Speaker 1: One of my favorite segments here.
Speaker 2: And if you haven't yet, you got to get on
Speaker 2: Rich Demuro's newsletter. It's a great read and incredibly informative.
Speaker 2: He's kfi's tech guy, Rich DeMuro. You can hear him
Speaker 2: live Rich on Tech every Saturday from at eleven am
Speaker 2: to two pm, which I do. See him on KTLA,
Speaker 2: follow him on Instagram at rich on Tech. His website
Speaker 2: website is rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Rich, Hey Neil, good morning to you. Thanks
Speaker 3: for the newsletter plug just past forty five thousand people
Speaker 3: getting that newsletter.
Speaker 4: Started it a couple of years ago, so very exciting.
Speaker 1: Good on you and no smoke. I really do love it.
Speaker 2: And you've become a super resource for me and keeping
Speaker 2: me up to date with everything and what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I enjoy the show, of course.
Speaker 2: And you've got some stuff going on, including iOS, which
Speaker 2: I've been a member of for a long time. iOS
Speaker 2: eighteen point four came out. I like how you call
Speaker 2: it that I've been a member of.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 3: It's like I have been a member of the iOS family.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have, which is interesting because iOS
Speaker 3: has slowly changed over the years.
Speaker 4: But it's largely.
Speaker 3: Remained kind of the same, right, Like, I mean, the
Speaker 3: iPhone still kind of functions the way it did when
Speaker 3: it came out in two thousand and seven, but with
Speaker 3: a lot more features. Apparently, by the way, that's getting
Speaker 3: totally revamped next month. Not next month, in June. We've
Speaker 3: got this thing called WWDC coming up, and that's where
Speaker 3: Apple usually shows off the new software. And apparently the
Speaker 3: rumor mill says that iOS nineteen is going to be
Speaker 3: like a complete revamp, So anyway, stay tuned for that.
Speaker 3: But today, if you do have an iPhone, they've got
Speaker 3: iOS eighteen point four. You might have seen that there's
Speaker 3: a software update. So a couple of notable things. Number
Speaker 3: one is going to use more AI on your phone,
Speaker 3: so you can do this thing called priority notifications, which
Speaker 3: I usually do on the weekends already, where it can
Speaker 3: kind of figure out which notifications are actually important, and
Speaker 3: we'll just surface those first. Let's see what else here.
Speaker 3: New emojis, of course, I mean those kind of come
Speaker 3: out all the time in photos. This is the big thing.
Speaker 3: When they redesigned the Photos app, people had a lot
Speaker 3: of problems trying to find their pictures and things like that.
Speaker 3: So now they just kind of revamp that once again
Speaker 3: to kind of give you some further refinements. So if
Speaker 3: you have not done this already and you're having trouble
Speaker 3: with your photos and finding them and how they're organized,
Speaker 3: open up the photos app, scroll all the way way
Speaker 3: to the bottom and where it says customize and reorder,
Speaker 3: cap that and get rid of like almost everything except
Speaker 3: the stuff you need. And you can also reorder the stuff.
Speaker 3: And I think those will be a nice improvement. And
Speaker 3: by the way, Neil for you, Apple News Plus, if
Speaker 3: you're a subscriber, just added this new food section with
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff like recipes and a step by
Speaker 3: step cook mode. But you do have to be a
Speaker 3: subscriber to get that.
Speaker 1: Numb num numb. I'm on it.
Speaker 2: Hey, So I h listening to you before I went
Speaker 2: to Italy with the handle a couple weeks back, went
Speaker 2: and got an e sim through.
Speaker 1: What is it.
Speaker 4: Arlow Ara Low?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So heard about that on your show and went
Speaker 2: ahead and did that, and this helped me avoid roaming
Speaker 2: charges well traveling.
Speaker 1: What are some of your other tips?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I'm getting a lot of questions about
Speaker 3: this right now because a lot of people taking trips,
Speaker 3: but you know people don't want to pay.
Speaker 4: You know, it used to be you went.
Speaker 3: Overseas, you came back with a huge roaming bill. Right,
Speaker 3: So if you've my number one tip is call your
Speaker 3: carrier because a lot of times you may have days
Speaker 3: included or even international data included on your plan. So
Speaker 3: sometimes if you're on the priciest plan, like the ninety
Speaker 3: dollars a month onlimited plan from Verizon or AT and T,
Speaker 3: they typically give you like a roaming day per month,
Speaker 3: and you kind of bank those. So when I went
Speaker 3: to Europe last time, I had like twelve days in
Speaker 3: my bank. I didn't have to pay to do anything.
Speaker 3: I just said, okay, cool, I'll use these twelve days.
Speaker 3: So that's my number one tip. If you want to
Speaker 3: just keep your plan, keep your phone number. Make everything
Speaker 3: the easiest. The simplest is really just to pay your carrier.
