Latest / Stampede of Truth / Rich On Tech - What my AI agent does for me, hidden subscriptions & Apple's $2,000 foldable (196, Oct. 17, 2026)

Transcript

Rich On Tech - What my AI agent does for me, hidden subscriptions & Apple's $2,000 foldable (196, Oct. 17, 2026) · Stampede of Truth

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro here, hanging out
0:03
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. I believe the tech
0:12
Speaker 1: should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those
0:15
Speaker 1: phone lines at 888-RICH-101, that's 888-742-4101. Give me a call
0:23
Speaker 1: if you have a question about technology, you need some advice,
0:26
Speaker 1: you want to share something interesting you discovered. Just go
0:29
Speaker 1: to richontech.tv if you'd rather send an email, richontech.tv, hit contact.
0:37
Speaker 1: All right, coming up on the show, we've got a
0:39
Speaker 1: couple of guests, Philip Shoemaker. He is the founding director
0:42
Speaker 1: of Apple's App Store review team and author of Unbreakable.
0:46
Speaker 1: He's going to share how he was SIM swapped despite
0:50
Speaker 1: his career fighting fraud and how you can protect yourself.
0:53
Speaker 1: And later, we've got Christopher Mutch. developer of Speaking Access.
0:57
Speaker 1: This is a $ 30 program for your Windows computer that
1:00
Speaker 1: helps you control it by voice. Well, it is that time.
1:05
Speaker 1: iPhone Duo pre-orders are open and people are going nuts
1:10
Speaker 1: over Apple's first foldable phone. Did you expect anything else? No,
1:14
Speaker 1: we did not. This is Apple's $ 2, 000 foldable phone. It's
1:19
Speaker 1: first foldable. Yes, I know, Samsung's been making them for
1:23
Speaker 1: six or seven years at this point. But this is Apple,
1:26
Speaker 1: and it's different, and it's their version of what they
1:29
Speaker 1: think a foldable phone should be. So pre-orders started on Friday.
1:34
Speaker 1: We are now into the weekend, and guess what? It
1:36
Speaker 1: is pretty much sold out. Yes, even at $ 2, 000 for
1:39
Speaker 1: a 256-gigabyte device. For $ 3, 200, that's the 2-terabyte device. Comes
1:49
Speaker 1: in two colors, star white, night sky. Some people saying
1:52
Speaker 1: delivery's already slipped into January. Just read an article where
1:57
Speaker 1: some people are selling these things on eBay for a
2:00
Speaker 1: couple thousand over the list price. I mean, let's not
2:03
Speaker 1: get nutty here. This is a new type of phone
2:07
Speaker 1: from Apple, but come on. And we haven't even seen
2:10
Speaker 1: one review of this device yet. So maybe we should
2:13
Speaker 1: wait until reviews are out before we decide this is
2:16
Speaker 1: the right product for us. So if you're not familiar,
2:19
Speaker 1: this is Apple's first foldable phone. It opens like a book.
2:22
Speaker 1: You've got a 5.4-inch screen on the outside, 7.6-inch screen
2:26
Speaker 1: on the inside. It's kind of like a mini iPad.
2:29
Speaker 1: It's got two cameras, not the best cameras in the world.
2:32
Speaker 1: I mean, not the best camera setup that Apple has
2:35
Speaker 1: to offer. Let's put it that way. And if you
2:37
Speaker 1: break this thing, it's going to cost you $ 1, 000 to
2:40
Speaker 1: repair that inner screen, almost $ 400 to repair the outer screen,
2:43
Speaker 1: $ 200 to repair the back glass, and If you drop
2:48
Speaker 1: it and it's just kind of mangled, it's going to
2:50
Speaker 1: cost you up to $ 1, 500. Or you can get AppleCare
2:54
Speaker 1: for $ 20 a month or $ 200 a year, and those
2:57
Speaker 1: screen repairs drop to just $ 100. So what do you
2:59
Speaker 1: think Apple people are going to be selling in the
3:01
Speaker 1: stores and online? Lots of AppleCare to go with this
3:05
Speaker 1: very expensive phone. So my advice is this is exciting.
3:10
Speaker 1: It's different, but it is expensive. It's unproven. I think, again,
3:15
Speaker 1: what I've said before, and yes, I've gone hands-on with
3:17
Speaker 1: this device at the Apple event. I think my thoughts
3:21
Speaker 1: on this continue to go to the place of developers
3:26
Speaker 1: are going to make the difference on this device. We
3:29
Speaker 1: have had foldables from Samsung and Google for many years now.
3:32
Speaker 1: The software has been a little bit of an issue
3:35
Speaker 1: because apps are all over the place. So if developers
3:38
Speaker 1: make their apps adapt to this nice big screen and
3:41
Speaker 1: the nice outer screen, that is going to be the
3:44
Speaker 1: key to the success of this device. You know the
3:46
Speaker 1: hardware is going to be good because it's Apple. But
3:49
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait and see until I tell you
3:52
Speaker 1: my full review on this device.
3:55
Speaker 2: All right.
3:55
Speaker 1: So that's the iPhone Duo. I wanted to talk to
3:58
Speaker 1: you this week about AI agents because my life is
4:02
Speaker 1: pretty much consumed with them at this point. And I
4:04
Speaker 1: know you've probably heard a lot about them. I told
4:06
Speaker 1: you the story how I'd ordered pizza for my kid's
4:08
Speaker 1: birthday party a couple of weeks ago. Well, now I've
4:11
Speaker 1: upped the ante. I have done just about everything you
4:13
Speaker 1: can imagine using this AI chatbot. I mean, it is
4:17
Speaker 1: running so many parts of my life. It's pretty amazing.
4:21
Speaker 1: So what are AI chatbots? Well, If you think about
4:24
Speaker 1: AI chatbots, they answer questions, but AI agents can actually
4:28
Speaker 1: take action. So you kind of give them a goal,
4:31
Speaker 1: not just step-by-step things of what you want. You tell
4:34
Speaker 1: them like, hey, I'd like to do this. Go on
4:36
Speaker 1: this website, compare these things, summarize this, find me the
4:39
Speaker 1: best price, get me tickets, whatever. A lot of them
4:42
Speaker 1: could work in the background. So they check on things
4:44
Speaker 1: proactively and let you know when something needs your attention.
4:48
Speaker 1: There's a couple of big players right now. Metamuse kind of,
4:52
Speaker 1: kick this whole thing off, who would have thought that
4:53
Speaker 1: Facebook would come up with probably what I would regard
4:57
Speaker 1: as the top AI agent right now. It's Metamuse. And
5:01
Speaker 1: it's a personal assistant that can help you do everything
5:03
Speaker 1: like everyday tasks, research, organize your life. And yeah, you
5:07
Speaker 1: can start using it for free. And a lot of
5:09
Speaker 1: people will probably never hit up against the limits on
5:11
Speaker 1: this thing if they're just using it casually. Then you've
5:14
Speaker 1: got ChatGPT Dots. And that's the one that I've been
5:16
Speaker 1: using a lot. This is from OpenAI.com. You create your
5:19
Speaker 1: own agent, you give it a name, you give it
5:21
Speaker 1: a personality, you connect your apps, and it can do
5:23
Speaker 1: things for you. Mine is named Glitchy. I thought that
5:26
Speaker 1: was appropriate. You've got GrokBot, and this is from XAI,
5:31
Speaker 1: same folks behind SpaceX and X, a lot of Xs
5:35
Speaker 1: and all these names. But this is, I've not tested
5:38
Speaker 1: this one yet. I know a lot of people on
5:39
Speaker 1: X are talking about it. It seems to be very powerful.
5:42
Speaker 1: And again, it's very similar. It's almost like an AI
5:46
Speaker 1: teammate for you. Then you've got Google Gemini Spark. This
5:49
Speaker 1: is Google's version, and this is great if you have
5:51
Speaker 1: all your stuff in Gmail or in Google services. And
5:56
Speaker 1: it's gotten a little bit better. I tried to have
5:57
Speaker 1: it do some things, and it's okay. I think it's
6:00
Speaker 1: probably not the strongest of the bunch right now. And then,
6:03
Speaker 1: of course, this all started with OpenClaw. This is the
6:06
Speaker 1: DIY version. This is open-source software that you run on
6:09
Speaker 1: your own computer or your own server. It's much more customizable,
6:12
Speaker 1: but it does require a lot more know-how. And of course,
6:16
Speaker 1: you got to watch about security with all of these things.
6:20
Speaker 1: So the thing that I think really sets these AI
6:23
Speaker 1: agents apart versus just a chatbot is that they have
6:26
Speaker 1: their own virtual computer in the cloud. So that means
6:30
Speaker 1: that they can navigate to websites and use apps just
6:33
Speaker 1: like a human would. So for instance, I've had it
6:36
Speaker 1: check into my flights. I've had it check websites, check stock. Yesterday,
6:40
Speaker 1: I was waiting for something from Amazon, and I had
6:43
Speaker 1: it go to the Amazon website and watch the tracking.
6:45
Speaker 1: And you might say, Rich, hold on. I thought Amazon
6:48
Speaker 1: blocked these AI agents. And yes, they have. But here's
6:51
Speaker 1: the thing. If you have these installed on your desktop computer,
6:56
Speaker 1: they can use your web browser. And they could also
6:59
Speaker 1: use all the apps on your computer, which makes them
7:01
Speaker 1: just mind-bogglingly powerful. And that's why you have to be
7:05
Speaker 1: careful with the access that you grant them, because they
7:08
Speaker 1: can pretty much do anything on your computer that you
7:10
Speaker 1: can do. And it's wild. I mean, it's getting to
7:13
Speaker 1: the point where if you don't know how to do
7:14
Speaker 1: something on your computer, you just ask your AI agent
7:17
Speaker 1: to do it. It says, hey, can I take over?
7:18
Speaker 1: And it literally drags your mouse around the screen, clicks around,
7:22
Speaker 1: and it's almost faster than any human would do it.
7:24
Speaker 1: I mean, it's wild to watch. And yes, you can
7:26
Speaker 1: watch them. So again, I've been using Glitchy, which is
7:29
Speaker 1: my chat GBT dot. And you can probably use AI Muse.
7:34
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the better one to use right
7:35
Speaker 1: now because unless you're paying for a high chat GBT plan,
7:38
Speaker 1: I think it's like $ 100 or more a month. That's
7:41
Speaker 1: how you can get access to dots. But for everyone else,
7:43
Speaker 1: you can use Muse for free. And so I'm just
7:47
Speaker 1: going to go through some of the things that I've
7:48
Speaker 1: done this week with my agent, which is now on
7:50
Speaker 1: my home screen. So I got my property tax bill yesterday.
7:54
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I took a picture, uploaded it to
7:56
Speaker 1: my glitchy, and I said, compare this to last year's
7:58
Speaker 1: bill in my cloud drive and tell me how much
8:01
Speaker 1: more it is and why it went up. And it
8:04
Speaker 1: did it. It told me the whole amount went up
8:06
Speaker 1: about 2% year over year. I've been doing a home
8:09
Speaker 1: improvement project, and it's been adding up all of the
8:13
Speaker 1: materials and contractor payments, subtracting the refunds for things I
8:16
Speaker 1: had to return, and giving me an ongoing total of
8:19
Speaker 1: how much that project's costing me. I got a haircut
8:22
Speaker 1: the other day and I said, remind me in three weeks.
8:24
Speaker 1: I want to go again, but I can't go on
8:26
Speaker 1: a Saturday, Sunday or Monday. So highlight a four-day window
8:29
Speaker 1: in my calendar of the next time to go to
8:31
Speaker 1: a haircut. Did that. Friend recommended a restaurant to me
8:34
Speaker 1: last night. All I did was tell it my friend
8:36
Speaker 1: recommended this restaurant. It found the proper spelling and it
8:40
Speaker 1: made a note in my note-taking app all by itself.
8:43
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just wild stuff that you might say, Rich, okay,
8:45
Speaker 1: big deal. But it's powerful over time and the more
8:49
Speaker 1: you do it with it. A hairdryer. Someone recommended a
8:52
Speaker 1: travel hairdryer. My wife loves her Dyson hairdryer, and this
8:55
Speaker 1: is the mini version of it. So I just put
8:56
Speaker 1: it in there, and I snapped a screenshot. I said,
8:58
Speaker 1: put this on my shopping list.
9:00
Speaker 3: Boom.
9:00
Speaker 1: Did that.
9:01
Speaker 3: School.
9:02
Speaker 1: Sends a whole bunch of complicated screenshots about an event.
9:05
Speaker 1: I said, hey, take all these things, put the times,
9:07
Speaker 1: the parking instructions, and the early pickup instructions on my calendar.
9:11
Speaker 1: Did that. Let's see. What else? Help me write a
9:14
Speaker 1: fun birthday text. I mean, you could do that with
9:16
Speaker 1: your regular chat bot. Oh. I got three nights free
9:20
Speaker 1: at a Las Vegas hotel. I said, hmm, let's see.
9:23
Speaker 1: Let's check.
9:23
Speaker 2: Okay.
9:24
Speaker 1: So I had it look at the deal, evaluate it,
9:27
Speaker 1: check my calendar, and it emailed my wife three possible
9:31
Speaker 1: windows where we could go to Vegas for those three
9:33
Speaker 1: free nights. And she wrote me back. She goes, did
9:35
Speaker 1: you have your AI chatbot do this? And I said, yes,
9:38
Speaker 1: I did. She said, it's pretty cool. We were going
9:40
Speaker 1: to a concert. There's a whole bunch of information about
9:42
Speaker 1: going to the concert scattered across all kinds of emails.
9:46
Speaker 1: It pulled together all of that information and made me
9:48
Speaker 1: what I call a one-page. All the information I need
9:51
Speaker 1: in one page so I know who I'm meeting, who
9:54
Speaker 1: I'm talking to, what I'm doing, where I'm parking, all
9:56
Speaker 1: that good stuff. United came out with this Starlink. Wi-Fi
10:00
Speaker 1: tracker website. I said, oh, check these United flights I
10:03
Speaker 1: typically go on and see if any of them have Starlink.
10:07
Speaker 1: And sure enough, they didn't, sadly. But it went through
10:10
Speaker 1: on my computer and just popped all those flights into
10:14
Speaker 1: the checker and checked them one by one. I mean,
10:17
Speaker 1: it just goes on and on and on. I've been
10:19
Speaker 1: doing a product review. So I've been dictating my observations
10:23
Speaker 1: and it just keeps adding them to the same note
10:25
Speaker 1: in my notes. Every Friday, it sends me an email
10:28
Speaker 1: with all the people I emailed with back and forth
10:30
Speaker 1: and their LinkedIn profiles, plus a reminder of what we discussed.
10:34
Speaker 1: So I can go ahead and connect with them on LinkedIn.
10:38
Speaker 1: It now marks my VIP newsletter subscribers in my email.
10:42
Speaker 1: So I can tell exactly when one of them emails
10:44
Speaker 1: me and I can prioritize their email to look at it.
10:47
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I'm going to write them back instantly,
10:49
Speaker 1: but you know, it does it. And just on and
10:52
Speaker 1: on and on. And also it's proactive again. So it
10:56
Speaker 1: not only does the things that you're asking it to do,
10:59
Speaker 1: but it will text you throughout the day and say, Hey,
11:01
Speaker 1: you just got an email with this warning. You should
11:03
Speaker 1: take action on it. Or someone's asking this question. It
11:06
Speaker 1: looks like your boss and you should probably answer them.
11:09
Speaker 1: So there are so many things you can do with
11:10
Speaker 1: these AI agents. I know AI can be intimidating and
11:14
Speaker 1: It can be scary. It can be unknown. But this
11:17
Speaker 1: is one of the truly remarkable breakthroughs that I have
11:21
Speaker 1: seen in my lifetime of covering technology. It is not
11:24
Speaker 1: only enabling people to, you know, AI enabled everyone to
11:28
Speaker 1: have all the world's information now, but also now it's
11:31
Speaker 1: enabling you to have superhuman strength and power in your day.
11:36
Speaker 1: So don't be afraid of it. Test it out. You're
11:38
Speaker 1: probably not going to break anything, but just be aware
11:40
Speaker 1: of the powers you are giving your AI. Mine has
11:44
Speaker 1: access to a lot of stuff, but I know what
11:46
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Just be careful because it can send emails
11:48
Speaker 1: on your behalf. It can make calendar invites. It can
11:51
Speaker 1: cancel things. It can do all kinds of stuff if
11:53
Speaker 1: you let it. That's my advice. All right. We got
11:56
Speaker 1: a great show for you coming up here. Engineered by me,
12:00
Speaker 1: by the way, not the AI agent. So there's still
12:03
Speaker 1: a lot of human involved here. Rich on tech dot
12:06
Speaker 1: TV is the website. If you want the show notes,
12:09
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV slash one nine six. Coming up,
12:14
Speaker 1: we're going to take your calls at eight, eight, eight,
12:16
Speaker 1: rich one on one, eight, eight, eight, seven, four, two, four,
12:20
Speaker 1: one zero one. And yes, we have to talk about
12:22
Speaker 1: Apple's new device. I know another Apple product, the home view.
12:26
Speaker 1: This is for your smart home. We'll talk about that.
12:28
Speaker 1: Plus the deal that mint mobile has coming up right
12:31
Speaker 1: after this. Jack in Anaheim, California. Jack, you're on with Rich.
12:41
Speaker 4: Good morning, Rich.
12:42
Speaker 5: Long-time listener, second-time caller. Love your show.
12:45
Speaker 1: Thank you.
12:47
Speaker 5: I don't know what the first call was about, but
12:49
Speaker 5: this one I'm sure is more important.
12:51
Speaker 1: Okay.
12:51
Speaker 5: Well, it's you, so of course. It's about four years old.
