AI-enhanced wizardry, iPhone storage fixes & esports insights - Best of (154, December 27, 2025)

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He fought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, even running back B. John Robinson. When I'm on the field, I'm feeling the pressure. I usually just take a deep breath. When I'm just breathing and seeing what's in front of me, everything just slows down. It just makes me feel great before I run the play. Just like Bijan, we all need a strong mental game on and off the field. Make a game plan for your mental health at loveyourmindplaybook.org. Love your mind. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and the Ag Council. Well, thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you listening this week. A couple things. Well, first off, I celebrated my birthday, which was a big one. Well, it wasn't a big one. It wasn't like a milestone birthday. So don't, yeah. But it was just fun. My mom was in town. You know, my family was there. It was great. And, you know, it was during the work week. So it was like I still went to work and everything. But I did post on social media, and many, many, many of you did comment, and I do appreciate that. You made me feel very, very special because I wasn't even going to post about it. And I was like, eh, you know, why not? I give you some attention. Just kidding. But this week I also, so right after my birthday, I went to, I beelined it to Las Vegas. I was very excited for this. The premiere of The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. Now, if you haven't been to the Sphere yet, it is quite incredible. It's this giant ball that just sits in the middle of Las Vegas. It's always showing something cool on its exosphere. The lights, the programmable screen on the outside. It's always showing some kind of funny little face or whatever they want. And so I did that, went there, and, you know, I was wondering. I was like, okay, I want to see this, but I'm not exactly sure how it's technology. But as soon as I started interviewing some of the principals that created this film, like the director and some of the other folks behind it, I was like, okay, this is all technology. Interesting. thing. So the big question is, how do you take an 86-year-old film and then sort of remake it for a giant screen and with new technology? And so they used AI a lot. I would pretty much say this is the first AI film. That's really what it is. They took an old movie and they recreated the entire thing with AI. That's the way I see it. I'll explain. But the original movie, you know, It premiered back in 1939 at now what's the TCL Chinese Theater. It used to be the, I think it was a man's Chinese Theater back in the day. And that was a 24-foot screen, okay? Now, the sphere, if you haven't been inside, this is a 16K resolution, 160,000 square foot screen. Huge. I mean, it's almost wraparound. That's really what it is. It's very immersive. The seats move. So they've got these rumble seats in there. They've got fans for wind. They've got a scent system. They've got just all kinds of tricks in there, all the latest technology. And the sound system is like nothing you've ever experienced. They can direct sounds right to your seat. So it is really quite impressive. Now, the experience starts right when you get in. They call it the atrium. This is kind of like when you go to an event at the Sphere, they've got like an hour of time before you actually go into the event, right? You just kind of stand around and explore what they call the atrium, and they sort of dress it up for the show. So for this, it's all sepia-toned when you get in. So imagine the beginning of the movie where it's back in time, and she's in Kansas, and so the whole kind of atrium looks like that. And then when you leave, it transforms fully into all green and emerald city, and there's like an interactive wizard that you can interact with. Kind of like, so if you've been to a sphere thing before or if you haven't, they used to have these really high-tech robots in there that you can interact with. The wizard is sort of replacing them. But, you know, they can do multiple things at this place at once. It's not just like one thing at a time. Anyway, so you get inside, and it's very exciting. I was there for the opening premiere, and so it was kind of cool. I mean, to me, one of the best things was all the food was free. So I was, like, grabbing, like, I grabbed so much stuff. I grabbed like popcorn and like candy and drinks, whatever I could. So that was kind of fun. When do you ever get that, right, at a movie? But when you get inside, the screen, it's like you get inside and it looks like Radio City Music Hall, which is also the same company that owns this. And so it tricks you because the movie starts in the middle of that little screen, and then all of a sudden it widens out to take up the whole dome. And people, that is the first awe moment. Like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be different. And the whole audience is like audibly wowed right there. And so now you know you're in for something special. And that was really cool. Then comes the tornado scene. Now, this is just incredible what they've done. So they are using every single thing available to them in that sphere. I'm talking wind, leaves, like there's actual leaves that kind of move around in there. The seats are rumbling. People were covering their faces. They were hooting. They were hollering. It was so cool. Like, I'm just sitting there smiling. Like, as an adult, how many times do you have a smile on your face? Not very often, right? No, I'm just kidding. I mean, but yes, you know, like, something that brings a true childish smile to your face, every single person in there was just literally and figuratively blown away. And by the way, I haven't seen the original movie in a long time, but that tornado scene lasted so long, I think they just made it longer just to have fun with, like, all the effects. And it was so crazy. I want to post the video to my Instagram, but they told us not to record video during the movie, but I did just because I like to break the rules every once in a while. But I want to share it, but I don't because I don't want to ruin it for you. It is worth the price of admission right there. Anyway, once you get into the movie, it's clear that AI is everywhere. So they used it to do things like if you think about how small this was when it first came out, they had to expand it to fit this screen. So they used AI to sort of rebuild the edges, the backgrounds, the extras, the crowds of people. So it's very apparent to me the AI use in this movie. And by the way, they worked with Google Cloud to do this. And it was very apparent to me. And yes, sometimes I'm like, okay, that's AI, that's AI, that's AI. But you can't let that ruin your impression of this. Like you still have to just, like any other movie, you've got to have a little suspension of disbelief. They used AI to make the resolution look better. So, you know, you can spot it if you're looking for it. But if you just kind of enjoy, you'll enjoy it. Now, there's also physical effects. So they've got apples falling from the sky. There was snow in there at one point. There's fire, real fire, flying monkeys. I mean, I'm not kidding. They went all out on this thing. And it was like, I think at one point, they're just like, you know what? we're just going to do the craziest, wildest stuff we can imagine inside of a movie experience. And they did. Now, this was about 80 minutes, so I think that's shorter than the standard movie. But I'm not kidding. It flew by so fast. There were some jump scares. I mean, look, if you're a purist about The Wizard of Oz, you might not like this version of it. But if you're just someone that's like, okay, I want to see how technology can change the way we tell stories, This is like the best example I've ever experienced. People are asking me, is it for kids? I think so. It's intense. There's intense moments. So you have to understand like what the, you know, what your kids can deal with. But it's nothing like super scary. Also the best place to sit, we sat in the 200 section, which is right front and center. So that I thought was pretty cool. Tickets are not cheap. I mean, tickets start about over $100. And they go up from there, by the way. And then you've got the popcorn and the drinks. And it's not a cheap experience. But here's the deal. Number one, you're in Vegas. You're going to be spending money anyway. I proceeded to gamble $100 in like less than an hour. Guess what I have to tell you about that? Zero. Nothing. I have no memories of it. It was a waste of money. The experience I had at the Wizard of Oz was incredible, and I'll be telling my grandkids about it. Well, I mean, maybe. We'll see. I'll just tell them to listen to this. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool. Definitely worth it if you are in Las Vegas or you're planning a trip. And how wild is it in this day and age, 2025, that now Apple, Amazon, and Google are making movies? I mean, I get that Netflix is. It's a studio house. But these three companies, the three tech companies in our world, are now making movies. Just think about that for a moment. Did you ever think that would happen? And by the way, this was also brilliant because guess what? Half the people that walk out of this sphere when they see this version are going to go home and rent the original. So now the IP folks make money again. Anyway, you can read my whole review on the website, richontech.tv. Coming up, I'm going to tell you about the free app that can help you clear up the storage on your iPhone. You have to download this. This is Rich on Tech. We'll be right back. You will see all the notes for not just today's show, but all of the shows out there. Let's go to John in Moorpark. John, you're on with Rich. Yes, I am. How are you today? I'm doing fantastic. What can I help you with? I appreciate you and your ringer program. I've been listening to you since day one. Oh, well, I'd love to hear that. Thank you so much. Anything change throughout the years that we've been doing this? It's been almost three now. Well, it's just ongoing updates to the tech world. I really, really appreciate that. All right. What can I help you with? I'm actually calling on behalf of a friend who's having just a terrible time with cell phones. Okay. She has been through five cell phones in the past year or so, four Androids and an iPhone. and somehow, some ways, someone seems to be able to find her phone and tap into it and even control her phone. Oh, wow. That's not good. That's why I'm calling you for any thoughts or suggestions. Okay. He even tried an iPhone and was having the same problem and got in touch with an Apple who did not believe her. Well, yeah, I could see that. Well, let me go through some of the steps I think that could help. Number one, it sounds to me, number one, it's not, and I get these emails all the time. People tell me their phone is hacked, and I don't really understand what they mean by that because there is not a simple way for someone to claim control over your phone. There just is not. These are two platforms that are very secure, iOS and Android. and now on Android there are ways that could make that process easier if you gave someone access to your phone but there's really not a way that someone can remotely control your smartphone. Like there's not just like some website they can log into and say okay let me target this woman's phone let me get in there and let me do all that stuff. So it's tough to say that someone has taken over control of your phone. Now there are apps that you can install on your phone that may do something similar to that, like a team viewer or something like that, but, you know, remote access apps, but, you know, you would have to really install those and give someone access and hand over the credentials. And also you would see what's happening on your screen if that was the case. So it's very unlikely that the phone is being taken over by someone. Now, with that said, there are ways that someone can get access to different parts of the device. And what this really comes down to is your social media, your email, your iPhone, iCloud, and also Android. So if they had access to their login, which is either their Apple ID or their Android, Google ID, they might be able to do something there. But again, highly unlikely because there's so many safeguards in place by Apple and Google to not let this stuff happen. And the only times we've ever seen a true example of a phone being hacked is in a couple of ways. Number one, you're sort of a head of state or someone that's very prominent and you click on a link and you get some sort of spyware or malware downloaded to your phone. And next thing you know, that is, you know, and the only times you've ever seen that is really, like I said, heads of state or journalists. It's not just regular people that that's happening to. Now, the more common way is if you sideload an app. And this is why Apple has fought sideloading for years, so it doesn't even happen on the iPhone, at least in the U.S. And then with Android, yes, you can sideload, but there's so many precautions in place. When you get a new phone, it doesn't just let you sideload anymore. You have to say yes like three different times to be able to download something that's not from the Google Play Store and install it on your phone. So, again, not very plausible that someone could just take over access on your phone. So when it comes to the hacking, when it comes to your friend, what I would recommend is start with the big accounts, your Apple account and your Google account and your social media. Go through, change those passwords. That's number one. Change the passwords to something strong. Use something that's at least 14 characters. Use a password generator to make those and save those. Then you've got to go in and turn on two-factor authentication. It's not bulletproof, but it is the best protection you have against someone gaining access to your account. And the third thing I would do is find the, in the settings, there's typically, in your account settings under security, there's typically a setting that says log me out everywhere else. And so I just had to do this with my Instagram because it thought someone was hacking me, but I was just logging in from a new phone. And so it logged me out everywhere. Every one of my phones that I Instagram installed on, it logged me out. And you can go in and say, we have logged you out of all your other devices. You can do that on Facebook, on Instagram, on Gmail. You can just go through and just log yourself out of all these other places that you might be logged in. And if someone happened to have access, they would be logged out as well. So those are the things I would do. And if you need a good two-factor authentication app, which I always recommend an app over a phone number, is Proton Authenticator is excellent, excellent, excellent. And that is available for iPhone and Android. But, again, change all those passwords, set up the two-factor authentication. that should be your best defense against, quote unquote, someone hacking or taking over your phone. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101, rich on tech.tv. Coming up, yes, I'm going to tell you about the app to clear your phone storage, and we're going to talk projectors right here. Chad writes in on the website, richontech.tv, what is the best power bank to buy for your iPhone and iPad Pro, $20,000 and above? I would appreciate it. So, Chad, I would recommend the Belkin Power Bank. It's called the Boost Charge Power Bank 20K. I've got one of these, and it's $40 or less. It comes in a bunch of colors, and that's 20,000 milliamp hours, which means you're going to get a lot of extra playback on your devices there, and it'll work with both. It's got three ports, got the USB-C and USB-A, so you'll be able to plug in whatever you need. And Belkin, you know, they do a good job. They really do. I also like Anchor. Probably find them for cheaper, and I do carry around in Anchor. They've had some issues lately with some of the recalls, but they're still a good brand. So those are the two that I would recommend taking a look at. Thanks for the email. All right, on with us now is Philip Jones, technical editor and lead reviewer at Projector Reviews, ProjectorReviews.com. We're going to talk about projectors. Philip, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you, Rich? I am doing fantastic. Thanks so much for joining me. So what is the current trend in the projector industry? Well, a lot of times when you look at projectors, you're thinking about the old traditional home cinema. But the trend seems to be utilizing projectors as TV replacements or in applications where you would not want to utilize a flat panel TV, like maybe a campsite or backyard theater. So those seem to be the bigger trends right now. That was the first time that I, I mean, as a kid, I remember the giant, like they used to have like projector TVs too, right? Where it's like the three lights at the bottom, like those giant lights. I mean, we didn't have one of those, but I know a friend did. It was like, yeah, that just came back to me. I kind of forgot about those. But the first time I used a projector was during the pandemic when we were starting to watch backyard movies. And so the whole name of the game was getting, like, you know, the brightness and all this stuff. But I feel like that's when a lot of people that were not projector people got into that world. Is that true, you think? I think so. And while flat panels are getting larger, there's still some applications where even those gigantic flat panels are not going to work. Yes, you can go out and buy a 100-inch flat panel now. I saw them at Costco for under like $3,000 or $4,000. But I'd like to see you carry one of those up eight flight of stairs in a New York walk-up apartment. So a lot of times, even though you can get a massive flat panel, a projector with a small screen or a projector on a wall may be a better application for you. So I was going to ask about that. Are people using projectors to replace their TV? And what do you think the consideration is for that? Like, what are you going to miss if you do that? Well, normally, there's a lot of people that are starting to use projectors as a replacement for their TVs. There's actually two types of categories of projectors that are designed to do that. The first is they call them kind of a laser TV. These are ultra-short-throw projectors that sit maybe less than a foot from your wall but can project like a 120-inch image. and you can use it on a white wall or you could use it on a screen. The other one is called a lifestyle projector. It looks almost like a tube, but it has a projector and a sound system in it, and it also has all the smart features, which makes that really easy to move from place to place, like maybe in an apartment. The big thing that had to happen was more brightness, and you're starting to see that in projectors to help overcome ambient light, along with specialized screens that actually reject light from any direction but when a projector is shining light at it. That's interesting. So you kind of have to decide, do you want the short throw? Those are more expensive than a standard projector. Is that right? For brightness, it is possible. Normally, you have these premium home theater projectors, and those are what you're paying for is more of the black level than anything else. But when you compare the lens assembly on an ultra short throw to a standard throw projector, the ultra short throw lens is more complex. So it normally does command a little bit more of a price premium, but not that much these days. You can get a great one starting at about $2,500, and maybe one of the top of the lines is maybe $7,000 or $8,000. So how long have you been covering this stuff? Well, I used to be the product technology manager for Sony Electronics for over a decade. So I've been messing around with projectors for probably 15 years. I have been one of the principal members of Projector Reviews for about six years now. Okay. So what have you, I mean, like if someone is just thinking, oh, projectors, and they kind of have this old kind of thought in their head about what projectors are, how do you think the tech has changed or improved over the years? Okay. So the first thing, the brightness, that there has been a massive improvement in the efficiency of the light sources that are built into these projectors. So they're much, much, much, much, much brighter in a smaller package. And that tends to be the biggest problem because a lot of times people want to watch video or football games or something, and the room is not pitch black. Having more brightness allows you to overcome that and maybe have someone sitting right next to you reading a book and you still get a vibrant image. Then you add things like smart features. so because they want to replace TVs, you're starting to see Google TV or Android TV operating systems, and you're also starting to see much better sound systems than what you can put into a flat panel because a thin panel makes thin sound, so these projectors have more room for speakers, so they actually sound better. So what is the best type of content? You mentioned sports. I mean, obviously, sports and movies come to mind. Do those work on a projector? Oh, absolutely. I mean, of course, most people, when they think of projectors, they think of movies, you know, turning off the lights and watching the latest blockbuster. But watching a football game, when I get done with this, I'm going to go finish watching. I think the Texas-Ohio game. And watching that game on a 130-inch screen is dramatic. My house is Super Bowl central. I can't tell you how people email me every Super Bowl saying, are you having a party? Can I come over? Well, clearly. I mean, look at your job. I mean, come on. And it's like, that's what I want to watch. Yeah. The other thing that's really growing in popularity is gaming. The input lag on these units are getting really, really small, really, really fast, that will rival a consumer flat panel TV. And playing Halo or Gran Turismo on a 120, 150, or 200-inch screen is a little bit better of a perspective than playing it on a 55-inch TV. My producer, Bobo, just put his arm up. He's like, yes, please. Halo? Is that the? Yeah, he wants to play Halo. So what about these small projectors? Like I did a story with X-Jimmy. There's also one like the Nebula capsule. Like these are like really small portable projectors that you can bring like in a hotel room if you wanted. What about those coming on the scene? Like what should people look for in those? Well, there's a couple of things. Some of them are battery operated. But I will tell you the battery is nice for super convenience. But battery is going to limit the brightness of the unit. And it also takes up real estate that could be utilized for sound or a more powerful light source. So ultimate portability, maybe battery smart features are great and a sound system because you just grab this thing, connect it to your phone as a hotspot, and you can watch movies or Netflix anywhere. I would say probably look for a little bit more brightness. A lot of times people will use these terms such as lux or LED lumens. The one you'll look for is lumens. That's like that is the standard measurement. So you need more lumens to overcome ambient light or a brighter straight. So if I was going to get a small projector, like I like the anchors, the little nebulas, those are great. The XGMIs are great. There's a lot of companies that make really great projectors. Those little small ones are normally maybe 700 lumens, which is great for an 80-inch TV. But you can get some companies are making them that size that are now 1,400, 1,500 lumens. It's not going to have a battery built in. It'll be around the same price, but that'll allow you to put like 100 and something, 120-inch screen outside, which is actually nice. But minimum 700 lumens is a pretty good number for about an 80-inch viewing screen. Yeah, I would say 700 looks really, really good. At a minimum, you probably want to be at 400 would be my recommendation. Okay. Because that will make the colors look more vibrant when they're shown at higher brightnesses. All right, we're running out of time here, but I want to get some specific recommendations from you. Any recommendations you want to leave us with for the pricey and then the budget projector? Okay, so if I was going to buy a big boy, a pricey unit, those are normally, there's big, there's brands that are way out there at the price of a small BMW. But the ones that if you're looking for ultra premium right now, it's probably Epson, JVC, and Sony. So my favorite right now is the big, it's an Epson, it's called a QL7000. It has 10,000 lumens of brightness. We're going to be showing one of those at Cedia on a 200-inch cinema screen. and you'll be able to watch that thing with the lights on. It's ridiculous. Well, okay. Am I getting the price right? About $30,000-something? It's about $36,000. Okay, I don't need a car. I'll just get this. Yeah, so that's what somebody wants. It's super bright. If you're looking for inky, inky, inky blacks, I would probably do something like a JVC NZ900 or a Sony Bravia 9. Okay. Now, value people, my favorite value unit out there under $500 would be something like Yabber makes one that's called a V12. It's like $399, about 700 lumens. It's a good little projector for the price. And then there's another one, there's a little Epson called an Epivision Flex. I think it's COW01. That's about 400. Actually, that's about $400. But that is 3,000 lumens, but it has a bulb. So it's not like most of these are solid state that has a bulb. But if you just want brightness in an itty-bitty box, that's the way to go. All right. Philip Jones with ProjectorReviews.com. Thanks so much for joining me today. Great information. Really appreciate it. I'll put a link to everything you mentioned on the website, richontech.tv. Coming up, I will share that app that helps you clear the storage on your iPhone right here on Rich on Tech. All right, here it is. I know you've been waiting for this. I love when I find something like this. When I find something like this, I don't know why there's this like, there's this part of me that I'm like, I don't want to share this because it's so good. Why do I feel that way? That's like a bad way to feel. But every time I find something that's so good, I'm like, I don't want to share this with anyone because it's so good. But that's my whole job is to share this with you. So when I found this, I had to check and double check