. But they do come to you. So that's that's one. The other one is you break I fix and that one, if you're in the LA area at least has a bunch of locations. They might even be outside of Los Angeles.
But that's a good way to do it. And if you look at these things, you know they're gonna it's not gonna be you know, it depends on your phone and depends what they're Yeah, they do have them all over the place. Oh yeah, this is everywhere. So I'm trying to see like what there repairs are.
So let's go cell phone and let's see carry in.
Okay, let's choose our device. Let's choose a an iPhone eleven Promax. Okay, and let's see what they're getting for a screen repair iPhone eleven Promax Okay, wow, original iPhone two G. Can you imagine what is wrong?
Broken screen?
Uh? Select a store for pricing, so it looks like this might be a kind of a okay, oh wow, oh okay. Four hundred and nineteen dollars and ninety nine cents.
That is a lot.
Why is that so expensive? That is a real That's that seems very expensive. Let me try a different store. Are they all different?
Yeah? Four nineteen Well, that's that's a lot, all.
Right, So I mean yeah, with Apple Care though, it's kind of the same thing.
Now.
The other thing I would do is, you know, you're just you're just pre paying for the Apple Care upfront, so it doesn't feel as bad when you have to pay because there is a there is a little deductible you have to pay when you get your screen repaired.
It's not as much, but still, you know, it's expensive.
When you add it all up, you're looking at you know, Apple Care plus the deductibles, you know, over one hundred dollars at least, if not more than that. Now they let you do Apple Care monthly, so you know, it's tough to kind of figure it out. But there's also opportunity cost and pre paying for all that stuff, and you may never use it. So what I would do is look on iPhone or look on Yelp for iPhone repair, and you know, just look for a place near you
that has a lot of good ratings. You may not get the warranty, but you want to go to a place that's been around for a while that has good ratings and reviews, and it'll be just fine. They're going to repair your screen. They do it every day, and it should be just fine. Now, earlier I mentioned chrome Cast with Google TV, or maybe I didn't mention it, but I have been using this and I just wanted to give you sort of an update on my thoughts on this device because I did switch over my main
TV to Chrome Cast with Google TV. And if you're not familiar with that, it is basically a Chrome Cast that now has a remote control, but it also has kind of a new interface, so it's got the Android TV Interface, or I guess they call it the Google TV Entertainment Experience, and it plugs into the back of your phone. It's a tiny little dongle, it's four K, it's got you know, all the apps you need. Basically, I can't. I can't think of an app that I want that's not on there. Oh yeah there is one.
Apple TV Plus is not supported. But that makes sense because it's Google and their frenemies. And I've been using it for a couple of weeks, and I will say I love it.
I love it, I love it. It is fantastic.
It is it's basically, and I think I said this on the podcast, but it's the power of Google for streaming services.
And let me explain what that means.
So the beauty of this device is that you no longer think about your streaming services. Now when you go to the main screens, all the stuff that's on your screen streaming services is sort of surfaced on the main screens in three different ways for you, movies and then TV, and the for you is like highly customized. Then movies is a little bit more of a kind of a broader reach of like here's the top movies, here's the comedies, here's the romantic comedies, here's the action movies, and then
TV same thing. But what's so magical about this is that they're using Google data to figure out what is popular, what is current, and what is hot at any given time. And that is really the biggest advantage I see to this versus something like the Apple TV, which, yes, we'll tell you a bunch of stuff that's in your streaming services,
but it's not necessarily as customized. And the other really really brilliant thing about the Google Chrome or Chrome cast with Google TV is that when you're looking at an item on the screen, right below that item, not only does it give you the it gives you a look at how much that item is if it's not on your service. Well, in the best case scenario, it tells you where it's streaming, and then I think it tells you rotten tomatoes maybe, but you get those two things
on the main screen. But then if it's not on one of your services, it will say how much it is and there's a little lock next to it. So to me, that is absolutely brilliant and the reason why it doesn't seem like a big thing. But The reason why that's brilliant is because so many times on Apple TV when I was browsing, there'd be something on the screen that I want to watch, and then you click in and then you have to see if it's on
one of your services. So with this you can scroll through and instantly get a gauge of if a showing or a movie or TV show is on a service you subscribe to. Now, the other thing they do is they don't really show you a bunch of stuff on other services.