12:55
Speaker 5: About eight months ago, a guest of mine sat on
12:58
Speaker 5: the Roco control and And I accidentally was on the
13:02
Speaker 5: couch and I've gotten a voice that every time I
13:05
Speaker 5: turn the TV on, I have a female voice telling
13:07
Speaker 5: me what's on the screen. And I don't know how
13:10
Speaker 5: to turn the voice off. I've been to settings. I've
13:13
Speaker 5: been to network. I've been to audio. I said, no voice.
13:17
Speaker 5: She's still there.
13:18
Speaker 4: Okay.
13:19
Speaker 1: So explain to me, explain to me the TV. What's
13:23
Speaker 1: the TV?
13:23
Speaker 5: It's a Sony smart TV.
13:27
Speaker 2: Okay.
13:27
Speaker 1: Now is the Roku built into that?
13:29
Speaker 5: No, I bought a Roku after I chucked cable about
13:33
Speaker 5: three years or two years ago. One year ago, I
13:35
Speaker 5: think I chucked cable and just went to a Roku stick.
13:37
Speaker 1: I love my Roku. Yeah.
13:39
Speaker 5: Yeah. And I have a tower here, so I just
13:41
Speaker 5: watch streaming TV. I don't have any services.
13:44
Speaker 4: Okay.
13:44
Speaker 1: So the question is, are you using, you're using the
13:47
Speaker 1: Roku interface. Is the voice coming from Roku or is
13:51
Speaker 1: it coming from the TV? This is an accessibility setting
13:53
Speaker 1: for sure, but we have to decide where it's coming from.
13:56
Speaker 1: So do you know if it's coming from Roku or
13:58
Speaker 1: the TV?
14:00
Speaker 5: So the Sony control is put up on a shelf,
14:03
Speaker 5: and it didn't get set on. I don't know how
14:06
Speaker 5: it could be the Sony control, although I don't know.
14:10
Speaker 5: I just know the Roku control got set on.
14:12
Speaker 1: But basically anything that you bring up on your screen,
14:15
Speaker 1: there's someone reading it basically?
14:17
Speaker 3: Yes.
14:18
Speaker 5: Okay.
14:18
Speaker 1: So this sounds like a text-to-speech reader, and Roku does
14:23
Speaker 1: have a lot of accessibility features built in. So according
14:27
Speaker 1: to what I'm looking up here on Roku– This is
14:29
Speaker 1: called Screen Reader. It used to be called Audio Guide.
14:32
Speaker 1: So depending on how old your Roku is, it might
14:35
Speaker 1: be called Audio Guide. It might be called Screen Reader.
14:38
Speaker 1: So have you gone into the accessibility settings?
14:41
Speaker 5: I have, and I'm at Settings, and I went down
14:43
Speaker 5: to Audio.
14:44
Speaker 1: No, it wouldn't be Audio.
14:45
Speaker 5: I also have other ones.
14:47
Speaker 1: It would be Settings, Accessibility.
14:50
Speaker 5: Okay, Accessibility. I'm on Accessibility.
14:53
Speaker 1: Okay, look for something called Screen Reader.
14:56
Speaker 5: That's right there. I'm going down four spots. Okay, screen reader,
14:59
Speaker 5: it says slow, very slow, slow is fast, is very rapid.
15:04
Speaker 1: Okay, there's no off?
15:06
Speaker 5: Oh, no, there's no off there. There's volume, there's pitch,
15:09
Speaker 5: there's shortcut underneath the speech rate.
15:11
Speaker 1: Okay, well, there's got it.
15:12
Speaker 5: We'll see if there's off.
15:14
Speaker 1: So the other way, it looks like you have a
15:17
Speaker 1: star on your remote.
15:19
Speaker 5: A star?
15:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, like an asterisk.
15:22
Speaker 5: On top?
15:23
Speaker 1: No, there should be on my remote. There's a little
15:25
Speaker 1: star button. So if you have the star and maybe, yes, yes,
15:28
Speaker 1: I did that. So press that four times quickly and
15:31
Speaker 1: see if that toggles. I think if the person sat
15:33
Speaker 1: on it, their butt probably pushed this button four times.
15:37
Speaker 5: I pushed it. Well, I'm on a speech rate right now.
15:39
Speaker 5: Should I get off of that?
15:40
Speaker 1: Well, I just pushed, just push the button anyway. It
15:42
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It's just, you can do it from any screen.
15:45
Speaker 1: So this is what we use to bring up captions
15:48
Speaker 1: is the star button. But if you, there's some shortcuts
15:50
Speaker 1: built in as well.
15:51
Speaker 5: So, So I push it four times, I get no action.
15:54
Speaker 1: You get nothing?
15:56
Speaker 5: Nothing changes on my screen on the TV.
15:58
Speaker 1: Okay.
15:59
Speaker 5: This says Roco accessibility speech rate. Well, hold on, let
16:02
Speaker 5: me see what's in here. Volume, pitch.
16:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's got to be.
16:07
Speaker 5: Can I find off disabled?
16:09
Speaker 1: There it is.
16:10
Speaker 5: I have disabled checked.
16:11
Speaker 1: Okay.
16:12
Speaker 5: It's undisabled.
16:14
Speaker 4: Okay.
16:14
Speaker 5: And still she talks to me.
16:15
Speaker 6: Okay.
16:16
Speaker 1: So when you go to another screen, it's still talking.
16:18
Speaker 4: Okay.
16:18
Speaker 1: So then it could be, it could be the fact
16:21
Speaker 1: that you are, this is being generated from the Sony TV.
16:25
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the case, but what I
16:27
Speaker 1: would do is if it's not working, the only other
16:30
Speaker 1: thing I would say is, let's see here. I'm trying
16:34
Speaker 1: to think.
16:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
16:36
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like you got to go through
16:38
Speaker 1: those settings and restart your Roku and see if that helps.
16:41
Speaker 1: But Jack, I feel like you're so close. You got
16:45
Speaker 1: to look in those settings, but you're so close in
16:47
Speaker 1: those accessibility settings. Please email me. Let me know if
16:51
Speaker 1: you're able to get that voice because no one wants
16:53
Speaker 1: a voice in their head and certainly not in their TV.
16:56
Speaker 1: Back after this. This week, Apple came out with a
17:02
Speaker 1: new device called the Home View. This is kind of
17:05
Speaker 1: a smart gadget for your house. Connects your smart home
17:10
Speaker 1: to the Apple services system. kind of like a smart speaker,
17:14
Speaker 1: a touchscreen and Siri all in one. So it's meant
17:16
Speaker 1: to sit on your kitchen counter or your wall, a
17:19
Speaker 1: way to control your smart home stuff, right? $ 299. We're
17:23
Speaker 1: noticing more and more the Apple tax. I mean, you are,
17:26
Speaker 1: Apple's products are just, they're way more than the competition
17:30
Speaker 1: at this point. And everything's expensive. I know because of
17:33
Speaker 1: the price of everything, but Apple in particular, like they
17:35
Speaker 1: are not, their stuff is high quality, but it is expensive.
17:39
Speaker 7: $ 300.
17:39
Speaker 1: I mean, If you look at what Google has, Google's
17:43
Speaker 1: had a similar product forever. The Google Home, Google Nest,
17:47
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And then Amazon has
17:50
Speaker 1: had Echoes at different price points for a long time
17:52
Speaker 1: that are way cheaper. But anyway, this is going to
17:54
Speaker 1: be available November 13th. I have knock-on hands-on, so I
17:57
Speaker 1: can't say how good this is. But from everything I've seen,
18:01
Speaker 1: it is very hit or miss. People either think it's
18:04
Speaker 1: great or not very good, especially at that price. You
18:07
Speaker 1: get a 7-inch touchscreen. It's got built-in speakers. Got a
18:10
Speaker 1: camera so you can FaceTime on it. You can mount
18:13
Speaker 1: it on a countertop or on a wall. There's four colors,
18:16
Speaker 1: and it's powered by Apple's A18 chip, and it also
18:19
Speaker 1: has the new Siri AI. So what can you do
18:21
Speaker 1: with this thing? Well, you can ask Siri questions. Obviously,
18:25
Speaker 1: control your smart home stuff. When someone walks up to it,
18:28
Speaker 1: it personalizes what they see for up to six family members.
18:31
Speaker 1: Your calendar, your reminders, your messages, FaceTime, control your locks,
18:35
Speaker 1: your lights, your thermostats. Watch your security cameras. displays your,
18:40
Speaker 1: your Apple photos as kind of a digital photo frame,
18:42
Speaker 1: which I think is great, but, or a frame is awesome.
18:44
Speaker 1: It's half the price. Um, what else? There's no app store.
18:48
Speaker 1: So you can't install third-party apps. So a lot of
18:51
Speaker 1: the features require you to have an iPhone or an
18:54
Speaker 1: iPad nearby. And the wall mount is about an extra $ 60.
18:58
Speaker 1: And of course, $ 299. That's a lot. You know, you
19:01
Speaker 1: can get these, uh, the Amazon echo show. I think
19:03
Speaker 1: it's like one 50 or something. Anyway, people are still
19:06
Speaker 1: going to go nuts over this because it's Apple. And
19:08
Speaker 1: of course, it works with their iPhone. But I will
19:11
Speaker 1: hold my judgment until after I am able to test
19:13
Speaker 1: this thing out. I love my Google Nest, my Google Home.
19:17
Speaker 1: I've had that thing in my house forever. I've got
19:19
Speaker 1: one on my bedside. I've got one in my kitchen.
19:21
Speaker 1: And it is the best thing ever. Not only can
19:24
Speaker 1: you ask Google to control all your smart home stuff,
19:26
Speaker 1: but you see your Google Photos as a slideshow. And
19:29
Speaker 1: you can ask it questions because it has AI. And
19:31
Speaker 1: this Apple product is very similar. So I think that
19:34
Speaker 1: Apple people will probably like it. I think the tech
19:37
Speaker 1: people are thinking that it is not as full featured
19:40
Speaker 1: as it should be for that high price tag. But
19:43
Speaker 1: we'll get this in soon and review it and have
19:45
Speaker 1: more information. Let's go to Susie in.
19:50
Speaker 1: In West Covina. Susie, you're on with Rich.
19:53
Speaker 3: Hi, Rich.
19:54
Speaker 9: Thank you for taking my call. I had a couple
19:57
Speaker 9: of questions. I'll ask for my mom first because she
20:00
Speaker 9: has a consumer cellular link 2 with 8 gigabytes. And
20:06
Speaker 9: she'll say, oh, my phone isn't working. And she keeps
20:10
Speaker 9: typing things, or she'll hit the button that silences the ringer.
20:15
Speaker 9: And is there something really, really, really simple for her
20:21
Speaker 9: to use? In fact, she's even having problems. She's like, oh,
20:25
Speaker 9: my finger's hitting the wrong thing because of my nail.
20:28
Speaker 9: So I'm trying to find her something super, super simple.
20:32
Speaker 1: Susie, I'm looking at this phone. I mean, this Link
20:34
Speaker 1: 2 is your most basic flip phone you can get.
20:37
Speaker 1: So if she's having problems with that, it's going to
20:39
Speaker 1: be tough to find anything else. I mean, as far
20:41
Speaker 1: as I can tell, this is a very basic flip phone, correct?
20:45
Speaker 1: It just has a screen on the outside and the
20:47
Speaker 1: digits on the inside. Yeah. So it's going to be.
20:51
Speaker 9: Sometimes I have to even admit I've hit something and
20:53
Speaker 9: then I go, what just happened?
20:55
Speaker 4: Oh, no.
20:55
Speaker 9: It's only because I kind of have a clue because
20:58
Speaker 9: I was... Oh, I thought maybe the... Because they did
21:01
Speaker 9: say something about the jitterbug and being a lock screen
21:04
Speaker 9: and you.
21:05
Speaker 3: Can't... Yeah. So.
21:07
Speaker 1: I would say, look, I mean, I think that this,
21:10
Speaker 1: you know, these phones, there are some that are purpose-built
21:13
Speaker 1: for seniors. I'm assuming she's a senior. I'm looking at, like,
21:19
Speaker 1: the Jitterbug. Have you heard of that?
21:22
Speaker 8: A what?
21:22
Speaker 1: The Jitterbug.
21:24
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, that's the one I mentioned, yeah.
21:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
21:27
Speaker 1: So, I mean, but I'm looking at these phones, and,
21:29
Speaker 1: I mean, they're, you know, the phone that she already
21:32
Speaker 1: has is pretty much the most basic phone you can get, right?
21:36
Speaker 1: A flip phone. The only thing, yeah, I mean, these
21:40
Speaker 1: other phones, I feel like they're even more complicated. But
21:43
Speaker 1: I would take a look at, have you heard of Lively, L-I-V-E-L-Y?
21:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so.
21:50
Speaker 1: Okay, so Lively is, now they're owned by Best Buy,
21:54
Speaker 1: but they have on their website just specifically phones that
21:57
Speaker 1: are geared towards seniors. So they've got the Jitterbug on there,
22:03
Speaker 1: which is a flip phone. They've got a Jitterbug smartphone.
22:06
Speaker 1: They've got the Raz phone, which I think would probably
22:10
Speaker 1: be a good choice, but this is for seniors with
22:13
Speaker 1: cognitive issues. But the problem is that's an expensive phone.
22:17
Speaker 1: It's like $ 400. So is she mobile? Does she move
22:23
Speaker 1: around a lot, or does she stay in her home?
22:25
Speaker 9: She's in bed.
22:27
Speaker 2: Okay.
22:28
Speaker 1: What about just getting her a standard old-school phone, like
22:32
Speaker 1: a landline?
22:34
Speaker 9: Well, she's in a board and care.
22:35
Speaker 3: Could she do that?
22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get, you can get, does she have wifi?
22:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:41
Speaker 1: Okay. Well you can get like an adapter. There's a
22:45
Speaker 1: company called pinwheel. There's a company called magic Jack. There's
22:48
Speaker 1: a company called Uma. They all make these adapters that
22:51
Speaker 1: you can use to plug in a regular landline phone.
22:55
Speaker 1: And I think that that would probably be a better,
22:56
Speaker 1: cause she's probably familiar with that concept, right?
23:00
Speaker 9: Yeah.
23:00
Speaker 1: So maybe look into those.
23:03
Speaker 5: Oh, okay.
23:04
Speaker 1: And that does she have, if she has wifi available
23:08
Speaker 1: at her place, you know, wherever she is, she can
23:11
Speaker 1: hook up one of these phones. And so you can basically,
23:15
Speaker 1: you get this little, like with Uma, you get this
23:17
Speaker 1: little device, it connects to the internet and then the phone,
23:20
Speaker 1: the landline of right. You could just go and buy
23:22
Speaker 1: a regular landline at Walmart and plug it into this thing.
23:25
Speaker 1: And when she picks it up, she's going to hear
23:27
Speaker 1: a dial tone. Is she texting people or no?
23:31
Speaker 9: No, she is not a tech.
23:33
Speaker 1: Is she using an AI agent? Is she on Muse?
23:35
Speaker 9: On a phone, I wouldn't text anyway.
23:37
Speaker 4: Okay.
23:38
Speaker 1: Is she using an AI agent like Muse or any
23:40
Speaker 1: of those? Is she into ChatGPT?
23:43
Speaker 2: No.
23:44
Speaker 5: She's technophobe.
23:46
Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, it sounds to me like she can
23:50
Speaker 1: use a landline then. So I would look into one
23:52
Speaker 1: of these landline options.
23:55
Speaker 3: Okay.
23:56
Speaker 9: Well, then on to my question. I have a a
24:01
Speaker 9: 2021 Moto G stylus and it's running Android 11 and
24:08
Speaker 9: it's like more places. Well, Taco Bell just said, we're not,
24:12
Speaker 9: we just got rid of everybody with older than Android 13.
24:20
Speaker 9: Plus I was thinking about getting a CGM and I
24:22
Speaker 9: think they want either 13 or 14 Android. Yeah.
24:26
Speaker 3: So I would go with the pixel.
24:29
Speaker 1: Go with the Pixel 10a if you want something inexpensive.
24:32
Speaker 1: If you want something a little higher end, go with
24:34
Speaker 1: the just standard Pixel 11. But Pixel 10a on sale
24:38
Speaker 1: typically anywhere from about $ 500. You can get a refurbished
24:43
Speaker 1: Pixel if you want something that's even cheaper than that.
24:45
Speaker 1: But I think the Pixel is going to give you
24:47
Speaker 1: a good seven years of use, which I think it
24:51
Speaker 1: sounds to me like you use your phone a lot. So,
24:53
Speaker 1: or you keep your phone for a long time. So, Susie,
24:56
Speaker 1: I'll put all this information on the website, richontech.tv slash 196.
25:00
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the call today. I do appreciate it.
25:04
Speaker 1: Coming up, we'll talk about Mint Mobile's $ 10 deal, $ 10
25:07
Speaker 1: a month for service. Yep, they're celebrating 10 years. They've
25:10
Speaker 1: got a good deal there, plus much more, including your calls, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101.
25:15
Speaker 1: My name is Rich DeMuro. You are doing something smart.
25:17
Speaker 1: You are listening to Rich on Tech. Let's go to,
25:31
Speaker 1: let's see, line three. We've got, is it Cleta in Brea?
25:37
Speaker 1: Is that right?
25:37
Speaker 3: Yes.
25:38
Speaker 5: Yes.
25:39
Speaker 3: Hi.
25:40
Speaker 10: Hi. Thank you for taking my call, Rich.
25:43
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
25:44
Speaker 10: I have a new, thank you. I have a new
25:46
Speaker 10: Samsung Android cell phone model, A37 5G. The notifications icon
25:53
Speaker 10: on my Facebook page has suddenly moved to the bottom
25:55
Speaker 10: of the screen and actually seems inoperative now. I researched
26:00
Speaker 10: the issue on the Internet for two hours today.
26:03
Speaker 1: Oh, no.
26:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
26:05
Speaker 10: It seems a recent Facebook page update, I'm not alone,
26:09
Speaker 10: has caused the issue for many users. However, none of
26:13
Speaker 10: the many suggested fixes worked for me. Um, they, the
26:17
Speaker 10: steps just weren't available.
26:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's, that's what happens when you search the
26:21
Speaker 1: internet to find the details on how to fix things.
26:25
Speaker 1: There's always like one or two things you're like following
26:27
Speaker 1: the steps and you get to like step three and
26:29
Speaker 1: it's like, wait, my phone doesn't have that step. Hold on.
26:32
Speaker 1: What's happening here? Believe me, I, I do this stuff
26:35
Speaker 1: all the time and it cracks me up when I,
26:37
Speaker 1: when I know how to do something and it's like,
26:39
Speaker 1: that's not how you do it. But to answer your question,
26:43
Speaker 1: so you're saying that Facebook, so it looks like I'm
26:46
Speaker 1: checking on both iPhone and Android, and you're saying your notifications,
26:50
Speaker 1: you're talking the little bell icon switched to the bottom
26:53
Speaker 1: of the screen versus the top?
26:55
Speaker 4: Correct.
26:56
Speaker 1: And now you can't even access it on your phone? Yeah.
27:00
Speaker 10: Now, I have cold, dead hands anyway, and I've got
27:03
Speaker 10: a screen protector. But the icons next to it for
27:10
Speaker 10: my profile, that works.
27:12
Speaker 1: Okay. The profile icon works, but that one doesn't.
27:15
Speaker 3: Okay.
27:16
Speaker 1: So it could be, and this could be that it
27:18
Speaker 1: could be that your screen.
27:19
Speaker 2: Okay.
27:19
Speaker 1: So number one, when you're on a phone, and sometimes
27:23
Speaker 1: the edges of the phone, like, yeah, they're a little
27:25
Speaker 1: bit less responsive depending on the screen... how much of
27:30
Speaker 1: your finger is hitting the icon, also the screen protector
27:33
Speaker 1: you have, and also the case that you have. So
27:37
Speaker 1: all those things can add up to making your phone
27:40
Speaker 1: a little bit less responsive. So on Samsung, you said
27:43
Speaker 1: you have a Samsung, right? So there is a touch
27:47
Speaker 1: sensitivity option in display. So do you know how to
27:54
Speaker 1: get to your settings on this phone?
27:57
Speaker 3: Yes.
27:57
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you go into your settings, is there
28:00
Speaker 1: a little search bar at the bottom?
28:03
Speaker 10: Oh, you want me to do this with you?
28:04
Speaker 1: Well, you don't have to, but you don't have to
28:06
Speaker 1: do it in real time. But all I'm saying is
28:08
Speaker 1: that if you go into your search on settings and
28:11
Speaker 1: if you type in touch sensitivity, you don't have to
28:15
Speaker 1: type the whole word. Just start typing it. It should
28:17
Speaker 1: come up. And you'll see under display there's an option
28:19
Speaker 1: that says increase touch sensitivity. So you can tap that
28:23
Speaker 1: and see if that helps that bell icon become more sensitive. Now,
28:27
Speaker 1: if it doesn't, there's a couple things going on here.
28:29
Speaker 1: Number one, Facebook changes their app every day. It's like underwear.
28:35
Speaker 1: They change their app more than you can imagine. So
28:38
Speaker 1: just when you get used to a feature on Facebook,
28:41
Speaker 1: they change it. And the reason they're doing that is
28:43
Speaker 1: because they're always testing Facebook. Because Facebook wants you to
28:46
Speaker 1: use their app as much as humanly possible. They would
28:49
Speaker 1: like for you to never go to work again and
28:51
Speaker 1: just be on their app all day long. That's their goal.
28:54
Speaker 1: And so what they do is they're always optimizing things
28:57
Speaker 1: and trying to change them and see how it makes
28:59
Speaker 1: people react. And sometimes it's called A-B testing, where they'll
29:02
Speaker 1: just send it out to a subset with a billion
29:04
Speaker 1: users or whatever they have, two billion. They send it
29:07
Speaker 1: out to 1% of users see how they respond, and
29:10
Speaker 1: then they'll push it out to everyone if they respond well.
29:13
Speaker 1: And it makes them use the app more, spend more money,
29:16
Speaker 1: spend more time, whatever it is. So that's number one.
29:19
Speaker 1: Number two, this may be that your app needs an update.
29:23
Speaker 1: So it may be that in the next three or
29:25
Speaker 1: four or five days, all these people complaining about this
29:27
Speaker 1: problem with this new app update, they will push out
29:30
Speaker 1: an update and get that fixed. So I wouldn't change
29:34
Speaker 1: anything too drastically Cleta. I would just go into that
29:38
Speaker 1: touch sensitivity, see if that helps. If it does, go
29:41
Speaker 1: with that. If not, I would wait for an app
29:43
Speaker 1: update and things may change on the Facebook app before
29:48
Speaker 1: you know it. All I know is that it's funny.
29:51
Speaker 1: It used to be on the Facebook app that there
29:54
Speaker 1: was not a lot of parity between the iPhone version
29:57
Speaker 1: and the Android version. So when I do instructions... for
30:00
Speaker 1: how to find your settings or something like that, I
30:03
Speaker 1: would have to give completely different instructions. And now that
30:05
Speaker 1: I'm looking at them, they've actually moved all of the
30:08
Speaker 1: settings to the same place, which is nice. So if
30:11
Speaker 1: you look at the bottom screen, it used, you know,
30:14
Speaker 1: the home, the kind of the icon or the bar,
30:16
Speaker 1: the menu bar is all across the bottom and your
30:19
Speaker 1: home is on the left. And then on the right
30:21
Speaker 1: is your profile. Next to that is your notifications. And
30:25
Speaker 1: the upper left-hand corner is your menu. And that used
30:28
Speaker 1: to be different on iPhone versus Android. And so it
30:32
Speaker 1: seems like they're trying to get things a little bit
30:34
Speaker 1: more aligned across both platforms so they don't have to
30:36
Speaker 1: write different support documents for all of them. Anyway, keep
30:41
Speaker 1: me posted. Hope that helps. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. I told you
30:43
Speaker 1: that Mint Mobile is celebrating 10 years. And Mint Mobile
30:55
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. One of my family members
30:58
Speaker 1: uses Mint Mobile and absolutely loves it. And she's always
31:02
Speaker 1: telling people like, hey, I use, you know, I pay,
31:04
Speaker 1: she pays for her cell phone bill one time a year, right?
31:09
Speaker 1: And it's a couple hundred dollars, whatever it is. And
31:12
Speaker 1: she tells all her friends, like, I literally pay a
31:14
Speaker 1: couple hundred dollars for my cell phone bill. And they
31:16
Speaker 1: never believe her. They're like, well, you don't get this.
31:18
Speaker 1: You don't get that. Well, no, you do get it all. Anyway,
31:21
Speaker 1: Mint Mobile, they run on T-Mobile's network. They were purchased
31:24
Speaker 1: by T-Mobile. So they're actually a T-Mobile company now. They're
31:28
Speaker 1: celebrating 10 years in business. They've got the best deal
31:30
Speaker 1: they've ever done, which is any plan for $ 10 a month,
31:33
Speaker 1: which includes unlimited. So you can pay six months. You
31:37
Speaker 1: have to pay up front. $ 60 plus taxes and fees,
31:41
Speaker 1: but $ 60 for six months of unlimited cell phone service. Now,
31:44
Speaker 1: this is obviously new customers only. It looks like it's
31:48
Speaker 1: ending this week. We don't know the end date, but
31:51
Speaker 1: it's kind of a good deal. The only problem is
31:54
Speaker 1: if you've been wanting to test out Mint Mobile, this
31:56
Speaker 1: is probably a good way to do it. Just keep
31:58
Speaker 1: in mind that after the six months, you're going to
32:01
Speaker 1: pay that standard price. And unlimited is $ 30 a month
32:06
Speaker 1: for 12 months. So the way that Mint Mobile saves
32:08
Speaker 1: you money is you have to pay in advance. You
32:12
Speaker 1: could pay for three months, six months, 12 months. I
32:14
Speaker 1: say go for the 12 months because you're paying less
32:17
Speaker 1: than 12 months and I'm paying one month to Verizon.
32:20
Speaker 1: So I've got my Verizon bills like $ 120 for like
32:24
Speaker 1: one line, but I need certain features. Now, one caveat
32:28
Speaker 1: with Mint Mobile is And I hope that they're going
32:30
Speaker 1: to change this. They don't support cellular Apple Watches. And
32:32
Speaker 1: one of the things that I love is having cellular
32:35
Speaker 1: on my Apple Watch because I like to run without
32:38
Speaker 1: my phone. And so that's why I like it. Anyway,
32:41
Speaker 1: it's all there. And if you want to check it out,
32:44
Speaker 1: let's see, do I have a link for this? I
32:45
Speaker 1: guess you could just go to their website. I'll put
32:47
Speaker 1: it on mine as well, but richontech.tv. You know, it's funny.
32:52
Speaker 1: My AI agent was telling me how many different mobile
32:55
Speaker 1: subscriptions I have. I've got Mint Mobile I pay for.
32:58
Speaker 1: I've got US Mobile. I've got Verizon. I've got Visible.
33:01
Speaker 1: I think AT & T is the only one I'm
33:03
Speaker 1: not paying for. Maybe I need to add that to
33:05
Speaker 1: the mix. 888-RICH-101. Rich on Tech, back after this. Welcome
33:12
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you,
33:14
Speaker 1: talking technology, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Thanks so much for being a
33:18
Speaker 1: part of this the website richontech.tv forward slash 196. That
33:31
Speaker 1: will bring you right to the show notes for today's show. Also,
33:36
Speaker 1: it gives you all the information on how to sign
33:38
Speaker 1: up for the podcast, send me an email, whatever you
33:41
Speaker 1: want to do. If you want to send an email,
33:43
Speaker 1: you can go to richontech.tv, hit contact. You can sign
33:46
Speaker 1: up for my newsletter while you're there on the website
33:49
Speaker 1: that I send out basically every weekend. And it goes
33:53
Speaker 1: out to a whole bunch of you It's got all
33:55
Speaker 1: the things I think you should know about during the week.
33:57
Speaker 1: Kind of like this show, except a different version, right?
34:00
Speaker 1: Like a version written down. It's got all my TV segments.
34:04
Speaker 1: It's just like a one-stop shop for everything I think
34:07
Speaker 1: you should know in that week. And I just started
34:10
Speaker 1: doing this new thing where I do a section called
34:13
Speaker 1: What I Bookmarked. Because there's always so many things that
34:16
Speaker 1: people send me throughout the week. I may not be
34:17
Speaker 1: able to mention them on TV or the radio, or
34:21
Speaker 1: I may not be able to even investigate them, but
34:23
Speaker 1: they seem interesting. And so I'll bookmark them. And now
34:26
Speaker 1: I put a list of all those things in there
34:29
Speaker 1: within reason, obviously. I don't put everything because I bookmark
34:32
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. But I'll put some of the
34:33
Speaker 1: more interesting things like apps and websites so that you
34:36
Speaker 1: can check them out as well. So it's all there
34:39
Speaker 1: on the website, richontech.tv. Let's go to David in Wisconsin.
34:47
Speaker 1: Looks like it's a question about the last segment we did. David,
34:50
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
34:52
Speaker 5: Thank you.
34:54
Speaker 7: My question for you today, you were mentioning that you're
34:57
Speaker 7: on Verizon PostPaid. I'm just curious what that gives you
35:01
Speaker 7: to say Visible Plus Pro does not. I went from
35:05
Speaker 7: PostPaid to Visible Plus Pro, and I don't even notice
35:10
Speaker 7: any missing.
35:10
Speaker 5: Features, really.
35:12
Speaker 1: Well, that's– this is– when we– okay, so I did
35:15
Speaker 1: a launch story with Visible back in the day when
35:18
Speaker 1: they first launched, okay? I'm going to look this up.
35:21
Speaker 1: Let's see. Visible– Wireless. And nobody believed that this could
35:28
Speaker 1: be a thing, right? Like nobody believed that because nobody
35:31
Speaker 1: had ever heard of it. By the way, it was
35:33
Speaker 1: unheard of that MVNOs were part of a big wireless company.
35:39
Speaker 1: Like nobody had done this before. Cricket, you know, by
35:42
Speaker 1: the way, okay, so if you look at the big
35:44
Speaker 1: wireless companies, you've got Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT & T.
35:47
Speaker 1: AT & T owns Cricket. I believe they bought them.
35:51
Speaker 1: You have T-Mobile that owns Mint. And then you've got
35:54
Speaker 1: Verizon that owns Visible. So they're all playing in two
35:57
Speaker 1: different places, right? They're playing with the postpaid people. There's
36:03
Speaker 1: a difference between prepaid and postpaid. Postpaid, it's weird because
36:07
Speaker 1: now everyone's on autopay. You almost have to be to
36:09
Speaker 1: get the best deal. So it's like, well, wait, what's
36:12
Speaker 1: the difference? The difference is with postpaid, it means they
36:15
Speaker 1: send you a bill. for whatever usage you have. And
36:18
Speaker 1: they've checked your credit, so they vetted you, but then
36:21
Speaker 1: your bill gets automatically paid. With prepaid, you are paying
36:25
Speaker 1: in advance. They don't trust you. They're saying, you give
36:28
Speaker 1: us money and then we'll give you service. Whereas with postpaid,
36:32
Speaker 1: They're giving you the service and then you'll pay later. Now,
36:36
Speaker 1: I'm joking about the fact they don't trust you. That's
36:38
Speaker 1: the way it used to be where if you didn't
36:41
Speaker 1: have credit or you just wanted to have a prepaid line,
36:44
Speaker 1: it was kind of like a whole different world. Nowadays,
36:48
Speaker 1: there is no distinction because people are going to prepaid
36:51
Speaker 1: because it is such a better value. And I think, David,
36:54
Speaker 1: you hit the nose on the head. You hit the
36:58
Speaker 1: nail on the head? Yeah, you hit the nail on
37:00
Speaker 1: the head. that there's really not a big difference. Now,
37:04
Speaker 1: I will tell you, okay, I did this story on
37:06
Speaker 1: Visible when it launched November 7th, 2018. So we're going
37:10
Speaker 1: on six, seven, eight years ago. And nobody believed me.
37:14
Speaker 1: I got so many emails about this story because they said,
37:17
Speaker 1: you're lying, Rich. You can't get unlimited Verizon for $ 40
37:21
Speaker 1: a month. I said, yeah, you can. And by the way,
37:24
Speaker 1: Visible's gotten even cheaper over the years. And here's why
37:27
Speaker 1: I personally don't use it. It's because, and I just
37:31
Speaker 1: literally went through this on my AI. I was like
37:33
Speaker 1: analyzing my Verizon coverage versus the visible. And there's two
37:37
Speaker 1: things that it comes down to. Number one, 4K video.
37:42
Speaker 1: I want 4K video, but I just read that visible
37:45
Speaker 1: does give you 4K video on the best plan. So
37:47
Speaker 1: that's out. So it really comes down to the hotspot.
37:51
Speaker 1: So I will tell you, I work in TV when
37:54
Speaker 1: I'm not on the radio and I am uploading giant
37:57
Speaker 1: files all the time on the road. And visible, yes,
38:00
Speaker 1: gives you unlimited hotspot. But it is capped at 15
38:05
Speaker 1: megabits per second. Now, Verizon's network is way faster than
38:10
Speaker 1: that in many, many areas. And I will tell you,
38:13
Speaker 1: I've been standing on a street corner in various cities
38:16
Speaker 1: around the U.S., including New York City, where I will
38:19
Speaker 1: walk around with my phone, wait for that 5G UW
38:23
Speaker 1: bar to light up, have a speed test going, and
38:26
Speaker 1: I'm uploading videos. 20 gigabytes of files to Dropbox so
38:30
Speaker 1: that my editor can grab them and start working with them.
38:34
Speaker 1: And so that is something that I understand is not
38:37
Speaker 1: a use case scenario for 99.9% of people. But that
38:40
Speaker 1: is what keeps me on the premium plan versus the
38:45
Speaker 1: MVNO Visible. Now, I'll also tell you, because I have
38:49
Speaker 1: a family member on Visible, and I had to deal
38:52
Speaker 1: with Visible's customer service one time. And that is a
38:55
Speaker 1: big differentiator if you're on a postpaid plan versus a prepaid.
38:59
Speaker 1: A lot of these prepaid plans, there is not a store. Now,
39:02
Speaker 1: Metro by PCS, yes, they have a store. Cricket, they
39:05
Speaker 1: have stores. Visible does not have stores. And you cannot
39:09
Speaker 1: go into a Verizon store and get help with Visible
39:11
Speaker 1: unless that's changed since I've, you know, since I started
39:14
Speaker 1: covering them. And so the big difference is you have
39:17
Speaker 1: a problem. You are going to be chatting with a
39:19
Speaker 1: customer service representative on your phone and or on a
39:23
Speaker 1: different phone if your phone doesn't have service or something's
39:25
Speaker 1: wrong with it, and it is a pain. And I
39:28
Speaker 1: will tell you, the reason why it's a pain and
39:31
Speaker 1: I'm not singling out visible but I can tell you
39:33
Speaker 1: my experience was pretty bad it we got through the
39:36
Speaker 1: problem but it was painful and the reason is these
39:39
Speaker 1: customer service people are literally chatting with a hundred customers
39:43
Speaker 1: all at once so if It is like wading through
39:47
Speaker 1: molasses to get your problem fixed. And this is with
39:51
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies that offer chat service for
39:54
Speaker 1: customer service. They will sit there and they'll be like, hey, Rich,
40:01
Speaker 1: can you please verify your account number? And I type
40:04
Speaker 1: it in immediately. Five minutes later, they respond. Why? Because
40:08
Speaker 1: they're now asking 10 other customers for their account number
40:11
Speaker 1: and working on their problems in the meantime. So that
40:14
Speaker 1: is the, it's not a one-to-one, right? I think there's
40:17
Speaker 1: things that is called like synchronous versus asynchronous. When you
40:21
Speaker 1: call up customer service on a phone, it's synchronous, right?