to see if it is as good as I believe it is, and it really is. So one of the most popular questions I get is, Rich, how do I clear out the storage on my iPhone? I am up against the storage. They want me to pay for iCloud, or I'm out of my iCloud, because basically what's happening is it's become so easy to take large videos and tons of photos on our phone, no one goes through and takes the time to actually clear those out. So what do we do? We get that email from Google or that email from Apple saying hey you need to up your iCloud or pay for iCloud And you probably just do it because it starts out at 99 cents Then it just keeps going up and up and up So here is the way to clear out the photos that you don't need on your iPhone or the large videos. Okay. And the app, this app that I'm going to tell you about is completely free. There are no ads. I couldn't believe it. No ads. And I had to double check. There are no in-app purchases. So it's not even going to try to sell you on anything else. I mean, talk about the long game. What this company is doing is they're basically going to say, oh, you're going to love this so much, you're probably going to check out the other software that we offer, and you might buy that. Because they do offer some other software that's really good, by the way. So here it is. It's called Clever Cleaner. Clever Cleaner. And if you go on the App Store, you want to search this up. It says Clever Cleaner, AI cleanup app, Clever Files Incorporated. Okay, make sure you get the right one. Right now it's number 94 in productivity. I'm guessing tomorrow it's going to be number one. Because once the word gets out about this app, it's going to jump. So here's the deal. It was developed by Clever Files. This is a company that makes another app that I really like called Disk Drill. It's a data recovery app, and it helps you do all kinds of stuff. But this is using AI, and it's all happening local on your phone, by the way, so it's not sending anything to the cloud. You can do this app with your phone in airplane mode. It'll still work. But basically, it's going to use AI to find not just duplicates, but also similar photos and videos. So when you go into this app, there are four screens at the bottom, four little tabs, okay? And the first tab is similars. And so it's going to scan through all your stuff, and I've got 2,692 files. And it's going to say, you know, you can do smart cleanup, which will just do this stuff for you, or you can do one by one. It'll show you the pictures side by side, and you can decide. It'll say which one it thinks is the better shot. You can choose that and then move the other one to trash. So that's number one. Then you've got my favorite, the heavies. The heavies are your large files, basically your large videos. And so you can sort by your largest videos. And this is just the feature that I don't think it's built into the iPhone, but I wish it was. It's built into Android, not iPhone. But you can sort your videos by the largest. So if you are having trouble with taking new pictures on your phone, just literally go to the heavies, delete the largest video file, as long as you don't need it anymore, and that will get rid of all that storage and free up space on your phone. I've got my first one is 7 gigs, second one is 7 gigs, third one is 6 gigs, 5 gigs, 5 gigs, 4 gigs. So that's my recommendation if you need to free up storage fast. Then you've got the screenshots. This is all the screenshots on your phone. You take up all these screenshots. I've got 1.29 gigabytes of screenshots on my phone. Guess what? I probably don't need any of those. I can delete those. Then you've got your lives. So you can convert them into a standard picture if you want to save space. Like this live photo is 12 megabytes, 12 megabytes, 10 megabytes. You probably don't need all those. And then you've got another feature in the middle, a Tinder-like feature called swipe photos. So it groups all your photos by month, and then you can just swipe through. So if I see this photo, I can swipe left, and it deletes it. Swipe right to keep it. Swipe right to keep it. Swipe right to keep it. So you can do all that. So this app is really, really handy, and I just love it. And I think it's one of those things that once you discover it, you're going to be like, oh, my gosh. Now, here is the caveat. You have to understand. If you are using iCloud to save your photos, any changes you make inside this app, if you are deleting photos, they will delete out of your iCloud. That is the way the iPhone works. It is a mirror image of your camera roll. So let me repeat that. If you go through and delete all your pictures and think, oh, I'm just clearing up the storage of my phone. No, you will delete those out of your iCloud. So understand that. You are only deleting stuff that you do not need ever again in your life. Okay? You have to be very understanding of that. Now, if you are using something like a Google Photos on your iPhone, if you deleted these pictures, they're not going to delete out of your Google Photos. So if you're just trying to clear up space on your physical phone and not in the cloud for Google Photos, you can also do this. But just keep in mind, your photos will stay in Google. They will delete off your phone. So that's what you need to know. Again, it is called Clever Cleaner, and it is available for the iPhone, and it is free. no ads, and I think this is really, really cool. And the thing is, you might say, Rich, the iPhone has a feature that will show me my duplicates. It's right in the Photos app. I got you. And I would say to you, well, I'm glad you noticed that because I don't think anyone ever has, but Apple literally only matches the exact file, like if you have two of the exact same photos somehow on your phone. This will find the similar photos that are very, very similar there. The logo looks like it's like colorful, and it looks like almost a circle with like a little film and photos inside. But it's only available for iPhone, not Android. Now, if you're on Android and you want something, there are some things that are similar. There is one called Remo, which is, let's see, Remo Photos. I've got to find this. Oh, gosh. Oh, I've got to find the photo, the duplicate photo finder on there. But there is an app that might already be on your phone, but it's called Files by Google. And if you open up Files by Google or download it, again, no ads, no in-app purchases, you can go in the upper left-hand corner. They have a feature called Clean, and that will show you your large files, your unused apps, your downloaded files, and that's an easy way, again, to reclaim some storage on your Android phone. If you're using Google Photos on your Android, literally just press and hold on the Google Photos app, and there's an option that says Free Up Space. And what that does is it deletes all the photos off your phone, but it keeps them in the cloud. So you still have a copy, but your phone storage is freed up. Anyway, I've linked this all up on the website. Go to richontech.tv. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. This is Rich on Tech. We'll be right back. for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought of Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? He was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did the secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard. Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No, but did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development? Nuh-uh. You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit TalkAboutVaping.org. Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years right and where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the biggest night in podcasting. The countdown is on to our 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards. Live from South by Southwest, March 16th, we'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative, talented creators in the industry. It's truly a who's who of the podcasting world. Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. And the winner of the iHeart Podcast Award is... See all the nominees now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app, Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. Let's go to Jim in northern Arizona. Jim, you're on with Rich. Hey, Rich, and hi from Fresca Valley again. Hello. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're okay. That photo of your car was something to see, boy. Yeah, something to be in, too. Yeah, I imagine. I currently use a password manager across multiple Windows devices and iOS devices. and I'm getting more and more prompts to switch to passkey, and I wasn't quite sure how that would work across multiple devices, Windows and PCs and iOS, and could I still use my user ID and password if I switch to it? Good question. So passkeys are the new way to log in that uses sort of a digital handshake with the device that you're on. It exchanges a little token, and it replaces the password. Now, I will tell you, in my experience, and I've set up a couple of these passkeys, when they work, they're amazing. But here is the thing that I've noticed, and a lot of these websites are pushing hard for passkeys. And, Jim, I think you're doing the right thing by using a universal password manager that works across all of your devices, because many of the password managers, like a Bitwarden or a Dashlane or a 1Password, a lot of them can handle passkeys. But also your Windows computer can do passkeys and Chrome can do passkeys and iOS can do passkeys. So what I've noticed is that when the passkey prompt comes up, it's trying to ping all these different ways of getting that passkey. Because unlike a password, you can have a passkey for different devices. And this is where it gets a little bit confusing. So let's just use Home Depot as an example. Let's say you go to the Home Depot website and it says, hey, would you like to set up a passkey? And you go, sure. It puts a little piece of data wherever you save that passkey. So it could be on your Windows computer. It could be through your password manager. It could be through your Apple computer. It could be through your iOS passwords app. So wherever you store that, it stays there. And then it's used the next time. So not only could you use your password manager, but you could also have a passkey on your phone. You could also have a passkey on your laptop. You can have a passkey on your tablet. And so it gets a little confusing to use these, but I guess my advice is to try it out with a website that you don't really care about too much, like a Home Depot. Sorry, Home Depot. I mean, you know, any website that's just, you know, you're not like you're Google. Like maybe start with one of these other websites just to get a flavor of it. And once you set up the passkey, logging in is pretty easy because however you typically log into your computer is how you would authorize that passkey. So, for instance, if you're on your phone and you try to log in with a passkey and you use a password manager, all you have to do is just use Face ID or your fingerprint reader to open up your password manager, and it would just exchange that passkey. So you're not typing anything in. You're not copying and pasting. It's not filling in a password. And the beauty of passkeys is that they're not easily hacked because you can go to a phishing website and copy and paste your password in there. Or in the worst case scenario, your password manager gets tricked and it pastes that password in there and you log in. And next thing you know, they're stealing your information. Passkey, it's really, really almost nearly impossible for that to happen. because the website has to exchange a special token with your password manager to get that passkey back. And so it is much more secure in that aspect. And there's nothing to forget. There's nothing to remember. So can you use passkeys in addition to your password? Yes. So even if you use a passkey, you can still log in with your old password the old-fashioned way. The thing that I've noticed that makes this a little bit tricky is two-factor authentication. So on my major websites, of course, I have two-factor authentication turned on. So pass keys are supposed to be super smooth and seamless, where let's say you go to that Home Depot website, you log in, it says pass key, you tap pass key, it pings your password manager, your password manager asks you for your face ID, you do your face ID, and it sends that pass key to Home Depot, and you get logged in. That's the way it should work really fast and easily. But if you have two-factor authentication set up, it's probably still going to text you that code for two-factor authentication. So it's still a little extra step to log into those websites. So for me personally, as much as I want to recommend PassKeys, and I think you should try them, I do think they're easy when they work. I'm not completely convinced just yet in the ease of use for the average person because it is a little confusing. because literally when I go to certain websites, I'm not kidding, on my desktop computer, my MacBook, I have my password manager pops up to offer up to save the passkey. Then my Chrome pops up to ask to save the passkey. And then my MacBook offers to save the passkey or to push the passkey through. So it's like all these things kind of competing. And I think you'd have to probably go into settings and make sure that you turn off all these other ways of saving things. But it's a little complicated. So I guess the long answer, Jim, is that try them. See how they work out for you. Try them on some low-stakes websites. But I do have them set up for a bunch of my websites that I regularly log into. And when it works, it's amazing because it's so fast and it's so easy. But I just, and I guess I don't want to wish the two-factor authentication away, But at the same time, it is that extra layer of, well, why is this easier than just my password being entered? But I think at the end of the day, the ease comes from the fact that it's not easily phished. Nobody can say, hey, can you tell me your passkey? It's just not possible. You can't verbally speak a passkey like you can a password. And I think at that moment, that's what makes it way more secure for the average person is you can't be tricked into sharing this passkey. So Windows supports passkeys. Apple supports passkeys. Android supports passkeys. 