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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Walmart adds a new perk to its membership program. One
of the best deals in wireless is gone. If you
use a VPN on iOS, you probably want to do
this first. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on?
I'm Rich dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
you should know about. It's also the place where I

(00:32):
answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter
at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you are
having a fantastic day, week, month, year. Can you believe
that we are more than six months into the year.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I don't know why I said that. I just looked
at the data as I said that, I'm.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Like, wait a second, We're like, we're more like eight
months into the year, almost nine months into the year.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
But here's the deal I was.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
I keep thinking about the fact that we are in
this gentle slide into the holidays, and I don't wanna
I don't want to get you like, you know, freaked
out or.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
But the reality is, in my world, we just had
the Samsung release. Now we've got Apple, then we have
Google and you know, so all these things sort of
happened throughout the holiday season, and it's it's really like
a little gentle slide into the holiday shopping season, and
then you have Thanksgiving and then you have just a

(01:29):
couple of weeks of shopping until the holidays, and then
you've got cees. So my entire like rest of the
year is all sort of figured out. And in my mind,
I'm like, I'm already there. I'm like, it's twenty twenty three.
So I don't wanna I don't want to alarm you.
You do not have to feel that way. You do
not have to think that way. I'm just saying for me,
you know, a lot of what I do is planning.

(01:49):
You know, it's planning to have coverage of the various
gadgets and things that are coming out, and you know,
it's it's a lot in the next.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Couple of months. One of the gadgets I've been playing with.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Are the Samsung Galaxy let me get this name right,
Galaxy Buds to Pro. And these are the follow up
to the Galaxy Buds Pro and these are the best
earbuds that Samsung has ever made. Oh the music was
still playing, there we go, That's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
So I don't say that lightly.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Now, I will tell you I've done several workouts with
these EarPods.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Are these earbuds?

Speaker 1 (02:28):
I should say, I'm mixing air pods and earbuds and
my own number one.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
The case is awesome. It's this nice rubbery, grippy case.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
My only downside of the case is that there is
no pairing button on it and I really have grown
to dislike that. And i'll tell you why. There's a
pair of Samsung earbuds that I disabled the touch controls
because I didn't want them on the earbuds, and next thing,
you know, I put them in the case and I
had to pair them with a new phone. And the
way that you do that is there's like a button

(03:00):
that you press or I'm sorry, not a button, but
you press and hold the two earbuds like the touch
area on them for a couple of seconds to get
it into pairing mode. Well, guess what, since I had
disabled the earbuds, you know, touch areas, that didn't work,
and so it was kind of a pain. I had
to find a Samsung phone, install the app on it.
Make sure that you know there, it was just a
whole thing. So anyway, I like the pairing button because

(03:23):
it's just simple.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's easy.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
There's no directions necessary. You want to pair these with
a new device, you just press the button. I'm not
sure how you pair these the two phones that I've
paired them with. Both times, i'd kind of opened the
lid and next thing you know, they showed up in
the pairing So maybe they automatically pair. I'm not sure.
But the actual case is awesome. You open it up
and the earbuds themselves same grippiness, so it's like kind

(03:44):
of the same exact material that the case is in.
But on the earbuds they're nice and grippy, they're the
perfect size, they fit into your ear really well, and
for the most part, they do not fall out. Now,
there is a little creepage where you know, I was
on the treadmill and it you know, you're running really hard,
there might be a little bit of that sensation where
it's kind of falling out and then you push it

(04:05):
back into your ear. And what I don't like about
the touch, and this is why I disabled it on
the previous pair, is that I don't like the fact
of feeling like I can't push the earbuds back into
my ear without pressing the touch area. So just looking
through some of the materials that Samsung sent by, let's
see does I have a listening time on these things.

(04:25):
So it's fifteen percent smaller than the Buds Pro. It's
got twenty four bit high fi sound. That's only if
you're using it with a Samsung device that supports that.
It's got three sixty audio. The noise cancelation on these
earbuds is absolutely fantastic. I was using them in a

(04:45):
gym with very loud music and I'm not kidding. You
put these things in and immediately everything fades away.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I'm very, very impressed.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
And it doesn't have that feeling where your ears are
super sealed up, which.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
I'm not really a fan of.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
So I like the fact that somehow they got the
ambient noise reduction or they sorry the noise cancelation to
be really good even without feeling.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Like my ears are clogged up with cotton. So that's
really cool.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
There's a way that you can find these if they're lost,
even if they're out of their case. So it's got
this feature called smart Things Fined, and you can basically
find these as long as the battery is alive. I'm
not sure how they're doing that. I don't think the
little buds have GPS in them, so I guess maybe
they're pinging other Bluetooth devices, other Samsung devices. They come

(05:32):
in graphite white and Boora purple. It's interesting that they
don't say how long the battery is rated for. But honestly,
I think the batteries on these wireless earbuds have gotten
so good that I don't put any thought into it.
I mean, I just charge them, you know, once in
a while, if you think about it, you plug them in. Otherwise,
the buds, you know, they last pretty long. Then the

(05:53):
case recharges them. But I've got to say, so far,
I'm very impressed with these, this Galaxy buds too. Pro So,
if you're in a situation where you are making a
purchasing decision, I think that you will be uh, you'll
be very very impressed with the quality of these. Now,
the price tag on these two hundred and twenty nine dollars,

(06:16):
which you know, that's expensive, that's that's very expensive. But
the thing about these is that you basically shouldn't be
buying them unless they are on some sort of deal
and so I'm just looking like just when you go
to the website for Samsung, immediately it's like, are you
a first responder? Are you a you know, a teacher.
So there's a lot of ways to get deals on

(06:37):
these things. I'm sure there are special codes out there.
You can also get kind of a credit. I mean,
let's see recycle. Look at this, save up to seventy
five dollars recycle or trade in an audio device. So
that's that's pretty interesting. You could save seventy five dollars.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Sort off the bat and is the case why I
did not test this though? I did not test to.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
See if the case supports wireless charging. And I'm oh,
my gosh, I feel like I should know this. It
says you can get a wireless charger with it, so
I assume that the case would support wireless charging. So
should do a little bit more homework on that. But anyway,
Galaxy Buds too pro I give them two thumbs up