40:24
Speaker 1: They say, hi, how are you? You say, good. They say, great.
40:27
Speaker 1: Let's get your problem fixed. What's your account number? Now,
40:30
Speaker 1: when you go on chatting, it is asynchronous. You give
40:34
Speaker 1: them information. They say, okay, let's wait for the next person.
40:37
Speaker 1: And then they sit there and they chat with you.
40:38
Speaker 1: And they said, let me look into that. And it
40:40
Speaker 1: takes five more minutes before they come back to you. So,
40:43
Speaker 1: And I know this to be the case too. I
40:45
Speaker 1: just had a deal with, actually, this goes back to
40:48
Speaker 1: my AI agent, but it was Home Depot. I needed
40:53
Speaker 1: to return something to Home Depot and I knew it
40:55
Speaker 1: was going to be a while and I needed a
40:57
Speaker 1: refund on something. And I chatted with the AI agent
41:01
Speaker 1: or my AI agent texted me and said, hey, Rich,
41:04
Speaker 1: you know you can just text Home Depot, right? Instead
41:07
Speaker 1: of calling in. And I was like, no. And so
41:09
Speaker 1: I texted from my phone. It told me exactly what
41:12
Speaker 1: to say. And it was, my whole problem was fixed
41:15
Speaker 1: in 10 minutes versus, you know, finding the time to
41:19
Speaker 1: call in. So these chatbots, they do, you know, if
41:22
Speaker 1: you're chatting with customer service with a company, there is
41:25
Speaker 1: a benefit sometimes, right? It's much easier because you're already
41:28
Speaker 1: on your phone. You can chat, but sometimes it could
41:30
Speaker 1: be painful. Anyway, to answer your question, David, I did
41:34
Speaker 1: do a deep dive on whether I should switch and
41:36
Speaker 1: save a couple bucks by going to Visible Plus Pro.
41:39
Speaker 1: And it just didn't work out for me because all
41:40
Speaker 1: the promotions I've got on my account and things like
41:42
Speaker 1: that It just didn't work out. So I'm going to
41:45
Speaker 1: stick with what I have. But again, I am testing
41:47
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of companies to see like who's good,
41:50
Speaker 1: who's bad, what works, what doesn't. And at any given time, oh,
41:54
Speaker 1: I also, I forgot, I have Google Fi as well.
41:55
Speaker 1: So my, yeah, my AI agent is wondering why I
41:59
Speaker 1: have so many cell phone bills, but I do it
42:02
Speaker 1: for really for research. And it's because people call and
42:06
Speaker 1: they ask and they want to know how these things
42:07
Speaker 1: work and I want to know how they work. And
42:09
Speaker 1: so they all have different kind of quirks and things
42:12
Speaker 1: about them that I think some are good, some are bad.
42:15
Speaker 1: And I like to be able to talk about all
42:16
Speaker 1: of those things. So to answer your question, yes, I
42:19
Speaker 1: will still be paying more for my postpaid plan. But
42:22
Speaker 1: I think that 99.9% of people could save a ton
42:27
Speaker 1: of money by going to one of these MVNOs. And
42:30
Speaker 1: you'll save easily $ 20, $ 30, $ 40 a month if you're
42:33
Speaker 1: on I call it the big premium plans on a Verizon, T-Mobile,
42:37
Speaker 1: or AT & T where you're paying $ 100 a month.
42:40
Speaker 1: But some people, you know, it's just you've been doing
42:43
Speaker 1: it so long that it's just habit, right? You don't
42:46
Speaker 1: even know that you could save this money by going
42:49
Speaker 1: to a different plan, and it's scary. And that's going
42:51
Speaker 1: back to the family member that has Mint Mobile. Everyone says,
42:54
Speaker 1: I'll just stick to my AT & T. I'll just
42:56
Speaker 1: stick to my T-Mobile. I've been with them forever. Well,
42:59
Speaker 1: guess what? They don't care that you've been there forever.
43:01
Speaker 1: They really don't. They don't care about that. They're not
43:04
Speaker 1: like sitting there going, oh my gosh, we have this
43:06
Speaker 1: customer in Milwaukee that's been with us for eight years.
43:10
Speaker 1: Should we send them a birthday card? No, they don't care.
43:13
Speaker 1: You're a number. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Coming up, speaking of subscriptions,
43:22
Speaker 1: I got to tell you how to find and cancel
43:24
Speaker 1: your subscriptions. Got a story on that, plus more of
43:27
Speaker 1: your calls at 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. This is Rich on Tech.
43:40
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Public service announcement for you.
43:45
Speaker 1: I know, I talk a lot about AI, but it's
43:47
Speaker 1: the world we live in. But I got to tell
43:50
Speaker 1: you that ChatGBT did a pretty major update to its...
43:55
Speaker 1: Chrome extension. So if you're using Chrome and you like ChatGBT,
44:00
Speaker 1: they updated their Chrome extension where now ChatGBT can look
44:05
Speaker 1: at the tabs that you have open in Chrome. I know, scary,
44:09
Speaker 1: watch out. But yes, this is actually very useful for many,
44:13
Speaker 1: many reasons. So it's useful for number one, for email.
44:19
Speaker 1: If you want to use AI to help you with
44:20
Speaker 1: your emails, you can do that. But it's just, imagine
44:23
Speaker 1: you have AI kind of looking over your shoulder. So
44:26
Speaker 1: whatever you're doing, it can help you with. So if
44:28
Speaker 1: you're looking at, let's say you have five tabs open
44:31
Speaker 1: and you're checking out hotels for vacation, you could just
44:35
Speaker 1: ask ChatGBT in your browser in the sidebar. And this
44:38
Speaker 1: is different than having ChatGBT, you know, loaded up in
44:41
Speaker 1: your browser, like as a tab. This is an extension.
44:44
Speaker 1: So it's on the side of your screen in your browser.
44:48
Speaker 1: And it's saying basically you could say, hey, compare these
44:50
Speaker 1: five hotels. And you don't have to copy and paste
44:52
Speaker 1: all the information from those hotels. It just knows, okay,
44:57
Speaker 1: I look at these tabs. I see these five hotels.
44:59
Speaker 1: Let me compare. And now it can give you the information.
45:02
Speaker 1: So you can compare products, summarize websites. If you've got
45:05
Speaker 1: a bunch of news articles open, research, basically ask ChatGPT
45:11
Speaker 1: about any web page that you're on. And it also
45:13
Speaker 1: knows your history. So you're logged into your account. So
45:16
Speaker 1: it has all that background information as well. And if
45:19
Speaker 1: you're on a YouTube video, you can ask questions about
45:22
Speaker 1: a video using its transcript. So if captions are available
45:25
Speaker 1: on the video, it can tap into those transcripts and
45:28
Speaker 1: you can ask questions about the video. And that's a
45:30
Speaker 1: handy one because, you know, YouTubers have a knack for
45:34
Speaker 1: putting the best information like hidden in the video somewhere.
45:37
Speaker 1: They have to watch for like two hours before they
45:39
Speaker 1: tell you the one nugget. So you just ask ChatGBD,
45:41
Speaker 1: cut to the chase. Just tell me what the best
45:43
Speaker 1: thing is. Anyway, that's ChatGPT on Chrome if you have
45:47
Speaker 1: the Chrome extension. It is a game changer for me.
45:50
Speaker 1: Let's go to Julie in Riverside, California. What's up?
45:58
Speaker 9: Hi.
45:59
Speaker 1: Hi.
46:00
Speaker 10: I have a Roku.
46:02
Speaker 1: Oh, I remember Julie.
46:05
Speaker 6: Yes.
46:05
Speaker 10: I have a Roku, like, plug-in, you know.
46:10
Speaker 1: Sure.
46:11
Speaker 10: And I want to know, if I get rabbit ears antenna,
46:15
Speaker 10: will the Roku work?
46:18
Speaker 1: The Roku will still work. It just depends on your setup.
46:21
Speaker 1: Is your Roku a stick or is it a TV?
46:25
Speaker 5: It's a stick.
46:25
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a stick. So the Roku itself does
46:29
Speaker 1: not have what's called a coaxial input, right? So if
46:34
Speaker 1: you remember when you, you know, there's a cable that
46:36
Speaker 1: comes out of the antenna and It looks like the
46:39
Speaker 1: old cable TV connection that's called coax. So that screws
46:44
Speaker 1: into the back of your TV. Now, the reason I
46:47
Speaker 1: asked you if you have a Roku TV versus a
46:49
Speaker 1: Roku stick, if you have a Roku TV, that means
46:53
Speaker 1: you have a smart TV and the Roku software is
46:55
Speaker 1: running on top of that TV. And you can plug
46:57
Speaker 1: the antenna into the back of the TV and it
47:00
Speaker 1: would actually, all those live channels and local programming would
47:04
Speaker 1: integrate into your Roku TV. It would show you the
47:09
Speaker 1: information on those channels. It has its own input kind
47:12
Speaker 1: of thing where you can select it just like you
47:14
Speaker 1: would any other streaming app like HBO Max or Netflix.
47:19
Speaker 1: It would just say input, cable, whatever, or antenna. So
47:23
Speaker 1: if you have a standard Roku that you're plugging into
47:26
Speaker 1: the back of your TV, that is not the case.
47:28
Speaker 1: because that is layering on top of an input on
47:32
Speaker 1: your TV. It's not built into the TV. So yes,
47:35
Speaker 1: you can still use an antenna. You would just have
47:38
Speaker 1: to switch inputs every time you wanted to watch programming
47:41
Speaker 1: from that antenna. Now, are there some ways to sort
47:44
Speaker 1: of integrate that programming into your Roku box or your
47:48
Speaker 1: Roku stick? Absolutely. There are certain devices like a Tableau, T-A-B-L-O, Uh,
47:55
Speaker 1: Tableau TV, they, I believe have a Roku app. So
47:59
Speaker 1: you can watch your, your programming from your antenna right
48:03
Speaker 1: on your Roku. Uh, now that's, it's been a while
48:05
Speaker 1: since I tested it, but I'm guessing they do. Tableau, um, T-A-B-L-O.
48:11
Speaker 1: Let's just check here. Roku app. So, uh, yes, Tableau
48:15
Speaker 1: has a Roku app. So you can do that. Uh,
48:17
Speaker 1: there's one called Zapperbox. Let's see if they have a
48:20
Speaker 1: Roku app. Uh, Zapperbox, uh, let's see. Okay, they don't
48:26
Speaker 1: have a native app just yet. So that one wouldn't work.
48:28
Speaker 1: Let's see. There's one more called HD Home Run. HD
48:32
Speaker 1: Home Run Roku app. And yes. Okay, so HD Home
48:37
Speaker 1: Run does have it. So basically, if you got a
48:39
Speaker 1: Tableau or an HD Home Run, these are like little
48:42
Speaker 1: DVRs for your antennae. they would integrate into your Roku programming,
48:46
Speaker 1: your Roku home screen. So a couple of ways to
48:49
Speaker 1: do it. If you want the cheapest, simplest way, you
48:50
Speaker 1: get the antenna, you plug it into the back of
48:52
Speaker 1: your TV. Every time you want to watch a channel
48:54
Speaker 1: that's on the antenna, you just switch that input. If
48:57
Speaker 1: you want a more integrated experience, you want everything to
49:00
Speaker 1: run through your Roku stick, then you would buy one
49:02
Speaker 1: of these DVRs and you would run it that way.
49:05
Speaker 1: So great question, Julie. Thanks for the call today. Really
49:08
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Speaking of subscriptions, by the way, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101.
49:13
Speaker 1: Links to everything. I mentioned is on the website richontech.tv.
49:24
Speaker 1: Taking show notes in real time, so hopefully everything I
49:27
Speaker 1: mentioned is there pretty quickly. Anyway, I did a story
49:32
Speaker 1: on TV this week about finding and canceling subscriptions because
49:35
Speaker 1: subscriptions are everywhere now, right? You can do it on
49:37
Speaker 1: your phone. You could do it through PayPal. You could
49:40
Speaker 1: do it through Roku. You could do it through Amazon.
49:43
Speaker 1: So I go through all the different ways you can
49:46
Speaker 1: find these subscriptions. Like you can look on your credit
49:48
Speaker 1: card statements. That's an easy way. Some of the credit
49:51
Speaker 1: card apps or banking apps will actually show you your
49:53
Speaker 1: recurring charges. On iPhone, you can go into your subscriptions
49:57
Speaker 1: to find anything there. On Android, you can go into
50:00
Speaker 1: the Play Store, and they've got a section for your subscriptions.
50:03
Speaker 1: In your email, you can search for things like renewal, receipt,
50:06
Speaker 1: free trial. And then, of course, there's the apps. So
50:10
Speaker 1: there's an app called Rocket Money that a lot of
50:12
Speaker 1: people ask about. Yes, you link up your bank accounts.
50:15
Speaker 1: It can find your recurring charges. It'll do that for free,
50:18
Speaker 1: but if you want it to help you cancel your subscriptions,
50:21
Speaker 1: that is the premium upgrade, and you can pay for that,
50:24
Speaker 1: or you can do it yourself. Chat GBT has a
50:26
Speaker 1: finances feature, same thing. It can help you find your
50:30
Speaker 1: subscriptions across all your different accounts. Metamuse, we've talked about that.
50:34
Speaker 1: That can also help you track down your subscriptions and
50:37
Speaker 1: it can help cancel them as well. Just remember, if
50:41
Speaker 1: you connect your financial accounts, you have to be careful
50:43
Speaker 1: because there are some sensitive things that they may get
50:46
Speaker 1: access to. And deleting an app does not delete. The subscription,
50:50
Speaker 1: remember that. All right, richontech.tv if you want the link
50:53
Speaker 1: to my full guide on finding and canceling your subscriptions.
50:56
Speaker 1: Back after this. We've got a great guest to talk
51:04
Speaker 1: to now. Philip Shoemaker was the founding director of Apple's
51:08
Speaker 1: App Store review team. And he has a book out
51:12
Speaker 1: called Unbreakable. Philip, thanks for joining me today.
51:16
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me on, Rich.
51:18
Speaker 1: So first off, tell me about Apple. You were there
51:21
Speaker 1: with Steve Jobs?
51:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, I got brought on mainly to help protect people
51:25
Speaker 6: when we launched the App Store. The idea was that
51:28
Speaker 6: the App Store, we didn't know how many apps people
51:31
Speaker 6: would submit. But the one thing we knew for sure
51:33
Speaker 6: is we didn't want them to steal people's identity, rob
51:37
Speaker 6: them of money, right?
51:39
Speaker 2: All of those kind of things.
51:40
Speaker 6: So we had to sit back, write all the guidelines,
51:43
Speaker 6: figure out what people were going to do and what
51:45
Speaker 6: they weren't going to do.
51:46
Speaker 2: And try to get as many apps on the store
51:48
Speaker 2: as possible.
51:49
Speaker 1: It's so wild. People may not remember that the iPhone
51:52
Speaker 1: did not launch with an app store. It came with
51:54
Speaker 1: a couple of pre-installed apps, and that was it, and
51:56
Speaker 1: you used the web. And then all of a sudden,
51:58
Speaker 1: do you remember which version of the iPhone came to
52:01
Speaker 1: the app store? Was it the second one?
52:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was iPhone 3.
52:05
Speaker 11: Okay.
52:05
Speaker 2: iPhone 3.
52:06
Speaker 1: iPhone 3.
52:07
Speaker 2: Okay.
52:07
Speaker 1: So then we got that. And obviously, the app store
52:09
Speaker 1: has been extremely popular. It's You know, it's a walled garden,
52:14
Speaker 1: so you can kind of protect what gets in, what
52:17
Speaker 1: goes out. And like you said, even though Apple was
52:20
Speaker 1: reviewing the apps, you still had to make sure there
52:22
Speaker 1: was nothing nefarious going on, right?
52:25
Speaker 2: That's right. And, you know, the first year, right?
52:29
Speaker 6: The first thing I said to Steve was that we
52:31
Speaker 6: need some guidelines so developers know what they can and
52:33
Speaker 6: can't do.
52:33
Speaker 2: And he said, no, that's wrong.
52:35
Speaker 6: Let's see what they want to do and we'll let
52:37
Speaker 6: them give us some wiggle room, right? Let's see what
52:40
Speaker 6: we allow them to do, what we don't allow them
52:42
Speaker 6: to do. Really great insight, but it was maddening because
52:46
Speaker 6: every developer thought that Apple, oh, Apple doesn't have any
52:52
Speaker 6: adult apps on the store. There's no pornography. Let me
52:54
Speaker 6: submit the best pornography app. And literally that first year, 80%
52:59
Speaker 6: of our rejections were because of objectionable content because they
53:02
Speaker 6: didn't see it in the store.
53:03
Speaker 2: They thought it was kosher.
53:04
Speaker 12: And so they would submit it, and you're like, oh,
53:08
Speaker 12: my inbox was– But that's also the genius of Steve
53:11
Speaker 12: Jobs saying, look, no, no, no, let's not stop people
53:14
Speaker 12: before they try to do something.
53:16
Speaker 1: Let's take a look at what they do and then
53:18
Speaker 1: decide if that's okay. And I think that's a brilliant
53:21
Speaker 1: way of thinking about things. It's almost like letting people,
53:23
Speaker 1: I had a boss that was just like that, where
53:26
Speaker 1: he wouldn't really tell you what to do. He says,
53:29
Speaker 1: just go out and do. And if you make a mistake,
53:31
Speaker 1: if you do something wrong, if I need to rein
53:33
Speaker 1: you in, I will let you know. And that really
53:35
Speaker 1: gives people the freedom to be creative.
53:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
53:38
Speaker 2: Exactly.
53:39
Speaker 6: And, you know, I was hired to do one job,
53:41
Speaker 6: protect people. And so for me and get the review
53:44
Speaker 6: times down from three weeks down to one day. Now,
53:46
Speaker 6: the idea was that this made my job a lot
53:49
Speaker 6: harder if we didn't tell developers what they can and
53:51
Speaker 6: can't do.