Much.
They do in certain aspects, but not all the time, and so for some people you might say, well, Rich, I want to see what's out there, even if I have to rent it. Yes, they do do that, but something like to b tv right, which is one of those free TV apps, they won't show you stuff that's on t B unless you download the app and install it on your Google and now all of a sudden, all their stuff will show up as well. So it's
pretty brilliant. The biggest downside I've seen is that the apps are really slow to open compared to other streaming sticks out there, and it's just it's very noticeable that this thing is very underpowered, and you don't need a ton of power to stream stuff, but for opening those apps, it takes some resources and it's it's pretty bad. It's
it's actually really slow. And I'm not sure if maybe optimizing these apps will help or what, but it's kind of like the biggest downside is that kind of popping in and out of your apps is like a ten second affair. And so it's just something that like these these higher end streaming devices, like especially the new Roku and you know, like the new higher powered you know Apple TV, not the one that hasn't launched yet, but you know the one that well, I don't know if
there's a new one coming out. I would hope there is, but even the old one is still pretty darn fast, and even the fire Stick is pretty fast compared to this, it's just noticeably slower. So that's my only downside. But
again it's fifty bucks. I love the Google Assistant, and I love the fact that the for You area gives you so much good stuff, And the most brilliant thing is that there's literally a section of trending movies that is one hundred percent based on what people are searching and on Google, and so when Sean Connery died, you know, Rest in peace, Sean.
It was to.
See all the movies that people were watching with him was pretty fantastic. And that is the kind of stuff that like these other services, it would take an Apple TV like a little bit of time to either come up with a list of like, you know, the best movies featuring Sean Connery or you know, they would you would start to see some of those movies trending because
people are renting them. But with Google immediately because people are searching for them, they have that real time information and it just kind of gives this service like a little extra like kind of real time like bit to it that I really kind of like it feels like
you're part of like the crowd. Like when a new movie comes out on a Friday night or a cool new documentary, you really feel like you have the upper hand because it's something that you're seeing happen trending in real time and that's really cool.
All right, Uh.
No, Nelcda, Nelsita says hi Rich. I was wondering if you can help me with the purchase of an iPad. What's the best deal for the latest version with ten or higher screen size? And Wi Fi capable. I don't know if I also need cellular. Can you please explain this? Thanks for your help. So easy when it comes to the iPad, the best deal is always a simple search away. All you have to search is iPad deal or iPad deals and then just click news up at the top of Google and now you will see all the bloggers
that have blogged about iPad deals. The iPad specif I would recommend is the just the standard one. So that's the iPad. It just was refreshed. It is the iPad ten point two inch. I think it's the eighth generation. It's just called the iPad. That's all you need to know.
Now.
It's it's kind of got annoying because Apple does iPad, they don't really tell you it's not like iPad eight. So if you go into the tech specs, you'll see, let's see do they say like eighth generation. Where do they say that it's the eighth Maybe you have to hit By. Let's see here. If I hit By and Space Gray Wi Fi, oh, thirty thirty two gigs, I'd go at the go with the one twenty eight. I bought my niece one of these and I went with
one twenty eight. It's just you know, it's a little bit more expensive, but it just really makes a big difference. I think it's just gonna give you much more life. Okay, so add to bag and let's see how they characterize this. Do they say ten point two inch iPad Wi Fi one twenty eight. Gosh, they don't even like say that it's like eighth generation or anything.
It's so weird.