(07:20):
in my book. I'm very very impressed with what Samsung
did there. All right, let's get to the first question
of the show. Let's see no name on this one,
but rich I will be traveling to Ireland and the
UK in about a month. According to my carrier, T Mobile,
I have unlimited international data, which would include using my

(07:41):
phone as GPS. I don't plan on making any calls,
so the higher cost per minute does not come into play.
Could you explain the advantage, if any, of getting an
e SIM for my iPhone. I've never used an international SIM,
so I'm not real clear on how they operate if
you choose to do so, could you recommend a company?
Thank you, your segments always contain us full information.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, so here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Since I just went to Italy and used my first eSIM,
it was a very very smooth process. And let me
explain what you get over T Mobile now, I think
this really comes down to what do you need?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
So if T Mobile, if.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Your plan and T Mobile has a bunch, you know,
depending on the plan you're on, you get something different.
So I don't know if you're on an old plan,
if you're on a new plan, but find out exactly
what you get with your plan. But I'm gonna give
you the generics of sort of what's included, what's not included. So,
like you mentioned, let me just give the example of
what they give you right now.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
So right now.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
If you're on a Magenta Max plan, you get five
gigs of high speed data in two hundred and fifteen countries.
If you're on the Magenta plan, you get five gigs
of high speed in eleven European countries. And the data
they say is two times faster than before. So I
don't know what the speed is exactly. Let's see if
they say it on here see full terms, Uh five

(09:00):
speed that okay? It so it's high speed data, which
I assume is just like no limit. But then after
that it's unlimited up to two hundred and fifty six
kilobits per second, which is super duper slow. Now it
is two times faster than before, which was one twenty eight,
which was basically worthless except for like checking your email.
But two fifty six you might be able to do

(09:21):
some stuff with that. I personally would never want that
limitation because I just couldn't imagine being in a different
country and trying to do anything on two fifty six
K versus you know, anything other than maybe maybe Google maps,
maybe a quick Google search. I'm not even sure those
would work. I mean, that's really for like push email,

(09:41):
like that's it. So you know, If you're gonna use
more than five gigs of high speed data, then I
would consider an e SIM.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
If you're not, then just stick to what you got. Now.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
The other thing you could do, and you probably should
do this, is just go ahead and use your five
gigs of high speed data. See how far that gets you,
and don't limit yourself. Because these e sims are so cheap,
it's not even a big deal to worry about how
much you're going to spend on one.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So use your five gigs of data.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
I'm assuming that T Mobile at the end of that
five gigs is going to text you and say, up,
you are at your five gig limit. Now you have
unlimited basic data for two fifty six. And at that
moment I would go on an app called.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Er low Ai r Alo Ai r Alo.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
And I would go ahead and buy a simpack or
an e SIM for Ireland. And Ireland is going to
cost you. Let's see, five gigs for thirty days is
thirteen dollars. If you want to go big time, you
can go ten gigs for thirty days, which is twenty
two dollars. And you buy that right from your phone,
right from your iPhone, you activate it right from your phone.

(10:44):
You do need a connection to do that, but once
you do that, it's phenomenal and you're gonna have high
speed data for that entire ten gigs twenty two dollars for.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
That for that data.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
I think it's well worth it. But again, use what's
included first. Now you said the other thing is that
you do not need texting.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
You do not need calling.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
So texting is included on T mobiles plan, which I
think is also really cool. But if you want to
call anyone, that's where you're gonna get hit with a
twenty five cent per minute charge. And the texting situation
is a little weird with the eSIM because texting is included,
but only I message right, Like, you're not going to
get a phone number, so there's gonna be no text messaging,

(11:26):
you know, historic text messaging. And there's also gonna be
no phone calls with the SIM.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
So what I did was.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
I just flipped my phone into airplane mode. For those
two things, I turned off. What I do I turned
off Oh. I think once you have an eSIM you
have the ability to turn off your other SIM. So
I just turned off my other SIM completely, And like
I said, use the five gigs first, then then go
into purchasing the eSIM. But fun times ahead. That's exciting

(11:51):
to be going over to Europe. I mean, I know
so much on the news is about the luggage and
all that stuff, but once you're there, it's such a
fantastic experience. You are going to have such a great time.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
All right, let's talk about what do we want to
talk about? First?

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Android thirteen. So Android thirteen was sort of a dropped
on everyone as a surprise. And I know that iPhone
commands all of the attention in the world, but there
are a lot of people that run Android. But here's
the thing. Android updates are not as big of a
thing as they are for iOS. And the reason being
is that iOS launches entirely new features that are core

(12:31):
to the phone, which Android does too, but not in
the same way like Android. If you want a new feature,
you just go on the app Store and you download
an app that ninety nine percent of the time will
solve or give you the feature you need. But some
of the features do have to be baked into the
operating system, and so we get new operating systems, they
take a lot longer to kind of percolate through the

(12:52):
lineup of phones, like I have a Pixel six Pro
sitting here and it still hasn't gotten the Android thirteen update.
And that is one of like that's like a dev phone,
Like that's a phone that developers would use to sort
of test their software. Now, if you're doing that, you
probably download the BEATA. But still my point is the
way Apple does it is they released the software and
everyone gets it pretty much at the same time, which

(13:14):
is I guess, good and bad.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
So let me go over some of the features.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
I have not played with Android thirteen just yet, because,
like I said, I did not get it on my phone,
and once you get it on the Pixel you can't
go back to twelve. So I figured, you know what,
I'm not going to force the issue because maybe they're,
you know, working out some little random bugs and things
and that's why they're not setting out to that many
phones right at once. But okay, so a couple things.
Google did a list of what they do thirteen. Let

(13:38):
me guess, oh, had I guess thirteen things that they
like about Android thirteen. I'm not going to go over
all of them, but I think some of them are
pretty cool. So number one you can assign a specific
language to an individual app.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
That is really really cool.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
And this what I love about Google's mission and Android
is that they sort of like to bring the entire
world together. So if you want one of your apps
to be in you know, I don't know if it's
a supported language, but Chinese, and you want another app
to be in English, you can say, Hey, every time
I open up we Chat, I want the whole app
to be in Chinese. And every time I open up

