Getting it sorted and taking your calls

The EFTM podcast. Talkback technology. Got a question about tech? Trev's here to help. Not

sure what to buy. Ask Trev. Australia's number one talkback technology podcast. I was gobsmacked.

I spoke to you on the Tuesday. Thursday afternoon, this is lovely courier man of me back door

with a parcel for me. All I know is, you've been 24 hours, mate. You had it sorted after

five weeks of herald, raising herald. Mate, I can't thank you enough.

Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Hoping Australians would take

questions for over 15 years. The EFTM podcast would Trev along. Real Australians. Real questions.

Every week.

You can text Trev now. Thanks to Vodafone on 047 657 657.

Get in touch. I'd love to hear from you. Always great to hear from anyone who's listening.

All reading or however you engage with the EFTM and the content I make. It's just always

great to know that you're there. Leaving comments helps. It's all great. It's all

feeding the ego and also just driving me to keep going. The thing with a lot of what I do

is it's very lonely. Sitting here in my office, love the space, but it's just me talking

to a microphone and a computer. It's always great to hear from you, especially if you've

got a question or want to chat. You don't actually have to have a problem. You could

want to brag about something or just chat about something you bought. I don't mind

at all. We've got follow-ups today. Also while I'm in the mood to give follow-ups, producer

Rob tells me that Alan, who we spoke to last week, had some issues with two-factor authentication.

Working with some sites and others, I think there was a Coles and Woolworth link to

that. It was complicated, but strange one. Turns out he fixed it with a factory

reset of the phone. So my guess is, just a guess, is that there was some sort of

filtering going on. So there's a level of filtering going on or maybe he'd flagged

certain numbers or certain SMS senders as blocked and so they weren't coming through

at all. So a factory reset has fixed that for Alan. So that's good to know. We'll

catch up a little later with Ivan, who had his iOS 26 issues. Meaning his iMessages

were coming from a different number. Very strange. So we'll see how Ivan's

going with that one we spoke about last week. And of course, many more of

you are ready to talk. So we'll get to your calls on everything from internet

security to Wi-Fi and dash cams, surely here on the show. Still in post CES

mode, I won't lie. It's January and I kind of slowly get into the year

because the start of January is epic. We went pretty hard, as you might have

seen. If you follow me on socials, you'll know. The reason I post

bragging posts, just to be clear. We wrote 71 articles, 44 videos, 1.5

million views, 10 TV spots or crosses, is to brag. Because if I don't do it,

there's some PRs out there who may not ever engage with me. It's a strange,

strange world. There are PR people who I don't hear from. There are

brands I don't hear from. It's weird. I can't seek every brand out. So you

got to brag a little sometimes, which is why I take to LinkedIn that way,

which is why I share it publicly on social media. You just sometimes

you got to do it. Yeah, it's the reason we do that. So yeah, January starts

off busy and then because the kids are at home, I'm trying to spend maybe

30, 40% of the week at home and then we'll get right back into it in

February with a bit of work to do. I'm pretty sure there'll be a

Samsung event at some point down the train. We've got Steven's son's

wedding. There's a lot going on in February. And at the end of

February, essentially, first week of March is the Melbourne Grand Prix.

So the Formula One is back at the start of March. So we are 47, 48 days

away from the Formula One season. And then if you didn't catch my

interview with Oscar Piastri last Friday on the Today Show, you can

watch the whole thing on the YouTube. So just search Oscar Piastri

Today Show. I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere. He's got a little

partnership with Google and the Google Pixels. He's using Gemini

and it's a smart partnership because Google's already a sponsor

of the McLaren Formula One team. So now they've leveraged the

individual as well. And some fun videos of Oscar. Look, using a

bit of AI, playing silly buggers on a TV shoot with a

remote control car. Yeah, just generally doing his thing. So

yeah, he's having a bit of fun. So yeah, that was a good

fun chat and one of his most comprehensive chats since the

2025 season and ahead of the 2026 season. So looking forward to

the F1 season kicking off soon. So we'll keep pumping through.

We got shows to do every week. If we get your calls, we'd

love to take them. You can send a text 0447657657 or

download the EFTM app. And within the EFTM app every

single week, there's something to win. At the moment, it is

where I think we're only a week or so away from the end of

the kind of EFTM magazine competition run. So this

week, there's a Netgear Nighthawk router that is there for

yours to win a Wi-Fi 7 router. You can open the EFTM app. As

long as you've got an EFTM ID, which is free to sign up for,

you can enter every day. And it's staggering. I look at the

numbers. I'm a numbers man, right? It's staggering to me

even on the most popular week so far, which was the ROG

Xbox ally. The number of people who entered was, I'm

going to say on average, I'm just doing a calculation

ahead. On average, everyone entered 3.5 times. You can enter

seven times. So I think a lot of people are only entering

once. My advice is to enter every day. Give you the best

chance. And next week, we'll have a unit in Smart Dashcam to

give away. So and then I'll have to dig in and find some

more prizes, I guess. So we'll get into those. And I want

to try and get to the point where we have a prize every

week and make that really valuable for you to engage

with the app and reward for being part of the EFTM

community. So download the EFTM app now. You can send me an

Ask Trev via that as well. And of course, enter the

competitions. Until then, on with the show.

Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years.

The EFTM podcast with Trev along.