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden. You can do it all. If you want to set a passkey up, go to your website that you want to set it up for. Log in the old-fashioned way with your password. Go to your account settings. Look for passkey. It's somewhere in there. tap create and make sure you save that passkey in a place where you can retrieve it. And it's not a big deal. If you can't like retrieve that passkey later, you can still use your password to log in. I think there's a little confusion there. And there is a website, this Fido Alliance, which tells you all the different websites that support passkeys. And it's a lot. I mean, I'm looking through Adobe, Amazon, Bank of America, Best Buy, Bitwarden, BMW, Citibank, CVS, Coinbase. I mean, these are just the Cs. eBay. So if you want to try it on one of these websites, go to this. I'll put this in the show notes, this Fido Alliance pass keys directory. So, again, try it on a low stakes website. So go to something, like I said, like a Home Depot or an eBay or a Kayak and just set up a pass key. and see what the process is like and then log out and log back in and see if it makes life a little bit easier for you. So according to this, let's see, there's 159 websites that support this right now in their directory. There may be more, but big companies like Verizon and Walmart or all listed here, Yahoo. So again, try it out, see what it's like. Good question, Jim. And yes, you can use them across devices. My recommendation is to use them in your password manager. Whatever you're using for your password manager, that's where you want to set up and save your pass keys. The one thing I do not recommend, do not use your password manager for your two-factor authentication codes. A lot of the password managers let you also save two-factor authentication codes for your websites. Do not do that. I don't recommend it because if someone was ever to get in to your password manager, now they not only have your passwords, but they also have your two-factor authentication codes. So for that reason, I recommend a third-party two-factor authentication code manager, and the one I love is called Proton Authenticator. It has every single feature that I want in a two-factor authentication app, which namely is if you want to use it locally on your devices, you can. But if you want to use it across all your devices, you can. If you want to import keys from another app, you can do that. If you want to export all of your codes to another app, you want to move, you find something better that comes along, you can do that. So Proton has really made a slick authentication app that is completely free and it does everything you need. Why is it free, Rich? Well, because they want you to discover how amazing this app is for free. And then you say, well, let me check out what Proton is all about. I like what they're doing here. I like the design. It's clean. It's slick. It's really, really well done. So let me see what else they offer. And yes, they offer a whole bunch of other stuff. They offer ProtonPass, which is their password manager, their VPN, Mail, which is super secure, Drive, Calendar. So they've got a whole bunch of stuff that they offer, and it's that halo effect. You go into Proton Authenticator, and next thing you know, you're using ProtonMail, using ProtonVPN. That's the name of the game there. And I believe ProtonVPN actually has a free level too. I think it's one of the few VPNs with a free level of service. Proton, yeah, free VPN. One device, no ads, no logs, unlimited and free forever. So if you're looking for a free VPN, protonvpn.com, check it out. All right, I'll link this all up on the website, richontech.tv. 888-742-4101. The website, richontech.tv. More of your calls. And the new robo-taxi option in Las Vegas coming up right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich on Tech.tv, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Let's go to Lisa in Long Beach. You're on with Rich. Hi, Rich. I too had a car accident this year and we're lucky to be alive. I'm glad I'm talking to you. Well, I'm glad you're talking to me as well. Thank you for that. What can I help you with? Okay, so a simple question. I have a Pixel 9 Pro. I got it like in January. Ever since I've had it, I've never seen it download and update because it always stops in the middle and says you have to start all over again connecting your wireless. And when I look at my wireless connector, it always says, saved, check password, and try again. Oh, okay. And otherwise, I have unlimited wireless with AT&T. So I'm totally confused of what is being downloaded. And I'm at Android 16. Isn't that where you're supposed to be? Yeah, that's Android 16. You're good there. Okay, so a couple things here. Number one, it doesn't typically like to download the software updates over cellular. It will in a pinch, I believe, but it mostly wants Wi-Fi because they're usually pretty sizable. So it sounds like your Wi-Fi is not properly connected on this device. So saved, check password means that it's trying to use the password and it's not working. And so it's actually not connected to that Wi-Fi network. And so what you want to do is go into your settings, okay? Do you want to follow along or are you on your phone? Well, I'm on my phone, but I've done this like 10 times, the same password. Oh, okay. Well, let me walk you through it and see. Every month I try again just to see what's going on. Okay. Well, let me walk you through what I think you should do, and then I'll give you a couple of solutions that will probably fix this forever. And it doesn't require throwing your phone out the window. All right. So you go into your settings. You go to network and internet, and then it says internet wireless. You tap there, and where you have your wireless connection, you want to connect, tap the little, it looks like a little gear icon, and you want to forget the network completely. And that way you are starting fresh with this network. And then I would restart your phone and go back in and connect to that network using that password. And if it says, you know, connected, then your password worked. If it says problem, then that password is not working. That's number one. And in the upper right-hand corner of your phone, you should see the 5G or 4G replaced with a little Wi-Fi indicator. So that means that everything is working. Now, if that's not working, the next level of what I would do is go down into your, let's see, system. I've got to find where this is. Okay, system under settings, and there's something called reset options. and there's an option called reset Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And so I would do that, and that's going to wipe all of your Wi-Fi settings clean. It's going to wipe all of your Bluetooth connections clean, and you're going to have to re-log in to your Wi-Fi networks no matter where you are, work, home, and you're also going to have to reconnect your Bluetooth. And if that doesn't work, which, by the way, that should fix like 99.9% of problems that people have, you can do what's called a factory reset. Now, with Pixel phones, pretty much everything's backed up to the clouds. You're not going to lose much data, if any at all. You shouldn't. But what you can do is that factory reset will reset this phone back to the factory conditions. Any little bugs, any little issues that are lingering will all be cleaned up and fixed. And in that way, you can then reset your phone up. You're going to have to log in. You're going to have to download all your stuff again. But your phone should work. The other thing I would say to do is there's something that people don't do on the Android side of things. And there is a, let's see, where is it here? Okay. I've got to find it. They moved it. A system and updates. Here it is. So there's not only a security update, a system update on the Androids, but there's also a Google Play system update. And so check for that one. That one adds new features to your phone. I just checked it online. I got a 93 megabyte download. So a lot of people think that there's just the software update, but there's also what's called a Google Play system update available on your Android. So if you're listening, you've got an Android, go into your settings right now and check for this. This is where Google pushes out a lot of their new features. So go into settings, and then you'll see where it says, let's see here, security and privacy, and then it says system and updates. And then you say Google Play system update, check for system update there, download and install, it'll restart your phone, and that adds new features to your Android phone without a full system software update. So on the Android phones, you've got three places to look for software updates. Number one, the operating system. That's called your system update. Number two, new Google features. That's called the Google Play system update. Number three, app updates. That's inside the Play Store. So three places. If you're having any issues with your phone whatsoever, You always want to download all those software updates, restart your phone, and see if your phone works properly again. Lisa, it sounds like the connection issue is just a mistaken password in this instance, but it could also be that something's just lingering from that Wi-Fi connection, and you need to clean up that Wi-Fi connection, and it should work better. Good question. Thanks for the call today. I love the Pixel phones. They last seven years, seven years of software updates. So don't think that because it's not working, it's ruined forever. Believe me, you can just reformat that phone. It'll work great. I know that's the last-ditch resort. You don't want to do that, you know, first chance. You don't want to do that as the first step. Thanks for the call, Lisa. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. If you're going to Las Vegas, you have a new option for a robo-taxi. Amazon's Zoox self-driving cars are now roaming the streets. Rides are free because guess what? You are the beta tester. So you can download the Zoox app on iOS and Android. The vehicles have no steering wheel, no pedals, no driver's seat. Inside, it's face-to-face to the other riders. So, again, these are now in Las Vegas. Zoox, Z-O-O-X. Look it up. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Rich on Tech, back after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. We will get back to the phone lines in just a moment. But first, while I was up at Apple, I had the opportunity to interview Kayanne Drance. She is Apple's vice president of worldwide iPhone product marketing. She's talking all about the big iPhone 17 announcements, including Apple's thinnest iPhone yet. Let's talk about the iPhone Air. All right. This is the headline-stealing phone, thinnest phone yet from Apple. Didn't think it could get any thinner. So how much work went into making this phone? Oh, my goodness. Well, as you saw, we had to make a whole bunch of rethinking as to how we were going to do this design. And it is the thinnest iPhone ever, but it's got that pro performance inside. And it's unbelievably thin and light. You've got to pick it up to feel it. Yet it's really durable, right? We talked about how it's more durable than any previous iPhone. And that includes our choices and materials like titanium, some great engineering, and to being able to put all the components in that top camera plateau area to save even more room for battery life. So it all came together, I think. Explain that term, camera plateau. It was the first time I heard it. Yes. Makes sense, like a little mountain on the phone. It's that top part where the camera lives, right? And so for the first time, we've precision milled that out and we're putting even more advanced technologies In fact the A19 Pro chip lives in that top area for the first time And that one of the reasons why we able to manage the great performance of the phone and still retain a lot of great space for battery life and everything else One thing that if I didn mention yet the ProMotion display being across the lineup that's a great everyday benefit. Can you explain that in like an average consumer term? Because it's kind of a tough thing to understand. What does that mean exactly, that the ProMotion display has come to the base model? Yeah, so