Anyway, I believe it is the eighth generation iPad right now. Anyway, That's all you need to do is just literally like okay, So here's digital trends. Okay, here's Apple Insider early Black Friday deals on iPad, iPad Air four, iPad pro, Hit, Hit Fever, Pitch save up to four hundred dollars. So let's now click into there and we look at iPad eighth generation on sale. The one twenty eight gig version,
which I'd recommend, is three hundred ninety five dollars. It's only thirty five dollars off, but still that's pretty good. The thirty two gig one is two ninety nine. So again, the reason why these bloggers blog about this is because they get a little referral link or a little referral credit when you buy something through one of their links. So it's in their best interest to be blogging about this stuff all the time, and so you can use that to your advantage.
And there you go.
Now, when it comes to the whole Wi Fi versus cellular, unless you are leaving your house and using your iPad on the road in places that are not hotels or not your school or not your work, that you don't have a Wi Fi network, that's the only time I'd recommend cellular. So I don't think that a majority of people need cellular on their iPads unless.
You are out and about your job is you.
Know, taking you all on the road somewhere all over the place, and you want to be connected twenty four to seven. Otherwise you will be just fine. If you're at your house, you're on Wi Fi. If you're at work, you're on Wi Fi. If you're at school, you're on Wi Fi. If you're at a hotel, you're on Wi Fi. And in a pinch, you can just hopefully connect the iPad to your phone using your hotspot if that's part of your plan. So that's what I'd recommend, and there you go.
So This is a big feature.
Last week on the podcast, I talked about how cool iHeartRadio was because it was streaming on the Apple Watch. Well, now this week we get Spotify streaming on the Apple Watch.
And this is so weird.
I discovered this on my Apple Watch when I was just kind of starting to use Spotify again. I have like a six month free trial, and so I've been kind of playing around with Spotify and I you know, installed on my wrist and whenever you play something on your phone, you see it on your wrist, and so all of a sudden, I was just kind of playing around with the wrist on you know, the Apple Watch app, and all of a sudden, I see like it said like stream to phone or play on Let's see it
says play on a device Rich's Apple Watch. And I was like, wait, what what do you mean Rich's Apple Watch? Like can I play that on here? And I was like, wait, would it play on the speaker? So I tried playing it and it doesn't play on the Apple Watch speaker. So you can't just stream music from your wrist and like listen to it through the speaker on the Apple Watch. But if you have headphones attached boom. You can now listen through those and you can listen when your phone.
Most importantly, this is the new part, you can listen when your phone is not nearby. Now, there are some caveats, So to me, this feature is best if you have a cellular Apple Watch, because yes, it'll work over Wi Fi, but a majority of the time, if you're in a Wi Fi zone, aren't you going to have your phone nearby? And then it's just gonna be grabbing the stuff it
needs from your phone. So to me, the best case scenario is when you are out on a run or you're out walking the dog and you want to listen to something on Spotify, and right now you still can't download stuff from Spotify to your Apple Watch. I'm not sure why that's so technically impossible Apple and Spotify, which I'm being facetious, there's no reason why you should not
be able to download Spotify. But somehow, you know, the little little bunking heads at Apple and Spotify have just not made that feature possible yet, even though it's been on Apple Music forever on the Apple Watch, you just can't do it with Spotify for some reason. Don't know why. I mean, I think we do know why. But anyway, little baby steps right, so you can stream this stuff.
And if you have a cellular connection, you can now leave your phone at home and you can walk the dog, have your headphones on, have your Apple Watch on, and now you can listen to Spotify.
Now.
I think that is a very small use case scenario because I don't think a majority of people get cellular on their Apple Watch personally. On like the iPad, I think cellular on the Apple Watch is a must have because it frees you up so much to distance yourself
from your phone. There's so many little times when I don't want to have my phone in my pocket that you know I still have a cellular connection, and I think it's it's vital to have that connection for you know, today's day and age with you know, you want to be able to be connected for friends and family, work,
and also you know in an emergency. Now, there is one little thing if you have an Apple Watch, and I have not confirmed this from pretty ninety nine percent sure, if you have an Apple Watch with cellular and there's an emergency, you can still dial nine one one, I would assume, because as far as I know, you can dial nine one one on any device, even if it's
not activated. So even if you had a cellular Apple Watch, it would theoretically in an emergency be all to help you because you could still dial nine to one one if or SOS whatever, if you you know, even.
