Facebook. Let's you turn off those creepy ads for the stuff that you just looked at online. Apple and Samsung duke it out. That's nothing new, but there is a new part to that, a way to get free calls and texts, Yes, including cellular service and the Peloton experience for half the price. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. Plus it is the exclusive place where I answer the
questions that you send me. Joining me as producer Megan as always. Hey, hey, oh it's back and we have a guest as well. Will is shadowing for the day. Welcome, how's it going.
Thanks for having me.
I heard that you just recently switched from Android to iPhone.
This is true.
Why did you do that?
Let's see. So I'd had my Samsung Galaxy S seven for a little bit and I just decided to see what was going on with uh on the Apple side of stuff.
Okay, I made the switch. And interesting. Will is a student in high school and you're just doing kind of a career week where you're shadowing different people to see what you might want to do in the future. Yeah, how's it going so far today at the TV station?
It's been pretty fun, just getting ah, you know, quick rundown of how things operate a little bit.
How would you describe in two words what the atmosphere here is like besides tense?
Oh boy? Uh I guess last minute?
Oh nice?
What does that say about?
That's good? Last minute is because TV is like always changing.
Yeah, especially with news where it's like constantly running. It's always it's interesting to see how like parts that you'd think would be you know, planned out for over like a long period of time has to be carried out in like you know, very you know, crunch time, Yes, situations.
It is. And that's the beauty of news is that if you like change, if you like being on the edge of your seat all day long, then this is a really good business because nothing is like you're not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting for the clock to hit five o'clock. Ever, for us, when we're watching the clock, it's because we have a deadline at five am or six am or seven fifteen or whatever it is. So that's a nice part about it. And do you like the iPhone so far? I do? I do.
It's it's nice because I have a MacBook Pro at home that I use for school and whatnot, so it's nice to have, you know, a more like seamless integration of like texts and FaceTime and whatnot.
Yeah, that is the one thing I noticed is when I try to go back to Android, is that the way Apple just gets you in with everything working so well, it's really tough to go back between air Drop and I Message, even though I love Shotgram. But let's start with our first story and we'll feel fit to chime in whenever you want, as long as I'm not talking nice. Actually,
this is a new thing from Facebook. So you've been on Facebook, you know that a lot of times you're on there and you see ads for stuff that you literally just looked at online. So you're shopping for a toothbrush and I feel like we've talked about this before, but you're shopping for something online, and next thing, you know, all your ads on Facebook and by extension, Instagram become ads for these things that you just recently looked at.
And the way they do that is because every website that you go to is sort of reporting back to Facebook that you visited. So that they can sell ads against your visit. They say, oh, we just had Megan come here and we know that she almost bought a toothbrush, So if we show her two more ads on Facebook, maybe she'll be pushed over the edge and buy that toothbrush. And that's what happens. That's the new advertising world we
live in. And I did a blog post about this on my website, rich on tech dot tv, as well as a little video that shows you how you can now turn this off. And this is part of Facebook trying to be more trained parent. Facebook trying to make us feel like we have some control in our lives, which we really don't. But they have this new tool called off Facebook Activity and when you toggle there's two things you can do. You can just view your activity. You can clear that activity out so they will show
you all. When I looked at mine, it was I think they show you the last six months, but it was every app that I opened on my iPhone, like even my workout app Aptive. It was like, oh, it sent information to Facebook that I just worked out. You know, every little app sends information every website. There was no surprises in there. I mean everything I saw I was like, Okay, yeah, I visited those sites, some of the little sites that my kids visit on my phone, some of the games
they play. Of course they were reporting back information. But again it's all to build this profile of you so
that advertisers can target their ads. And it totally makes sense from an advertising standpoint, because do you want to sell your ads to someone who's interested or expressed interest in toothbrushes, like Megan because she just visited a toothbrush website, or do you just want to put your toothbrush ad out there for everyone and hope that people are in the market for a new toothbrush, which is the way broadcast TV in the past has worked, and also magazines
and newspapers. But this is why people love internet advertising because it's been so targeted. Now you can turn that off if you go to a section of Facebook under the site. It's really complicated, but you go. It's easy to do, but a hide it. You go to settings, You go to Facebook your Facebook information and then tap off Facebook activity and under that you can tap clear
history to delete out the data. Or if you don't want websites setting information in the future, look for the option labeled manage future activity and you can toggle that blue switch off. I know this a podcast. You're not writing this all down. Just go to my website rich on tech dot tv. I wrote all of the steps out very clearly, so you can do this and you'll see less ads that are super targeted because they just
won't have as much data on you. They'll still get all the data about what you're doing on Facebook, you know, and that's the whole reason they had you like stuff like your favorite bands, like your favorite TV shows, so they could build a profile about you. Now it's just gotten to the point of anything you do online reports back to Facebook. But you can turn that off now. So good to know off of Facebook activity, Megan. First question.