Great, heavy company and would love to hear from you. If

you want to have a chat, anything tech in your world, or

you want to brag about something you bought, I don't

mind. You can get in touch at 477-657-657. Use the EFTM

app where you can also win something every single week. Or

just go to the website EFTM.com. Mark's on the

line. G'day Mark. G'day Trevor. Mate, how are you? Happy

new year. Happy new year to you. Hope it brings some

good things for you this year. I've got good plans,

mate. I've got good plans. What can I do for you today?

Well, Trevor, I was reaching out to talk to you about Mesh

Networks, actually. Yep. I currently have a Mesh Network

Google Wi-Fi Pro 6E, which is, I believe, is a tri-brand

network. Right. And recently, I've had an increase in

speed. So I'm on the 750 plan with the NBN FD fiber to

the home with Telstra. 750 plan, you said, yeah. 750 plan. And

I have a Gen 3 modem with Telstra and three, I guess,

satellites, which came with the Mesh Network. Now, my

understanding and whether it's right or wrong, and I guess

that was the reason for the cause, is that what I can

see is that the modems receiving the full speed, I can

see that the mesh network at each individual satellite and

they're spread around the house, one's next to the modem and

the other two are in other separate rooms to, you know,

increase the speed. I work from home a couple of days a

week. And what I find is that the speed doesn't

transfer, although it gets to each of the satellite modems,

it doesn't forward it on. Now, this may be a problem

with this particular mesh network, but it chooses what

frequency it sends on. So my understanding is that the mesh

network can only transmit the highest speeds if it's using

the five or six bands, gigahertz, whereas it doesn't let you

choose them. So you can't isolate that.

You've got a single network as opposed to, you know, something

underscore 5g underscore 6, you've got a single network

SSID appearing in your home. And you don't really know how

each device is connecting like we used to have a distinct

network for 5g and whatnot. I just want to rewind a little

bit here. For first and foremost, you say that the speed is

getting to the Google devices. How do you know that?

The Google app tells you, well, and I whether this is true or

not, but the Google app sort of says, oh, it's receiving

that speed. So you can do a test with the app and it

says that it's receiving speed. And the router, so

there's three of three Google devices, one of them is a

router and two of them are satellites, I'm assuming, and

the router is plugged into the Telstra modem. Is that

correct? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And from there, you basically

got a situation where device by device or any of them get

any of your own devices getting great speeds and

others not, or are they all getting bad speeds that you

can see? No, the speed, and this is the interesting

thing. So in the room where the modem is, you'll get a

higher speed, you'll get the, you know, close to the 750, but

the other end of the house where I have the other and one

of the satellites, I'm only getting about 250 to 300.

Yeah. First world problems, let's be honest there.

No, it's not it's not first world problems. But I guess, and

maybe this is just for your listeners, I think that

everyone would be expecting that's right. Well, I

expected that. If you're paying for 750 and you've got a

decent network, let's be clear, because some people pay for

750 and they've just got the modem and they're expecting it

everywhere. So you've already gone one step ahead and got

yourself a mesh setup. The Telstra modem has its own SSID, I'm

assuming is that still broadcasting a wireless

signal? It is. I've tried it with and without. In fact,

they both have the same SSID name, but hang on. So the

Telstra modem has the same SSID as the Google Mesh

setup.

Yeah, I've switched them on and off and it doesn't I did I did

that for a specific specific reason what I and again, listening

to your show, you know, when you talked about older

devices and air conditioning, for example, uses an older

Wi-Fi. So and we've got a watering system that uses an

older Wi-Fi. So I had the Telstra modem, which I

thought would just have that, you know, connecting to those two

devices on 2.4 and isolating 2.4 on the Telstra modem, and then

only using the mesh network for everything else. And I named

them differently in the beginning, one being a, you

know, I just gave it a six at the end for the for the other

SSID on the mesh. And so that thinking that I would, you

know, it would be better because I could leave the old

devices connecting to the older network. Yes. A newer devices

connecting to the new network. I worry there's a conflict

there. It didn't matter. I worry it didn't matter. I because

what's happening is your Telstra modem is sending out a

signal with with the name as is as other Googles. And I

think some of your devices are probably jumping between the

mesh network and the Telstra modem. So first and foremost,

I would say tidy that up because you really shouldn't

have. So what happens with me? I use the same SSID here at

the office. And I was just preparing to go go away to CS

and we take a wireless network with us. And I turned it on

the office and it just created chaos in here because it had

previously previously been the office network. So to turn

off the office network to turn on the the other one to

test it, it may not have may not be obviously causing you

issues. But I would argue it is a conflict. And it's it's

one of it's one thing we need to rule out as being the cause to

your issue. If you know what I mean, like we got to be careful

not to find a thing that is causing the issue. I mean,

first and foremost, you've probably answered the question in

the in that you've got some older devices you want on that

2.4 with the Telstra, but you don't need the Telstra modem in

any way shape or form because you've got fiber to the

home, you should be able to plug that Google straight in,

you know that simplifying the network is is at its core,

the wisest thing to be doing. So if you could, I'd want to get

rid of the Telstra modem and just have the Google system. And

secondary to that, then you've got to you've got to remove

that conflict to determine whether or not that is a factor

at all in the in the speed issues, but you've probably

already done that by just disabling Wi-Fi on the

Telstra modem generally. I did. I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I