(14:12):
you know, Facebook Messenger, I want the entire app to
be in Italian.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Or Facebook whatever. That's a really cool feature.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
There's a media player that's updated. It looks and feels
based on the music or podcast you're listening to.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Android thirteen allows you to customize your bedtime mode with
wallpaper dimming and dark theme that sort of happened with iOS.
These screen options help you help your eyes adjust to
the dark when you're about to go to bed and
go back to sleep. If you wake up and check
your phone in the middle of the night. That is
very true because I often do that with my iPhone
and Android thirteen, you can select only the specific photos

(14:48):
and videos that apps get access to. Again another I'm
not going to compare everything to iOS, but yeah, these are.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's kind of like.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
iOS and Android are getting aligned in a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Of different ways with some of these features.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
But you can say, like if you down load a
app that you're kind of thinking is a little sketchy,
like one of those like profile maker apps or something,
and you say, I just want to give it access
to one of my pictures because I'm not sure what
servers these pictures are going to. You can now do that.
This is interesting. The clipboard.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
If you copy sensitive data to it, like an email.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Address, a phone number, or log in credentials, Android automatically
clears it after a certain period of time, So that's
pretty smart. The apps you download now have to get
your permission to send notifications, rather than being allowed to
send notifications by default. That's a huge change, something that
Apple had years and years ago. Spatial audio is now supported.

(15:37):
You can stream your messaging apps directly to a Chromebooks.
You can send and receive messages from your laptop. I'm
not sure how useful that is. I'm also just not
really understanding why Google is so hesitant to come out
with an easier way to use messages on a like
a you know, a Mac computer. I guess you have,
you know, the web app, but why can't they just

(15:58):
come out?

Speaker 2 (15:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
It's fine. I guess I just want like a real app.
But I guess the web apps are fine, you know what.
I use web apps for Google Photos. I use a
web app for Outlook, and they're just fine. I mean
they're they're really you can't really tell them apart from
the actual app. Most of the time, you can copy
content like a URL, picture, text, or video from your

(16:20):
Android phone and paste it on your tablet.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
So kind of this. There's this little app called is
it called clipped.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
It's made by OnePlus actually, and it's a great little
app Clipped c l i PT is it still around,
And it's a great little app that lets you copy
and paste from Android to any computer, whether it's an
iOS or sorry, whether it's Android or a Mac or
Android or Windows. So that's c l I p T.

(16:49):
It's a really cool little app and it uses your
own Google Drive, so I feel like it's pretty safe.
Let's see what else do we have that's it? Okay,
So that's the only thing I thought was pretty interesting. Again,
I haven't played with it. I feel like this is
one of those incremental updates, but I will. I will
check it out in more detail. Android thirteen is rolling
out to rolling out the worst Words to a Nerd,

(17:09):
rolling out to Pixels today, and then later this year,
Android thirteen will roll out to Samsung, Galaxy Asus, Nokia,
Motorola one Plus, Oppo, real Me, Sharp, Sony, Shoomi, and more.
The sad part is in the US, the only Android
phones that matter are Samsung and Pixel in one plus.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
And Motorola is like, I don't even know if that's
a blip on the radar, but that's it. I mean,
all these brands that you that people like look to
in other countries. It's just Android is huge in other places.
I've talked about this. In the US, it just it's
it's just not as popular as I as Apple. Although
I will say when you leave the Los Angeles area,
I immediately see an uptick in a lot of the

(17:56):
non Apple phones like the Android devices. So that's kind
of interesting. Let's get to the next question, Paul says, Rich,
do you remember monocle on yelp?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
We need something like that again.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Thank you, Paul, Paul, of course, I remember the monocle
mode on Yelp. This was one of those features that
was way before its time, way before kind of like
the whole augmented reality thing took off. And what monocle
was is you would open up Yelp, you'd go into
the settings and there was a feature called Monocle and
you would tap it and then hold your phone up

(18:34):
and you can look through your phone's camera at the
viewfinder and see like the real world, like a street
in front of you, and the Yelp reviews would be
overlaid on the businesses down the street, so you can say, OK,
is there a good coffee place around here? Let me
look up coffee, and then overlay and oh, it's that way.
It's funny because I just thought about this the other day.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Where was I.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
I was in Sacramento, and I was like, I didn't
want to walk too far for a coffee place, so
I wanted to see if there was one really close.
And so that's what I did. I use that little
I wanted to use the monocle on my phone. I
was like looking for it. I'm like, where is that feature? So, Paul,
I think you're reading my mind, because I was literally
looking for that feature the other day and sadly it

(19:16):
seems to be gone.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
But we'll see, we'll see if.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
If maybe you know, someone brings I mean, I don't
think it would be too much for Google to bring that.
I've This is the funny thing too, I've gotten more
used to now using Google for my restaurant recommendations than
anything else. Yelp is now sort of a cross reference
and mostly to see menus and pictures, whereas it used

(19:42):
to be the other way around. I would use Yelp
first and then cross reference on Google. Now Google has
gotten so good with the restaurant recommendations. They have that
little thing that says your match, So when you look
up a restaurant, it says how much that restaurant matches you,
And you know, like this place I'm looking at as
a seventy eight percent match, This food Trucks is seventy
five percent, tie place is seventy four percent. Then this

(20:06):
Tratoria is ninety two percent. So I'm like, all right,
I never heard of this place, but you know what,
I might try it because Google, let's be honest, knows
exactly the types of restaurants that you are frequenting. And
if you don't think they do, yeah, they do because
they see that your phone is in there for a
longer period of time. They see that you went in there.
And so Google has this rich data set and I

(20:27):
know it's scary, it's privacy, oh my gosh, but it's
actually quite useful. And when I'm in different cities now,
I'm almost exclusively using Google Maps to research almost everything
about my trip. And quite honestly, it is I would
say it's right ninety nine percent of the time.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Like this stuff that it tells me.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
I'll like, they sort of nail it, and the locations
of things, the proximity of things. It's all very very good.
And I'm I'm and I love making the lists. So
I make a list for a city before I go,
and I do it all on Google Maps. That to
do is all in there. I mean, it's really really phenomenal.
How much information's in there. So good question, Paul, And yeah,

(21:10):
let's they should bring it back. All right, Let's get
to some sad news. Visible was one of the best
deals in wireless. They had a plan that was forty
dollars all in and they run on Verizon, so it's
a really good network. But they had this thing called
party pay, and party pay if you got I think
it was like three or four people on your plan,
not a family plan, but all you had to do