Speaker 3: And that's AT and t's twelve dollars a day, Verizons
Speaker 3: twelve dollars a day, T Mobile. Almost every plan has
Speaker 3: the roaming included. But if you want faster speeds, you
Speaker 3: can pay five dollars a day. Now you mentioned the
Speaker 3: e sim I think that's the most value because you
Speaker 3: buy it from an app, like you said, Aarlow is
Speaker 3: one of them, Gigsky's another, Saley is another, and you
Speaker 3: basically activate that from your phone. There is a little
Speaker 3: caveat if your phone is locked to your carrier. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they don't allow you to do the ESIMP, so you
Speaker 3: do have to check to see if your phone is
Speaker 3: unlocked before or if your carrier allows that.
Speaker 4: But that's the most.
Speaker 3: Value because you just activate that and you can basically
Speaker 3: use it all month for like thirty thirty dollars and
Speaker 3: if you don't want to make any charges extra on
Speaker 3: your bill, be sure to turn off roaming.
Speaker 4: Be sure to turn.
Speaker 3: Off all the apps that automatically update, like the photo
Speaker 3: uploads and the cloud uploads, because you don't want them
Speaker 3: to gobble up all of your information. Make sure they're
Speaker 3: only set to Wi Fi. And of course you can
Speaker 3: use Wi Fi hotspots too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it worked out nice, So my wife did. She
Speaker 2: went through her carrier and did it that way, and
Speaker 2: I went through having an aim so we had a
Speaker 2: little of both and it kept us.
Speaker 3: That's what I did with my wife. Yeah, she didn't
Speaker 3: want to do anything special. She was like, I just
Speaker 3: want to stick to my you know, carrier, and I
Speaker 3: was like, all right, that's fine, We'll pay the ten
Speaker 3: dollars a day for you, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we did a little bit of both in
Speaker 2: that way. We always had a signal or always had
Speaker 2: the ability to do whatever we needed and hopefully no
Speaker 2: no major costs in that.
Speaker 1: So Rich Gmail turns twenty one. Do you use Gmail?
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been using it since day one. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love Gmail. I think I think they do an excellent job.
Speaker 2: And you know, let's hope that they stick around forever
Speaker 2: and ever and ever.
Speaker 4: I hope.
Speaker 3: So I've got forty one gigabytes of stuff in my Gmail.
Speaker 3: So I don't know what that is. That's twenty one
Speaker 3: year's worth of emails.
Speaker 1: You still have your AOL account somewhere.
Speaker 3: I do not have my AOL account. I pretty much
Speaker 3: was I was a I think I was a Yahoo
Speaker 3: guy before Gmail. He always kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of people were using hot mail at the time.
Speaker 4: Aol was popular.
Speaker 3: But they were giving you like a couple megabytes of storage,
Speaker 3: and Gmail gave you a thousand in counting. And yeah,
Speaker 3: it's been been interesting ever since because it kind of
Speaker 3: changed the way people saw email.
Speaker 4: You just save stuff forever. You don't have to delete it.
Speaker 2: Man, I was like, God, they used to call me
Speaker 2: boy toy when I was an intern because the male
Speaker 2: is because the producer at the time was a female
Speaker 2: for the Bill Handle show. I was his intern and
Speaker 2: she didn't want a girl. Everyone else was guys on
Speaker 2: the team. They wanted girl. So they would refer to
Speaker 2: me as boy toy because she wanted a boy. And
Speaker 2: so so I think my Aol account might still be around.
Speaker 2: It was talkboy six forty from back at ninety something.
Speaker 1: AnyWho, what about April Fools today?
Speaker 2: Any tech stuff going on we should know about?
Speaker 4: Well, that's so okay.
Speaker 3: So the whole Gmail thing, I don't know if you
Speaker 3: remember this, but it actually launched on April Fool's Day,
Speaker 3: April first, two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: Oh I did over that, that is Yeah.
Speaker 3: So a lot of people thought that it was a
Speaker 3: joke when it launched because it was so different than
Speaker 3: all the email out there, and it was from Google,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of an upstart back then, and so
Speaker 3: people were like, wait a second, what is this?
Speaker 4: Is this real? Is it fake?
Speaker 3: So Ever since then, tech companies have gotten a little
Speaker 3: bit more and more elaborate. For many years, they were
Speaker 3: doing all kinds of jokes. This year, I'm not seeing
Speaker 3: too many yet, but I didn't fall for one. But
Speaker 3: I did get one pitch last night that kind of
Speaker 3: like made me go, wait what.
Speaker 4: So it's a company called Nothing.
Speaker 3: They make smartphones or based out of London, and they
Speaker 3: sent me this email saying, hey, we're coming out with
Speaker 3: this pair of beautifully designed wired earphones. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's weird because most phones don't have an earphone jack anymore, right,
Speaker 3: the three point five millimeter sure, And then it went
Speaker 3: on to say, Neil that it has a fifty meter
Speaker 3: cable and I'm like, wait a second, hold on. I
Speaker 3: may not be, you know, versed in metrics, but let
Speaker 3: me ask chat GBT what's going on here? And they said, oh,
Speaker 3: that's one hundred and sixty four feet. I said, mistake
Speaker 3: in your press release. So I email the woman who
Speaker 3: sent it, and I know her pretty well from the past,
Speaker 3: you know, ten years of working with her. Said Jane,
Speaker 3: I think you got something wrong. This should be five meters,
Speaker 3: not fifty. She goes, no, Rich, it's a joke.