did try it didn't matter either way. And yeah, I just I

guess my major reason for calling is that because the the

Google mesh doesn't allow you to select your own separate

and yeah, you you can't force it on to the faster speeds and it

may and I'm not sure that any other mesh networks allow you to

do that. Maybe I know that you're a big fan of the Orbi and

you can certainly on an order I know you can certainly

broadcast them as separate SSIDs. Yeah. But it is very rare

these days, to be honest, because most most devices,

essentially what they do these days is your device based on

its Wi-Fi technology. So let's say you've got a Wi-Fi 6E or

Wi-Fi 7 compatible device like a smartphone. It essentially

uses the right lane of the highway. It goes, well, I've

got a, you know, E tag, I'm going to go down there. I've

got it. I've got I've got a passenger. So I'm going to

go to the T2 lane. You know, it knows where to go. So

it should theoretically it should be prioritising that the

devices onto the right part of the network to give you that

efficiency. It doesn't sound like it is though, which is the

concern. The only other thing to do is that whole very annoying

troubleshooting, which is turning pretty much everything off

and determining whether there's a particular device or

devices in the home, which may be pushing that

designation away. So for example, what I would do if

I was in if we had a whole day is I would certainly disable the

Wi-Fi on the Telstra modem. I would leave the Google

network as it is, and I would turn off everything in the

house. And then I'd go with the most modern smartphone or

laptop, whatever you've got and turn that on and see what

speeds I get to see what's happening at its kind of

clearest. And then you turn on device by device, you

understand which devices may or may not be causing

conflicts within the network. And how you rectify that is

the next big problem and question. But, you know,

essentially, you'll be able to work out where the failure is.

If that makes sense.

Certainly does.

It's not fun. And the reason to the thing is the funny thing

is, is probably a huge percentage of people suffering

the same problem and not knowing it, which is why I

joke about the first world problem. Here we are. We're

talking about devices that are that are not that are

getting 300, 250, 300 megabit speeds. And that's not

what you want because you want more because you're paying

for more abs as you rightly should. But think about, you

know, two years ago, we were, we'd be happy to have had 100.

So it's that weird thing where I think a lot of people

don't notice that they're not getting the full beans. And

you're doing the right thing by saying, hang on, I'm paying

for 750. I should be getting 750 everywhere. But you now

need to do the hard yards determining where it is.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your help. I don't think I've

been helpful. But you know, it's a good reminder to

everyone that there's, there's probably some testing

everyone needs to do to work because here's the thing. The

last thing I'd say to everyone is, look, if you're paying

for 750, and the majority of your devices are actually

only getting 250, and it's working just, you know,

effectively not as fast as you'd like it to be down

grade to the 250 or the 500, like pay less, because

there's no point paying more if your current

infrastructure doesn't allow for it is really where

my head's out on that side of things.

Understand. All right, Mark, thanks for getting a touch,

buddy. No worries. Thank you again, any time at all. Thanks,

mate. Cheers. Yeah, it's not easy. And that's, frankly, not

a solution. Mark's like, hang on, that didn't help at all.

And I get that. But short of pulling out the network and

putting in another one on the hope that it does

something, I do think you need to eliminate a couple of

the conflicts there and rule out any internal factors,

which is what the NBN would tell you as well, if they

did customer service, because I think the vast majority

of times when people have issues, it is within their

home networks, not the the ISP or, you know, the incoming

internet. Anyway, love to hear from you. This is the

EFTM podcast.

Great to have you company and we'd love to hear from

you anytime. Ted's on the line. Good day, Ted.

Good day, Trev, how are you? Yeah, real good, buddy.

What can I do for you?

Mate, look, just looking at, I took a recommendation from

you a couple of years ago on a on a phone, mobile phone.

It was a A53 Oppo, bloody good. Enjoyed it. Pretty well

priced. But I'm looking for what what if I'm gonna

update what should I get, mate, at the moment. And I'm

looking at price to another, not technologically sound. So

I'm a bit of old school, you know?

Yeah, but you like you were very happy with what

you had. Is that what you're saying to me?

Yeah, I was. I was, but I think it was the A53 Oppo.

Yeah, what did you what are you willing to pay today for a

new phone?

Oh, no, five, six hundred bucks.

Yeah, I think that's a lovely price bracket to be in,

mate. Honestly, it's it's it's almost the the the middle

spot of the mid range. There's a couple I'd tell

you to look at. Firstly, Oppo again, they have the

Reno, Reno 13 at about six hundred bucks. Yes.

Beautiful phone, like a lovely phone. Another one

that my 14 year old son loves and I love as well is

the nothing phone. Nothing. Are you kidding me?

Not lying at all. It's called nothing. It looks a bit

funky and fancy. But it's it's just different,

mate. It's just it just it just has a different

vibe to it. You may not love the interface. It's a

bit more funky and fancy in terms of what the

software looks like. But mate, at that price

point, a really good value phone. If pushed, I

probably pick the the Oppo Reno over the nothing

though. And mate, at that point, you're probably

from there. You're ducking down to probably the

Samsung Galaxy A 36 would be the next choice.

OK, but you'd still recommend Oppo mate. Absolutely.

Great phones. Yes. I think put it this way. You've

got one now. It's a simple upgrade and it'll

last you last you a long time again.

Trev, fantastic. That's all I need to know,

mate. Thank you. No worries at all, mate. Have a

great day. Yeah, you too. Take care.

No worries at all. Just sometimes you just want that

rubber stamp that says, you know what? It's still OK

to buy that thing. Isn't that interesting? You know,

that's legit like all he wanted. All he wanted

to hear was that it was still OK to get one.