Okay, so if you want to send in your question to Rich, go to his website rich on tech dot tv and hit the contact button to send your question. Our first question today comes from and Hi, Rich, I suspect that someone is reading my texts by using spyware of some kind. Is there a way to protect against this? I know it's illegal, but what can I do?
I wonder why she thinks she's being stocked her text?
Also, how do you get spyware to read people's text.
Well, that's what I'm trying to think. I would think on Android it would be well, we know that Jeff Bezos had his phone packed, so if it can happen to him, we've talked about this, it can happen to anyone. I often get this question in various forms, and I think what it comes down to, there's several ways that people can do this. If you have an iPhone, the easiest way is if they have access to your iCloud.
So a lot of couples will share iCloud login information and sometimes that will also give deliver your text messages realistically your I messages to their phone and vice versa. A lot of families tell me this, They say, oh, I've got my whole family signed up on the same iCloud. We're not using separate accounts. We just all sign in with one account, and a lot of information gets shared between the phones that is meant to be for one person.
So I would say that's probably the first way, is that someone might be logged in with her iCloud account and looking at her messages in the cloud. That could be one way. I don't know of an app, like if they installed spy were on her phone, I think it'd be really tricky because umber one, Apple doesn't really give you access to text messages on the iPhone no matter what I mean. You'd have to be a real
hacker to get into those. Now, if she's on Android, it's much easier, and there's a lot of different ways you can do it on Android because pretty much any app that you download can have access to your text messages on Android if you grant that access. So someone could have installed an app that's lurking in the shadows on her Android and reporting all those texts back to them. But the bottom line is, I don't think any of
this is happening. It might be something that she thinks is happening, right, because she.
Said, I suspect that someone is reading my text.
But those are the scenarios that I think could lead to someone looking at her text right right. And if you do suspect this, I would go with the nuclear option, which is reform at your phone and just clear everything off and start over and sign in with a new account.
Whether it's Google or Face or Apple, just sign up with a new account, and that way, no one's going to be able to get access to those new messages unless they're getting access to them at the network level, which would be really tricky.
Yeah, it's intense.
Yeah, that's a really intense first question, I like.
To start it off. Yeah, really really intense question.
So this kind of plays into what we just talked about with Will and switching from Android to iPhone, and it's something that I recently did as well with the iPhone eleven. I went kind of all in when I got the iPhone, and I usually switch phones several times a year, but I've pretty much been with the iPhone exclusively for a while now, and it's kind of crazy because there's not much on Android that's like trying to
get me back. I love the way Android is super flexible, and I love the control I have over my Android. But at this point, between the Apple Watch and the AirPods and the iPhone and my Mac, everything just sort
of works together. And I really like that aspect. And when I go back to Android, I feel like I'm cobbling together in experience that's trying to match what Apple has, and that means even something as simple as my remind I'll sit there and I'll say, Hey, Siri, remind me to do this and on Android you can do that, but you have to find an app to do it with, and it's not as integrated with your computers. You have to now download that app. With all that said, Apple
is really selling a lot of iPhones. To the tune of I usually said they sold about fifty five to sixty million in a quarter. That's three months or no, a quarter is what? Yeah? Three months? Yeah, they sold seventy two point nine.
Million four months, because there's four four.
Quarters, so it'll be three months in a quarter. Oh yeah, right, I always get that confused. And apparently Samsung only sold about seventy million Galaxy phones, which is still Both of those are very respectable numbers, but it's wild that that is a lot of phones and Apple kind of beat Samsung in the last quarter, which historically Samsung usually beats Apple because think about it, Samsung on a global level, right,
probably sells more phones. In the US were very iPhone centric, but in the rest of the world it's very Android and Samsung centric. So this is kind of big and I just find it very telling that when I saw the iPhone eleven come out, I called it, and you probably remember this, I said, this is a killer device. Yeah, it hits every single point that people have wanted with
their devices. It came at a time when people were kind of growing tired of Android and all these promises that you would get from the thing like the Pixel four. Everyone wanted the Pixel four to be this amazing phone and it comes out and immediately every tech person was disappointed because it didn't have the wide angle lens, the camera didn't really improve very much, and it's slow, it's laggy.