If you didn't have a cellular plan on that.
Now I'm gonna have to research that, but I'm ninety nine percent sure because that's the way it works on cell phones, so I would assume a cellular connection on the Apple Watch is the same anyway. So if you have Siri, if you have you know, Apple Watch, you've got okay, So if you have Apple Watch, you've got Spotify, and you've got a cellular connection. This is really cool.
Even if you don't, it's still cool. I guess if you're in your house and you have Wi Fi, you're at work and you just want to use your phone or your watch without your phone. But to me, it's really really cool for people like myself that like to run with their watch and only their watch, because now you know, and I'll still use the iHeartRadio thing, but maybe now next time I run, I'll test this Spotify thing. So maybe I'll have to take a run today and check that out.
But anyway, there you go.
Mark via Instagram says long shot, I'm about to upgrade my phone. I've had Samsung Galaxy phone since the S five. I'm the social media guy for AV Firefighters, and it seems everyone has iPhones. I get small iPhone videos that I can't use all the time that I can't post. There is more, but I just inadvertently hit the send button.
Lol.
Should I switch to the iPhone twelve Pro or stick to the S twenty Ultra. Also, my wife will not make the switch. Ooh uh, Mark, I would recommend in this case that you make the switch.
It is.
It sounds like you it's part of your job with this AV Firefighters and I will for better or for worse. This whole I message thing has really messed up messaging. And I say that because people think that you can send a one hundred gigabyte or whatever, one hundred megabyte video full resolution to a friend on another iPhone and that's just the way it magically works. No, it's going through I Message, And so when that friend tries to send you to your Samsung Galaxy S twenty Ultra, that's
trying to do this through the MMS. It's not gonna work. It's gonna look like garbage. And so that's what you're experiencing. And yes, there's a million and one ways that you can ask this person to send you a video high res through Google Photos, through Dropbox, through Telegram, through an iCloud link.
But guess what, they're not gonna do any of that.
Because they're just gonna send it through I Message because that's what they know how to do, and that's what all their friends are doing, and that's how they've been raised on the iPhone.
So things are getting a little better on the Android side of.
Things now that we have we have RCS chat, and yes, you can send stuff just the way you can uh Android to Android. But the problem is that's still nason, it's still growing and not everyone's on board just yet. And again, the biggest problem is that when you go from iPhone to Android, Android to iPhone, all those giant files video are.
Just going to look terrible. So I say, for the sake.
Of your job, switch to the iPhone twelve pro, call it a day, and your wife can just stay on the the the Samsung side of things, what I'd recommend there because you're gonna get all caught up in the I message stuff set up with your wife a Telegram or a Facebook Messenger, any one of those apps. Just pick one and stick to it and say, look, this
is how we message each other. And you know this is you know, I did this with my wife because I switch phones all the time and I'm always on Android or iPhone, and it was just such a pain for her to try to figure out where I was that day. And so I said, look, we're going to use Telegram and that's where you get me all the time. And we've been using it for you know, a year or two and it's been fantastic. Same thing with my family.
We're all on Telegram. And so no matter what whoever, if you have an iPhone or an Android, it all works the same. And it has been an absolute blessing because we send photos, we send videos, we send gifts, we send emojis, and it's all the same no matter what phone you're on.
It does not matter.
With iPhone, it be that whole thing where you press you know, like on the iPhone and it sends it like to your Android friend is like Rich liked this, and it just doesn't make sense and so yeah, just stick to one of those apps and I think you will be fantastic. Great question mark, and uh yeah.
It's pretty cool. I got to check you out. Check out av Firefighters. This I thought was pretty cool.