And it is it's a cracking set of phones. What's

really interesting because I'm on the I do this

whenever I'm talking about a specific set of

products, I'm normally on the JB website because

it's got a really easy price kind of guide so

you can choose the max price, etc, etc.

And then it's fascinating to me that that's

$600 price point. Like you jump from $599 pretty

much down to $499 to Samsung's Galaxy A26.

There's a TCL there as well. There's HMD and I've

got to be honest with you right now. I'm not

feeling the vibe about HMD anymore. I've had

several emails about the kids phone that we

were talking about last year and had someone

say it couldn't be registered in Australia.

Like I'm starting to get very nervous about whether

HMD is long for this world. That's just a vibe

though, folks. There is a Motorola at 449.

So you know, it's a great price point. It really

is worth checking out devices in that price

point. But I think I think if he was to grab

himself another oppo, he's going to be a very happy man.

Join the conversation. Head to

eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

We would love to hear from you. Joe's on the line.

G'day, Joe.

Yeah, hi, Trev. How you going?

Mate, really good. What can I do for you?

I'm after recommendations for a dash cam.

My son's just got his new car. He's got his first car.

Sorry. I'm just after like a dash cam that

probably gives a little bit of peace of mind or

anything like that. Something that obviously records

front and front and rear. He's got any any

ideas, recommendations or anything like that.

Oh, mate, that's the easiest question in the world.

There are so many great options out there.

UNIDEN, who will disclose the responses of the

EV podcast, excellent dash cams at super affordable

prices as well. So there's there's something for

everyone there. And really, honestly, there's

something at every price point as well, which is

great. The front and rear means with certainly

with UNIDEN, you need to look for one that

has the R in the model name.

So they have so many different models, it'll

be confusing to you. But basically, if it's

got the R in the model name, it means it's got

the rear camera as well.

I'm just trying to think of there are other

features you think you might need or want in

the dash cam.

Something and also at night, because it does

work at night.

They'll all work at night. There's no issues.

As long as you're spending more than I

would say, mate, to be honest, you can get

dash cams for 100 bucks. But I would want

you spending certainly 150 plus.

You can spend 150 to 250 dollars and get

yourself a really nice dash cam.

UNIDEN's kind of mid range is, you know, three

to $400.

I'm looking at JB Hi-Fi right now. The dash

view 60R is $350 on special.

That's a front and rear.

The reason I love it for your son is because

it doesn't have a screen.

I don't love a dash cam with a screen.

I think it's an extra distraction.

I think being able to see the footage,

like, why do you need to see the wind

screens there? You don't need to look at a screen.

So and I would also say to you,

mount it on the passenger side.

So mount it on the passenger side,

the middle of the windscreen, but just to

the passenger side of the rear view mirror

so that it's not something that they're

that's in their view at all.

It's literally behind the mirror.

So if I'm sitting in my little

Hoopra, the dash cam is actually not

visible to me as a driver.

It's behind the mirror in kind of on an angle.

So that's a great place to mount them

as well and make sure you spend

the time to mount that rear camera.

But mate, three hundred and forty nine

dollars, probably a lot of money,

but it's a good, high quality dash cam

that will will will be great.

And hopefully you never need it.

But it's those it's that that's that

piece of mind, mate. You know, he comes

home, he's got a ding ding on the

on the back corner and he says,

you wouldn't believe what happened.

I'll hang on a minute. Let's go to the dash cam.

You know, yeah, with that with that

particular one, this with that

one record when his car's parked

and all that as well, too, will I pick

up anything as well or will I need

to go up another another model for

that one? Most of the unit ends do

have the parking kit available.

What I would say to you is you definitely

want to get it professionally installed

if you want the parking kit because

what has to be wired into the kind

of the fuse box so that it's

getting, you know, residual power

and you want it done properly so

that it doesn't drain the battery.

It should turn off when the battery

voltage gets to a certain point.

I'm looking here.

I don't see the note that says

that one hardwire kit.

You might need to separately buy.

I'm pretty sure you can buy it for

any unit end dash cam.

The the hardwire kit does say

unit end hardwire kit comes with it.

So that might be OK.

Hardwire hardware kit, it says,

but hardwire kit is normally another

40 bucks, but that'll that'll

that'll connect into the fuse box

so that it'll do your parking

sensors and things like that.

And what it does is, as I said,

it shuts off automatically to preserve

your car's battery.

Yeah. Again, install it properly.

Get it professionally installed.

Yeah, that's one.

But like when I take it for a service,

I'll give it to the or electrician

to do it. Well, any good

or electrician can do that.

Yeah. The other the other thing

is how can we access the data from

is it like a state card that goes in

there or can we access it by the

word? If something happens,

what do we need to take the state

card out or do we can we access

a by the word where by default

pretty much every dash cam has

an SD card in it.

So that's the simplest way you pull

it. To be honest, it is the absolute

easiest way you pull the card out.

You put it in a computer and you look

at the footage.

You need them, though, do have an app.

So you're sitting in the car,

you know, cars on, you load up the

app. There's a Wi-Fi network that

the little dash cam has and you

connect to that Wi-Fi network.

And then in the app, you can see

all the footage. You can download

it directly to your phone over the

Wi-Fi. It's not as fast

because you've got to wait for it

to download, but very easy to do.