The apps just don't have the same support. And I feel like what I'm hearing over and over from people is they're saying, Rich, I'm going to the iPhone because I feel like it's the experience that people just talk about. It's that iPhone experience, and I'm not going to sit here and extol the virtues of iPhone. I still love Android for the fact that you can set default apps. When I want my links to open up in a web browser of my choice, I can do that on the Android when I this is my thing. I feel
like on the iPhone it's almost like landmines. Like I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, I can't click the map link in Yelp because that's gonna take me to Apple Maps and I don't want to go there, or oh, I can't open this in Safari because it's not gonna work nicely with it, you know. I'm always trying to use Chrome or whatever. So it's just this experience on the iPhone that's really good, but it's very siloed, right,
and I think that's what I love about Android. But anyway, but people are loving the iPhone, and that's clearly happening because they overtook the Samsung sales for the first time in a while.
And you suggest to most people when getting the iPhone to go with the eleven, right, yes, if you don't need uh, you don't need.
The eleven Pro. For most people, I don't think they need the eleven Pro because with the eleven you get the wide angle lens, which is the cool new feature. You just don't get the zoom line. Now, if you're taking pictures of your kids at their holiday play or some sort of recital, the zoom is always nice, but the zoom is not enough to warrant itself because most people just pinch to zoom anyway, and they're getting like really close in on their kids and it's not a good picture no matter.
What, you need a really nice and that's the only difference besides this and the screen, the screen, and yeah, that's basically it now or something.
Battery I believe is better on the pro. And we've talked about this before on the podcast, where at this point battery is not even a thing on the iPhone, Like it's just so good. It's so good. I went through CS literally not even thinking about my battery. See yes, the big convention in Vegas, and I just didn't. It wasn't even a thought in my head that I was going to run out of a battery at all.
That's really impressive.
At night I go to sleep again, my phone is at like seventy five percent most nights.
Is that from charging a little bit?
Yeah? Sometimes, but still most people are near an outlet at least sometimes. I was saying, I don't, it's not even a thought anymore in my head of oh am, I gonna run out of battery, Megan, I think it's your turn for a question. Okay.
Our next question is from Mona. The eb photo storage you mentioned, I got one and downloaded all my photos. Is it safe to delete them now? From the iCloud I need to free up space for backups.
Mona is referring to the EB storage device we talked about, which is pretty much a hard drive with Wi Fi connected to it, and at night, it has an app that goes on your phone at night when your phone is charging. It takes all the pictures off your phone, and not off it just makes a copy of them to the EB. And so she's asking if she can now delete those off her phone. My recommendation is no, because you want your pictures backed up in two places.
And if she's saying she wants to free up her iPhone storage and her iCloud storage as well.
Because no, I think she just needs space in her iCloud.
So yeah, that means she's had to delete them out of her eCloud as well, which you can't do. You need your photos in two places, and so just having them on that hard drive on EB. Let me just give you a scenario. Let's say God forbid, your house burns down and the EB is in it. Now you've lost all your pictures. That's not a good solution for backup. Let's say there's a flood and all the in that hard drive gets messed up. Now you have no pictures,
so you always want your pictures in two places. Now, if she wanted to do this, if she wanted to buy a second EB and set it up at a friend's house and she has one at her house one at a friend's house, I would say that's probably fine because if something happened to your house, you can be like a friend, I need that EB with all my pictures on it. That's kind of funny, but you can't just have it in one place. You have to have your photos in two places.
And to buy some more storage, I mean, isn't it. The hundred gigabytes is like one dollar.
I pay three dollars for two hundred gigs. Okay, three dollars a month. Now, over the long term, you know, three dollars a month is a lot of money when you think about that's thirty six dollars a year. Two years is seventy two dollars. A hard drive with like two terabytes of data is about fifty nine dollars on Amazon. So it is expensive, but you're not What you're paying for is that peace of mind and the fact that
Apple is maintaining these servers. It's off site, it's a secondary backup the other options I would tell her is just put your photos in Amazon Prime Photos. If you have a Prime account, is that free, totally free, unlimited.
Okay, I have a Prime account, Yeah, you can.
Totally free and unlimited. Now the trick with that is that if you cancel Amazon Prime now, all of a sudden, your pictures are in danger because you have to pay up. Or you can just switch to something else. Google Photos is totally free. You can use that. But again, pick two either iCloud and your phone, your phone and eb iCloud and eb eb and Google Photos. Just pick two things and get on with your life. New app that is really cool for the iPhone eleven is called double Take.
We had a lot of phone with this app. What it does is it gives you a two camera shoot with just one phone. So if you have an iPhone eleven, it takes advantage of all of the cameras in that phone, the wide angle lens, the telephoto lens, the ultra wide and the selfie camera. So when you turn on this app, you get an option with those four cameras, it shows
you a live feed of all four. You pick two, any two you want, and now you can record both of those feeds at the same time, you can merge them into one video, so you can have side by side. So let's say for me personally, I think and I might start this as a thing. I interview a lot of people for TV. A lot of those interviews go to waste because we only use you know, thirty seconds forty seconds on TV. Well, these people have a lot
more to say that's interesting. So if I can stand there with my iPhone, have a mic on them, a mic on me, a camera, one camera facing me, one camera facing them, I do a quick five minute interview and now I've just created something in real time that's easily postable to YouTube, and it shows my reaction, my questions, and also them and their reaction and their answers. That is something that is really cool. Yeah. Again, it's something that used to take two cameras to do.
