TEH 063: 500 Channels …$10 Each

In This Episode: Listeners invited to Meetup in Denver. Apple’s big announcements. The hottest chat app for teens is…. AT&T’s “5G” still isn’t. Robocalls.

This Week’s Hosts

  • Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True.
  • Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
  • Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
  • Longer Bios on the Hosts page.

Show Notes

  • In the warmup, Leo talked about backing trailers (which led to an aside about parallel parking), Gary saw the Apollo 11 movie, which led to a discussion about the other missions that the moon landing built upon (and that President Nixon had a prepared memo “In Event of Moon Disaster“. And Randy reminded listeners that we’re hosting a Meetup in Denver next Tuesday at 7:00 p.m., so please register at that link and come by if you’re in the area!
  • Gary summarized the big announcements from Apple today. They launched a magazine/newspaper subscription service today, and will be creating a streaming TV service later in the year that will be available across most TV devices. Apple also will create a subscription game service and offer its own credit card that ties in with Apple Pay.
  • The Apple credit card led to a side discussion about who’s on the hook for credit card fraud, and that the Kroger grocery chain is “banning” Visa from many of its stores due to high fees (USA Today).
  • Leo brought up that the hottest chat app for teens is — not Signal, not Facebook Messenger, not TikTok … it’s Google Docs! It’s a feature that’s easy to use, and easy to hide — something that is apparently useful for kids in the classroom (The Atlantic). TEH uses Google Docs not just to keep track of what we’re talking about, but use the chat function while we’re recording too. Or, as Leo put it, we’re soaking in it!
  • Randy had a couple of brief follow-ups to make fun of AT&T Wireless: AT&T is still holding firm to their bogus claim that they offer 5G service, when it’s actually not 5G, and a “study” by Opensignal found AT&T’s fake 5G E is slower than Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s 4G. And in a follow-up about the robocall scourge, AT&T’s CEO was giving a presentation in Washington DC and was interrupted by a robocall, which led to how the guys avoid such calls.
  • Last, if you didn’t know already, you can get an email notification of new episodes of TEH: check in the site’s sidebar for a subscription form. It’s an ad-free automated notification when something new is posted.

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