In the event of an accident,

you know, if we're going to take the

extreme case and obviously touch

would never never something you need

to do.

The dash cam will stop working

and and the footage will be saved

and you better get it off the SD card.

OK, no worries.

Like I get home and he wouldn't

believe what I saw on the freeway

today. Just pull over in the

driveway and I'll sit there and

download it before I go inside.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good.

That's good. No, that's fine.

Thanks. Thanks for that, Trevor.

How old did you say?

18. Yeah, mate.

Look, it's a it's a fun time.

We're still my 19 year old still

has life three sixty installed on

his phone.

Yes, that is my son.

And the great thing about that is

we pay. I think you have to pay

extra for it. It's a subscription.

But we get the driver alerts then.

So we get notifications about high

speed driving, like braking,

yeah, trip, trip durations,

all that kind of stuff.

And I just said to him,

it's a piece of mind for us.

Your girlfriend lives 30 minutes

away.

You get driving there, you know,

four times a week.

We want that piece of mind

and knowing you arrived and that

everything's OK. Yeah.

So yeah, that's it's a great

little thing to continue to do as

well.

Yes. No, thanks for that.

Appreciate it. Just one more

question for that.

An air tag.

It's the one that's sticking

in the car or anything like

that. Is it any particular brand

or anything like that?

Or were they pretty much

all or pretty good?

Pretty much all the same, mate.

You know, if you're on Apple

Family, then get yourself get

yourself a generic Apple Air

tag.

There's a company called.

We're an Android family.

Sorry. You're an Android family.

OK, well, get yourself

get yourself the tile, which also

works with Life360.

So tile would be a perfect

perfect way to do it.

Is that C I L E or?

T I L E.

I think you can get it with JB.

Yeah, yeah.

And and yeah, they're

they're they're great.

And they're they're actually

owned by Life360 now.

So it's all part of the one

app.

Yeah, no worries.

Thanks, Trevor.

Appreciate your time.

It's great, great, great help.

No worries, mate.

Enjoy.

No, thanks, Trevor.

Good to have you.

Thanks very much.

Good on you.

Yeah, I mean, it's a fun time

to to be a parent

is getting your kids in the car

and then you have that.

You want to give them the freedom,

you know, how you go.

Enjoy.

But you also have the complete

nervousness built in,

which is totally fine and

legitimate.

So yeah, it's it's

it's all good fun.

But good luck to Joe on that one.

This is the EFT and podcast.

Great to have you company.

I love to hear from you

whatever you want to talk about.

Ivan's on the line.

Good day, Ivan.

Good day, Trevor.

How are you?

Mate, very well.

This is a follow up because

when we spoke last,

you were you had the strangest

problem I reckon I've ever

encountered.

I'm still convinced of that

because it was that your phone

number was not registering

correctly with iCloud

and like the last two

digits has essentially been

changed.

I mean, it was just give me

a two second summary.

That's kind of broadly it,

isn't it?

Yeah, well, bizarre.

It was bizarre.

Even Apple said that when I

was first contacted by them.

But yeah, after updating,

as I said, from 18 to 26,

I found that my own messages

were being delivered using

a different number.

I can still call out normally

on my on my correct

number, but my own messages

are going out and coming up

on people's phone.

Unknown.

Now, what I mean, you tried

Apple support.

You'd had you had various,

as you said, they'd conceded

the bizarre nature of your

concerns.

But we tried to escalate it.

Well, what's happened since,

mate? Where are we at?

OK, so shortly after

my last conversation with you,

I was contacted by Apple,

their corporate sector,

and they assigned me a senior

engineer.

And her name was Sarah

and she was very helpful.

So within a day,

basically, I was on the phone

for a good three or four

hours with her.

And we went through all the

procedures that I had done

before with the previous

Apple people.

And she came to the

conclusion that she

that have to be escalated.

So she took a number of logs

from my device

and she came back a few

hours later and said, I want

you to do two things.

I want you to reset your

phone to

a factory reset.

And I don't want you to use

your iCloud backup to restore it.

I want it as a blank phone.

And I did that.

And unfortunately, guess what?

It came back with the same problem.

Oh, right.

So after that, she said,

could we just try one other thing?

I want you to switch off iMessage

and then I want you to not

also log out of your iPhone account.

And I want you to switch it on

24 hours later and see what happens.

And I did this.

I followed her extractions to the T

and guess what?

It fixed it. Wow.

Did she indicate that they had done

something or that was just

literally problem solving?

No, not at that stage.

And it was with Sarah, she said,

this is completely out of

any script that she has in front

of her for the customer to do.

And this is, you know, she just said

before I escalated to the engineering

department.

Just can you do that?

Because sometimes the

my account, my Apple account

cache gets corrupted

and after 24 hours, it's refreshed.

Oh, OK.

And so it brought in the new number

and, lo and behold,

or the new number, my correct number

for the for the I message function.

And that was the end of the section.

My only problem was I had to go then

and then put all my not been able

to use the cloud backup.

I had to go and put in my all my email

accounts and et cetera, et cetera,

download all my apps.

And but I got I got the phone back

after about a day of fiddling

around to its exact its exact,

you know, look before that.

And then I quickly did a backup.

Yeah, in a working state,

in a working state.

Now I'm able to, as I said,

now I'm able to upgrade to 17

because this one, as I said,

was getting beyond its life

with the battery and the speed and whatever.

And I noticed that as soon as I went

from 18 to 26, that it was a little bit clunky.