Do you think it looks funny if you have the camera close to your face though.
Well, you have to figure out I was thinking about Yeah, I.
Was gonna say, maybe it's like you need a third person to hold it so like it kind of balance it out.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was thinking about the setup, and I think you can get it right with a tripod. If you put a tripod in between you and you stood in one place because as the interviewer, you have to stand back because the iPhone camera is so close up. Yeah, so you just have to stand back and kind of stay there and then the other person. You know, depending on the lens you use, you could be close up, wide, whatever. It's just a really cool app. It's called double Take.
It's free. It's from Filmic, which they're known for making a really high end recording app for the iPhone, and eventually this will be built into the Filmic app, but right now it's a standalone app. You can do side by side, you can do picture and picture, or you can do yeah, those two things. It's really cool. Have
you seen this app? Well, actually, it's really fun because as a journalist that's been doing this for so long, to get the two shots at once on a smartphone is just something that is just such a cool idea. And I think it opens up an entirely new genre of interview style where you're just kind of like, hey, you're on the street and I'm talking to you, and you see both of us at the same time. The idea here is that there's minimal effort, and you know,
usually minimal effort means crappy. But this is kind of cool.
And I'm still waiting for the story that we do that we shoot just on an iPhone.
We've done it. I did it, did it with the yes, with the what was the story Microsoft Surface? I went to New York City by myself and shot that all on my iPhone true, And it was, well, you're going.
To be shooting were iPhone though.
No, it's the new iPhone, my iPhone eleven. Yes, oh okay, but you're going to be shooting when you come up to San Francisco with me. Yes, you're going to be shooting the Samsung event on probably an iPhone. Yeah, and we're going to do that. So we'll see what that's like. I mean, it works. It's so good nowadays that you can't really tell the difference. There are certain certain situations where a real camera is better, right for nine to
nine percent. I mean, look at people are on TikTok watching videos all day that are shot on cell phones, so the bar is pretty low at this point. Of course, high production quality is always going to have a place, but it's pretty nice that you can just do the stuff on your phone, Megan, all right.
This next question comes from Debbie. My granddaughter is a Roadblocks gamer. For Christmas, I purchased two twenty five dollars Apple gift cards so she can make in app purchases. The problem is, no one can seem to figure out how to apply the card totals into our app store account so she can access the funds.
So right now we.
Have fifty dollars of useless plastic.
Can you help me please?
Well, I don't think that they're useless, so yeah, I mean, I'm well, okay, First, will do you know what Roadblock says? I do? Can you describe what that is? Because my kids play this. I've seen it, but I don't really understand. It looks like a lot of different worlds or something that people create.
From my understanding, it's like people can create different like worlds that are like I guess, accessible online, and I guess they can create different like scenarios you play little games on them.
What kind of a world like underwater world?
I'm not sure.
I think it's kind of you haven't played Block is the Limit?
No, But I've watched my younger brother who's been playing on it.
So it's kind of a younger kid thing. I mean, you're young, but this is like super young. My kid's like eight and he plays.
It's more like that age range as opposed to like teenage audience.
I think let's go through how to redeem a gift card on the iPhone, so the number one thing you want to do. These gift cards aren't worthless. You just have to know how to redeem it. You open up the app store on your iPhone. You tap your little profile picture in the upper right hand corner. Megan you following along? Here are you just on Instagram?
I'm just on Instagram.
Then there's an option that says redeem gift card or code. You tap that, and there's two ways of doing it. You can do it manually, which I've not done in a long time, because the camera works so well. You tap used camera and you hold just for a split second, your camera over this little code on the back of the card. And have you ever done this? It's so easy.
It immediately finds the code on the card and boom, puts on the screen and you're says fifty dollars or twenty five dollars has been added to your account.
I haven't gotten an iTunes gift card in like maybe ten years.
Oh, my kids love them, so that's like the only thing they want for Christmas. iTunes gift cards so cute. And at sometimes at Costco they'll have like a one hundred dollars worth of iTunes gift cards for ninety dollars ten bucks, So you buy that. Yeah, but it's also I think it's misleading that they call iTunes gift cards because most people are thinking it's the app store that they're buying stuff for, right, So, and.
It's not called iTunes anymore?
Well is it? I think it is on your iPhone.