we've only typically had ProMotion on our Pro models. So this year for the first time, it's going to be on iPhone 17. And so what that is is as you're scrolling through content, like you're looking in Safari on a website, you're reading something, it's going to give you this really adaptively smooth refresh rate even to follow how fast you're scrolling. And when you're watching movies, it's going to match the frame rate needed. And so in some cases, it can save battery life also. But it looks great. So as you're scrolling, it looks great on the eyes. And the other great thing, in addition to ProMotion, is all our displays are brighter, so you can get even brighter content when you're outdoors. And we've added an anti-reflective coating to reduce that glare when you're outside and your iPhone goes with you everywhere. And it's also three times better resistance to scratching, which is a great everyday benefit, as you can imagine. How does the average consumer decide between the Air and another model of the iPhone at this point? Sure. Well, I think one of the easiest things to think about is, like I said, that the iPhone Air has that pro performance, but in this thin and light design. And so if you go in and you pick that up and that really makes sense to you as the phone you want, that's great. It still has an advanced camera system on the back, and all the models this year have that new center stage front camera selfie experience. So that's the same across the board. It still has great battery life, and like I said, it's really durable. Now, if you're someone who wants the very best iPhone in the world, that would be the iPhone 17 Pro or the larger iPhone 17 Pro Max. We're pushing performance, camera capabilities, battery life, everything to that very top level. And if that's something that's important to you, like you just want to capture every single possible photo, every single focal length or zoom length, then the iPhone 17 Pro might be the one for you. Let's talk about that new selfie camera experience. Sure. It's going to be a pretty big departure for many people because you don't have to rotate your phone anymore. Yeah. How do you explain the innovation there? Sure. Well, basically, for a user, it just means you can hold your phone really naturally in that portrait orientation. And whether it's just you in the frame or suddenly you've got three other people or more people in the frame, the phone can automatically detect the faces using AI, and it will do like a virtual rotation of the phone for you using that innovative new square sensor. And so that you can get actually four different composition styles all by holding your phone in the same way. So you just got to smile. You got to smile, and your eyes will be right in the frame, and it's just super easy to use. Is there any sacrifice in terms of quality with the photos because it's, you know, different orientations? Well, it is up to an 18-megapixel output, so it's got even higher resolution than before as the max resolution output, and the quality is fantastic because with our photonic engine, with our computation photography, all the software that we do, it's absolutely great quality. And like I said, your videos get better. So if you're doing FaceTime, you're going to stay stable in the frame. And you've got like action mode type stabilization when you're recording on the front video too. I test a lot of phones, a lot of different cameras. The video on the iPhone is really incredible. The camera is always something that delivers. So have there been improvements this year in the camera and video quality that consumers will notice? Sure. Well, all the cameras have our latest camera systems with the A19 or the A19 Pro chip. And we're always making improvements across the board, whether it's color or tuning or things that we do just every year to make things even better. And, of course, we have a new ultra-wide camera that's also high resolution on iPhone 17 this year. So your 0.5 shots and those wide, fun perspectives, your macro photography is going to get even better detail and quality. And then on the pros, we also have this new telephoto, right? It gets you the 4X zoom and all the way to 8X zoom. And now your digital zoom goes up to 40x. So you're going to get closer to the action than ever before. And we talked about having eight Pro lens equivalents in your pocket with all the different framing options. So there's a lot of great things. But at the end of the day, you just have to take a great photo because iPhone will help you do that. And you don't have to think too much about it. And when it comes to storing those photos, 256 across the board now. That's right. That's a sizable increase. And I think for consumers who are taking so many photos and videos, that's a pretty good thing. Yeah, it's great. And for iPhone 17, it's 256, which is double last year's storage capacity. But we kept the same $799 starting price. So that's a great value. And now with all the photos and videos you're taking, as you said, you have more space to store them on your phone. You mentioned pricing. How important was it to keep pricing similar and not have these wild swings with pricing? Did you put a lot of thought into that this year? We put a lot of thought into everything, and we're really happy where we landed with the pricing where it is. And the other great thing is in the U.S., there's a lot of great carrier offers and Apple offers. So Apple can offer up to $700 now in being able to go into trade in an iPhone 13 or newer. And our carrier partners, they actually have up to $1,100 off in credit when you trade in an iPhone 13 or newer in any condition. And you can go into an Apple retail store or Apple online to take advantage of that, too. When it comes to that upgrade cycle, who do you think is, I know you want everyone to upgrade, obviously, but who do you think is ripe for an upgrade at this point if you're rocking an iPhone 13, 14? Where do you think that sweet spot is? Well, it depends on you, of course. We have people who upgrade every year just because they're so excited to get the latest. We know that, you know, all the previous phones were fantastic and have great durability, so we love that people are able to continue using them. But if there's something that speaks to you, whether it's the center stage front camera, whether it's battery life, whether it's these stunning new designs. It's a great time with all these great offers to come over and over and upgrade. Now, iOS 26 is also going to launch, and that's going to be a big upgrade for a lot of people. What can they expect to see out of that on their phone that they already have? Sure. Well, you'll have the same kinds of things that you have. You know, some of the things have a beautiful new look. We have new wallpapers. We have the spatial photos that you can put on the wallpapers and your lock screens. for this just beautiful look. You have this new looks with liquid glass where everything looks just so seamless, and it goes great with all of our hardware capabilities as well. And, of course, we have some updates coming for Apple Intelligence. People have been already using the writing tools and cleanup, but now there's live translation, so you can do that in messages, phone, and FaceTime. There's enhancements of visual intelligence, so now you can do more like searching for the world around you, learning about places or objects or adding a poster to an event in your calendar or using your iPhone screen to search things up on Google or on Etsy or other apps. So there's a lot of great stuff in there, and we think people are going to love that upgrade. And, of course, that all comes with the new phones as well. Any update on AI? Some people say that Apple is behind in this. They promised some things. Can you give me an update on when we're going to see that next burst of AI features on the iPhone? Well, with iOS 26 coming next week, some of the new ones that I mentioned, like the visual intelligence updates, live translation, There will be some more updates as we go. And, you know, we talked about we're working hard to bring even more updates as we go on. And our strategy has always been to create something that's advanced but accessible and easy to use for everyone. So we continue to embed it across our technologies to make it personal, private, and easy to use, and to meet you in your everyday life just in the app that you need. And finally, I was looking at that iPhone Air. I feel like if you put two of them together, it can almost be a foldable phone. So is this the precursor to something that Apple might be working on in the future? Well, I can't comment on the future, but I love your imagination. All right. That was Kayan Dranz from Apple with more on the new iPhone 17 lineup. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Your call's next. Jay, I see you've been waiting for over an hour. You're on with Rich. Hey, I'm glad you're okay from your car accident. Thank you. So my question is, so I recently went from a 14 Pro Max to, or I'm sorry, 15 Pro Max. The battery was, I was using it so much that I was going to just replace the battery, but my carrier basically was only an extra $100 to go to the 16 Pro Max. This was just a couple of months ago. Really like the phone. Obviously, it's great. Battery life's great. Now I'm seeing all these great things about the 17. I've got literally the last version. And like the previous interviewer you were saying was they give a lot of money for these tradebacks, so it's really not that expensive. I pay for my phones outright. So I'm wondering, in your opinion, would it be worth it to just go ahead and trade this thing in and, you know, with all this new tech with the 17 to pull the trigger on that? Well, let's take a look at what you're getting. So first off, you're getting a faster processor, which, of course, is always nice, but the 16 is already fast. The big change here is this new vapor chamber that makes the phone stay cooler longer. So that's a nice thing, especially if you're using your phone under any sort of heavy video editing or gaming, stuff like that. You've got the brand-new design, so if you like the new design of the phone, it's got better scratch resistance on the front and the back, which is nice. Let's see. Display is brighter, so you're going to get a brighter display for that money. Longer battery life. So I don't know about your 16 Pro Max, but mine, the battery life, has kind of taken a little hit in recent months. So I'm really hoping that the 17 Pro Max is going to be better. I don't know if you noticed that or not. Yeah. Yeah, the battery, like I said, I only got it a couple months ago. The good thing I do like about it is it charges really fast. Yes, and you still get that. Yeah, but yeah, the battery is huge to me. Yeah, well, the battery is supposed to be the best yet ever on the iPhone. It also has a faster charging because now you can use a 40-watt adapter, which is something that many people may not care about. But yeah, if you're trying to get a faster charge, it does charge faster with a 40-watt adapter. but you will need a new adapter. Before, I think you needed a 30-watt, now 40-watt for the fastest. You get the new camera system, which, of course, Apple is always pushing the envelope when it comes to the camera. So you're going to get the eight times total optical, quote, quality zoom. And, of course, it takes in more light because it's got a bigger sensor, so that's nice. The front-facing camera is going to be 18 megapixels versus 12. You're also going to get to take it, you know, vertical or horizontal. Let's see what else. The base storage is now 256. I'm not sure what you've got on yours right now, but 256 is the new base. And it's got the new N1 chip inside, which has Wi-Fi 7, the latest Bluetooth, and Thread. So you've got all that going on. So I would say for $100, Jay, I mean, I think it's worth it personally because it sounds like you're someone that's interested in the latest, greatest, and $100 is really kind of a no-brainer to me for having the latest technology. Yeah, I think you're right. I think I'm going to pull the trigger on it. Awesome. What color are you going to go with? I think I'm going to go with the orange. I'm from Tennessee. Oh, nice. I heard they're going to sell a lot of these in Austin and, I guess, Tennessee. There you go. Tennessee, Texas, yeah. Yeah, Texas. Okay, very cool. Well, enjoy. Pre-orders are open, so you have that. And how much are they going to give you for old phone? Do you know? Well, for the 15 Pro Max, they gave me a grand. Oh, my gosh. I'm assuming it's going to be roughly the same. So basically I paid $100, then they make you pay for the tax of the phone, which is another $70. So to me that's not like it was a no-brainer for me because the battery itself was going to be $70, $80 to replace it. Oh, yeah. No, I think this is a no-brainer. I think easy choice in your life right now. That's the easiest choice you'll make all year. All right, Jay. Well, thanks so much. Enjoy the new phone. Thank you. Take care. All right. Have a great day. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Let's see what Rebecca in Los Angeles has going on. Rebecca, you're on with Rich. Hi, Rich. I enjoy watching you on KTLA, and I love your show. Thank you. I'm calling because my friend lost his phone. It's been missing since Thursday, and we don't know if he had it on Wednesday, but for sure by Thursday it was gone. And I've tried to help them find it going the usual route using the Google Find My Phone or I called the carrier Verizon to see if they could help. And it was a Motorola Moto, let's see, Moto G Play from 2023. So I called Motorola and they weren't able to help to track it. and I sort of went online to see if I could find, like, some companies or something that might be able to help to track it. There was one that I kind of put in the phone number, and it said it found it, but they were asking for a service, and I wasn't sure, you know, how reliable they were. No, don't do that. That's no. Yeah. The only way that I know to find a lost Android is go to android.com slash find. It sounds like you already did that, right? I think I did, yeah. Okay. But I can check. Because I know I went to the Google one, the find my phone one. But you're saying Android. What was it? Android. Android.com slash find. And you have to log in with his account and his Google account. And if his phone was linked to his Google account, which if it's an Android, it should be, you can tap on that phone and you will find the location. I just did it for my Android, and it shows exactly where it is right now. It shows that it has wireless service. The battery is at 82%. You can play a sound. You can secure the device. You can factory reset it. But do you think this phone was stolen? If the battery was dead, do you think it would still be able to track it? It might give you the last known location. So these things. That's what we're looking for. That's what we want to know is where was the last known location. Let me look at a phone that I haven't used in a long time. Let's see here. Let's see if it gives me this one. So I'm checking the old Google Pixel 9 that I had, and it says contacting device. So I'm not sure if it's going to show me that last location. So it just sort of depends, I guess, if the phone is still alive. Let's see. Can you get the last? Yeah, I don't know if you can see it. It's saying contacting device, and it's taken a while. I know it's not going to find it because that phone is nowhere to be found at this point. But, yeah, it would be ideal if they showed you the last location, but it may not. The other thing you can think about is if you had, like, a tile device on there or any other. I'm trying to think. Yeah, see, it can't reach the device. So it sounds like it may not show the last known location on these things. It just kind of doesn't look like it's able to do that. So if it's alive and battery, you might be able to find it. But does he think he left it somewhere? Yeah, he thinks maybe he lost it at work because we've tried calling the phone, you know, the usual call of a phone. And we were listening around through the whole house and in the car and in the garage. I mean, everywhere on the property, we were listening for that phone and it didn't ring. And so, you know, he thinks it might have fallen out at work. So we've been calling it over there, but, you know, at this point, we don't know if the battery was dead or if it's in a location where they can't hear it ringing. Yeah. Did he have a tile or anything like that attached to that phone? No. No. Okay. No. That could be another way, or Life 360 or some of these things. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough one. If you can't find it, it might be a total loss, but that's the best way to do it, that Android.com slash find. I think, you know, note to Google, last location. Let's include that, right? That would help people if the battery goes dead. Like, you can still find your phone. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film, How did the secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard. Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No, but did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development? Nuh-uh. You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit talkaboutvaping.org. Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. This is the biggest night in podcasting. The countdown is on to our 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards. Live from South by Southwest, March 16th, we'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative, talented creators in the industry. It's truly a who's who of the podcasting world. Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. And the winner of the iHeart Podcast Award is... See all the nominees now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app, Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, writer, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around here and my wife. Boom. Boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's see. Who has been holding the longest? Let's go to Don in Provo. Let's see. What line is that? Don, you're on with Rich. Rich, you're amazing. You're handsome. Well, thank you. I mean, I'm on the radio. You can tell. I called you a long time ago about zelta.com, z-e-l-t-a.com. And then the last couple weeks ago, you said you like original ideas, right? I love original ideas. That sparked me. I have like 4,000 pages of text, you know? Okay. Prolificant Provo. and yeah every day there's a new something new original idea pretty much every single day maybe even more what's what can i help you with oh i just need to ask a question um i'm trying to find the best free ai um for my one and a half hours of video musical that i was in once upon a mattress to clean up the scenery to set the costumes the music the thing etc from the musical ones from the mattress, 1985, has an old video camera videotape file. The file is VOB. Oh, VOB. That's a tricky one. Well, so you're trying, okay, you want to run this through and get this cleaned up. So here's the deal. I am sure there are ways of doing this. At this point, I don't think there is a popular way to do it, nor do I think there's a consumer version of this. So we are just at the point right now where AI is doing a lot of stuff with photos. Obviously, Google's Nano Banana in Gemini is, like, probably the best at that. So I think we're getting there. But I think when it comes to just taking this VOB file, which, by the way, are very tricky, those are typically from DVD. So you'd have to convert that into a file that's, you know, regular, you know, like an MP4 or something. You could do that with, what's that program? Handbrake. So you can take Handbrake. That's an easy conversion program, open source, put it in there, get it into a better format. But I don't think at this point, as far as I know, there's not a website I can just recommend and say, oh, yeah, take this video and throw it in there, and it will clean up everything on that video. Like, there's just not a place that I know that will do that. Photos, no problem. We can restore photos very easily on Gemini. If you take an old picture and you pop it into Gemini and say, restore this photo, it will do it. It's just incredible, the results. So I think we're getting there, Don, with the other stuff. But I don't think we're there just yet. Yes, is someone listening and they're saying, Rich, there's a program that will do this. Like, there probably is. I don't think there's a consumer version right now that's very good at doing an entire video and AI-ing it. I mean, if you look at Wizard of Oz, they did that at the Sphere. It cost them $100 million to do that. So it's not like you can just take that video and just throw it into some program, some website that you're going to find that's going to do it for free and clean up every frame. It's just not possible right now. So I would think in the next, I would say, couple years, and I'd say couple years, probably going to be quicker than that. But I think we're going to see some of these apps that can probably do that. Thanks for the call, Don. Appreciate it. So let's go to Richard in Costa Mesa. You're on with Rich. Back in the day, I upgraded my Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10. Have been putting all the updates all the way up until today. My question is, is there an advantage to downloading and installing a current Windows 10 file to my laptop over what I have right now, which is an old Windows 10 file called the update. I'll tell you what's happening. So basically, if you use the one that's already on your computer, it's probably like, are you talking it's like stored on your computer, like in a partition or something? Yes. Like it's just already there versus downloading it. So basically, the version that's on your computer is as old as that computer. So you're talking it's, you know, how old is this computer? But I heard that it's eight years ago that Windows 10 was available to upgrade from Windows 7. Okay. So you're talking eight years old. The bottom line is that, yes, you can install it from there. You're going to be spending the next couple hours doing the updates on that program. So either way, we'll get you to the same ending place, which is you'll finally be updated after a while. Well, there's no advantage. I don't think there's an advantage. I think it's easier because you don't have to worry about downloading it. And how are you downloading it and installing it? Like, you know how to do that? Well, yeah, you go to the Microsoft website, download the ISO file to your laptop, and then install it from there. Usually it's not that easy. Usually you need to put that file onto, like, a flash drive and then make it bootable. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It sounds like you know what you're doing, so I would just do that personally because that way you're getting a fresh, nice, clean install and you're getting something that is up to date. So you're still going to have to probably do some updates on it, but I think it's going to be less than you'd have to do if you were to install this from whatever's residing on your laptop. But, Richard, it sounds like you know your way around. If you're talking Rufus and ISO files, you know what you're doing. I would say do it that way, and I think that's a much cleaner method than using the old program, which is fine, but it's going to be dated and you have to update it immediately. It's going to take a while to do that. So thanks for the call. Appreciate it. 888-RICH-101. The reviews are in for Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold. I did not test this phone. I saw it. I went hands-on with it, but I did not test it. So I will rely on the folks that did from all these other websites that I rounded up some of their reviews. But, you know, I'll be honest. I didn't really want to review it because it's not something that people are really demanding. They're just not. Like a lot of people are not asking me about foldables. This thing is $1,800. And also, I think that the, you know, and I'll tell you what the end result is of all this, but let me just go through the reviews here. So here's the improvements. You've got a new hinge. You've got new dust and water resistance. You've got Qi 2 built in on it, which is nice, the magnetic charging. It's got a bigger battery. So there are some improvements. The reviewers say that it is the most durable foldable yet from Google, so that's nice. The Verge buried it in sand, and it did survive. Google did not make this thing any slimmer. It's still heavy. It's still bulky. And when you compare it to something like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7, which is just a marvel of engineering, it's like, hold on. There's two, like, what's it? Google, you just took two phones, and you literally slapped them together. Whereas Samsung went back to the drawing board and engineered that Fold 7 to be such an amazing device and super thin. You won't even believe it. The cameras are not necessarily pro level. They're good. It's a Pixel camera, so it's going to be good. But the reviewers say it's the same sensors as the base Pixel 10, not the higher end Pixel 10 Pro series. Gizmodo even called them regressed compared to last year. Battery life and build quality was good. But some of the AI features, I disagree with that. Some of the AI folks said that the AI features like Magic Q are gimmicky. I don't think that's true. Magic Q is this thing where let's say someone texts you and says, hey, what's that restaurant we're eating at on Friday night? Google, using AI, will look through all of your emails and your texts and whatever's stored on your phone, and it will figure out that information and present it to you, and then in one click, you can just send it to your friend. So I think that's great. I've liked that on the Pixel 10 series. But the add me feature, which is the ability to take a picture and then add yourself to that picture, is very gimmicky. And it's actually very tough to use. I don't even understand why that's still on these phones because it's just I don't think anyone's using that. ZDNet says the Pixel is better for dusty environments. But Samsung wins on basically every other thing, performance, thinness, multitasking. So the verdict across the board, it's great for durability and battery life, but the Z Fold 7 is still the foldable to beat. And I could have told you that without reviewing this phone because I played with it a bit at the Google event. And while it nice it not really an upgrade in a big way from the last fold from Google And this is the third generation They didn really change too much I mean yes they made the dust resistance They added the Qi charging the wireless charging and the battery but in the hinges better. But it's really the Z Fold 7. They just improved every aspect of that device. But my biggest downside is that it does not have the magnetic ring on the back, which is really annoying in this day and age because you're paying so much for that phone to not at that feature is kind of a bummer. So anyway, Pixel Fold 10, you know, probably want to skip. I think unless you love the Pixel lineup and you love a foldable, it's probably not the best foldable out there. But I do love the Pixel 10. I will tell you that I do love that phone. I think there's still some issues with it. They're still, it's not as, the performance is not as great as the iPhone and the software is incredible. It's really a smartphone, but it's still just like not as polished. Like, it's crazy to me that like this phone is still just not as polished as the iPhone, even though I think the software on the Pixel is better. But you can do more on the on the iPhone because so many more developers have tapped into what Apple has built. And that's really, to me, the defining the differentiating factor between these two devices is that on the Google phone, it does a lot of things. It's super smart. It's got all the googly stuff. But that's sort of where it ends. Whereas on the iPhone, it's like, OK, so Apple doesn't have everything you need necessarily built in, but there's anything you can think of that you want to do, a developer has thought of it and has worked it into Apple's ecosystem. So still both great phones this year, no matter what you go with, whether it's the standard Pixel 10 series or the iPhone 17 series, really, really the best phones there. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Coming up this hour, we are going to talk eSports. And let's see, what else do I have? Oh, I promised we'll talk about the Tesla, cheaper model Teslas coming up as well. This is Rich on Tech. Let's go to Steve in Orange County. Steve, you're on with Rich. Oh, hi, Rich. Thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. What's up? I have a two-part question here. I have a Windows laptop, and it automatically installs Copilot onto it. You don't want that. Yeah, and my understanding is that it takes screenshots periodically, but like quite often of whatever you're working on. That's a feature called recall. Recall, yes. Yeah, you don't want that. No, you don't want that. No. So I was wondering, first of all, why they just put it on there without my knowledge, and then second of all, how do I get rid of it? Okay, so with – I'm relying on everything I have. Yeah, exactly. Like an email and everything. I have Proton now, and it's like worthless. Well, so Recall, when it first came out, it was promoted heavily by Microsoft, and they thought it was going to be great because what it does is it takes a screenshot of your system every couple of seconds to remember everything that you've done on your computer. Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why that may not be the best idea in the world. for a lot of reasons, right? Even if you're not necessarily doing anything bad on your computer, right? Let's just say you're checking your email. Well, think about the emails you check. Hey, Rich, confirming this is your social. Hey, Rich, here's your bank account number. Hey, Rich, here's this. Now, that's all fine. What if now all that data is stored on my computer, all those screenshots with all that private information, what happens if a hacker gets access to that repository of all that stuff? You know, now they can go through it and see everything. that's just one scenario other scenarios what if someone gets access to your computer and they search they just go and search through your recall and find all kinds of stuff that you were looking at and find either private information embarrassing information whatever so that's number two so as soon as Microsoft launched this there was no fanfare it was like a screech of a record it was like this is not a good thing and so they went back to the drawing board They ended up delaying the installation of Recall. They went back to the drawing board, figured out some more privacy situations, figured out some more privacy protections, and now it's back. And now it is. I just checked. You're right. It is pre-installed because I just found it on my machine. And I'm assuming when you first set it up, they ask you if you want it or not. But you can turn this feature off. So if you go into your settings on Windows, Privacy and Security, it's under Recall and Snapshots. And the main feature you want to look for is Take Snapshots. That is turned on. I honestly did not even realize this was turned on on my computer. So I'm actually now I'm not going to turn it off because I want to go through some of these screenshots. I just want to see what's in here. That's pretty wild. So, okay, I've got 150 gigs dedicated to my screenshots and 90 days worth of stuff. This is wild to me. So you can go through and you can turn off save snapshots and you can delete snapshots. You can delete all the snapshots. So you can delete all or you can delete from, they give you some nice options, past hour, past 24 hours, past seven days, past 30 days. So if you just need to delete some. And then they've got filter sensitive information, snapshots where potentially sensitive info is detected, like passwords, credit cards, and more will not be saved. You can filter apps. You can filter websites. And so they have thought about a lot of these things. But the reality is, for the average person, I, you know, the idea is that you were surfing a website, you were looking at jeans or whatever, and you can't remember what that website was. And so you type in jeans or you type in a color or you type in whatever description, and it would be able to find that. It's cool in theory. And I actually think it's kind of fun, but I get it. There's a lot of privacy aspects of this. So that's how you turn it off. Again, go into your settings, privacy and security, and it's under save snapshots. You can turn that off. Why did they install it on your computer? You know, tech companies just like to do that. There is another app. This is for my advanced listeners. If you are advanced, advanced, advanced, okay? There's an app called WinAero Tweaker, W-I-N-A-E-R-O. and this is an app that if you really want to decide how your computer works, you can do this with this app. So it is, let's see, is it freeware? Looks like it's, yeah, free app. So you can just tweak all the hidden secret settings that Microsoft doesn't necessarily let you adjust easily. So if you want to disable things, you want to disable Copilot completely, you want to, you know, whatever you want to do, this will let you do it. It really has like, I mean, every feature you can imagine. It's kind of like you're in control of your system again. But, again, you have to be an advanced user for this. But, I mean, you could do so many things. Look at this. I mean, if you look at the list of things that this lets you do, it's just a laundry list. I'll link this up on my website, richontech.tv. Again, the name of the app is WinArrow Tweaker, and also put the instructions on how to disable recall if you so choose. Great questions, Steve. Coming up next, we're going to talk eSports right here on Rich on Tech. So many things to talk about. I never get to everything I want to talk about on this show, ever. It never happens. I literally have a laundry list of things I want to get to, and I just can't get to them all. So maybe I need to plan less for the show. Like I just maybe I need to come in unprepared one day. But I don't think the show would be as good if I did that. But that's all debatable. So let's bring on Steve Arnsett. He is the co-CEO of Team Liquid. This is an e-sports organization. And we met at this UCLA. They opened up this gaming lounge at UCLA. That's where we met. And I just was fascinated by this world of like e-sports and e-athletes. And they call them e-athletes? Maybe. Steve, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Rich. So what is Team Liquid? Explain what that's all about. So Team Liquid, we're an eSports team, just like any other kind of sports team. Think 49ers or Golden State Warriors. But instead of throwing around a football or dribbling a basketball, we're playing video games. So we have a bunch of gamers that compete underneath the team, Team Liquid, and they play in games like League of Legends, Valorant, StarCraft, and then tons of people watch them compete and play against other gamers. And that's esports. Wow, interesting. And how many, like, your team Liquid, how many other organizations are there out there in the world? And are they part of, like, a league? Like, are you part of, like, one conference, like, versus another? Yeah, so there's probably about 300 esports teams globally around the world. and each team competes in a number of different titles or games. So instead of us just playing football or just playing soccer, we're actually competing in a lot of different types of games. And each of those games has their own respective league, like the NFL or NBA. And then our business is run by our commercialization within each of those respective leagues. And that's why we have 160 or so players that compete underneath Team Liquid all around the world. Now, you compared yourself to sort of like these big teams out there. You've got athletes. What makes esports similar or different from like, you know, the NFL or the NBA? Yep. I mean, one thing that is similar is that we are all about the fans. We have a global fan base. This is something that's a little bit different than other traditional sports is that there are a lot of gamers out there and they're all around the world. And so that is pretty much the same. Some things that are different is that we are more digitally native, which means that our demographics skew younger. Someone once told me for every baseball fan that dies, basically two esports fans are born. So there's a lot of gamers and there's only more gamers going into the future as, you know, computers and tablets and stuff are more ubiquitous with with day to day kind of activities. Yeah, and I want to talk about that in a moment. But first, I mean, this whole eSports industry, like I remember, you know, I would get pitched on it pretty hard to like cover these stories and these tournaments and all this stuff. And it was like it was big. And I still think it's big, but it's definitely gone through some changes. So was there a bubble that burst or something like what happened? Like what why do people some people have the perception that eSports isn't as big as it might have been five years ago or something? Yep. So eSports, just to put it in context, is the third most watched sport in the world after cricket and soccer. So a lot of people watch it. That's wild. Yeah, this is wild. It's mind-blowing. But in 2014, there was pretty much like this gold rush into eSports. And that was when a lot of professional sports team owners and investors all came in and put money into teams and agencies and players. and developers and the whole ecosystem, just like what would happen in like the crypto bubble or what may happen in the AI bubble, right? A lot of capital gets deployed. And those expectations were set pretty high. And if you're familiar with the Gartner hype cycle, inflated expectations, not able to deliver in the timeframe that was needed by a lot of these investors and the bubble burst. And so that happened about two years ago. And I think that caused a little bit of this kind of what's happening in esports. Is it real? But the thing is, is that there's still more people watching esports events every year prior. So we just beat last year's records. And that just shows that the demographics are still on our side, that, you know, they're just the aging of the population, more people on the Internet, more people gaming. And so what has happened over the last two years is just a lot of consolidation. There's been a number of teams that have went bankrupt or ceased to exist. You know, either their investors didn't have the right horizon on the investment or poor management. But then there's the haves and the have nots. And so a lot of the organizations that are the top of the field are in pole position have used this time to consolidate and buy other esports teams and basically become bigger. And so you saw that 300 number that I'm talking I spoke about. That's been consolidated down to probably 100. Oh, wow. Okay, so we're talking about all these esports, and, like, it's great if these athletes are, you know, they're good at these games. What games are they playing, by the way? What's the most popular esports games? Yeah, the two most played esports games, number one, League of Legends. It's made by Riot Games. They actually have their headquarters in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, California. and the second which surprises a lot of people is Mobile Legends Bang Bang which is a mobile game that's predominantly played out of the Philippines and Indonesia. Wow okay so now parents listening parents sitting there going hold on you know you're talking about all these things that these kids can do and I assume these you know these esports personalities make a