Mate, unbelievable.

I mean, it's such a bizarre thing.

And now you can send messages again

because you're running your business

off that number, too, aren't you?

I was, that's right.

And I've got to thank you, Trevor,

because, you know, I don't know what would happen

to the average Joe out there

because they wouldn't have been escalated

to be given access to a senior consultant

and engineering.

And, you know, as soon as I put the handset down

within a few hours, they called me reaching out.

Mate, a pleasure.

It's the least I can do

if I'm going to spend this many days

flying and traveling around the world

every year talking to these companies.

The least I can do is take advantage of them a little bit, eh?

Yeah, well, absolutely.

You know, it's not what you do it to your nose.

So as I said, I'm in IT

and I was scratching my head for weeks.

And you know, it's funny

because you mentioned the script that they go by.

And look, I think it's really important

people realise that when you're speaking to someone,

even if you're escalated within a call centre,

they're still only restricted

by whatever they've seen before

or whatever the script says.

Do you know what I mean?

Correct.

They're not the engineers.

So how do you break it through?

How do you break through that barrier

and get them to realise this is unheard of?

This is unprecedented.

We need a different level.

Yeah, well, Trevor, that's what I went through.

I was going around in a continual circle.

Every new person I was assigned to

just put me straight through the same old screen

that they have in front of them

and it wasn't getting anywhere.

And even Sarah said this is something

that they've never seen before.

And I believe it.

You are a trailblazer in the worst possible way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, mate, I'm glad it's sorted.

I'm glad you've got your number working fully and properly again,

mate, and it's a better way to start the year.

Absolutely.

And thanks again for your help.

Mate, absolute pleasure, mate.

Enjoy.

OK.

No worries at all.

Good on you.

Great to hear from Ivan again there

and I'm glad we got resolution.

As I said, I'm not bagging anyone.

It's technical support.

To the point where, and this is a weird segue,

but I don't really bag the Optus call centre

for the triple zero emergency issues

because in the general state of play,

if you're a call centre operator on a mobile network

and someone says triple zero is not working,

you check the network, you follow a procedure

and you go, well, it's all working for us.

Obviously, Optus learned from that

and they'll escalate every single one of those calls.

You know, Apple now probably have some sort of record

of this very strange inquiry

and if it happens to just one more person, maybe,

they'll benefit from Ivan's knowledge of getting it working.

Good stuff.

Glad I got it sorted.

You're listening to the EFTM podcast.

You can text TRIVNOW thanks to Vodafone

on 047-657-657.

We would love to hear from you anytime George is on the line.

Good day, George.

Hello, Trev, how are you?

I'm really good, mate. What can I do for you?

Look, a couple of quick things, mate.

These telly sticks or flick sticks for your telly.

Yes.

Yeah, my grandson bought me one of those fire TV thingies.

Yep.

And mate, I'm 76.

I can hardly work an iPad.

Never mind all that crap.

He reckons the telly sticks are the bee's knees.

No, I don't like buying stuff from America in the first place

of any good.

Look, so there's a couple of differences.

When you say something like a flick sticks

and there's a bunch of different brands out there,

very different to a fire stick.

So an Amazon fire stick is a legitimately great product

because what it does is it brings all of the known streaming

apps like, you know, Stan and Netflix and Amazon Prime

and all those things to any TV.

So if you've got a TV that's five, 10 years old,

it might not have all the latest apps.

Well, a little stick like that or a Google Chromecast.

Boom, you've got all the apps and they just work.

And the big thing is a lot of people

think that their TV is broken because an app doesn't work.

Well, who cares?

As long as the picture turns on, you can plug one of these,

you know, Amazon fire sticks or Google Chromecast into the TV

and you basically make it brand new again.

However, if you're on Facebook or you're getting stuck

in a little bit of a rabbit hole online,

you might come across these ones called Flixy Sticks

or Flix Sticks or there's a million different names.

And they market themselves.

They say, you know, X number of live TV channels,

live sport and da da da da.

Mate, it's not true.

It's not real.

What they are is exactly the same as an Amazon fire stick,

except Dodgy is heck.

There's no support.

They're not very fast.

They they're not very reliable.

They do have some apps built in.

But those live TV channels, those live sports,

they refer to, that's Americans learning about Free

to Air TV.

So imagine a world, George,

where we thought that the only way to watch sport

was on Fox Sports.

Just imagine that was the basic mentality of Australians,

that the only way to watch the cricket was on Fox Sports.

And then imagine someone started advertising

a little product that you plug into your TV

and then you plug in an antenna

and there's free live sports on Channel 7.

There's the cricket on Channel 9.

There's the football on Channel 9.

There's the tennis.

Imagine we marketed it like that.

You'd be like, wow, that's pretty cool.

It's Free to Air TV.

I mean, there's free sport in America

just like there's free sport here in Australia

just that Americans don't know it.

By default, Americans assume and rely on pay TV, cable TV.

70% of American homes have cable TV or satellite TV.

And don't even realize that some sport,

not all of it, is available free on the broadcast networks.

That's all those little sticks are promoting

is the free stuff.

Okay, all right.

All right, another very quickly thing.

I've been watching you fight

and a little robot and meet and face.

Mate, you should have picked the big ones to fight,

not the little ones.

No, you're kidding, aren't you?

As soon as I saw the size of those robots,

I thought I'm having a go at them.

Now, I took two of them on, mate.

That was so clever.