Let's see, I deleted that apps.
Maybe it's not. I don't know, it's just music. Still have iTunes? I don't know.
Maybe it's just like the wider like web of like stores is maybe I'm not.
Sure, Yeah, exactly, like it's kind of the whole encompassing kurn. Yeah because when that when iTunes went away, Boy did we hear about that?
Yeah, that was a scary times for some people.
Let's see what else should we talk about next? Let's see, Oh, how about this uh an unlimited? Okay, So I take back what I said about the story being dumb. My friend Jefferson Graham in USA today did a feature piece on an app called text Now. It's been around for a while, but they have this new feature where you can get a personal phone number and also phone calls
and texts one hundred percent for free every month. And the way you do this is you pay ten dollars for a text Now SIM card that you pop into your phone, and now you have a phone line as well as these texts and calls the catches. You can't serve the Internet for that price. This is just texts and calls. And so I said, this is dumb, but I thought about it more and I realized this is brilliant for a kid's phone line. So now you can
give your kid. You're old. It has to be a Sprint or Verizon phone, so you know, let's say you had, you know, if an iPhone. Most iPhones these days are unlocked anyway, so if you but if you have a Sprint or a Verizon phone, you pop this text Now sim into there and for ten dollars, now your kid can have texts and calls. Which for my kid, that's all I want them to have, because.
You know, he's only eighty to get in contact with them.
Yeah. So, I mean the main thing is, like with school, it's like I'm gonna pick you up at this time today or I'm going to pick you up at this time. So it's kind of like just giving them. It's not information they have to have. And believe me, kids survive for many years without knowing when their parents were going to pick them up from school. I did, I think, did you couldn't walk home? I mean no, really, I mean you weren't allowed to.
It was like ten blocks away.
Oh come on, No, I didn't start walking home from school until later.
I guess your kids walk home.
No, but I walked. I walked to all three of my schools growing up, and my high school. I'd be curious, you know, I'm actually gonna look about how far this is because I'm curious how far I had to walk every day.
So I'm gonna go ahead and feel like a long walk?
Did it?
No?
I mean sometimes it depends if you have like after school activities, Like a lot of time I played tennis, so I had, you know, i'd go to like the tennis.
I lived in a different house when I grew up, like elementary school, and that was I feel like it had to be a mile and a half away.
Okay, mine is two miles away. Wow, let me see by walking, maybe that's shorter. Yeah, two miles wow, so that's that's a pretty good walk. Maybe I didn't walk every time. I'm trying to remember now. Yeah, no, I definitely walked home, but maybe I don't. Yeah, that's don't forget. You also drive in high school a little bit, like after maybe this second year, so maybe obvious a junior when I got my license. But anyway, so text now,
I think this is actually kind of cool. So if you want a super cheap phone line that is free, it is nine ninety nine to buy the sim. You pop it in your phone. It works, and as far as I'm seeing, there's really no catches here. The only thing is you have to have some ads on your text messaging app, so I guess they use a special app display ads. You don't have to listen to them before making your receiving phone calls, which would be kind
of weird. But here's the thing. At this point, phone phone calls and texts are commodity anyway, They're not what people are buying their phone line for it's the data. So and text now knows that eventually you're going to grow tired of just having texts and phone calls and you're gonna want to pay, and they have upgrades where you can pay for the data.
But let's say like one of your kids, they would just need to get on the Wi Fi and then they could use all the data they wanted.
I'm actually thinking that this might be something I get because I was trying to think the way I would get my kid a phone, because most of the plans are like minimum forty dollars, Like Verizon has a you know, kid's only plan and I think it's about thirty five. I don't want to quote.
Myself, and Visible is forty dollars.
Yeah, Visible is forty dollars. So the Verizon just Kids plan is, let's see, do they even tell you how much it is? I think it's about thirty five a month. So long story short, that's a lot. Ten bucks, ten dollars one time is like, that's now you're talking, and did.
You get a phone? How old were you?
I was eleven?
Yeah, wow, that's about the going I think I was that age too, eleven.
My kids, they asked me for a phone every day. They have iPads. They asked me for a phone every day, and a dog. But the phone thing they so they go to Google on you know, if the goole home thing. They ask every day a million questions Google what age can a kid have a phone? And it's like, according to the website parenting dot com, thirteen. I'm like, ha, I was gonna say eleven, but Google said thirteen. So now that's what you get for asking googleme. You gotta wait two more years now, kid?
You call your kids kid?
Yeah, I don't know their names.
So it's just it's easier that way.
Ye, it's so easy, and they both answer it's so hard to keep track.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Our next question comes from Karen hi Rich. I have Windows seven. I know there is no longer support for it, but what are the dangers of not upgrading to Windows ten. I'm not very techie and I use my PC for only minimal things like emails, Google search, limited, banking, et cetera.