Apple could fix your broken iPhone, your AirPods, your Mac or other devices, even if it's out of warranty, for free. And this is not like some you know, you're not gonna get your screen cracked or your crack screen done for free. Maybe you will, but there are caveats. This is not just like random. But this was a zd net dot com article and I didn't know about this,
so it's you know, I'm telling you now. So the thing about this, it's called Apple Service Programs, okay, And so what this is is a website on the Apple website that lists all of the different I'm not gonna call them recalls because it's not necessarily stuff that's a danger to you, but it's it's all the products that Apple has put out that they have identified some sort of issue with.
And yes, we hear this on the news. I often mentioned.
I'll be like, hey, there's a new you know, Apple says if you have a you know, if you have a third generation iPhone six s and you notice that the speakers stopped working, they can replace it for free. And everyone jumps and goes to the website and sees pups in their serial number and sees if it's theirs, and sure enough, some of you have it. But this lists every one of these programs in one place, and right now there's like, I don't know a dozen or
two of them. So they've got one for the Airpod's Pro for sound issues, iPad Air third generation. There's a blank screen issue, the smart battery case. They're replacing those iPhone Success and Success Plus for a power issue screen replace, an issue for Apple Watch series two and three, a fifteen inch MacBook Pro battery recall. And again these are all not brand new, but it's just kind of cool
to see them all in one place. And if you go to support dot Apple dot com slash Service dash Programs, of course I'll link that up in the show notes, you can see all these different things and boom, you never know. I mean, if you if you have an Apple product in your house, it's worth it to just look on this on this page and see if one of these things that you had might have an issue I'm looking for anything.
I have.
Hm iPhone seven USB power adapter take back program.
What's that? Yeah, so that's it.
I mean my AirPods Pro maybe might have had the sound issues, yeah, crackling or static sounds, but since I lost.
Them, it doesn't really matter. All right, Let's get to another question.
Cynthia via Instagram says, just an FYI, I got my iPhone twelve pro today and it does not work with my magnetic car mount. I guess I just have to buy a mag safe one without the case. It holds on but slides a little. I don't think it would survive a drive with the case. It sticks, but it slides even more. Thanks Cynthia for the information, and I
kind of assumed that that would be the case. Seems like this mag safe stuff is not going to be compatible with like current magnetic things out there, so we are gonna have to pay more to upgrade. And I do think that the car one is actually kind of a cool solution. So even if it's like a hundred bucks, I think it's probably worth it because if I can just I don't have wireless car place. Never mind, I was gonna say, if I can just pop my phone on a magnetic mount and it's charging, and I you know,
and it's on a mount. That's pretty cool, But then I lose my car play, so I still have to plug it in. So for me, I think just having a magnetic mount that goes on my vent or something with the you know, then I plug it in, it's gonna.
Be pretty worth it.
You know.
That'll that'll be pretty cool.
H This is another thing I've been testing out, speaking of headphones, the one plus buds Z. So one Plus came out with one plus buds earlier in the year and they were okay. I found that the microphone quality was not very good, but overall they were okay, and they were eighty bucks.
These are called the Buds Z and.
They're only fifty dollars and I've been testing them and I got to say, I like them a lot. They fit a whole lot better than the original buds. They're cheaper, they have the silicone tips, and you know, it's like they have all the like twenty hours of playback with the case. Ten minutes of charging delivers three hours of playback. It's also USBC case. I just like the design, I like how they fit, and I think they're pretty good.
Now.
I have not done a lot of phone calls on them. I need to still test that aspect to see if the microphone is better, but the sound quality is just fine.
They stay in my ears.
The biggest thing that I've noticed with these, and why I can't one hundred percent recommend them yet, is that, for some reason, especially when you get sweaty, the.
Bud, when it kind.
Of pops out of your ear a little bit, it stops the music a lot more so than any other of these devices that have the automatic sensors that press pause on the music when you take these out of
your ear. For some reason, these are really really touchy and it happens a lot and so and I've was testing them while I was running, and I kind of like, you know, I was kind of seeing like what was going on, and like, I don't know if it's a placement of the sensor or if it's just they need to tweak their software a little bit, which could be the case.