Anyway, I've got an energy team.

Watch the video back in the background

on the other side of the ring.

There's two people standing with their hands behind their back.

They're the people controlling the robots.

Is that right?

Yeah, they're using just little like Xbox controllers.

So they're not even autonomously boxing, mate.

Unfortunately, I don't want to spoil it for you,

but yeah, that's the situation.

No, okay.

Now, I've watched your things

about the new TVs all coming in.

I've got an LG 65 inch,

2017 B-Series OLED.

Beautiful.

I'm more than happy with it,

except for the burn in the bottom,

the Channel 9, Channel 7, the insignias.

Can that be fixed?

It can't be fixed, no.

It can't be fixed, but the good news is

that it shouldn't deter you from a modern OLED.

So basically, they know that that was a problem

over the years.

So a modern TV has a thing called Pixel Shift

built into it,

which basically moves the pixels around

without you noticing, just by a few millimeters.

And it means that nothing is quite stuck

on the same spot all the time

and the pixels get lit up differently.

But it is a reason why OLED is not foolproof.

It's not perfect.

It's unbelievably beautiful to look at,

but we are probably five to 10 years away

from a replacement technology that won't suffer burning.

You've got seven beautiful years out of that TV.

It's still a great TV.

I mean, do you throw it out because of the burn in?

Probably not.

Does it become maybe the man cave TV

and you get yourself a new lounge room TV?

Maybe, but yeah, a modern TV,

I'm not gonna say it won't burn in to be very clear

because if you only watch Channel 9,

18 hours of the day after five years,

you're probably gonna see a Channel 9 logo.

But here's what I would say to you.

If it took four years to burn in last time,

it's gonna take six or seven this time

because they've improved the technology in such a way.

All right.

I was looking at either the high sense or the LG,

but I saw what you've got.

I might wait a few years anyway.

Yeah, mate.

You've got a good TV.

Don't be buying a new TV just for the sake of it.

Ha ha ha.

Mate, I'm 76.

I'm gonna last that much longer anyway.

Oh, stop it.

You've got another three TVs in your life easily.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Anyway, my friend, eat more snakes.

Thank you very much for doing what you're doing.

I thoroughly enjoy it.

No, that means a lot.

Thank you, mate.

And thank you later, Scott and Adam for me, mate, too.

Absolutely, mate.

Good on you, buddy.

Thank you.

Take care.

Cheers.

No worries at all.

Very nice of George to be following me on Instagram.

Probably Instagram, not TikTok.

Maybe even Facebook, actually.

And watching all the videos we made from CES.

Very proud of what we did at CES.

Numbers are old now,

but like 71 different articles.

I think we made over 40 videos,

over 1.5 million views in the week we were there.

Yeah, it really, really dominated and very happy

with the performance of all that content.

So thank you, George and everyone else for watching.

Love to hear from you.

If you've seen the text,

producer Rob will definitely get back to you

and we'll try and line you up for a show very soon.

We record on Tuesday.

So hopefully we can talk to you in a Tuesday,

not too far ahead.

Jeff's on the line, good day, Jeff.

Good day.

Trevor, how are you going?

It looks like you had fun over there in CES.

We had a great time, mate.

Had a really, really great time.

I appreciate everyone engaging in the content, mate.

That's good.

What can I do for you?

Mate, as I said on my submission to you,

with today's major programs

and that they have their inbuilt

or advanced technology built in for security

and what have you,

now I've been using Norton's or Semantic products

for over 40 years.

And I'm just wondering whether we really need

off the shelf security programs now

given that there is inbuilt security in a lot of programs.

I think it's a great question, Jeff, it really is.

And I think if you reframe your thinking about

what it is that you're subscribing to,

what it is that the product that they offer,

you go back 15, 20 years

and we were buying antivirus software.

So it was software that when you downloaded

something out of your email or off the internet,

it would check that to see if it was a virus

and it would stop you from running it

and that was good.

Then we moved to malware,

which was there might be legitimate software

that had other malicious intent within it.

And then we've moved now,

that's still a broad problem,

but it's not, no, we're near the problem it used to be.

Now we've moved really to what we call internet security

and that's, I genuinely believe,

absolutely something we still need.

But it's actually more about assessing

your individual need based on the devices you use.

So is the first thing I install

on a computer internet security software

because I want to protect it from breaking?

No, is it internet security software

because I'm worried about what I'm gonna click on

accidentally that I fall for?

Yes, so what I want and what I want for everyone

is I want your phone, your tablet and your computer

to be second guessing you.

So in my browser, I use Chrome as a browser,

most websites are secure these days

so the transmission of internet's pretty good

and easy, information is secure,

but when I click a link, can I trust it?

When I search my email, when I search the internet,

can I trust the links that appear before me?

And what Trend Micro does is it puts this little tick box

next to every single link

and if it doesn't have a green tick, I'm not clicking it.

And the same applies on my smartphone.

If I get a text message, which does have a link in it

and I do think that it might be a real text message

and I click that link, I use Trend Micro,

Norton does the same.

It will come up with a message saying,

mate, don't click here, we suspect this to be bad.

And then it's on you, it's on you to click

if you really wanna click.

So yes, that's why I think we still need it.

Do you need the full suite?

Are you getting the true benefit of every single function

of the software that you're paying for?

Totally up to you, mate, but I absolutely want you

and everyone else to have the basics,

which is multi-device, protection from yourself

is what it should be called.