(21:31):
was link up with them. You could then pay twenty
five dollars a month for unlimited service on Verizon. I'm
talking unlimited calls, texts, and data. And it was a
really really good deal. But now that deal is gone
because Visible has raised their prices. Well they actually lowered

(21:51):
they you know, these all these companies kind of use
a little bit of trickery, but they they lowered some prices,
but they raised their base price of their main plan
is now forty five dollars. It includes a bunch of
stuff that it didn't before, and then the cheaper plan
is now thirty dollars. They kind of split the difference
between twenty five and forty.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
So for thirty.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Dollars you still get a pretty good plan. Okay, pretty
pretty pretty good. You get unlimited talk, text and data
five G and four four G. You get unlimited mobile hotspot.
Obviously the hotspot is limited to a certain megabits per second.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
I think it's five.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
And then you get the extras which is unlimited talking
text to Canada, Canada, Mexico and Canada. That's thirty dollars
a month, which is still really good. Now they have
Visible Plus which is forty five dollars a month, and
this gives you the same data, but you also get
five g UW which is you know, Verizon's super duper
fast stuff. And then a premium network experience whatever that means,

(22:49):
unlimited mobile hotspot. And then you get the extras include
the unlimited talking text to Mexico and Canada, unlimited talking
text and data roaming in Mexico and Canada, international calling
from the US to thirty countries, international texting from the
US to two hundred countries. So and you can add
a smart watch for five dollars. So again, if you
if you have the Party play, it's not going away

(23:10):
for you, you are grandfathered in. But for new customers,
it's going away. Let's see when is it going away on?
It doesn't really say when it's going away, but you
are you can let's see. You can now refer new
customers and receive twenty dollars off your next month of service.

(23:31):
You can bank up to twelve months at a time,
so if you refer twelve friends, you can get two
hundred and forty dollars off your bill for the year.
So twenty dollars off of thirty is really actually cheaper.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
So that's ten dollars.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
You just have to bring someone in every month, which
is kind of a lot.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
So let's see when does this go away.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
I don't know when it goes away, but basically, you
can't sign up for a new Visible plan at the
twenty five dollars. And the whole trick of the twenty
five dollars party play our party pay is that you
didn't have to sign up up with your friends. You
could literally go on Reddit or any you know, anywhere,
find a link to a party plan and just join in.
And so some of these plans had like twenty five

(24:11):
hundred people on them that didn't know each other, but
they were all paying twenty five dollars, and so this
was something that you sort of needed to know how
to do to get it. And I asked Visible when
I did a story on this, I said, Hey, this
is this legit, Like, are you guys okay with this?
And they said, eah, we're sure, we're fine with that.
But I guess now they're saying, our members love the discounts,

(24:33):
but not the hoops they had to jump through to
get it. So okay, I mean hoops they had to
jump through, they had to sign up one time. I mean,
that's not that.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Big of a deal.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
By the way, existing members, if you have Visible, if
you want to move to one of these new plans,
you can do so, but you have to get a
new sim because Visible's network is expanding and evolving with
these new plans, which should provide you with improved speeds
and latency. So Visible is still fantastic. I have been
testing out Boost Wireless Boost Mobile with their new twenty

(25:03):
five dollars unlimited plan, and it's been really, really good.
I only had one problem with it at the beach
where I've really had like zero signal, and it was
kind of a problem, like I couldn't use my phone
at all, Like it was just really really bad. And
that's the only place that I've had an issue. But
the beach historically has, you know, depending on your carrier,
has connection issues anyway, because there's not that many cell

(25:26):
towers on a beach, and so it's not like I'm
not gonna.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Give Boost a total like f because of that.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
So far, I've been very impressed with their service, and
for twenty five dollars unlimited everything, I'm pretty impressed with
that as well. So it just depends what you want.
All right, let's get to the next question of the show.
This comes from Bob says, Hey, Rich, which is the

(25:53):
best streaming device, Roku or Fire? Thank you, Bob, Ooh wow,
you're really trying to ask me the tough questions here.
So I think this is really a matter of personal preference,
and it also kind of depends on your setup. So
if you have one of the TCL series TVs that
has Roku built in, which I highly recommend the TCL
six series, go with Roku.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's built into the TV. It's gonna be great, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Less cables, less fuss, it starts right up, you know,
it gets pretty decent software updates, I would assume, and
the apps are nice and updated because they're all Roku apps.
So and Roku has pretty much every app available. I'm
not sure that there's an app that's not available a
popular streaming apps that's not available on Roku. So what

(26:39):
I don't like about Roku is pretty much, you know,
the maybe the presentation. There's a lot of ads on
the screen, and that's basically it. I mean otherwise, I
think Roku's fantastic. I think people that have it, they
love it. I've yet to meet a person who doesn't
like their Roku. So Roku's great. And they've got the

(27:01):
you know, the free stuff. I mean, they've got a
lot of stuff on there. I think at one point
Roku had everything represented on theirs when some others did not.
But now I think the streamers pretty much all have.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
The same stuff available.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
But okay, so then when it comes to fire TV,
now this, you know, some people might have a problem
with it because it's Amazon, and not everyone wants to
support Amazon or likes Amazon. I'll be honest, I love Amazon,
but I'm noticing that a lot of my income is
going to Amazon, and it's a little scary. Like the
other night, we were eating Amazon pizza, opening up an

(27:39):
Amazon package, watching an Amazon movie, buying stuff from the
Amazon website, and it just gets a little weird.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Drink in Amazon water.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Now, I kind of joke we weren't doing all those
things at the same time, but it's kind of a
reality in my house when I look around I'm like,
there's a lot of Amazon, and when you factor in
the Amazon Fresh, like their grocery service, if you're buying
like their brand, it's called a Plenty, which is, by
the way, fantastic. It's a really great brand. But it's
just weird that you're eating like Amazon pizza. Like we

(28:11):
had an Amazon Truffle mushroom pizza the other night and
it was delicious. But I'm sitting there like this is weird.
But is it weird that I'm eating a Kroger pizza
or a Walmart pizza? Which maybe I would need a
Walmart pizza, But you know, like there's these different brands
out there, all the companies, all the grocery stores have
their own house brand. So what's the difference, you know,

(28:31):
if I'm eating a Target pop tart, you know, versus
a pop Tart pop tart, which probably is better, by
the way, although I haven't had a pop tart in
many years. It's one of those things that I really
really want. But I have to draw the line somewhere
with like junk food, Like this morning, I had a
pumpkin spice donut and it was fantastic. It was just
so good, But you know, someone brought them into work

(28:53):
and I ate it and I didn't even know it
was pumpkin spice.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
It just picked it out because it looked good and.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
I took a bite and I'm like, oh, first pump
can spice products or the season. It was delicious. But
you know, again, I wouldn't have I would like to
seek that out, but for health reasons. I would rather
be presented with a donu and say, oh, how can
I resist this, Dona?