53:52
Speaker 2: It was it was the Wild West. And but Steve
53:55
Speaker 2: saw that.
53:56
Speaker 3: Right.
53:56
Speaker 6: I didn't see the forest for the trees. He certainly did.
53:59
Speaker 6: And I think what he did was ultimately the right call.
54:02
Speaker 6: But when we wrote the guidelines, even, we made every
54:05
Speaker 6: guideline a little gray, right? A little wiggle room so
54:08
Speaker 6: we can expand on it.
54:09
Speaker 4: Wow, wild.
54:11
Speaker 1: Okay, so you wrote this book, Unbreakable. Tell me what
54:14
Speaker 1: the book is all about.
54:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll give you a little history.
54:18
Speaker 6: You know, when I was at the app store, there
54:19
Speaker 6: was this wild moment when I helped David Copperfield, the magician,
54:22
Speaker 6: out with an app. And I was in a position
54:25
Speaker 6: that was confidential. Nobody knew what I did at the store. Well,
54:29
Speaker 6: David Copperfield tweeted the next day and put my name
54:32
Speaker 6: out there. And then next thing you know, I got
54:34
Speaker 6: SIM swapped.
54:35
Speaker 4: I got hacked.
54:36
Speaker 2: I got stalked.
54:37
Speaker 6: I had people showing up on my house in the
54:39
Speaker 6: middle of the night where my wife and kids were sleeping. Threatening,
54:43
Speaker 6: not really threatening, but look, someone shows up at your
54:45
Speaker 6: house at midnight saying, approve my app. It's a veiled threat.
54:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
54:50
Speaker 6: It's all that kind of stuff that happened to me
54:52
Speaker 6: in this job and beyond because I went into crypto,
54:55
Speaker 6: which was even worse after I left Apple. And I
54:58
Speaker 6: was like, look, I want to protect people from this.
55:01
Speaker 6: I want to continue this mission I had at Apple
55:04
Speaker 6: about protecting people in the app store. Let's spread it
55:07
Speaker 6: out and do stuff on the internet in general. And
55:12
Speaker 6: last year, like two or three years ago, a friend
55:14
Speaker 6: of mine's mother was running down to CVS to pick
55:17
Speaker 6: up some gift cards, some iTunes gift cards to send
55:21
Speaker 6: to the, quote, IRS, because they said they were coming
55:24
Speaker 6: to arrest her. And this happened to her multiple times,
55:27
Speaker 6: and she bought it hook, line, and sinker. And those
55:30
Speaker 6: are the kind of things I want to protect. And
55:31
Speaker 6: so I have chapters on SIM swaps, on deepfake attacks,
55:35
Speaker 6: et cetera.
55:36
Speaker 2: And it's written for normal people, not for cybersecurity executives.
55:41
Speaker 2: It's for everybody.
55:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's what this show is all about is just,
55:44
Speaker 1: you know, the average person that just we're all inundated
55:48
Speaker 1: with this stuff. You know, we're all dealing with these
55:50
Speaker 1: spam calls and the spammy, scammy emails. And so, you know,
55:54
Speaker 1: a lot of these things like like you would never
55:56
Speaker 1: think that someone would go to like a CVS and
55:58
Speaker 1: buy a gift card to get out of a, you know,
56:01
Speaker 1: jail sentence or whatever these people call up and say.
56:04
Speaker 1: But yet at every CVS you go to and every
56:06
Speaker 1: Walmart and every Target, it says do not buy gift
56:08
Speaker 1: cards if you're doing this with them. Clearly, there's an issue.
56:12
Speaker 1: Tell me about the SIM swapping. Explain what that is
56:15
Speaker 1: and what people need to know about that.
56:16
Speaker 6: Yeah, so somewhere along the line, we started giving out
56:20
Speaker 6: our phone numbers to all of these websites, right? And
56:22
Speaker 6: websites that say if they want to change your password,
56:24
Speaker 6: they'd send you a text message. Seems great. It's a
56:27
Speaker 6: great method of security. But our phones were never built
56:31
Speaker 6: to be a security mechanism. So what a enterprising young
56:36
Speaker 6: hacker can do, or old hacker, if you will, they
56:39
Speaker 6: can go down to a, once they determine your phone number,
56:43
Speaker 6: a target, right?
56:44
Speaker 2: I was a target.
56:45
Speaker 6: I gave my phone number out to too many people,
56:47
Speaker 6: my cell phone, that is. They could come down and
56:49
Speaker 6: ultimately go hit up a variety of mobile carriers until
56:53
Speaker 6: they found which one I was on. And they went
56:56
Speaker 6: in there and said they were me. And in the
56:59
Speaker 6: early days, they wouldn't ask for your driver's license. They
57:02
Speaker 6: wouldn't ask for any information. You're just like, look, I
57:04
Speaker 6: lost my phone. I need a new SIM card. And
57:07
Speaker 6: they'll just give it up. And in fact, to kind
57:09
Speaker 6: of add insult to injury, they put the bill of
57:12
Speaker 6: the new SIM.
57:12
Speaker 2: Card on my account.
57:15
Speaker 6: So not only do they get a new SIM card,
57:18
Speaker 6: they billed me the $ 25 for it.
57:20
Speaker 2: And suddenly my cell phone stopped working.
57:22
Speaker 6: So for me, the idea was I was in the
57:24
Speaker 6: Dominican Republic with my wife and daughter on vacation.
57:27
Speaker 2: My phone stopped working. Heck, I'm in the Dominican Republic.
57:30
Speaker 2: It happens.
57:32
Speaker 6: But once I got onto Wi-Fi, my phone blew up.
57:36
Speaker 6: with all these text messages saying, reset your Gmail password,
57:39
Speaker 6: reset your Apple password, reset your.
57:42
Speaker 2: Bank account password. It went on and on. I mean,
57:44
Speaker 2: I had about a hundred of them.
57:46
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
57:46
Speaker 2: And that's when I realized I was being attacked.
57:49
Speaker 6: And it was devastating. I had no, there's no AT & T.
57:53
Speaker 6: For me, it was AT & T at the time.
57:55
Speaker 6: There was no AT & T store on the island.
57:57
Speaker 6: So how do I get my cell phone service.
58:01
Speaker 2: Back, right?
58:02
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. That must've been a horrible feeling. I mean-
58:05
Speaker 1: It's so nowadays, I mean, and you know, number one
58:08
Speaker 1: to protect, there's a couple of things. Number one, I
58:10
Speaker 1: think the carriers allow you to do like, you can
58:13
Speaker 1: go into your settings and say like what, like make
58:15
Speaker 1: sure you ask for secondary approval before you SIM swap
58:19
Speaker 1: or something, or you get it.
58:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
58:22
Speaker 6: You can call your carrier now and say, or go
58:25
Speaker 6: there in person and say, put a pin code on my,
58:28
Speaker 6: my SIM card.
58:29
Speaker 2: The problem is, and that works, that works really well.
58:32
Speaker 6: I think one of the problems that we've seen in
58:35
Speaker 6: some of the lawsuits that have been happening recently is
58:38
Speaker 6: that there's often an inside.
58:39
Speaker 2: Man, right?
58:40
Speaker 6: You go to somebody, they just ignore this pin code
58:43
Speaker 6: and there you give them a hundred bucks and they
58:45
Speaker 6: give you this new SIM. It's maddening, but there's a
58:50
Speaker 6: lot more tighter controls on it than most of the carriers.
58:52
Speaker 2: I know AT & T and T-Mobile do, which is great.
58:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think AT & T was the one that
58:57
Speaker 1: had the big issue with this, where it came out
58:59
Speaker 1: that there was an inside person kind of helping them along.
59:03
Speaker 1: I think the carriers, once AT & T put some
59:07
Speaker 1: roadblocks in place, I think the other carriers have done
59:09
Speaker 1: the same thing. So definitely go into your account and
59:12
Speaker 1: kind of like toggle on any protections that comes to
59:15
Speaker 1: where it says like number transfer, any of those things
59:17
Speaker 1: like go in there and turn those on. Any other
59:20
Speaker 1: advice you've got? We've got about a minute left here.
59:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
59:24
Speaker 6: I think the biggest piece of advice I have is,
59:26
Speaker 6: is a big thing that's happening now are people are
59:28
Speaker 6: being deep faked voices. Like your son has been kidnapped
59:31
Speaker 6: and they call you. The main thing to do there is,
59:34
Speaker 6: is voice in, in audio, a video can be faked now.
59:38
Speaker 6: So have a code word, a code word or a
59:40
Speaker 6: code phrase that you set with your family. So you
59:44
Speaker 6: know it, who it is you're talking to when they,
59:46
Speaker 6: when they start demanding money.
59:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like the old days when I was getting
59:50
Speaker 1: picked up from the boys and girls club, my parents,
59:51
Speaker 1: we had a code word. If, you know, if a
59:54
Speaker 1: stranger came there and said, Hey, your dad, you know,
59:56
Speaker 1: he can't get here. Let me, let me take you.
59:58
Speaker 1: And it's like, hold on, what's the code word. So
1:00:00
Speaker 1: we had that as a kid, everything old is new again.
1:00:03
Speaker 1: And even in our high tech world, it's just something
1:00:05
Speaker 1: simple like that. So come up with a code word,
1:00:07
Speaker 1: tell your family members and make sure that they, and
1:00:10
Speaker 1: practice it too. Cause you don't want to forget in
1:00:11
Speaker 1: the moment, you know, you're in the heat of these calls.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: These scammers are, they're relentless. I mean, they're, They're waiting
1:00:17
Speaker 1: all day to do this stuff, and they're doing it
1:00:19
Speaker 1: all day.
1:00:20
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:00:21
Speaker 1: So the book is called Unbreakable. It's available, what, on Amazon,
1:00:25
Speaker 1: wherever you buy books, or what?
1:00:27
Speaker 2: That's right.
1:00:28
Speaker 6: It's Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wiley. You can get it
1:00:31
Speaker 6: pretty much anywhere.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: Okay. Unbreakable. Philip Shoemaker, founding director of Apple's App Store
1:00:36
Speaker 1: review team, giving you all the information you need to
1:00:40
Speaker 1: better protect yourself because You have seen it all. That's
1:00:43
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean, you've seen probably every way people
1:00:46
Speaker 1: try to get over on things. And I've heard about
1:00:49
Speaker 1: apps at the App Store. It would look one way
1:00:51
Speaker 1: when you submitted it, and then you could unlock a
1:00:54
Speaker 1: secret feature or something. I mean, there's just been so
1:00:56
Speaker 1: much over the years.
1:00:59
Speaker 6: I tell you how to protect yourself from the App
1:01:01
Speaker 6: Store downloads as well. Do a little more due diligence
1:01:03
Speaker 6: before you download the app. It just takes a minute. Yeah, okay,
1:01:07
Speaker 6: good advice. All right, thanks so much for joining me.
1:01:09
Speaker 6: Really appreciate it. The book, once again, Unbreakable by Philip Shoemaker.
1:01:14
Speaker 6: I will link it up on the website, richontech.tv. It's
1:01:18
Speaker 6: amazing how many of these stories I hear about people
1:01:20
Speaker 6: getting scammed. Even today, today, it just continues to happen.
1:01:24
Speaker 6: Thanks for joining me. Coming up, we'll take some more
1:01:26
Speaker 6: of your calls at 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. And Amazon has two
1:01:28
Speaker 6: new devices that you wear all day.
1:01:36
Speaker 1: They record your conversations and help you remember pretty much
1:01:40
Speaker 1: anything that was said. I'll explain what that's all about
1:01:43
Speaker 1: coming up right here on Rich on Tech. The website richontech.tv.
1:01:51
Speaker 1: If you want links to anything I mentioned or see
1:01:53
Speaker 1: more information, it's slash 196. Richontech.tv slash 196. Especially if
1:01:59
Speaker 1: you want to see that post I did on how
1:02:01
Speaker 1: to find and cancel your subscriptions. Let's see what else
1:02:05
Speaker 1: we did that. Oh, the feedback is also overflowing this week.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: It's just like, it's like every week there's just a,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: the stack grows. It's like, I don't even get to
1:02:13
Speaker 1: half of them. Uh, let's go to Steve has been
1:02:17
Speaker 1: waiting patiently in Fullerton. Steve, welcome to the show. Oh,
1:02:24
Speaker 1: do we lose them? Steve, you there? Oh, I hear him.
1:02:31
Speaker 1: I hear something.
1:02:32
Speaker 3: Nope.
1:02:32
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:02:33
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to give Steve some time to
1:02:36
Speaker 1: compose himself. Okay, now I've got to remember how to–
1:02:39
Speaker 1: it's been so long since I put someone on hold.
1:02:41
Speaker 1: Usually I just hang up, so I'm going to try
1:02:42
Speaker 1: that button. Don't know if that did it. Nope, I
1:02:46
Speaker 1: think I just hung up on him. All right, let's
1:02:48
Speaker 1: try line five. Ed in Elwood City, Pennsylvania. Ed, you're
1:02:55
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
1:02:55
Speaker 8: Yes, thanks for taking my call, Rich.
1:02:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:02:59
Speaker 8: I have a free ProtonMail account. And I want to
1:03:03
Speaker 8: download a 12-hour video to that account and then upload
1:03:09
Speaker 8: it to my inbox and then send links to– I
1:03:13
Speaker 8: have the copyright owner's permission to send links to other people.
1:03:18
Speaker 8: So how do I go about that?
1:03:21
Speaker 1: Well, you're not going to be able to send a
1:03:23
Speaker 1: 12-hour video through email. You can send a link to someone.
1:03:28
Speaker 1: but you can't send the video itself. So how big
1:03:32
Speaker 1: is this video file?
1:03:36
Speaker 8: It's under the five gigabytes that I'm allowed for.
1:03:43
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's a couple ways you can do this, okay? Now,
1:03:47
Speaker 1: for this video... So it's five gigabytes. So the best
1:03:51
Speaker 1: way to do it is to upload it to a
1:03:53
Speaker 1: cloud service and then send the link to that cloud
1:03:55
Speaker 1: service to the people that are the recipients. And you
1:03:58
Speaker 1: can do that through your Proton account. So Proton, let's see,
1:04:02
Speaker 1: I believe they have something called Proton Drive, right? And
1:04:06
Speaker 1: so if you look at Proton Drive, that's part of
1:04:10
Speaker 1: your account. They give you five gigabytes for free. I
1:04:12
Speaker 1: think that's what you're referring to. But I think on
1:04:15
Speaker 1: the flip side, that may share... the storage with your email.
1:04:21
Speaker 1: So I would check into that before you do this.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: But you can basically upload this video to ProtonDrive, and
1:04:28
Speaker 1: that would basically be under the same account, username and
1:04:31
Speaker 1: password that you're using for your ProtonMail. You upload that
1:04:36
Speaker 1: file to this ProtonDrive, and then you're going to make
1:04:39
Speaker 1: a link out of it. So it'll say, you know,
1:04:41
Speaker 1: you could right-click it, or you could just click it,
1:04:43
Speaker 1: and it'll say, make a link. And that link you make,
1:04:46
Speaker 1: that's what you'll email to the friends and family or
1:04:49
Speaker 1: whoever you're sending this to through ProtonMail. Now that's just
1:04:52
Speaker 1: one way of doing it. There are 150 ways of
1:04:55
Speaker 1: doing this. So there is, if you want something that's
1:04:59
Speaker 1: really simple and easy, there's a website called Wormhole, W-O-R-M-H-O-L-E, wormhole.app.
1:05:08
Speaker 1: You can drag and drop, no signup required. You can
1:05:11
Speaker 1: drag and drop that file into this website. You can,
1:05:15
Speaker 1: up to 10 gigabytes is included. It's completely free. And
1:05:20
Speaker 1: once you do that, it will generate a link and
1:05:23
Speaker 1: you can take that link and you can send it
1:05:25
Speaker 1: to people. And so you can delete the file. You
1:05:29
Speaker 1: can set like a deletion for the files. You can,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: you have, it's basically, let's see here. It's only good
1:05:36
Speaker 1: for 24 hours. So people would have to, would have
1:05:38
Speaker 1: to download it pretty quickly, but you can set your
1:05:41
Speaker 1: file to be deleted in 24 hours or after a
1:05:43
Speaker 1: certain amount of downloads. You can also, use another cloud service.
1:05:49
Speaker 1: So Google gives you 15 gigabytes of free cloud storage.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: So if you have a Google account, which you may
1:05:55
Speaker 1: not add because you're using Proton, usually Proton is very
1:05:58
Speaker 1: privacy centric. So people that are using Proton, they don't
1:06:01
Speaker 1: really want to use Google. So that's why I told
1:06:03
Speaker 1: you about Wormhole first. But if you want, you can
1:06:06
Speaker 1: upload this to something like Google Drive and do the
1:06:08
Speaker 1: same thing. You can right click the link or the
1:06:11
Speaker 1: file and you can make a link out of it
1:06:13
Speaker 1: and share it with your friends and family again. Now,
1:06:15
Speaker 1: there's a lot of websites that will let you upload stuff.
1:06:20
Speaker 1: WeTransfer is another one. Let me see how much they
1:06:24
Speaker 1: give you for free because it depends on, let's see here. WeTransfer, okay, pricing.
1:06:32
Speaker 1: So for free, you can send them received up to
1:06:37
Speaker 1: three gigabytes a month. So that's not going to work
1:06:40
Speaker 1: for this because this is over three gigabytes. So you'd
1:06:44
Speaker 1: have to use something like a Google Drive or the wormhole. Or,
1:06:47
Speaker 1: you know, again, your Proton account is going to work
1:06:49
Speaker 1: just fine. It's just a matter of making sure you
1:06:53
Speaker 1: have that five gigabytes of storage. Okay, interesting. So ProtonMail
1:06:58
Speaker 1: comes with one gigabyte of storage for free. So it
1:07:01
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it shares the storage with ProtonDrive. So
1:07:05
Speaker 1: I'd say just use the ProtonDrive that you have as
1:07:08
Speaker 1: part of your Proton account. It's five gigs. Sounds like
1:07:11
Speaker 1: this file will be right underneath there. And you can
1:07:14
Speaker 1: send it out that way. But again, thanks for the call, Ed.