decent living doing this as well because that's the top of their game but like parents are already struggling with screen time, right? They're sitting there, they're trying to get their kids off Roblox or off Fortnite or off Minecraft. And so it's like, they're like, hold on. If every parent got their kid off these screens, no one would ever make it to this level. So how do you kind of ride that line? Like, how do you know when like your kid is healthy doing stuff on, you know, eSports or not? Yeah. Well, here's my take. You know, I think gaming is one of the best vessels for education and retaining information. Like, for example, you know, my geography is actually really good. And I, in part, say because I played a lot of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Oh, wow. My U.S. history, you know, I... That's bringing it way back, Steve. Yeah, that's bringing it way back, right? And the same thing with, like, Oregon Trail. There's a lot of parents that probably played that in their computer labs at school, right? And that's how you learn a lot about U.S. history. There's something about gaming that just makes it where you can retain the information and learn the information really well. Here's the other side, is that it's highly addictive. And there's a lot of different types of games out there. And most of them are not good. And they aren't providing the kind of development and skill that is possible. So, for example, in a lot of these games that are like strategy games, you're thinking about critical placement. In team-based games, you're communicating with other gamers, usually with a headphone. So you're learning communication, resolving conflict, leadership ability in team-based games. And in a lot of these games, you're also piecing things together, and they're very complex. And so it's just about finding the right kinds of games, which is really hard. And it's making sure that you do it in moderation. And I think those two kind of key factors come into play. And the last thing that I'd say is that if you've got a kid, let's say your kid was really interested in football, or baseball. You probably go in the backyard, grab a glove, throw the ball around, right? Why aren't you doing that with your kid if they're playing Fortnite? Like grab a controller, sit down with them and be interested and curious. Like, how do I play this? And I know you're thinking, oh my God, I won't know what I'm doing. I'm going to mess it up. That's okay. That's actually better because your kid is going to teach you this game. And there's a whole learning and bonding process that happens with that. So I always encourage parents to just sit down and play. What is it realistic for your kid to become an e-sports? Do you call them you said athletes, right? Do you call them? Yeah. So do you is it realistic for a kid to become that? Is that becoming like a pro athlete, you know, in the NBA or whatever? Like, is it that or is it more realistic? And also there are other kind of like opportunities in this world if your kid is into video games. Right. I mean, I think the probability of an average kid making it to a pro team is minuscule. It's very, very small. There's just a lot of gamers out there. And think it's the same thing in like football or baseball, right? You do these things because you're learning what it's like to be in a team sport. You are being coached. You are taking those skills, but you don't really have the goal of going pro. Now, maybe if your kid is playing a particular game and reaches like the top 20 of the respective in-game leaderboard of that respective game, your kid may actually be a pro gamer. But for most, they're not going to make it that far, which means that you just use this like any other kind of intramural sport, that you can learn life skills and collaborating with other players. And so what we're finding more and more, just like you mentioned at the UCLA campus, is that universities, colleges, high schools, even elementary schools are now investing into like building out these labs, these gaming centers where kids can learn, play the right games, develop those skills. And I mean, I compare that to when I was a kid, like we didn't have access to those things. So I think it's just so cool. Yeah, it's really I mean, it's a different world for sure. I mean, I, you know, I played video games, I think a lot of people, you know, my age have played video games. But this, this is like next level stuff. Like when I've seen some of these pro gamers, especially like the way that they're doing things, I'm just like, how are you doing that so fast? So what's next for you guys? What's next for Team Liquid? We got about a minute left? Yeah. You know, Team Liquid, we are the largest esports team in the world. We've won more prize money than any other team. We have the most championships of any team. We field the most teams and players. I want Team Liquid to be a household name around the world. And it's our ball to drop or our misclick to happen. So I want to continue expanding our brand into important regions of the world where we don't have a base yet and continue to just feel the best players and teams across across the globe um that that's the goal for TL all right uh team liquid it's uh teamliquid.com steve arenset thanks so much for joining me today thanks for having me rich i appreciate it all right coming up we are going to open up the feedback uh it is overflowing this week We're going to hear what you had to say in my email this week, coming up right here on Rich on Tech. Apple Vision Pro users are getting something special this basketball season. Lakers games in Apple Immersive. I guess Apple's working with Spectrum to stream these live games to Spectrum Sportsnet customers. But it's so cool. Maybe, I'm assuming you can get them otherwise, even if you're not a Spectrum customer. But anyway, the cool thing is this is something that Apple promoted back in the day when they came out to Vision Pro. They showed us like a little clip reel, and it was like you're going to be sitting courtside at your favorite games. And now that's going to be a reality. It's really cool. Well, the problem is nobody has one of these Apple Vision Pros to be able to use this, to try it out. I mean, I'll be able to try it out, but, I mean, it never became like a big-time thing. So maybe this is the killer application. I mean, if you can sit at home and watch a game like Courtside, that's pretty cool. So watch for that this season. Tesla launched a cheaper Model Y and cheaper Model 3s, but they kind of cut out a lot of stuff. So the pricing is under $40,000 for both of these. They've got pretty solid range, but a lot less of the features. So like no autopilot, no AM, FM radio, no leather seats. I don't think they had leather seats to begin with. No rear screen, no panoramic roof. It's just a lot of like they cut like a lot of the things that make a Tesla nice. You're not getting those. But if you just want an electric car, then these new cheaper models might fit the bill. And speaking of EVs, Chevy Bolt is back. They're bringing back this EV next year, reviving the Chevy Bolt, because I guess customers wanted it. They canceled it back in 2023. Now it's going to be under 30,000, 255 miles of charge, and it's got an NACS charging port, which will be nice, because then you can use Tesla superchargers. It's got Google built in, but no CarPlay. That's a bummer. I will tell you, as I drive a car, my rental car had CarPlay. My regular car does not. I could not believe how much I loved CarPlay. I loved having that in Android Auto. They're just so great. And then the Crocs I'm wearing. What a Croc. I'm wearing Crocs right now. They are Windows XP-themed Crocs. You've got to go to my Instagram stories if you want to see the picture, at Rich on Tech. They're celebrating their 50th anniversary with these Windows XP-themed Crocs. They've got the Bliss Green and Blue Sky, the wallpaper from Windows XP, and they've got six Microsoft Gibbets charms. Clippy, the MSN Butterfly, Internet Explorer, and the Recycle Bin. And you can now buy these. They were originally just going to be a giveaway, but so many people wanted them. Now they're selling them for $80 a pop. So if you want Crocs and you want Microsoft, go ahead. All right, now for the feedback. Karen from California, my husband and I enjoy watching your TV segments, listening to you on the radio. Now your podcast keeps me company on my commute. Sorry to hear about your accident. Hope your recovery is doing well. In a recent episode, you said you preferred Google Docs. I yelled at my car radio. Microsoft Office, even the free version, has features Google doesn't. Just go to office.com to sign in. This includes immersive reader for read aloud and translation and dictation that even auto-punctuates. All right, Karen, I'll give it another try, but I'm kind of in on the Google stuff. But I like it. It's good to have options. It's office.com. Sign in for the free web version. Sean writes in, TiVo comment, I've got two TiVos with lifetime service. They'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands. I still use one every day to record over-the-air TV. Sean, I stayed home from work. I could probably tell this story now because it's been many, many years, 20 years probably. I stayed home from work to wait for my first TiVo to be delivered. I set it up. It took forever because it was over phone lines back then. I'll never forget. I invited all my friends over for my work. had a little party, and in the middle of Survivor, I just paused the TV, paused live television. Everyone went nuts, like, wait, what? And I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was a fan of TiVo for so many years. Kim writes in from Tennessee. She recently ran into a messaging mystery with her Samsung S25 Ultra using Google Messages. One of her friends wasn't getting photos. She switched to MMS, SMS, and then couldn't get RCS back for that contact. Well, it turns out the issue was not her phone. After some detective work, she discovered her friend was using Samsung messages, which does not support RCS. Ah, good to figure that out. So, yeah, if your friend's not getting your RCS, you're doing that stuff, check to see if they're using Google messages. Let's see. John, I should have listened to you. Rich, I bought an iPad 11 for $3.19. Just days later, it dropped to $2.79. I called Amazon. They said the only way to get the lower price was to return it and reorder. After hours setting up and charging it, I decided it was not worth the hassle. Still cheaper than the Apple Store, but next time I'll follow your advice and wait for those Prime Day deals to kick in. Joey says, you made my week with the shortcut to auto-reply to texts. I've needed this for two years. Thanks, Rich. Credit goes to Steven Robles. He was my guest, Beer.fm. I set up a whole bunch of shortcuts after last week's show because I was so excited about them. Let's see here. We've got Victor in California. Hey, Rich, your newsletter has golden info. I was looking through it for Windows 10 fix options, and behold, found the answer. I went to admin settings, checked for updates. A few minutes later, it appeared. Now I've got another year to save up for a new computer. I'm a happy listener and subscriber. Neil in Anaheim. Rich, I love all your tech shows. You're an amazing guy helping us navigate the challenging world of home technology. I could say more, but that's really it. Seriously, just grateful you're out there helping the masses or maybe the messes of people. Thanks, Rich. Day in Los Angeles. Love your work. Thank you, Rich. And Janine writes in, thank you for all your great info and another terrific show. I just don't know how you keep up the energy. Well, thank you, Janine. I really appreciate that. All right, if you can believe it, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Go to richontech.tv. Find me on social media. I am at richontech. Next week, we've got a former FBI operative. He's going to tell you how to stay safe from the biggest online threats. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right here with me. One reminder before I go, do not drive distracted. If you're texting, driving, all that stuff, it can wait, please, for the safety of everyone, including you. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo on the boards this week, Kim on the phones, me on the mic. My name is Rich DeMuro. I will talk to you real soon. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our 2026 iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One. Tickets are on sale now. Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com. That's Ticketmaster.com. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature, trees, and praying. And drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He fought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, even running back B. John Robinson. When I'm on the field and feeling the pressure, I usually just take a deep breath. When I'm just breathing and seeing what's in front of me, everything just slows down. It just makes me feel great before I run the play. Just like B. John, we all need a strong mental game on and off the field. Make a game plan for your mental health at loveyourmindplaybook.org. Love Your Mind. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and the Ag Council. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.