Speaker 2 (29:13):
I mean you brought them into work, thank you, So
that's what I did. But at home, if.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
I'm buying stuff, I'm trying to buy the healthier version
of stuff, so which is why I don't have pop
darts anyway. How does that have anything to do with
Roku and Amazon? Let me remember so Amazon. Yeah, people
might take, you know, take a problem or have a
problem with the fact that it's Amazon, and they're like,
I don't want to support Amazon. So that's fine, that's
within your right. What I like about Amazon is I
think their firesticks are pretty good for the price, and

(29:42):
the software is updated on a regular basis.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
I like the presentation.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Amazon keeps trying to tweak their presentation because you know,
Amazon is riding this fine line kind of like Roku.
Of you know, they get paid for a lot of
the placements on that screen, like whether it's an ad,
whether it's a movie, whether it's a service, so they
want to make it useful, but they also want to
introduce stuff that you wouldn't typically see otherwise because they

(30:07):
want you to click it and they want you to
watch it. Same thing with Roku. Apple TV does not
do that. They don't have any sort of ads on
the home screen, and it's very much like it. Once
you set it up, if you never go in the
app store again, you may never discover anything ever again
on that thing. So it's just a different way of
doing things. But I like the movie selection. I think
the Amazon is fast. It's got Alexa or the A

(30:31):
word built in, so if you need that a assistant
that's built in, so if you're used to that, that's
kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
I just like it.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
That's my personal preference. I use a combination of Apple
TV and fire TV. I do not actively have a
Roku set up. I have in the past and it's fine.
Throughout the pandemic, I had one set up and I
was watching it every single day to monitor the newscast
while I was on.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Air, and it was fine. I mean, it works.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
The only thing I didn't like was that it didn't
have a photo slide show. And I think that they
have fixed that. I think we talked about it on
this podcast that they fixed it. So, Bob, I can't
make your decision for you, but I hope that those
little differences help you make your own decision. Oh, speaking
of Walmart, Walmart, if you are a Walmart Plus subscriber,

(31:20):
this is sort of their answer to Amazon Prime. You
probably want to activate this new perk. It's Paramount Plus.
So they're giving Walmart Plus subscribers Paramount Plus for free.
Say that ten times fast. So Walmart Plus is, you know,
like I said, their answer to Amazon Prime. It's ninety
eight dollars a year or thirteen dollars a month, and

(31:41):
a lot of people, by the way, pay for these
things monthly. So I feel like, if you're thinking you're
gonna stick with it, honestly, I just just try to
pay it yearly because twelve ninety five a month.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Let's just do the math. So that's thirteen times twelve.
Oh gosh, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
More Okay, do not pay for Walmart plus month to
month twelve ninety five a month or ninety eight dollars
for the year. So if you're paying by the month,
you are paying an extra fifty eight dollars a year.
That's more than fifty percent. So I would not pay
for this monthly. Now I know that Amazon also does

(32:21):
a monthly plan and it's I think it's up to
is it fifteen dollars a month? Now fifteen dollars a
month or one thirty nine a year, So if you're
paying fifteen times twelve, that's eighty So it's thirty dollars
more to pay it by month. So let's divide that
by month or sorry, oneint eighty minus one thirty nine

(32:43):
forty one dollars more. Okay, so it's not as big
of a deal there, but it's still three dollars and
forty one cents extra a month.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
And that may not seem like a big.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Deal, but that's a third of Spotify, that's half of Hulu.
I mean, you can put that money towards other things.
So this is not a financial podcast. I'm not telling
you how to run your financial life. But you know,
if you're sticking with things in the long term, Like,
for instance, I was paying for Google Cloud Storage by
the month. It was twenty five dollars a month for
five terabytes, And the two hundred and fifty dollars was

(33:12):
really scary because I was like, that's a lot of
money all at once to pay in one fell swoop
for this cloud stage. But I'm like, rich, you're paying
this every month no matter what I get that two
fifty is a lot scarier than twenty five, but you're
wasting money every month, Like you're going to spend that money.
You're going to spend a year with Google Cloud service,
So why are you doing this? And so I did.

(33:32):
I ended up just you know, I ended up just
paying for the two fifty and you know, I haven't
looked back, and it's it's much better because you know,
I don't want to do the math again and bore
you with math on the show.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
But it's a better deal. So anyway, ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Dollars a year paramount plus you're getting the Essential plan,
which is fifty They say it's fifty.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Nine dollars a year.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
I'm not sure that's the case because paramount, I know
you can prepay for the year and I think it's fifty.
So realistically, no matter what, it's still a pretty good
deal because you're paying ninety eight and you're getting a
fifty dollars item right off the bat, So really you're
paying forty eight dollars for this, So that's pretty good
if if you need Paramount Plus, I wouldn't join Walmart
Plus four Paramount Plus, But if you're thinking of it,

(34:12):
you're like, Okay, well I get uh and what else
do you get? By the way, you get savings at
the gas pump, and if you're filling up at Walmart,
you get faster delivery, you get this grocery delivery service,
and also six months free of Spotify, So there are
some perks. I don't live near a Walmart, so it's
tough for me to have a Walmart Plus subscription. I

(34:32):
know that American expressed the Platinum card, which is very expensive,
just added it, which.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Honestly, I don't you know.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
I feel like that's like it's so weird to me
because the AMEX Platinum has a credit for Equinox, which
is the most expensive gym in your entire life, Like
you don't even want to look up how much that
gym costs you can't find anywhere online because they don't
want to publish the prices because they're so expensive. It's
like two hundred and something dollars a month for that gym. Yeah,
I'm sure there's more expensive gyms, but it's it's insane.