1:07:17
Speaker 1: There are so many ways to send files. I use Dropbox,
1:07:21
Speaker 1: but obviously I pay for Dropbox, just another service that
1:07:24
Speaker 1: I pay for. But I have up to two terabytes
1:07:26
Speaker 1: inside there. And so what I can do is I
1:07:29
Speaker 1: find that Dropbox is really easy for stuff like this
1:07:32
Speaker 1: because it's kind of, to me, Dropbox is like the
1:07:37
Speaker 1: most similar to a hard drive in the cloud. And yeah,
1:07:40
Speaker 1: there's a lot of services like it nowadays, but it
1:07:42
Speaker 1: was kind of the original. So for Dropbox for free,
1:07:46
Speaker 1: I think you only get one or two gigs. Yeah,
1:07:48
Speaker 1: two gigabytes. So that's not going to work here either.
1:07:51
Speaker 1: You'd have to pay to upgrade. So, and there's, you know,
1:07:55
Speaker 1: obviously there's so many different storage places out there. Box
1:07:59
Speaker 1: is another one. OneDrive is another one. Let's see, iCloud
1:08:04
Speaker 1: is another one. So there's just a lot of ways
1:08:05
Speaker 1: to do this. I think there's one called pCloud as well.
1:08:09
Speaker 1: And they, let's see. Oh, you get, so pCloud, you'll
1:08:12
Speaker 1: get 10 gigabytes, pcloud.com. So you can use that for
1:08:16
Speaker 1: 10 gigs. And that's a Swiss company. So they're also
1:08:19
Speaker 1: very privacy centric. So again, lots of ways to do this.
1:08:24
Speaker 1: It just depends like how long you want this file
1:08:26
Speaker 1: to live online, how many people are downloading this file
1:08:30
Speaker 1: and how big that file is. But yeah, you can't
1:08:32
Speaker 1: just typically attach a five gigabyte file in pCloud. an
1:08:37
Speaker 1: email application because it's not meant to transport a file
1:08:41
Speaker 1: that large. So put it to a cloud, then send
1:08:44
Speaker 1: the link. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. I'll tell you about the Amazon
1:08:51
Speaker 1: B wearables. Those are those AI wearables. Oh, plus we
1:08:54
Speaker 1: got to talk about the Tesla Roadster. Did you watch
1:08:56
Speaker 1: that video?
1:08:57
Speaker 2: OMG.
1:08:58
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tesla. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
1:09:06
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101.
1:09:16
Speaker 1: Got an email from Greg, and it was about this
1:09:19
Speaker 1: Roku situation earlier, way earlier in the show. A person
1:09:23
Speaker 1: called in, said that they were hearing audio descriptions. But see,
1:09:28
Speaker 1: it's interesting. They said they were hearing audio descriptions of everything,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: every button they pushed or whatever they did. And so
1:09:33
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is what's happening. But Greg
1:09:37
Speaker 1: says he believes that the audio description was on. So
1:09:43
Speaker 1: this is like in the movie apps. This happened, my
1:09:45
Speaker 1: wife and I, once we were watching, you know, you
1:09:47
Speaker 1: put on the closed captions and there's some other settings
1:09:51
Speaker 1: in there. One of them is like audio descriptions. And
1:09:54
Speaker 1: if you have that on, it'll be like, she walked
1:09:58
Speaker 1: down a, you know, a dark road in the fog.
1:10:02
Speaker 1: And like, while you're watching the show, it'll like tell
1:10:05
Speaker 1: you like what's happening. And that's for obviously for visually
1:10:08
Speaker 1: impaired to understand what's happening on the screen. But if
1:10:11
Speaker 1: you have that on, you don't realize what's happening. I
1:10:13
Speaker 1: was like so confused. I was like, wait, what? Anyway,
1:10:16
Speaker 1: so he believes that's what was turned on. But I
1:10:19
Speaker 1: feel like the caller said that it was everything they
1:10:21
Speaker 1: were doing on the screen was being described. So maybe
1:10:24
Speaker 1: they meant the movie. But that's another place to look
1:10:26
Speaker 1: is in your closed captions. There should be an audio description.
1:10:31
Speaker 1: Turn that off.
1:10:32
Speaker 3: All right.
1:10:32
Speaker 1: We've got looks like Steve called back.
1:10:36
Speaker 3: Steve. Steve.
1:10:37
Speaker 2: Jan?
1:10:38
Speaker 3: Can you hear me?
1:10:38
Speaker 2: There you are.
1:10:39
Speaker 1: Stephen Fullerton. What's going on?
1:10:41
Speaker 2: Fantastic.
1:10:43
Speaker 3: Well, before I continue my subject, you just mentioned that
1:10:48
Speaker 3: those messages being read out loud.
1:10:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:10:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, that happened to me the other day.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: And were you confused?
1:10:57
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, what happened with me is that it
1:11:00
Speaker 3: started reading my text messages.
1:11:02
Speaker 8: Oh, okay.
1:11:04
Speaker 3: It read every text message I had all the way
1:11:10
Speaker 3: down my list without stopping. I had to restart my
1:11:13
Speaker 3: phone to stop it.
1:11:14
Speaker 1: Was this iPhone or Android?
1:11:15
Speaker 3: It's a Galaxy S23. Okay.
1:11:19
Speaker 1: And did you figure out what triggered that?
1:11:23
Speaker 3: Well, I called tech support. Nobody could figure out what
1:11:28
Speaker 3: was going on.
1:11:29
Speaker 8: And finally.
1:11:31
Speaker 10: I.
1:11:31
Speaker 3: Went into the Google Assistant to the text app, and
1:11:37
Speaker 3: it had enable– call recording was enabled.
1:11:44
Speaker 2: Oh, weird.
1:11:45
Speaker 3: And we had tried everything else. So as a last resort,
1:11:48
Speaker 3: I turned that off, and it stopped. It happened a
1:11:52
Speaker 3: couple days after with one text message, and then now
1:11:57
Speaker 3: it stopped altogether.
1:11:58
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you figured that out.
1:12:02
Speaker 3: Well, yeah. Well, I was just going to say that
1:12:03
Speaker 3: the Verizon guy said it might be due to that
1:12:06
Speaker 3: latest Samsung update. So I don't know if this guy
1:12:09
Speaker 3: has a Samsung phone, but that's my two cents on that.
1:12:12
Speaker 1: Okay. So what are you calling in about? What's up?
1:12:16
Speaker 5: Okay.
1:12:18
Speaker 3: I was curious about if you have an opinion about
1:12:21
Speaker 3: Google's decision to drop the Google Assistant in favor of
1:12:26
Speaker 3: this Gemini AI and if you have a suggestion for
1:12:30
Speaker 3: a voice-activated replacement.
1:12:32
Speaker 1: Ooh, okay. I mean, so when you say, which platform
1:12:37
Speaker 1: are you discussing this on? Because there's phones, there's cars,
1:12:40
Speaker 1: there's the smart home, you know, the Google Home. Like,
1:12:44
Speaker 1: which one are you talking about? Because they're replacing it everywhere.
1:12:47
Speaker 3: Right. Well, yeah, it's gone. And so now I'm on
1:12:52
Speaker 3: my Android phone, my Samsung phone.
1:12:54
Speaker 5: That's how I use it.
1:12:56
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:12:57
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think there's pros and cons to
1:12:59
Speaker 1: this because... Google Assistant was amazing for many, many years.
1:13:05
Speaker 1: And Google Assistant, you have to understand the way they're
1:13:08
Speaker 1: programmed is quite different, right? Like a Google Assistant is
1:13:11
Speaker 1: programmed with commands, right? Like turn off lights. And it
1:13:16
Speaker 1: may understand turn off lights in the bedroom, turn on
1:13:20
Speaker 1: lights in backyard. But it's very much like almost programmed
1:13:26
Speaker 1: to understand that context and And because of that, it
1:13:30
Speaker 1: was very efficient, right? It called Jim, it calls Jim,
1:13:35
Speaker 1: you know, set a timer for five minutes. It knows, okay,
1:13:38
Speaker 1: we can set a timer and it's very fast and
1:13:40
Speaker 1: it's quick and it's easy. But we as humans had
1:13:43
Speaker 1: to figure out how to say things in a certain
1:13:46
Speaker 1: way for the pre-programmed instructions to work. Now, when you
1:13:50
Speaker 1: think about AI and Gemini and It is natural language,
1:13:55
Speaker 1: which means you can say whatever you want and the
1:13:58
Speaker 1: system will match up what you're saying to those backend commands,
1:14:03
Speaker 1: including stuff that you may have never said before, or
1:14:06
Speaker 1: it may never have understood before, may never have heard
1:14:08
Speaker 1: those things before. And so it can adapt and figure
1:14:11
Speaker 1: out what you're trying to say. Now, the downside of
1:14:14
Speaker 1: that is that some things aren't as fast. So when
1:14:17
Speaker 1: it first started, like people would try a little simple
1:14:19
Speaker 1: things like set a timer, this and that, and it would,
1:14:22
Speaker 1: take forever because it's trying to do all the computing
1:14:25
Speaker 1: to figure out what you said and then match it
1:14:27
Speaker 1: up with something on the back end. And obviously these
1:14:29
Speaker 1: engineers understand this and they kind of come up with, okay, well,
1:14:33
Speaker 1: we know here are the list of a hundred things
1:14:34
Speaker 1: that people ask over and over that should not take
1:14:37
Speaker 1: five minutes to figure out. And so they'll go through
1:14:40
Speaker 1: and they'll kind of prioritize those and make it respond
1:14:43
Speaker 1: faster to those things. And it's gotten better over time.
1:14:46
Speaker 1: But you also get the full kind of benefit of
1:14:51
Speaker 1: having AI. which AI can answer long-form questions, complex questions,
1:14:56
Speaker 1: things that the assistant can never do. And so you're
1:14:59
Speaker 1: getting the benefit there. But is one better than the other?
1:15:02
Speaker 1: I think for a while, the standard Google Assistant was
1:15:07
Speaker 1: better at smart home stuff because it all had been
1:15:10
Speaker 1: programmed for that assistant. Whereas when you blend AI into
1:15:14
Speaker 1: the mix, it's now much more kind of It doesn't
1:15:18
Speaker 1: necessarily need to be programmed to understand all these things.
1:15:20
Speaker 1: It will just figure out what you're trying to say
1:15:22
Speaker 1: and do it. And so for that reason, it's actually
1:15:26
Speaker 1: in the long term, a better play. But in the
1:15:30
Speaker 1: short term, it's a little bit more frustrating because simple
1:15:32
Speaker 1: things that used to work that used to kind of
1:15:34
Speaker 1: make it take action may not work at this point.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: So I know there's been a lot of controversy over.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: The switching from Google Assistant to Gemini, there's some people
1:15:43
Speaker 1: that don't want AI blended into everything. They don't want
1:15:46
Speaker 1: AI in their house. They don't want AI on their phone,
1:15:49
Speaker 1: in their car. But I think in some aspects, having
1:15:52
Speaker 1: AI is a lot better. And it's eventually over time,
1:15:55
Speaker 1: it will just become so much better. I mean, we
1:15:58
Speaker 1: just got Siri AI on watches. And for my kid
1:16:02
Speaker 1: who uses an Apple Watch, it's a game changer. Because
1:16:05
Speaker 1: it used to be, you know, you'd ask a question
1:16:08
Speaker 1: to Siri on the watch. I don't know, whatever kind
1:16:13
Speaker 1: of question you might come up with, like, what's the
1:16:15
Speaker 1: best place to go to for fluffy pancakes in Tokyo?
1:16:18
Speaker 1: And it'd be like, oh, here's what I found on
1:16:20
Speaker 1: the web. And you're like, thanks. Thanks, Siri. But now
1:16:24
Speaker 1: it will actually search because it's an AI. It will
1:16:28
Speaker 1: search for the information on the back end and give
1:16:31
Speaker 1: you a response that it comes up with. And so
1:16:33
Speaker 1: that is the big shift in how we're computing these days.
1:16:36
Speaker 1: It used to be that Humans had to adapt the
1:16:39
Speaker 1: way that they spoke to computers so that computers would
1:16:43
Speaker 1: understand them. Now we can speak like we want to
1:16:47
Speaker 1: as a human and the computer understands our intent and
1:16:51
Speaker 1: understands what we're trying to do. Is it right every
1:16:53
Speaker 1: single time?
1:16:53
Speaker 3: No.
1:16:54
Speaker 1: But is it getting really good at kind of understanding things?
1:16:57
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:16:58
Speaker 1: And my favorite is when my AI says stuff like, well,
1:17:02
Speaker 1: If I were you, this is what I'd order for dinner.
1:17:04
Speaker 1: I'm like, what do you mean if you were me?
1:17:06
Speaker 1: You're not. You're literally nothing. You're electronic. And there's so many...
1:17:13
Speaker 1: stories of these engineers that work on AI. And they
1:17:16
Speaker 1: say that these, these AIs become sentient. Like they're literally
1:17:20
Speaker 1: believing that they are like a human in the machine.
1:17:24
Speaker 1: And it's just not possible. There's no, these things don't
1:17:28
Speaker 1: have feelings. They don't have wants and needs. They're just
1:17:33
Speaker 1: an assist. Like they're just AI. It's like literally a
1:17:36
Speaker 1: black box that we just pop all this information into.
1:17:40
Speaker 1: All the worlds, we just feed it all this information.
1:17:42
Speaker 1: And it comes up with connections between all these things.
1:17:45
Speaker 1: And it spits those connections out to us when we ask.
1:17:49
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel. It may understand what feelings are like
1:17:51
Speaker 1: because it's read so many books about feelings. But it
1:17:54
Speaker 1: doesn't feel. It doesn't have preferences. You know, sometimes people
1:17:58
Speaker 1: are mean to their AI. My kid was yelling at
1:18:00
Speaker 1: AI the other day. And I said, hey, don't be
1:18:02
Speaker 1: so mean to that AI.
1:18:03
Speaker 2: Why?
1:18:04
Speaker 1: What does it matter? well, we shouldn't be mean in general,
1:18:06
Speaker 1: I guess, right? Treat your AI as you'd like to
1:18:09
Speaker 1: be treated. Oh my God, this stuff is so wild.
1:18:14
Speaker 1: This is all I think about. I mean, literally all
1:18:16
Speaker 1: I think, I woke up so early the other day
1:18:19
Speaker 1: just to like work on my note-taking app setup. Like,
1:18:22
Speaker 1: cause I was so excited how many things I'd like
1:18:24
Speaker 1: figured out with it. Like, this is the stuff that
1:18:26
Speaker 1: really just keeps me going. Like, I just sit there
1:18:29
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, like my brain when I'm sleeping,
1:18:33
Speaker 1: It processes all the stuff that I've come across throughout
1:18:36
Speaker 1: the day. And then when I wake up, I'm like, oh,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: I came up with this idea. I need to do
1:18:40
Speaker 1: that right now. I'm sure you felt that way. It
1:18:43
Speaker 1: just happens. But when you're excited about something, that's the
1:18:46
Speaker 1: way it is. And you know, we can only hope
1:18:48
Speaker 1: for that in our lives. All right, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Coming
1:18:54
Speaker 1: up this hour, we still have our guest to talk
1:18:56
Speaker 1: about the program on the Windows machines that can let
1:19:01
Speaker 1: you control everything via voice. Plus, I got to tell
1:19:04
Speaker 1: you about the Roadster. We got to talk about Amazon's
1:19:06
Speaker 1: B devices. Got a lot more to pack into the
1:19:09
Speaker 1: rest of the show. 888-RICH-101, richontech.tv. Back after this. Alan,
1:19:19
Speaker 1: what's up?
1:19:21
Speaker 5: Well, hello there.
1:19:21
Speaker 3: Hi.
1:19:22
Speaker 13: I have a iPhone 17 that I'm having problems with
1:19:28
Speaker 13: the camera coming on and off intermittently.
1:19:32
Speaker 1: Okay.
1:19:34
Speaker 11: I'll be texting, for example, all of a sudden the
1:19:37
Speaker 11: camera will pop off. I can be on an app,
1:19:41
Speaker 11: all of a sudden the camera will pop up. It's
1:19:44
Speaker 11: very irritating. I did contact Apple. They told me, or
1:19:51
Speaker 11: the gentleman I spoke with said to go ahead and
1:19:54
Speaker 11: download the update, which I did, and unfortunately it didn't
1:19:59
Speaker 11: fix the issue.
1:20:00
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what I think is happening. there is a
1:20:03
Speaker 1: camera control button on the side of your phone, and
1:20:07
Speaker 1: it's pretty sensitive if you don't adjust it. And I
1:20:10
Speaker 1: think what's happening is when you're texting or typing, you're
1:20:12
Speaker 1: pressing that button, and that's what's launching your camera. Have
1:20:15
Speaker 1: you looked into that?
1:20:17
Speaker 5: I actually have.
1:20:18
Speaker 11: I know there's an adjustment to control, I guess, the
1:20:23
Speaker 11: sensitivity or so forth. And I'm pretty sure that when
1:20:27
Speaker 11: it happens, I'm not– touching the phone because I'm pretty
1:20:32
Speaker 11: conscious of it now happening.
1:20:34
Speaker 2: And I don't know if.
1:20:36
Speaker 11: It's something that could be voice activated because, you know,
1:20:39
Speaker 11: when I do the text to voice or voice to text, whatever,
1:20:42
Speaker 11: that seems to trigger it as well.
1:20:46
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, I think you can say,
1:20:51
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll try it. Hey, Siri, open the camera. Yeah,
1:20:55
Speaker 1: mine's not responding to that. But here's what I think
1:20:59
Speaker 1: you should do. Go into your settings. And for the
1:21:01
Speaker 1: next week, I would go into settings. So it's settings
1:21:07
Speaker 1: and then camera and then camera control. And you tap
1:21:11
Speaker 1: in there and it says camera control up at the top.