Do I need a whole new system?
Well you don't, but you are taking a risk. And what she's talking about is Windows seven. We've talked about. This is done. That means that Microsoft is no longer putting out software updates. Security updates for Windows seven, specifically, those are the ones you should be concerned about. Now.
What's funny about this is right after they announced they were going to stop doing this, they put out an emergency update because there was a problem that I guess they deemed big enough, and it was kind of in the same week, so like, you know what, we'll let
this one more slide through. So I actually got emails from people saying, Rich, you said there would be no more updates for Windows seven, and I just got one, and I had to look online, and sure enough Microsoft had put out this like little tiny update, just like one more. They're like, fine, one more update, just one one more, So what do you lose? The main thing
is you have to be concerned about security. You did say that you do your banking on there, and it doesn't mean that your computer is not going to work. It doesn't mean that your computer is insecure inherently already. But if a bad guy finds a way to break into a Windows seven computer some sort of hack, it's not going to be patched with an update because Microsoft said there's no more updates. That's what you have to kind of know. So can you use your computer? Yes,
do I recommend you think about upgrading? Probably, And according to a lot of websites, you can still get a free Windows ten upgrade. Apparently Microsoft did not turn off one of these little websites that lets you upgrade. I think they're doing it for people that really want it. If they find this website and they find that upgrade path, then they're like, sure, go ahead, because they gave you a long time to upgrade to Windows ten for free. Now it's like one hundred and thirty nine dollars to
do it. But I'm looking at the c neet article and it says if you go to the go to the download Windows ten website, create Windows ten installation media and next thing you know, you can actually do this. So they have a download Windows ten disk image file. So and apparently people I was talking to said, if you have an activated version of Windows seven, like a legitimate version of Windows seven, when you try to upgrade with this Windows ten, it will take. So I would
do that. Yeah, I don't know how old our computer is, but that's that's something you should probably do. Well.
Do you have a Windows I do not.
I primarily just use my MacBook.
Yeah cool, MACI Mac all right. I think this is kind of a neat feature coming to Google Nest thermostats. I have one of these at home. I can't say I'm super impressed with the Nest thermostat. I don't think it saves me money in any way. But I do get a check for twenty five dollars every couple of months from my energy company because I guess I'm on the plan where they can control my usage from their end.
So they say in the summer, like, oh, the you know a lot of people are using their air conditioning, so we're going to turn yours up to seventy two degrees or whatever it is. My wife always changes anyway. She likes it cold. I really don't care. I don't even think about the air most of the time.
I didn't realize the setup was quite easy.
I mean not easy, but I watched a video how they make how they put.
It in, so yeah, it looks so straightforward. I was like, maybe I just spent one of these for my parents.
You connect a few wires. Yeah. Now. The only thing is you have to keep in mind if your system at home can handle the Nest. There are some and you have I believe your parents have an older home, right it some of the systems that are installing those older homes. It doesn't accommodate. Oh okay, super easy. You go online. I think what you do is, it's been a long time since I did this, but you just I think you pop the thing off the wall, the old one. You look at the cables, you pop them into the.
Website, put the correct cable into.
The but it'll tell you, based on those cables if it can control your system. Okay, And I just assumed you know that my house, it wouldn't work, and sure enough it does. It's great. I did it a couple of years ago. I haven't thought about it since and it just kind of does its own thing. And anyway, yeah, sorry, it's so Nest thermostat a lot of a lot of people have them, and now they have a feature. They didn't say they're using AI, but I assume they are
using some sort of AI. But your Nest thermostat can now identify potential issues with your heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. If a potential issue is detected, they're going to send you alert via email. So how do they
know that something's wrong. Well, if ninety nine percent of people when they turn the thermostat down a degree, it takes forty minutes to cool down their house, but your house takes two hours, they're going to notice that pattern and they say, Okay, we think that there's something wrong with your air conditioning. I think that's how they're doing it.
They don't describe how they're doing it, but I'm guessing they're looking for patterns in the way most people's air conditioning works, and then if yours doesn't work that way, they're going to say something's wrong. You might want to take a look at this, which I think is pretty smart. Yeah, now here is the thing that they're doing though, which of course they don't just do things for fun. They do things because it might make them money at some point. So you will get a link to a person that
can fix your air conditioning. They've partnered with this website called handy which I actually interviewed them a while back.
I use this site to hire a hand Yeah, you can.
Hire like a handyman to do stuff, and so they'll send you a link, and of course if you book I'm sure Google gets a little cut of the commision of whatever that service costs. But it's brilliant and I think it's smart's. I think that it's giving people information that they may not think about or you know, ponder
or whatever. And it's just like, especially if you are single or you're older and you just don't know about this stuff and you get an alert and you're like, oh, wow, I should look into this.