(35:00):
And I can say that because I was.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
A member for a while.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Uh and you know much, you know for a while,
and it's like, once you realize just how expensive that is,
you're just like, Okay, never mind, I can't.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, it's a very nice gym, don't get me wrong.
But on the one.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Side, you know, the Platinum card from Amex has an
Equinox membership, you know, or an Equinox twenty five dollars
a month credit. On the on the other side, they've
got Walmart plus a free membership to that. So it's
kind of weird. It's like it's like two extremes Walmart
an Equinox. I don't see those two brands in the
same place, but they're both. I I like them both.
I mean, Equinox is amazing, and I personally I love Walmart.

(35:35):
If I'm if I'm near a Walmart, I'm going in.
My wife she's always like ugh, do we have to.
I'm like, yes, I love Walmart's. When you're in a Walmart,
the price is going there's no fooling around.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
The price you.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
See is going to be the cheapest price for that item.
It's just that's the way it is. That's the way
it's always been. Whereas when you're in Target, and I
love Target, but you can tell that they're playing with
the prices. Some things are really expensive, some things are
really cheap, some things are in the middle, some things
are like a dollar or two more, so they.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
They kind of fiddle with the prices a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Whereas Walmart, no matter what you're getting, it's going to
be the cheapest. And that's what I appreciate about it
because they don't fool around, and I feel like they
respect me with their pricing, and that's that's something that
builds loyalty for me.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
All Right, Janet says, good evening.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
I have a question. I've always been an Android user.
I have the Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. My
grandson is trying to talk me into an iPhone. In
your opinion, which is better? I take lots of pictures.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Thank you, Janet.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Oh Janet another million dollar question. Why is everyone asking
me a million these these really really deep tech questions?

Speaker 2 (36:47):
What's next? Mac versus PC? So here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
The Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra is an amazing phone.
It's my favorite Android phone of the year. It is
the best Android phone, yes, even over the pixel because
the pixel is great, the software is amazing, but the
full package leaves at a little bit to be desired.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Whereas the Samsung S twenty two Ultra.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
My biggest downside is I just wish they made it
in a handheld size. The S twenty two Ultra is
so big that it's like I don't even want to
put a screen protector in a case on it because
it's like it's just gonna make it bigger. But I
wish they would make this in a in different models
like the iPhone this year came out in the iPhone
thirteen Pro and Pro Max identical hardware specs. I mean,

(37:32):
minus the battery obviously, minus the screen size obviously. But
you know, the cameras are the same, the processor is
the same, everything's the same except the size. One of
them is a lot easier to hold than the other.
Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra is an amazing device,
but they make you pick do you want the most
amazing phone Samsung has to offer, or do you want
a more pocketable phone, which is the S twenty two

(37:54):
Plus or the S twenty two, which are not as good.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
They're not the same phone.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
It's not the same phone across the lineup, and so
it's just one of those things that makes life just
a little bit trickier. So, with all that said, do
you get a new iPhone and switch from the S
twenty two Ultra. So I don't really feel like you
need to unless there's something that's lacking in your relationship
with this phone. So if everyone you text is a

(38:19):
blue bubble and you feel like you're being left out
and you feel like you want to be on that
train and people are giving you a hard time, okay,
maybe you want to switch. I hate that peer pressure,
and so I don't think that's a good reason because
that's sort of an Apple manufactured reason, And I don't
think you should. You should, you know, I don't think
that should make you go over to the other side.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Camera.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
I think the camera on the S twenty two Ultra
is excellent I think that the video on the iPhone
is is a little bit better, maybe maybe even more better,
maybe even a little bit better than better, Like I
like to me, it's tough to trust any other video
on any other phone, but this Samsung is excellent. The pictures,
I would say, are both on par with each other.

(39:04):
I think that the iPhone is maybe a little bit
easier sometimes because there's less features, But there are so
many cool features about the S twenty two Ultra, like
the customization. Everything that you're used to as an Android user.
A lot of that stuff goes away when you're an
iPhone user because iPhone you're not able to customize as much.
So it's just the way the phone works and taking

(39:25):
pictures of let's see your grandson. So if you take
a lot of pictures, it depends are you're taking pictures
of people? Are you taking pictures of things? So I
think that it sort of depends. It's just how do
you feel. Do you feel like you're ready for something new?
Do you feel like you want to stick with what
you got? You've got the newest, latest, greatest Android, so
you're in a pretty good position if you feel like
you're taking pictures and you know, fifty percent of them

(39:46):
are not very good, then maybe you switch over and
see what the deal is on the other side with
the iPhone. But good question, Thanks for asking it, Janet.
All right, speaking of iOS, if you're using of VPN
on iOS and I get a lot of questions about VPNs,
you know, VPNs are basically small software applications that tunnel

(40:10):
your Internet connection through them to hide your activity from
other people, like anyone that might be on the line,
which is pretty rare, but if you're on a Wi
Fi network, perhaps that can happen. Or maybe you know
you want to access a website and you don't want
your ISP, your Internet service provider to see that. That

(40:32):
is how a VPN can protect you. And you know
VPNs for work, they help you access your corporate servers
from a regular consumer device. And the way that does
that is that it kind of fakes the connection. Imagine
you took a long Ethernet cable from your workplace and
dragged it to your house, like, stretched it all the
way to your house and then plugged it into your phone.

(40:53):
That's basically what your work VPN does, except it does
it wirelessly.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
It kind of creates that secure.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
One to one connection with your work computers that allow
you to access things you can't access on the open web.
And it's kind of the same thing with just websites.
So if you're going to websites, nobody else can see
what you're doing. Now the caveat is if you're using
your corporate VPN, I would not use that for personal
because your work can see everything that you do on there.