1:21:14
Speaker 1: You can tap it and you can basically say what
1:21:17
Speaker 1: you want to come up when you press that button.
1:21:19
Speaker 1: I would toggle that to none and see if that
1:21:22
Speaker 1: fixes the issue. And if that doesn't fix the issue,
1:21:25
Speaker 1: which I have 99.9% belief that it will, if it
1:21:30
Speaker 1: doesn't fix the issue, I think that it is either
1:21:35
Speaker 1: your case or something is hitting something on your phone.
1:21:39
Speaker 1: Because I've used every iPhone since the first one, and
1:21:43
Speaker 1: the only time I've ever seen the camera come up
1:21:45
Speaker 1: intermittently is because of the camera control button. When Apple
1:21:49
Speaker 1: first added that, it was a nightmare because I was
1:21:52
Speaker 1: activating it every two seconds. And I finally figured out
1:21:55
Speaker 1: how to adjust my settings so that it's not super
1:21:58
Speaker 1: sensitive and always getting adjusted. But on Android phones, I
1:22:02
Speaker 1: will tell you, I see this problem all the time.
1:22:04
Speaker 1: The camera's always getting activated. The only other way you
1:22:08
Speaker 1: can activate the camera on the iPhone is with the
1:22:10
Speaker 1: shortcut on the home screen. But you'd have to be
1:22:14
Speaker 1: on the lock screen. You'd have to be on the
1:22:16
Speaker 1: lock screen for that to happen. So you can also
1:22:19
Speaker 1: go into your settings and change your shortcuts on the
1:22:23
Speaker 1: lock screen. So if you press and hold on your
1:22:25
Speaker 1: lock screen, like while it's locked, and then you can
1:22:29
Speaker 1: edit it, a little edit button will come up and
1:22:32
Speaker 1: you can press customize and you'll see your two little
1:22:35
Speaker 1: icons for whatever your shortcuts are. Just go ahead and
1:22:38
Speaker 1: delete the camera icon and see if that helps. So
1:22:40
Speaker 1: those are the two places that the camera gets activated
1:22:43
Speaker 1: on the iPhone besides the actual iPhone camera app. And
1:22:48
Speaker 1: there's no way that like another app or anything like
1:22:50
Speaker 1: that is activating it as far as I can tell.
1:22:52
Speaker 1: That just doesn't really happen on the iPhone. So try
1:22:55
Speaker 1: disabling those two things, Alan, and send me an email.
1:22:58
Speaker 1: Let me know if that helps. But I think that
1:23:00
Speaker 1: is the problem. Thanks so much for the call. Thanks
1:23:03
Speaker 1: for holding. Website richontech.tv. This is episode 196 if you
1:23:08
Speaker 1: want more information. All right. I got to tell you
1:23:10
Speaker 1: about two things before we get to our guest here.
1:23:14
Speaker 1: Amazon Bee. This is a gadget that is a startup
1:23:18
Speaker 1: that Amazon acquired last year. I interviewed the founder, young
1:23:22
Speaker 1: woman out of, where was she from? Italy, maybe. And
1:23:25
Speaker 1: she invented this little device. You clip to your wrist
1:23:28
Speaker 1: or your clothing, wear it on your wrist or clothing.
1:23:31
Speaker 1: And it just basically listens all day and then transcribes
1:23:34
Speaker 1: and gives you updates on your day to help you
1:23:36
Speaker 1: remember things. And it also does a lot more than that,
1:23:38
Speaker 1: but that's the basic functionality. Well, now this idea of
1:23:42
Speaker 1: AI always listening is huge. Everyone's got it. Amazon now
1:23:45
Speaker 1: has two new devices. The B Frontier is $ 75. You
1:23:49
Speaker 1: wear it on your wrist or you clip it to
1:23:50
Speaker 1: your clothing. Then they have the B Eclipse, which is $ 100.
1:23:53
Speaker 1: And this is a gadget that magnetically attaches to your phone,
1:23:57
Speaker 1: kind of like the Plod gadget. Battery life, seven days
1:24:01
Speaker 1: for the little clip one, 21 days for the one
1:24:04
Speaker 1: on the back of your phone. And basically they listen
1:24:06
Speaker 1: to your conversations. They create summaries, reminders, to-do lists. They
1:24:10
Speaker 1: remember things when you say, oh yeah, I promise I'll
1:24:12
Speaker 1: send you that link. Like we'll email you and be like, hey,
1:24:14
Speaker 1: remember to send that person that link. Can connect to
1:24:17
Speaker 1: your Gmail, your Outlook, your calendar, can draft follow-up emails.
1:24:21
Speaker 1: Now these new versions integrate with Alexa Plus. You can
1:24:24
Speaker 1: literally have Alexa have the perspective of all the things
1:24:28
Speaker 1: happening in your life. I know that is a little
1:24:30
Speaker 1: bit scary. And I'm telling you this, like, I haven't
1:24:32
Speaker 1: gotten to the privacy implications, but yeah, this stuff brings
1:24:35
Speaker 1: up a lot of privacy concerns for sure. And now
1:24:39
Speaker 1: they also have a pro. So basically 14 days of
1:24:42
Speaker 1: memories included. They have unlimited for $ 12. Let's see here.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: So these devices have a physical on and off button
1:24:50
Speaker 1: and a recording indicator light. And Amazon, like a lot
1:24:53
Speaker 1: of these companies say, audio is processed and deleted, not
1:24:56
Speaker 1: necessarily stored. Transcripts are encrypted. But your big concern here
1:25:01
Speaker 1: is that you're, potentially capturing conversations with people who don't
1:25:05
Speaker 1: agree or don't know they're being recorded. And so these
1:25:09
Speaker 1: recording rules vary by state. A lot of states are
1:25:11
Speaker 1: two-party consent. So it brings up a lot of questions
1:25:15
Speaker 1: about society, but here's the deal. These are not going away.
1:25:19
Speaker 1: Apple Watch is getting this feature. There's Plod. There's a
1:25:22
Speaker 1: million of these types of wearables coming into the market,
1:25:24
Speaker 1: and they all do the same thing. They record the
1:25:26
Speaker 1: whole day and they help AI understand your day and
1:25:29
Speaker 1: like remind you of stuff and remember stuff. So we're
1:25:32
Speaker 1: gonna have to figure out as this, as a society, like,
1:25:35
Speaker 1: are we just always being recorded all the time? We
1:25:38
Speaker 1: just have to understand that. Like there used to be
1:25:40
Speaker 1: like a, you know, you had a kind of a
1:25:43
Speaker 1: belief that certain places were private, right? Certain conversations were private.
1:25:48
Speaker 1: You know, it goes back to like the mafia movies, right? Like, Hey,
1:25:50
Speaker 1: you wearing a wire? It's like, no, well, half the
1:25:53
Speaker 1: time they were, um, So we'll see. Anyway, but in
1:25:58
Speaker 1: certain businesses, this could be very useful. Like I was
1:26:01
Speaker 1: at a doctor's office the other day. The doctor was
1:26:03
Speaker 1: wearing one of these type devices. Probably helps them remember
1:26:05
Speaker 1: all the things that are said throughout the day and
1:26:08
Speaker 1: helps them connect with the patients more. If you're a realtor,
1:26:12
Speaker 1: you're a salesperson, you want to remember little nuances about
1:26:15
Speaker 1: the people that you interact with. These are an amazing thing.
1:26:18
Speaker 1: And because it's gotten so cheap to just record and
1:26:20
Speaker 1: transcribe everything and have AI slice and dice it, It's
1:26:23
Speaker 1: something that we've just never had before in our world.
1:26:28
Speaker 1: So I think that there are a lot of privacy implications,
1:26:32
Speaker 1: but the fact that Apple's doing it, the fact that
1:26:35
Speaker 1: Amazon's doing it, Google has not come out with a
1:26:38
Speaker 1: device like this just yet, but they could easily do it.
1:26:41
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more out there.
1:26:43
Speaker 2: All right.
1:26:44
Speaker 1: Uh, coming up, we're going to talk about this program
1:26:46
Speaker 1: that can help you control your computer by your voice.
1:26:49
Speaker 1: Plus we got to talk about the Tesla roadster. We've
1:26:51
Speaker 1: got feedback, lots more coming up right here on rich
1:26:55
Speaker 1: on tech. Uh, I got to talk about this roadster
1:27:02
Speaker 1: real quick. I mean, this was just wild. My kids
1:27:04
Speaker 1: were like, oh, they're like, dad, this is all over YouTube.
1:27:06
Speaker 1: And I had to watch the video. I watched like
1:27:08
Speaker 1: a 10 minute super cup, but Tesla showed off this, uh,
1:27:11
Speaker 1: new roadster sports car that, uh, can jump over other cars,
1:27:15
Speaker 1: flip through the air, accelerate really fast. It's called the Roadster.
1:27:20
Speaker 1: It went zero to 60 in like less than a second,
1:27:23
Speaker 1: which is just wild. Top speed over 200 miles an hour.
1:27:26
Speaker 1: It's electric, so it's got 300 miles of range. It
1:27:29
Speaker 1: can jump. They showed it jumping over other cars. It
1:27:33
Speaker 1: uses compressed air thrusters to flip in midair. And I
1:27:37
Speaker 1: actually talked to one of my friends who works at SpaceX,
1:27:40
Speaker 1: and he's like, yeah, that's our technology. I'm like, this
1:27:42
Speaker 1: is just wild. Um, it's got upside down driving. So
1:27:46
Speaker 1: it has like suction to stick to surfaces. I think
1:27:49
Speaker 1: they said it's like a couple of G's of suction.
1:27:51
Speaker 1: It's just wild. And it uses compressed air, not rocket fuel. So, um,
1:27:56
Speaker 1: this is obviously not something that's going to be in
1:27:58
Speaker 1: driveways very soon. 2028, I believe they said they're going
1:28:03
Speaker 1: to start production. And of course, people are talking about
1:28:06
Speaker 1: on social media that they originally announced this all the
1:28:08
Speaker 1: way back in like 2017. And it's going to cost, uh,
1:28:12
Speaker 1: Even the ones that can do all the crazy things
1:28:15
Speaker 1: is going to be unattainable for the average person. But
1:28:19
Speaker 1: the standard model starts at over 200 grand. So for
1:28:23
Speaker 1: most people, this is not something that's in their future,
1:28:26
Speaker 1: but it's still pretty cool. If you haven't watched the video,
1:28:29
Speaker 1: the CNET Supercut is the one that I watched. It
1:28:32
Speaker 1: takes the whole presentation and just clips it down to
1:28:34
Speaker 1: 10 minutes. That was pretty awesome. So check it out.
1:28:38
Speaker 1: All right, joining me now is... is Christopher Mutch, developer
1:28:42
Speaker 1: of Speaking Access. This is a program on Windows that's
1:28:47
Speaker 1: $ 30 and it basically gives you voice controls for everything. Christopher,
1:28:50
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me.
1:28:52
Speaker 4: Thank you, Rich. Thanks for having me.
1:28:54
Speaker 1: So, yeah, tell me what speaking access is. We like
1:28:56
Speaker 1: to talk, I mean, I think that technology is doing
1:28:58
Speaker 1: incredible things for accessibility. And this is probably, you know, like,
1:29:03
Speaker 1: was this built as an accessibility tool or is this
1:29:05
Speaker 1: just built as a tool for anyone?
1:29:08
Speaker 4: Well, it was originally designed for the blind because what
1:29:11
Speaker 4: ended up happening is just like a lot of people,
1:29:14
Speaker 4: I went through a midlife crisis and I needed something
1:29:16
Speaker 4: new to do. So I ran into a customer who
1:29:19
Speaker 4: was blind from birth. And he was using, I'd never
1:29:22
Speaker 4: seen anybody use a screen reader before. So I went home,
1:29:25
Speaker 4: immediately downloaded it and realized it was really hard, like
1:29:30
Speaker 4: really hard for a sighted person of my age. And anyways,
1:29:34
Speaker 4: what I decided is that, okay, if I'm going through
1:29:37
Speaker 4: this just as a hobby and just being experimental, I
1:29:41
Speaker 4: could just imagine what a person that like got diabetes
1:29:45
Speaker 4: or whatever later in life had to deal with, especially
1:29:48
Speaker 4: if they worked in an office. So I went Okay,
1:29:51
Speaker 4: so if you could change all these, I don't know
1:29:54
Speaker 4: if you know, Rich, but there's almost 300 plus shortcut
1:29:57
Speaker 4: keys when it comes to running a screen reader. That's
1:30:00
Speaker 4: a lot of keys, right?
1:30:01
Speaker 2: It's a lot of stuff.
1:30:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you, like the ones that are easy
1:30:06
Speaker 4: to remember, most people can remember, like control copy. Those
1:30:09
Speaker 4: are ones that are pretty, but what if you're in
1:30:11
Speaker 4: the edge and you need the browser address bar? Do
1:30:14
Speaker 4: you know what the shortcut key for that is?
1:30:15
Speaker 1: Ooh, let's see. Windows slash, I don't know, T.
1:30:20
Speaker 4: I don't know either. My program remembers for me. So
1:30:23
Speaker 4: I converted. What I decided to do is to look
1:30:26
Speaker 4: into it. And that's where speaking access came from, is
1:30:30
Speaker 4: the idea that the conversation and remembering voice commands is
1:30:34
Speaker 4: a lot easier than remembering like your what for browser
1:30:38
Speaker 4: commands and stuff.
1:30:39
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. So you took kind of like all the
1:30:41
Speaker 1: commands that you could potentially do on your computer or
1:30:44
Speaker 1: a lot of them and just converted them into what
1:30:47
Speaker 1: you would speak.
1:30:49
Speaker 4: Exactly. And the best way to describe it is like,
1:30:52
Speaker 4: I say 90% controls 90% of the computer. The best
1:30:55
Speaker 4: way to put it is to tell you the stuff
1:30:57
Speaker 4: it doesn't control.
1:30:58
Speaker 5: Okay.
1:30:58
Speaker 4: So it won't shut down your computer and that has
1:31:01
Speaker 4: to do a lot with security. And also because it
1:31:05
Speaker 4: won't get into the main menu of the MBDA because
1:31:08
Speaker 4: of the speech engine. It's not, yeah, the speech synthesis.
1:31:12
Speaker 4: And the last part is it won't go into the taskbar.
1:31:15
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:31:15
Speaker 1: Interesting. So, So it basically helps you control things once
1:31:18
Speaker 1: you're in a program and trying to do stuff around
1:31:20
Speaker 1: that program.
1:31:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it allows you to navigate the desktop. Like
1:31:25
Speaker 4: one thing for audio users is that a lot of
1:31:28
Speaker 4: the times you'll get like a ding from the notification center,
1:31:32
Speaker 4: and it's really hard to remember what the shortcut key is. Well,
1:31:36
Speaker 4: with my computer and with speaking access, all you have
1:31:40
Speaker 4: to do is say desktop notifications. It's always listening and
1:31:44
Speaker 4: has no internet connection. So it's locally self-hosted. I should also.
1:31:50
Speaker 1: Now, I'm just curious because people, you know, some people
1:31:52
Speaker 1: listening may say, well, you know, there's a whole bunch
1:31:54
Speaker 1: of voice control built into Windows. Like, why do we
1:31:56
Speaker 1: need something different? There's that voice access. So how is
1:31:59
Speaker 1: this different?
1:32:01
Speaker 4: Well, for one, it's voice access was designed for... I
1:32:05
Speaker 4: interviewed 70 people. And unfortunately or fortunately... Well, unfortunately... Sometimes
1:32:11
Speaker 4: I was listening to them and I found that I
1:32:13
Speaker 4: got a list of seven different things that they wanted.
1:32:17
Speaker 4: And with voice access and stuff, they are really strong programs,
1:32:22
Speaker 4: but they can be glitchy. My program, and not only that,
1:32:25
Speaker 4: they don't do everything mine does. Like you can control
1:32:28
Speaker 4: every aspect of the browser. You can go browser downloads.
1:32:31
Speaker 4: You have the other thing that's handy is screen reader users.
1:32:36
Speaker 4: We'll notice that, say if you're in LinkedIn, sometimes you
1:32:39
Speaker 4: have to hit the tab key 10 times to get
1:32:42
Speaker 4: to where you're going. Well, in my program, all you
1:32:45
Speaker 4: have to say is next key 10 times. I programmed
1:32:48
Speaker 4: it so that you can have multiple keys by just
1:32:51
Speaker 4: saying it. Just also single as well. So you can
1:32:54
Speaker 4: say up key 10 times, down key 10 times. The
1:32:59
Speaker 4: other thing it allows you to do is selection commands.
1:33:01
Speaker 4: Like you can select five lines above, five lines below.
1:33:06
Speaker 4: open file like i'm not kidding that it literally does
1:33:09
Speaker 4: that and from what i understand voiceover doesn't do all
1:33:12
Speaker 4: that it'll mostly work within a window.
1:33:15
Speaker 1: So how are people using this like who who is
1:33:17
Speaker 1: this for and how are people using it like what
1:33:19
Speaker 1: are you finding how long have you been on this
1:33:21
Speaker 1: journey with this program that you built a year now
1:33:23
Speaker 1: oh wow yeah.