Yeah, totally.
Next thing, you know, you're spending ten thousand dollars in a new system.
That's always really fun to do.
My favorite and this is I replaced my air conditioning and it was a lot of money, but it was And I call all repairs. There's a certain category of repairs that get you back to the place you were, Like a car repair. Nothing was wrong with your car. All of a sudden, the check engine light comes on. You spend three hundred bucks, like, oh, we found this thing in the back. We had to replace it. You're just back to where you were. Your car is not
any better. Yeah, you're just still driving the same car. It's like a cell phone. Your screen gets cracked, you pay two hundred bucks to fix the screen. Your phone's not any better. You're just back to where you were before your screen crack and now you're out two hundred dollars. Same thing with air conditioning. I mean in my house, Yes, the air got a little bit better when we upgraded it, but it's not like it changed our lives. So I call those repairs. You're just back to where.
You to where you were just a little bit baseline, baseline, but.
Your your bank account is not in the same place it was. I love those, and you know what I'm talking about. There're just there's a million examples of those where it's just like, okay, what do we have the other the other day we had one, Oh it was what do we pay Oh, our dryer? So all of a sudden, my wife puts in some laundry and all of a sudden, it's like, do you hear that. I'm like nope, And of course I always say that for everything.
I'm like, I don't hear that. It's fine, it's fine, And I go in and it sounds like sand is just like it's like like the way it's just it's something's grinding up against like two parts are just grinding, and I'm like, okay, call a guy three hundred bucks. Oh yeah, we can fix it, and I've got the part in the van. Three hundred dollars later, we're back to exactly where we were when I woke up on Saturday morning, before my dryer was not working.
You had three hundred dollars and the dryer.
Was working just fine, and now it's like okay. Yeah, so the only thing that changed was the amount of money that went from my account to his account. Yeah.
I want to become a handyman so I can just like fix stuff and not have to ever pay for it to be done.
They they you know what, those guys. I give them credit and Gallas, I actually haven't had a girl come to the house as a handy person, but I'm just saying, could be out there. They're out there. Yeah, but I give those people credit. And every time, except for the one time I got ripped off for they replaced a flap in my toilet for eighty five dollars, which the next guy came and actually taught me how to do it, and he said, here's where you go. He showed me.
He goes, you take the flap off, you pop this in. It'll cost you six dollars and he goes, I'm not charging you, and I said, now you are awesome.
That is a saint.
I go and you'll get my business next time.
Yeah, did you?
I haven't had another toilet problem, but I went to the little place, I replaced it myself, and I that's I was smiling after that.
Yeah, me too.
Great, You're smart somewhere across town smiling all right.
This next question comes from Anne. I was wondering if you have an opinion on upgrading to Catalina.
So she has a MacBook Pro fifteen inch.
She bought it in mid twenty fifteen, and she said she's looked at some reviews and some are saying that it has slowed down their computers a lot. So do you think that she should upgrade to Catalina?
I would say, in this case, if your system is working out for you, which I think the one before Catalina was Mojave, yeah Jave, right, Mojave. I think it's v mojave, mojave Desert. I don't know. I don't know all these California things. I didn't grow up learning California. I learned. I can tell you New Jersey.
Did you guys have a dessert? And I'm just kidding Jersey Shore.
Yeah, so I would say, if it's working for you, you don't have to upgrade. I Catalina was the first Mac operating system that I actually waited a couple of months. I think it was three months before I upgraded, because I don't see the need like the Mac operating system is not. It changed a lot with Catalina, especially because they got rid of iTunes and separated it out, but that's only for Apple's benefit. They wanted to be able to watch Apple TV Plus shows on your computer and
sell you more stuff. So I don't see the benefit of necessarily upgrading right away. If it's working for you, will your computer slow down? Usually yes, And it's not because your computer is slowing down or Apple's doing something to slow you down. It's mainly because these these programs require more horsepower because they're written for newer computers. They're not writing a program today in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty for a twenty fifteen computer. They're writing it for
today's processors in today's memory. And I would say just hold off if you don't need it, unless there's a reason why you need Catalina. If there's a there was one feature that I thought was kind of cool, called which you can put your iPad next to your computer and wirelessly put your I think is it wireless or is it Yeah? I think it's wireless. Yeah, but you can just put make that part of your display. I
thought that was kind of cool. I did. I did want to try that out, so I downloaded it for that. But there's not a feature on Catalina that I can tell you that I use, And I'm like, wow, this is why I downloaded it.
That's a good point.
I feel like I haven't really noticed much.