(41:19):
So when it comes to a VPN, you want to
choose one that is a no log VPN and don't
use the free ones. They're not very good as far
as many of the researchers have told me. So with
all of that said, a security reacher has said that
Apple's iOS devices don't really work that well when it
comes to VPNs, So there could be a potential security

(41:40):
issue because you would think when you activate the VPN,
all of your connections would now go through that VPN,
But it turns out, due to iOS architecture, some connections
to apps and websites and things they sort of stay
persistent and they aren't rerouted through the VPN when you
activate it, which is kind of a surprise. You would
think that wouldn't happen. Oh, the solution apparently by the way,

(42:03):
it's been going on since May twenty twenty. Solution and
it's pretty effective, is that you want to open up
your VPN, then you want to turn on airplane mode
and then turn it off and then that should you know,
like basically switch airplane mode on and off and that
should help. Now here's the caveat to all this. Do

(42:25):
not use the airplane mode that is in your control center.
So that's the one that you pull down from the
upper right hand corner of your phone and then you
press a little airplane icon.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
If you do.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
That, that does not necessarily turn off all of your
connections because it typically leaves Bluetooth.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
And Wi Fi on.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
So that you can continue connecting the things. Depending on
the situation, like if you're on an airplane, sometimes airplane
mode will actually leave Wi Fi on or bluetooths that
you can continue listening to your headphones or you can
connect to the Wi Fi on the plane. So what
you want to do is go into settings and once
you go in the settings, you can activate airplane mode

(43:02):
there and that actually turns off the Wi Fi. Oh well,
it left Bluetooth on, so what do I know? Okay,
that's odd. So it left that's weird. So that's strange.
Why would it do that? Why would it leave the
bluetooth on? So I guess it turned off Wi Fi
and cellular, which are the two important ones for the VPN.
But that's what I would do if you're using a

(43:23):
VPN as just kind of flip the airplane mode on
and off, and that should give you a little bit
more security. And it's not foolproof, but hopefully it should
be pretty effective. All right, let's see Octavio says, hey,
Rich for iPhone thirteen, do we even need a phone

(43:45):
protecting case anymore?

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Have you seen their video? Yes?

Speaker 1 (43:49):
I have, And I know that Apple came out with
a commercial that is saying that the iPhone is super durable.
I think it falls falls over and it you know,
it's like this great thing, you know, falls off the table.
But the reality is I still think that you need Look,

(44:09):
I can't tell you what to do with your phone.
I will tell you what I like.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
And I like my.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Phone after a year of use to look like new
and so for that reason, and I hate cracks on
my phone. I hate scuffs on my phone. I don't
want any of that stuff on my phone at all,
because if I ever have a rough edge on my phone,
what does my hand do all day on that edge?
It feels the rough edge I bought Oh my gosh,
it was so long ago, but I bought the They

(44:35):
used to come out with these oh gosh, I can't
even remember what they called it, but it was like
a basically a pixel version before it was called the
Pixel of the Samsung phones. And so they would come
out with the Samsung but then I know, this is
so wild to think about, but they would come out
with another version that is it was completely a Google

(44:56):
kind of you know, I think they call it ASoP,
which it's just like the Android that is not affected,
Like there's kind of the pixel as we know it
like just a standard operating system where it's not you know,
there's nothing you know, flavored about it. You know, they
don't put any software on it, they don't put any
extra apps.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
It's just like the Plaine Vanilla Android. Right.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And so I bought that phone one time from Samsung
and it was like, you know, whatever it was back then,
six hundred bucks and like literally day two, I'm putting
it in my pocket, and then you know that little
like that little gene like that little what's it like
that little metal piece on your jeans, like on the
pocket that I don't know what it does, like a mallet.
I don't know what they call it, but it kind
of holds your genes together. I guess it's like almost

(45:39):
like a giant ring kind of staple. I know there's
a term for it. I just can't think of it.
But I scratched the screen on there like the second day,
and I was so annoyed because there's nothing I could do.
I hadn't put on a screen protector, and it just
like that was it, And so I ended up calling Samsung.
I forget if I went through like some sort of

(45:59):
I went through I think my credit card protection, which
of course it was like sorry, no help there. It's
like whatever it was. Maybe I was out of my room.
Maybe it wasn't day two, maybe it was day sixty.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I don't know, but it was. It just was annoying.
And anyway, I tell you this because I like to
put a screen protector on my phone.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
I like to put a nice case on there because
I think that these phones can last a long time.
And I see a lot of people walking around with
damaged screens and damaged cases on their phone, like damaged backs,
and so you get that if you carry your phone naked,
and yes, I get it. It feels great, it's beautiful.
It's such a nice device. But why put yourself through

(46:37):
all that stress of always worrying about dropping your phone
or always worrying about cracking your phone.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
I don't know, Maybe do the math. Maybe instead of buying.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
A fifty dollars case, put that fifty bucks in a
little envelope, and then you know, when you need a repair,
just take that fifty dollars and put it towards it.
And if you get if you're gonna get two cases
over two years.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
But the extra fifty bucks in the envelope. Again, I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Maybe most people have Apple Care and they just don't
even care about this stuff. But I personally just like
the phone to physically be nice and clean and and
and just not messy, like not all you know, mucked up,
And so it just feels nicer to have the case
on there. I'm using my phone in all kinds of
different places, all kinds of different shoots and stuff, and

(47:19):
it's just nice to know that if it drops or
if it falls like yesterday, it fell to the gym
and you know, you do that thing where it falls
face first and you kind of lifted up slowly to
see if the screen shattered, and it didn't.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
But it's just I feel better that way.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
So all right, what should we talk about next.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Let's talk about the Jamba robot.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
So I went to Jamba, or I went to UCLA
at their campus in West Los Angeles, and there's this
Jamba robot. So it's actually a company called Blended b
L E N D I D. This is a startup
that is making a SMOOTHI robot. Now they're actually making
just food like AI food robots, but I guess this

(48:04):
is one of them, or maybe their first I don't know,
but anyway, this is our flagship product. But it's a
self contained, fully automated kiosk. It requires just like eight
by eight to operate, so it's a small area. It
holds up to twenty ingredients, and it just requires a
few hours of restocking a day. So they someone told
me there that they only need two hours a day
kind of to get this thing up and running in

(48:26):
the morning and just make sure it's maintained obviously there's
someone nearby in case something goes wrong, Like I'm talking
a person nearby for all of the locations, not like
just sitting there by the smoothie. This is like or
buy the machine. This is self contained. I'm sure if
something goes wrong it would text someone to come over.
The robot uses artificial intelligence and hardware to fulfill orders

(48:47):
on demand. You can order a phone or a tablet
on the kiosk. You can slide to customize your ingredients.
You can choose your ad ins, like if you want
like the energy powder or the protein powder. The robot
has nine cameras so it can see the ingredients, and
the mechanical arm works on multiple smoothies at once, so
it can work on nine smoothies at the same time.