1:33:24
Speaker 4: And i've had about six months of solid stuff because
1:33:28
Speaker 4: um because it's all new i run into problems And
1:33:31
Speaker 4: I'm getting stronger and I'm getting a really good reaction
1:33:34
Speaker 4: from people. They're really liking it. I'm already getting requests for, like,
1:33:38
Speaker 4: for example, I was on, there was a suggestion that
1:33:43
Speaker 4: that's why accessibility, when you're doing accessibility, you should never
1:33:48
Speaker 4: take things for granted. Like my program is all done
1:33:51
Speaker 4: through the shortcut keys and then a voice command. So
1:33:54
Speaker 4: all the programs are there that if you wanted, say,
1:33:58
Speaker 4: to say to the command to speaking access, what is
1:34:01
Speaker 4: the shortcut key for browser address bar? I didn't have
1:34:04
Speaker 4: that in there. And then one viewer asked, or one
1:34:08
Speaker 4: person that was talking to me asked that we could
1:34:10
Speaker 4: put that in because that way that gives them the
1:34:14
Speaker 4: alternative to use. I didn't think of that. That whole
1:34:17
Speaker 4: program was to avoid the shortcut keys, but there's a
1:34:19
Speaker 4: lot of people that like say you're in a library
1:34:22
Speaker 4: or you want some privacy. you want to know what
1:34:25
Speaker 4: the shortcut key is. So I put that in. That'll
1:34:27
Speaker 4: be available in the next update in about two or
1:34:30
Speaker 4: three months because I got to test them first.
1:34:32
Speaker 11: Right, right.
1:34:33
Speaker 1: Is this your full-time gig? Are you working on this
1:34:35
Speaker 1: full-time or is this a hobby? How are you doing this?
1:34:37
Speaker 4: This is, well, the hours, I'm still work, I work
1:34:41
Speaker 4: as a chainsaw carver. That's my full-time gig. That's probably
1:34:45
Speaker 4: around 25, 30 hours a week. And then the rest
1:34:48
Speaker 4: is this, but it's full-time. Let's just say, Rich, I
1:34:51
Speaker 4: have no life right now.
1:34:54
Speaker 1: What have you learned in this process? I mean, you know,
1:34:56
Speaker 1: cause nowadays people are like coding apps with AI. I mean,
1:34:59
Speaker 1: it's making like where it's, it's, it's really making it
1:35:01
Speaker 1: more accessible to, to people to, you know, if you
1:35:03
Speaker 1: have an idea, you can make an app. What do you,
1:35:05
Speaker 1: what advice do you have for people if they have
1:35:07
Speaker 1: an idea for something like you, this seems like you
1:35:09
Speaker 1: took a lot of thought and put it into this. Yeah.
1:35:12
Speaker 4: Five years. So yeah, the biggest thing I would put
1:35:15
Speaker 4: into is it's always the last 1%. I've had this
1:35:20
Speaker 4: conversation with other people who are going, well, people could
1:35:22
Speaker 4: just like, we just had that thing with Photoshop. They've
1:35:26
Speaker 4: got a new rendition of Photoshop.
1:35:28
Speaker 3: It's free.
1:35:29
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing that came up is it's glitchy.
1:35:32
Speaker 4: People that are going to be doing this stuff seriously.
1:35:34
Speaker 4: That's why I don't really think there's going to be
1:35:37
Speaker 4: like when you're using a computer for accessibility and you
1:35:40
Speaker 4: need it like solid, you need the people behind it
1:35:44
Speaker 4: to be solid. You're not going to be running off
1:35:47
Speaker 4: and downloading a black copy of jaws because you have
1:35:52
Speaker 4: no idea where it's coming from. I mean, but on
1:35:54
Speaker 4: the blip side, if I was a person that was
1:35:56
Speaker 4: looking into it, like I'm a creative, right? I've been
1:35:59
Speaker 4: a chainsaw carver for 30 years. And that creative part,
1:36:03
Speaker 4: to be honest with you, I don't see the difference
1:36:05
Speaker 4: between programming and especially now that you can vibe code.
1:36:08
Speaker 1: Oh, that's what you said you did. I missed that.
1:36:10
Speaker 1: You said you're a chainsaw carver?
1:36:12
Speaker 4: Chainsaw carver, yeah.
1:36:13
Speaker 3: Oh, my.
1:36:13
Speaker 1: So you're one of those guys, you got all the
1:36:15
Speaker 1: tree stumps outside your house with like the designs in there. Okay,
1:36:19
Speaker 1: got it. That's wild.
1:36:20
Speaker 4: And I've done things like, I don't know if you've
1:36:23
Speaker 4: ever heard of it, but there's a place called the
1:36:25
Speaker 4: Wiccan Inn at Shin Tofino, and it's a very famous restaurant.
1:36:28
Speaker 4: I did an 18-foot root bar for them.
1:36:31
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
1:36:32
Speaker 4: That has an eight-foot root, and a eight foot piece
1:36:35
Speaker 4: of glass that goes over top of it. And then
1:36:37
Speaker 4: they asked me to notch it out little butters so
1:36:39
Speaker 4: that fit on their existing bar. There wasn't anything straight
1:36:43
Speaker 4: on this whole thing until I was done with it.
1:36:45
Speaker 1: Wow. That's wild.
1:36:47
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:36:47
Speaker 1: So that gave you the basis for, so, so carving
1:36:50
Speaker 1: with a chainsaw gave you the basis for coming up
1:36:52
Speaker 1: with this program.
1:36:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
1:36:55
Speaker 4: And I could, yeah, exactly. I know it's a little surprising,
1:36:57
Speaker 4: but that's, yeah. A lot of people are surprised by that,
1:36:59
Speaker 4: but for me, it's not, I like, if you're a
1:37:01
Speaker 4: painter or, I'm sure what you do is very creative.
1:37:05
Speaker 4: Whenever your brain has to think outside the box, that's
1:37:10
Speaker 4: exactly what we're going to need in the future. Because
1:37:12
Speaker 4: I'm convinced in this age of AI, what's going to
1:37:15
Speaker 4: become the master thing or the big thing is creativity.
1:37:19
Speaker 4: Because AI sucks at creativity.
1:37:21
Speaker 1: 100%. Well, if you look at it, it's all the same.
1:37:23
Speaker 1: It just copies everything it sees and does a variation
1:37:28
Speaker 1: of that. And so I think that I think the
1:37:29
Speaker 1: two things are going to stick is that human aspect
1:37:32
Speaker 1: of things. We still crave that as humans. And also
1:37:36
Speaker 1: creativity and new ideas. Now more than ever, we need
1:37:39
Speaker 1: that because AI is just regurgitating everything that's ever been
1:37:43
Speaker 1: said and done before. All right, we've got to leave
1:37:45
Speaker 1: it there. The website is speakingaccess.com. Christopher Mulch, tell me
1:37:50
Speaker 1: how to say your last name. I think I butchered
1:37:51
Speaker 1: it here.
1:37:52
Speaker 3: Much.
1:37:53
Speaker 1: Much. Okay, Christopher Much from speakingaccess.com. Thanks so much for
1:37:57
Speaker 1: joining me today. I really appreciate it.
1:37:59
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me, Rich.
1:38:01
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we are going to open up
1:38:03
Speaker 1: the feedback and I'll put a link to the, uh,
1:38:05
Speaker 1: speakingaccess.com and my website, richontech.tv. Uh, coming up, we are
1:38:09
Speaker 1: going to open up the feedback. These are the, uh,
1:38:11
Speaker 1: the comments that you have sent to me throughout the week.
1:38:14
Speaker 1: That is coming up right here when Rich on Tech returns.
1:38:23
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to do my best here to
1:38:24
Speaker 1: get through, uh, as much as the feedback as I can.
1:38:27
Speaker 1: There's a lot of it this week. So, uh, these
1:38:30
Speaker 1: are the comments, the questions, the emails I get from you.
1:38:34
Speaker 1: Feedback is a combination of feedback plus the mailbag. And
1:38:39
Speaker 1: if you'd like to submit yours, just go to richontech.tv.
1:38:42
Speaker 1: Hit contact. Bob writes in. I agree it's bad manners
1:38:47
Speaker 1: to have your face buried in a phone while you're
1:38:50
Speaker 1: with other people. How rude we've become towards one another.
1:38:52
Speaker 1: I'm from a generation that was taught to make eye
1:38:54
Speaker 1: contact and address others with a sir and ma'am. Those
1:38:58
Speaker 1: lessons cost me nothing, but they enriched my journey through life.
1:39:01
Speaker 1: To some, I'll just say a Southern, bless your heart.
1:39:05
Speaker 1: Brian in Watsonville. Rich, I strongly agree with your plea
1:39:09
Speaker 1: to put the darn cell phone down during meals, especially
1:39:11
Speaker 1: when you're with someone you love. Last week, I took
1:39:14
Speaker 1: my wife to Paris to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Congratulations.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: We had lunch at a beautiful chateau outside Paris at
1:39:21
Speaker 1: a very expensive two Michelin star restaurant. The experience was fantastic,
1:39:27
Speaker 1: but what shocked us was that every other couple in
1:39:29
Speaker 1: the restaurant spent most of their time looking at their phones.
1:39:32
Speaker 1: Even when the chef came out to speak with guests,
1:39:34
Speaker 1: some people were still staring at their screens. You're spending
1:39:36
Speaker 1: all this money on an amazing meal, and you're scrolling
1:39:38
Speaker 1: through your phone. You might be at Denny's. We always
1:39:42
Speaker 1: have a rule raising our kids. Put your phones away
1:39:44
Speaker 1: during meals, whether at home or dining out, period. The
1:39:47
Speaker 1: joy of sharing a wonderful meal with my wife and
1:39:49
Speaker 1: kids will always beat YouTube or Instagram. Thanks for a
1:39:52
Speaker 1: great show. Well, congratulations on the marriage. Two Michelin star
1:39:58
Speaker 1: meal is too fancy for me, I'll be honest. I'm
1:40:00
Speaker 1: not a fancy food guy. I appreciate a nice steak.
1:40:03
Speaker 1: That's kind of where it ends. But all this fancy
1:40:05
Speaker 1: stuff that's served on your plate, like a little tiny
1:40:07
Speaker 1: thing in the middle, not for me. But I'm sure
1:40:09
Speaker 1: it was great. Alex, I was always tuning into tech
1:40:14
Speaker 1: TV and G4 back in the day. I could watch
1:40:16
Speaker 1: all day and learn about tech. The screensavers, Attack of
1:40:19
Speaker 1: the Show are my favorites. I was wondering, Rich, were
1:40:20
Speaker 1: you a fan too? Was I a fan? I applied
1:40:24
Speaker 1: to tech TV every year of my life while that
1:40:27
Speaker 1: was on air. G4, same thing. And tech TV never
1:40:31
Speaker 1: worked out. G4 never worked out. And I still remember
1:40:35
Speaker 1: I would send my tapes and my information and my
1:40:38
Speaker 1: resume to the HR people like all the time. And yeah,
1:40:42
Speaker 1: never worked out. But here I am still doing the
1:40:45
Speaker 1: same thing.
1:40:46
Speaker 2: Jeremy.
1:40:47
Speaker 8: Hey, Rich.
1:40:47
Speaker 1: Great newsletter. I wanted to recommend an alternative to the
1:40:50
Speaker 1: nightlights you mentioned. Wyze makes a three pack of USB-C
1:40:54
Speaker 1: rechargeable nightlights for $ 25. The coolest feature is that they
1:40:58
Speaker 1: connect wirelessly. When one detects motion, it triggers the others.
1:41:00
Speaker 1: You can link up to 10. They also have magnetic
1:41:03
Speaker 1: backs for easy mounting. That is fantastic. I put this
1:41:06
Speaker 1: in my newsletter, but it's the Wyze... Let's see. Wise
1:41:11
Speaker 1: rechargeable nightlights. What a great idea. You can have all
1:41:13
Speaker 1: the nightlights in your house light up if you go
1:41:14
Speaker 1: past one. Let's see here. Candy in Spring Hill, Florida.
1:41:21
Speaker 1: I spent six weeks in Europe this summer and upgraded
1:41:23
Speaker 1: to Spectrum's international plan before my trip. It worked seamlessly.
1:41:26
Speaker 1: I even had 5G service in the middle of the
1:41:29
Speaker 1: Aegean and Adriatic seas. Great show, Rich. Thank you. There
1:41:33
Speaker 1: you go. Let's see. Fred, I tried Muse after hearing
1:41:38
Speaker 1: you talk about it. Now I have it watching my flights,
1:41:40
Speaker 1: looking for airfare, giving my itinerary, restaurants, and updates. Then
1:41:44
Speaker 1: Muse found airfare that could save me $ 1, 600 on an
1:41:47
Speaker 1: upcoming trip. I haven't booked, but it's sending me daily updates.
1:41:50
Speaker 1: I've even renamed it Kona after my beloved dog who
1:41:54
Speaker 1: passed away and uploaded her picture. Now Kona gives me
1:41:57
Speaker 1: a morning digest, afternoon stock market wrap-up, airfares. and even
1:42:02
Speaker 1: make his dining reservations, and I'm doing all of this
1:42:04
Speaker 1: on the free version without hitting my weekly limit. Love it, Fred.
1:42:09
Speaker 1: Don writes in, Rich, I have a GE rabbit ear antenna,
1:42:11
Speaker 1: and I can pick up TV stations almost 60 miles away.
1:42:15
Speaker 1: You should try the Philips rabbit ear antenna. You can
1:42:17
Speaker 1: hang it on the wall like a picture. It has
1:42:19
Speaker 1: great reviews. The biggest factor in getting good reception is
1:42:22
Speaker 1: line of sight. If you're surrounded by obstacles, they'll interfere
1:42:25
Speaker 1: with reception no matter what brand of antenna you use. Oh,
1:42:29
Speaker 1: Don recommends the GE flat panel indoor HD antenna. It
1:42:33
Speaker 1: got mixed up with the rabbit ear one. So I
1:42:35
Speaker 1: don't know why it was mixed up. John, Rich, I
1:42:39
Speaker 1: saw your antenna segment, wanted to tell you about a
1:42:41
Speaker 1: product called Zapper Box. It's basically a TiVo for over
1:42:44
Speaker 1: the air. What makes it interesting is it supports ATSC 3.0,
1:42:48
Speaker 1: the newer broadcast TV standard. It can record 4K broadcast
1:42:52
Speaker 1: and has a two-week channel guide. They just released a
1:42:55
Speaker 1: Fortuner model. I'm not affiliated. I just like the product.
1:42:58
Speaker 1: I thought your viewers should know about it. There you go.
1:43:01
Speaker 1: Now you know. Zapper Box. Is that it? Zapper Box, yeah.
1:43:05
Speaker 1: Let's see here. Rich, I'm so glad you covered TV antennas,
1:43:09
Speaker 1: says Mario. Five months ago, after 30 years with Cox,
1:43:12
Speaker 1: I cut the cord. I was paying $ 400 a month.
1:43:14
Speaker 1: Now I bought $ 45 RCA outdoor antennas and connected... One
1:43:19
Speaker 1: $ 45 RCA outdoor antenna connected it to the existing coax
1:43:23
Speaker 1: cables in my house. I added an amp and now
1:43:26
Speaker 1: I get 160 channels, which I've narrowed down to about
1:43:28
Speaker 1: 65 that I'll actually watch. I also switched to a
1:43:31
Speaker 1: $ 40 DirecTV streaming package, $ 60 T-Mobile home internet and kept
1:43:36
Speaker 1: my home phone service for 26. My $ 400 monthly bill
1:43:39
Speaker 1: went to $ 145. I also use Canopy and Hoopla plus
1:43:44
Speaker 1: Roku's movie vault. And I like Howdy, which offers commercial-free
1:43:48
Speaker 1: movies for $ 3 a month. I'm getting more entertainment than
1:43:51
Speaker 1: ever for a fraction of the price. Well, good for you.
1:43:56
Speaker 1: Let's see. Neil gives a warning about AI agents. You
1:43:59
Speaker 1: may have changed your mind about AI agents, but I
1:44:02
Speaker 1: still think they're risks. I've always wanted something that could
1:44:04
Speaker 1: reliably do my bidding, but I'd also want it to
1:44:07
Speaker 1: be completely secure. I think we have a ways to
1:44:09
Speaker 1: go on that. Thanks for the show and the newsletter.
1:44:13
Speaker 1: Mark writes in, in addition to MacGyver, another TV character
1:44:16
Speaker 1: who lived on a boat was Quincy, M.E. And let's
1:44:20
Speaker 1: see here. One more I think we have time for.
1:44:25
Speaker 2: Let's see.
1:44:26
Speaker 1: Oh, here we go. James, I was watching Netflix's Wonka,
1:44:30
Speaker 1: the golden ticket, and spotted Nick Cannon appearing in one
1:44:32
Speaker 1: of those proto-holograms. My first reaction was, DeMuro was in
1:44:35
Speaker 1: one of those. The show was shot in Australia. The
1:44:38
Speaker 1: celebrity hosts appeared through the proto. It's a little cheesy.
1:44:41
Speaker 1: but also pretty cool from a tech standpoint. Howie Mandel
1:44:43
Speaker 1: asking for a high five was especially funny.
1:44:46
Speaker 4: Thanks, James.
1:44:47
Speaker 1: I'm glad I was there first. That's going to do
1:44:49
Speaker 1: it for this episode of the show. You can find
1:44:51
Speaker 1: links to everything I mentioned on the website. Just go
1:44:53
Speaker 1: to richontech.tv. You can find me on social media. I
1:44:57
Speaker 1: am at richontech. I am on Instagram, and I am
1:45:01
Speaker 1: dabbling back on X, as many are. Next week, we
1:45:05
Speaker 1: got Philip Swan. He runs a website called TV for Seniors.
1:45:11
Speaker 1: So you know what that's all about. He'll explain how
1:45:12
Speaker 1: you can live with streaming in this new era. Thanks
1:45:16
Speaker 1: so much for listening. There are so many ways you
1:45:18
Speaker 1: can spend your time. I appreciate you spending it right
1:45:20
Speaker 1: here with me. One reminder before I go, this is
1:45:23
Speaker 1: very important. Please do not drive distracted. Put that phone down.
1:45:26
Speaker 1: Those texts can wait. Thanks to everyone who makes this
1:45:28
Speaker 1: show possible. Kim, Adam, and for Bobo, my guests, and
1:45:32
Speaker 1: of course you. My name is Rich DeMuro. I will
1:45:34
Speaker 1: talk to you real soon.