Speaker 2: And that's the only punchline is one hundred foot Well,
Speaker 2: it's just.
Speaker 4: What, Yeah, it's like it's silly.
Speaker 3: It's like, who needs one hundred and fifty foot cable?
Speaker 3: Also they plug in. It's just you know, look, this
Speaker 3: is nerd humor, Neil, this is you know. I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's food humor, which I see you post on your Instagram.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm pretty nerd. You do love your posts.
Speaker 3: I really I do stop on your posts and laugh
Speaker 3: every single time.
Speaker 1: That's all.
Speaker 2: You know what, there's so much ugliness, as you know,
Speaker 2: in the work that we do because we're surrounded by news.
Speaker 2: All I'm trying to do is bring a little levity
Speaker 2: to things. That's all same, same, it's yeah, so ugly. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna do a handle real quick because Handle
Speaker 2: always makes it about him.
Speaker 1: I have been using Apple forever.
Speaker 2: I came kicking and screaming in nineteen nineties, maybe even
Speaker 2: late eighties, when I was a young designer and artist
Speaker 2: and they wanted me to use this machine. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what it's like glorified typeshetter. So, needless to say, I've
Speaker 2: been in the environment and eco system for a long time.
Speaker 2: I have an iMac on my desk get home. It's
Speaker 2: only a couple of years old. And when I updated
Speaker 2: recently to a newer operating system, not the newest, it
Speaker 2: started giving me smart issues, saying that there was that there,
Speaker 2: there was their smart issue, which is tried to predict
Speaker 2: issues with my hard drive.
Speaker 1: Oh what the what?
Speaker 3: Interesting? So is that I wonder if you have one
Speaker 3: of those fusion drives which which mixes the the standard
Speaker 3: like hard drive with the SSD drive, that might be
Speaker 3: what's giving you some issues.
Speaker 2: I will, I would that out because there's nothing on it.
Speaker 2: I keep everything you know on a separate drive, and
Speaker 2: I back up and do that. So if it did,
Speaker 2: God forbid, crap out and I wouldn't lose anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, well that's the main downside of SSDs.
Speaker 3: They're a lot faster, but if they crap out, they're done. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's nothing you do. Hard drive you might be able
Speaker 3: to recover, but that feer that weirdness.
Speaker 1: You remember all that?
Speaker 2: You put it in a freezer and see if you
Speaker 2: could get the information back on the old spinning drives.
Speaker 4: I don't remember that, you don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would be able to get like on some
Speaker 2: of the older drives. Man, But I go way back
Speaker 2: with all this stuff where you put them in the
Speaker 2: freezer and you could take them out and maybe get
Speaker 2: some information off the just weird, well stuff.
Speaker 4: Just too quickly, I know we got to go.
Speaker 3: But to bookend your whole change to to Mac or
Speaker 3: making you use a Mac. I remember when I switched,
Speaker 3: and it was such a big deal because I was
Speaker 3: Windows my whole life, and I bought a MacBook at
Speaker 3: a place called the Good Guys.
Speaker 4: I don't remember that electronics store.
Speaker 3: I think it was called the Good Guys in LA
Speaker 3: and it was like it was a transformative moment in
Speaker 3: my life. So I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing,
Speaker 3: but I'm trying this thing because I heard it's better
Speaker 3: for video editing. Yeah, And I've been Mac ever since
Speaker 3: for my laptop and it's it's been great. And of
Speaker 3: course now I use both because I get a lot
Speaker 3: of questions on the show about Windows.
Speaker 1: Me too.
Speaker 2: I'm a dual platform here at the station and at home.
Speaker 2: And funny enough, going way back, rich I was I
Speaker 2: headed up the computer department and the graphics for Kinkos
Speaker 2: for seven or eight locations back in the day, so
Speaker 2: I was I was doing all the computer and everything
Speaker 2: back when you'd have to do everything yourself and figure
Speaker 2: out what was going on with the computers. Yes, so
Speaker 2: this is one of the love that old school name
Speaker 2: Ugh Kinkos. Yes, it has a it was a fabulous
Speaker 2: place to work, said that doesn't exist in its original form.
Speaker 1: All right, Rich DeMuro.
Speaker 2: Hear him every single Saturday from eleven am to two pm.
Speaker 2: Get his newsletter. It's a wealth of information, and check
Speaker 2: him out on KTLA and of course Instagram, Rich on
Speaker 2: Tech and his website, Rich on tech dot TV. Thanks Rich,
Speaker 2: nice talking with you buddy.
Speaker 4: Thanks Neil, have a great day.