So I'm not going to write these.
Off just yet, but I have noticed that that happens much more now. Maybe you could turn that feature off in your settings so that they don't automatically play and pause your music, and that would help, but I haven't looked for that setting. The other thing that's smart about one plus now is that when they first came out with these earbuds, it was just a matter of they worked really well on the one plus phones, but on other Android phones and the iPhone they just worked okay
because they didn't have like the specifics. Well, now they do have an app that lets you control the settings from your phone, so you can install this on Android. I'm not sure if they have it for iOS just yet, but it's called hay Melody, which is kind of a funny name.
But now you can actually get the.
Full use of all the software features, you know, I'm talking about like programming the tap the tap areas on the left and right buds to like do certain things. So maybe you want a double tap to bring up Google Assistant versus you know, forwarding to the next song.
So anyway, one plus bud z, don't write.
Them off if you see them, you know, over the holidays for cheaper than fifty bucks. I mean they're pretty good, and I still like my Let's Fit for twenty dollars, I gotta say they are still pretty fantastic. These feel a little bit more premium than the Let's Fit, so I probably go with these over them. But the Let's Fit are fantastic for twenty dollars. I've got them linked up. I'll put them in the show notes. But I've also
got a new Rich's Favorite Things. Since I you know, I'm responding to emails over and over with the same recommendations, so I decided to make a little list of all the stuff that I recommend on my website, Rich on tech dot TV, and you can see that list. It's called Rich's Favorite Things. Jose vervia Instagram says, good morning, Rich, huge fan. My wife and I are hooked on all your KTLA segments.
Well, thank you.
Question my Google Pixel four XL recently broke. I love that phone. I'm not sure if you recommend I buy another four XL or just go with the new model, the four.
A five G or the Pixel five.
People to tell me to get an iPhone, but I really like the Pixels. Thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance, jose I would recommend just going with another Pixel. Why do you have to switch over to iPhone? Just because everyone tells you to. I mean, yes, iPhone is the easy recommendation. Everyone uses them, everyone loves them. But if you like the Pixel, and what's not to love? I mean, the camera is awesome, the Googlely software is amazing.
And although I'm not as big of a fan of the Pixel as I was in previous years because I think that Apple or Google is just screwing it up by not giving us these powerful phones that we deserve, I still think that the if you're using a Pixel four XL and you'll love it, go with one of the new models.
And the model that I.
Would choose is actually the four A five G because you get the bigger screen, and you get almost all of the same features, same camera. You the two main things you don't get You get two gigabytes less RAM, so yeah, it's gonna be a little teeny bit slower than the five and you also get no water resistance and what was the other thing, oh, no wireless charging.
But you do get a headphone jack. So if you can live with not having those two features and you know, the less RAM, I think the bigger screen size is better. I think the headphone jack is better. And I look, I've been using the Pixel five. I've been testing it out. I do love it. It's just I wish that I just wish that Google would make a a powerful version of this device.
And I don't understand why they can't do that.
But they got everything right on the Pixel four and the Pixel of Pixel four A and the Pixel five.
Like you know, everything. The software is great, The camera is good.
It's not like you know, it's it's still that googlely camera that's pretty amazing in like almost every situation with just one snap of the of the shutter. But it's just like little things that, you know, I just don't understand why they can't give us like more ram, more storage, you know, a bigger screen option on the more powerful phone, like a zoom camera. Like what is going on, Google,
Why can't you get this right? And But otherwise I'm not against it, and I still think if you're on a four XL and you love it, I think you'll like the four A five G. I don't think it's gonna be a huge step down. And the battery life is definitely better, so I think that is a step up, all right. Another thing I was testing out with the kids this time is the Mario Kart Live Home Circuit. So this is you know, there's a lot of gaming
stuff coming out right now. So you've got you know, Nintendo does not have a new console, but they have a whole bunch of games for the holiday season. This is one of their more unique ones. Then you've got the PlayStation five and the Xbox. The new Xbox is coming out. I'll tell you more about those in a future podcast, but let's talk about.