Are there any major security updates with I'm sure there are, but but I think Apple is still supporting the last one. So as long as you're still supporting the security updates, you're fine.
Yeah, totally.
And I'm like ninety nine percent sure that the old one is getting security updates.
Especially because it's not like super old.
Yeah, it's a couple of years. Let me just talk about one more thing before we go, because this is something that I want to purchase. It's on my wish list and I'm just sharing it with you because I imagine there's someone else out in the world that wants that.
Peloton kind of experience in their house, but doesn't want to pay twenty five hundred dollars for the Peloton, which is, I love the Peloton, but do I need to pay twenty five hundred dollars for a bike that is also fifty dollars a month for the Peloton app.
No.
But I saw this at CS and I fell in love and I probably will buy it soon. I'm just waiting for the official okay for my wife. But it's called the Bowflex C six Indoor Cycling Bike, and it's a spin bike just like the Peloton. But the difference is is that it has a place for an iPad instead of a giant screen. So you take an iPad that you already have, you pop it in the holder, and now you can download the Peloton app or any other app that you want to use for your workout.
So there's a lot of biking apps out there. They mention a bunch of them, Swift whatever. And the cool thing is that you're like, well, what do I lose by not having the Peloton experience. The main thing you lose is the leaderboard because the bluetooth on the bike reports back to the app, the Peloton app, so it will still be able to see how hard you're going on the bike. It will be able to see your
cadence whatever. But the main thing that according to Bowflex when I interviewed them, is that you don't get the leaderboard, which I know a lot of people that have the Peloton that is the future that they love the most is the leaderboard, which I'm just not that competitive. I don't really care. Like I'm doing my workout for me, I don't really care if I'm on a leaderboard. In fact, i'd rather not be. When I did a Peloton workout, when I saw that my name was on like the
little side thing, I was like, Eh, that's kind of weird. Yeah, I don't need that. I think this is great. And the Peloton app is like thirteen dollars a month versus forty or fifty for the the other one. And it's, by the way, nine hundred dollars. So nine hundred dollars for a bike not bad, No, not bad at all. And you might be thinking, oh, come on, rich Bowflex. Aren't they the people that did all those like commercials
on TV and like who are they? Well, they also own Shwin, so they know something about bikes and I trust them, so again, it's about the size of a peloton. It looked very solid. I got on the thing at CS and I think it's a winner. For nine hundred dollars versus twenty five hundred, I think for the peloton that's significant.
Are you going to do the shoes?
I well, that's the other thing about this. This has dual link pedals which lets you put your feet in there, or the shoes. If I had this thing at home, I'd probably go for the shoes.
Yeah.
Right now, I've done the spinning classes at the gym and I don't have the shoes, but our gym just upgraded to it. Used to be the little shoes were really tricky to get on because they would you have to pull them like almost like a zip tie off the side. Now they made it really easy. Just pull up on the top and it sinch is closed. She almost don't need the spin shoes anymore. But if you really want to get into spinning, apparently you have to
have the shoes. And I'm a runner, not a spinner, but I do enjoy a bike spin workout every once in a while.
I'm as flywheel.
I know that was your place. That was your jam.
Yeah, and then they got rid of it.
No more flywheel yeah, bumber.
Oh well oh soul cycle butt that's yeah. That's a little a little, a little expensive, a little much.
Well, that's gonna do it for the show, Can you believe it? I went by so fast, by so fast I think because Will was here. Yeah, Will, what'd you think? I thought it was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, cool, good time, Megan, No fun, no fun, no fun. Thanks for listening to the rich on Tech podcast. If you have not subscribed yet, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. The best thing you can do is tell your friends
about this show. Don't keep it a secret. I know you want to have all these little things that I tell you, So you can tell your friends about the double Take app and the new bike from Bowflex that's half the price. But don't keep this a secret. Tell your friends, let them listen, and then you can discuss Yeah, and that will be more fun than trying to like one up them with like the new app that you've heard me talk about on here. You can get in touch with me on Instagram. I am at rich on Tech.
And you can also rate this podcast at a website called rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech Meghan, I think we are actually holding steady at close to five stars.
That's amazing.
Maybe it's a little bit less. How can folks get in touch with you, Meghan?
I'm on Twitter at producer Megan and also on TikTok.
Are you Have you done a new video?
No need to do that with Will today?
Are you doing one? Are you on TikTok? Way?
On TikTok, I've resisted. I've resisted.
Five point zero rating.
By the way, Wow, you got to have a party.
One hundred and forty nine, so be the one hundred and fiftieth. Will's not on TikTok. I am rich on Tech, but I haven't done anything on there yet. Thanks so much for listening on behalf of myself and everyone that helps get this podcast to your ears. Have a great day. Oh bye,