You protect it from yourself,

clicking on a link that you shouldn't click.

That's it, yep.

And the same goes for emails.

Yes.

I always check the sender.

If I don't know who the sender is,

I'll click on their name or the heading

and open up and see who it's actually coming from.

And sort of do my own security check

to make sure it's not spam

or something that's got a data miner connected to it.

Yeah.

My experience goes back to when I was using an IBM 64.

Wow.

It had a nine-inch floppy disk drive and it was 64K.

It's something.

Yeah.

Since then, I've been sort of into programming

or paradox,

WYSIWYG and a few other things,

but it's one of those things.

If you don't continue using it,

you don't keep up with it.

You cannot follow it.

Have you played around with any of the AI tools

in that sense then?

I've only just started to,

I've got an old computer,

but it does it when I say old,

it's probably five years old,

but it still works well.

And I don't see the point in replacing it

because the software is getting updated all the time

and it's doing what it needs to do.

But yes, the AI I should say has got me interested.

So I'm 75 years of age

and I still find things quite interesting.

I think that's the most exciting part about it is

it doesn't matter how old you are,

there's something in it.

Now, it might be that you're querying it

for basic information,

but also you talked about computing and programming

and these things are smart enough to build apps.

I mean, you could use AI

to not just learn a little programming language,

but actually do the programming.

So I'm fascinated by it for you.

And I hope that there's as many evolutions of technology

that you're seeing in your retirement

when I have time on my hands

because to muck around with that stuff

and still be able to kind of be at the cutting edge

and not feel like it's of a distance.

Like, I feel like technology's now closer to all of us

than it ever has been.

Yes, I'd agree.

And I've also now thought maybe I can,

as I mentioned before,

when you open up an email

and you're not sure who's sending it

and click on it and find out who it is,

whether I can write a program through AI

that will automatically do that for me.

Well, I would hope that we get to a point

where that's built into our email.

You know, like, I like, I mean, I use Gmail

and I'd like to think that they are spending as much time.

I think they are.

Here's a question for you, Jeff.

Have you fallen for a scam?

No, fortunately.

Yeah.

Because I'm...

And I can't remember the last time I wanted to either.

I do, thank you.

So I feel like if we're taking the time

and I do think that the Google system is unbelievable,

I think it picks up a lot more spam

than people might appreciate.

I rarely go into my spam folder

because I think it's false positives are very, very rare.

I only go there if I'm literally looking for an email,

someone said they sent.

But most of the time, mate,

what's in spam is literally rubbish.

So I think they're doing a great job

at cutting out that stuff.

Yeah, no, they have.

And I think it's Samsung that got NOx security.

So everything I've run virtually is on Samsung.

So with Norton,

I think I've got some pretty good security.

But that's why my question was,

with the technology today,

do we need the off the shelf?

But yeah, I agree that getting those green ticks

or getting...

I'm not going to open this connection

because we think that something wrong with it.

I'm very happy to receive those.

Yeah, it makes...

It gives you a sense of safety and security

when you can rely on that.

So it's good that you've seen that

and found that in Samsung NOx like that

and you can put some faith in it.

So mate, bottom line, you're doing the right thing,

but maybe just analyse whether you need the full suite

of everything that's being offered to you

by the software vendors would be my only feedback.

Yes, no, I've actually culled on what I need

because some of it is what I check anyway.

So I don't need to pay for what I can already do myself.

There you go. Good idea.

Good on you, Geoff. Great to hear from you, mate.

All right, Trevor. Thank you very much.

And I enjoy what you do.

Oh, mate, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, mate. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Geoff. Good on you, mate. Lovely to hear from Geoff

and everyone this week on EFTM podcast.

It is a busy time of year.

We're still in school holiday,

so we're kind of balancing away,

getting a bit of work done while trying to see the kids

and getting the shows done.

So it's all happening and then it all just winds up again.

February is going to be a very busy month.

We've definitely got a Samsung event in there somewhere, don't we?

There's got to be a new phone.

That can't be too far off being revealed.

Then we've got the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne.

So stay tuned.

The EFTM podcast.

Tech, cars, lifestyle.

This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.

I am pleased that we got a result for Ivan earlier in the show

to get Apple to sort that out for him.

And you can imagine the head-scratching that was going on there.

Strange stuff.

And I still don't understand fully whether they did anything

or whether a reset and a pause was what did the job for him.

So good news, though.

He's sorted, he's happy, and that's what we like.

We like happy campers.

So if you've got a challenge you want us to assist with,

a brand that you want us to connect with,

I'll do my best, no guarantees,

but we'll always try to look after you, our listener.

And that's what we're here to do.

I enjoy it, and I appreciate the help of producer Rob

getting me through each and every show

and keeping me on my toes with regards

to making sure I follow up all those things.

But so let's do it all again next week

as we get close.

I mean, can we, hang on, hang on, hang on.

I'm just going to the diary.

Like, next week is the last week of January.

How we already won 12th through the year.

Dude, that's amazing.

So next week, oh my God, that is just crazy.

Wow, anyway, let's just pause on that for a moment

and move on and come back to the concern

about the fullness of time at another angle.

Thanks for listening, folks,

and we'll do it all again real soon.

I appreciate you being here each and every week.

This is the EFTM podcast.

Getting it sorted and taking your calls

Formula One

UNIDEN

Toyota Supra

dash cam

About this episode

Original notes