Mario Kart Live.
This is a game, it's Mario Kart, but it comes to life in your space, so they use augmented reality. You buy this little ninety nine dollars car that has a camera on it. It's either you know, it's a race car. It's either Mario or Luigi. You pair that up with your switch, you download this software, the Mario Kart Live. And then there's also cardboard that comes with this little kit that you buy for a hundred bucks.
And the cardboard is kind of the I don't know what you call it, like you know, the end of a race where there's that thing, that checkered flag thing, but it's like above you, you know.
The checkpoint.
I don't know what you call that, but it's that and you basically make a course around your house with these four pieces of cardboard, and then you teach the game the course with the you know, by driving the car under the cardboard, and the little camera on the car recognizes the cardboard cutouts because it has like some sort of special writing on it or whatever, and then you just you're off to the races. It's a lot
of fun. Oh gates, that's what they call them. Four gates, and there's two arrow signboards as well, and you know, you play. We had a fun time playing with this. It's it's basically Mario Kart in the.
Physical world but also in the virtual world.
So you're driving through your house on this little course you built, but you're also seeing all the signature Mario Kart stuff, the other characters, the little power ups, all the little you know, obstacles are all on the virtual screen that you're seeing on your switch. So you see your house, like your living room, plus like clouds or snow or rain or whatever on your living room floor.
It's really cool. We had a fun time.
One hundred dollars for the car are It's a lot, and especially if you have two kids, you want to have you know, two of those cars, because you can't play together unless you got two cars. You can play against you know, virtual competitors, but that's it if you only have one car and the other thing. I don't think was clear, and I you know, I'm not really clear on this. I don't my kids couldn't figure it out. But I couldn't figure out a way for my kid to be a virtual player with my other kid being
the physical player. I'm not sure if I need to do some more work on that one to figure it out. But it's fun, it's cool, it's unique, it's definitely you know, Nintendo has been really into cardboard for some reason. I don't know if they bought a company that does like cardboard stuff. But you know, Nintendo Labbo was all cardboard that was cool. But this is is a much better use of cardboard versus the Labo stuff. The Labbo was kind of like, eh, it was cool, but not as much this.
This is pretty cool. So it's fun.
I think the kids will like it for the holidays. I don't know how much they'll play it after the first time, because, let's be honest, I mean, it's easier to just sit down and play on your switch than it is to sit there and set up the whole course every time. So in that aspect, you know, it might be one of these things where they do it once or twice and then they never really played again.
So I would kind of wait and see on this one.
But it was fun and it is definitely a unique spin on the.
Whole Mario Kart thing.
So I will I will definitely give you that uh oh, I hear it there. It is that music that means it's the end of the show. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to Rich on tech dot tv, hit the email button at the bottom of the page, or send it to hello at richontech dot tv.
Also, I would love it if.
You would rate and review this podcast to help other folks discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com. Slash rich on tech, Duffy Zoo rated the podcast and said love rich on Tech. Thanks Rich for all the great info you provide. Love when I get to see you on Katla, but I don't catch it all the time. I started following you on Instagram and felt more connected.
Wow.
Thanks and now I'm leaning in further with your podcast. I feel much more in the know thanks to you. It's a bit cool to be able to show my four teenagers new tricks and tips you've shared. Thanks again, Alma, Well, thank you Alma for listening, and thanks for leaving a review.
Got a bunch of reviews up there, and most of them are positive, so thanks for that.
You can find me online at rich on Tech. I will be testing out the latest gadgets bringing them to you. If you're following me on Instagram, I'm trying to post a lot there these days. Of course on Facebook as well. My name is rich Dimiro. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and I'll talk to you real soon.