(49:08):
It also, you know, puts some of them under the spencers.
It's washing other ones, it's serving other ones. I mean,
it's pretty wild to watch this thing. And when it's
not in use, it makes a little dance, which is
kind of cool. The only thing I thought was really
kind of ironic about this whole situation. And by the way,
there was so many students. I mean, this thing was
busy the entire time I was at it. There was
not a moment. There was one moment where it was

(49:30):
had some downtime. That's when it did the little celebration dance.
But I'm not kidding. It was a steady flow of
students and they weren't even classesn't even in session yet.
These are just like summer school students and campers and.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
So I thought that this was pretty wild because the
ironic part is that the blending actually takes place out
of view. And I asked one of the employees and
I was like, what's the deal with that, because wouldn't
that be the most fun to see the smoothies being
you know, sort of swirled up. And he said, well,
it's kind of the messiest part of the process. We'd
rather keep it out of sight. So I don't know,

(50:06):
I think that's a little bit of a misstep. Like
I think that the blending is actually the best part.
But whatever, I mean, it's not my robot. So they've
got a half a dozen of these robots operating at
college campuses, malls, and even a Walmart. And then they
also have this cool little feature at the end where
they've got these magnetic sliders it's tough to describe. But
when the robot is done pouring the drink, instead of

(50:27):
the robot sort of sliding the drink, they have these
two pickup windows because the whole thing is enclosed in
like a plexiglass.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
So they have these two pickup windows.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
And you know, they rotate kind of like a bank
teller window that rotates open and closed. But it slides
the smoothie into this pickup window. But it's not the
robot arm that's doing it. It's two little like magnetic
sliders on the table that they remind me of. I
think it's called thing from the Adams family, you know,
a little hand. It almost reminds me of that because

(50:55):
it's just moving the cup by itself. And it was anyway,
it was really cool. So this smoothie robot, I get it.
It sort of went a little bit wild on my
Instagram because people are saying this is you know, this
is evil, this is terrible, Like what about jobs for people?

Speaker 2 (51:12):
And you know, I get it.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
I mean I understand that we're seeing a lot of
automation in food and every person I talk to says
people don't want these jobs. Now, I don't know if
that's true or not, but I can tell you just
from me going out and about that every restaurant I
go to has a help wanted sign and I asked them,
they say, yeah, we can't. We can't hire people for
these positions. Nobody wants to do it. And it's I

(51:36):
don't know if nobody wants to do it, but it's
just one of these things where you know, in California,
they're paying more and more for these, you know, entry
level jobs at restaurants, but you see that they just
still need people. And so a lot of these companies
are focused on how do we get around this this
employee labor shortage and make these things at a price

(51:58):
that's reasonable.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Now.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
I think some of it is sort of they see
the writing on the wall. They want, they want things
to be They want costs to go down, and humans
are expensive and a robot's expensive initially, but over time
I think it brings a lot of the costs down because,
like the person we interviewed said, there's no sick days,
there's no bad hair days. They can get into little
spaces that they couldn't. So if a location they want

(52:22):
only has a tiny little space, they can get in
there because this is such a small eight by eight box,
so I thought it was pretty cool. You can let
me know what you think of it on my website
or on my Instagram. It is at rich on Tech.
All right, final question, Kim Peterson says, Hey, rich thanks
for your post about Disney Plus and Hulu bundles. Let's

(52:46):
see I lost my question and Hulu ESPN bundles, so
I'm wondering if you know of any bundles with just
Disney Plus and Hulu, no ESPN.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
I do not watch sports. Thank you, Kim. Kim, great question.
I think you're referring to.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Last week because they had, you know, they had a
whole situation where Disney is raising prices and so is
Hulu and you know whatever. So I don't want to
rehash that whole thing. But the bottom line is Disney
prices are going up, and I think Hulu and ESPN have.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Either gone up or they're going up, but the bundle
is not.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
So the bundle is staying at nineteen ninety nine a month,
and I think this is one of those examples of
really good marketing a manufactured issue. So they're making all
the prices go up of the individual services, which when
you do the math, if you add them up, you're like, hmm,
shouldn't I just get all three and I'll pay either
a little bit more or you know, a little bit

(53:42):
less than I'm paying for them separately. Well, the reality
is yet, like you said, you don't need ESPN. And
this sort of reminds me of the triple play that
the cable companies did for a very long time. So
many many people, yourself included, might have had a phone
line for many years that you just didn't need. But

(54:03):
it was cheaper to have the bundle with the phone
line than it was to have the bundle with just
Internet and TV. And nowadays the Internet is the most
important thing to many people, and so it's almost gotten
to the point where the Internet is almost as expensive
by itself as it was with the Internet and TV
as it was with the internet, TV and phone line.

(54:24):
So Disney knows this all. Look like I said in
the last week's episode, the free ride is over these
streaming services, the delivery services. They are not subsidizing our
lifestyle and convenience anymore. It's gotten real. They've gotten to
a point where the saturation is there. They know the
customer base is there. They know people like their shows,

(54:45):
they've gotten accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and they just said,
you know what, this is what we're doing. We're going
to raise the prices because we know that people are
gonna do this. We know that people are gonna stick
with it, and if a couple of them don't, it's
fine because they know there's gonna be more people on board.
Because what's the alternative, and you know it's the alternative
to Netflix is no Netflix?

Speaker 2 (55:04):
So what are you gonna do?

Speaker 1 (55:05):
You're gonna subscribe to cable Again, Probably not so good question,
and it's definitely one of those frustrating things where it's
just do you need it? No, but you have it,
and then you feel like you got to use it.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
That's gonna do it for this episode of the show.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer,
just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash
rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button,
or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit
the email icon. Also, I would love it if you
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what you like about this show to help other people
understand why they should listen. You can find me on

(55:42):
social media. I am at Rich on tech and no
matter where you live in the US, you can download
the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku.
Once you do, scroll to the tech section and watch
all of my TV segments on demand. My name is
Rich dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so
many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
I do appreciate you spending it with me. I'll talk

(56:02):
to you real soon.