Tim Cook has announced the date he will step down at CES with John Ternus taking over, what’s it all mean?

We play a new game, called PayPhone Tag and you can join in! Plus your calls on Email issues on Android, Saving MONEY on your mobile and smartphones as cameras!

Be part of the show, send us a text or whatsapp to 0477 657 657

Full AI Generated transcript below

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[00:00:51]  ANNOUNCER

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SEGMENT 1: TIM COOK STEPS DOWN AS APPLE CEO

[00:01:09]  TREVOR

Alrighty, great to have your company. Thank you for joining us Tuesday, April 21st, the day that we will remember that Tim Cook stepped down as Apple CEO. Well, announced he was stepping down anyway. Um, doesn’t come much bigger than that. Put it this way, when ABC calls me to be on the television, you know it’s a big tech story. You know, it’s funny, I can call I kind of judge the story by the number of phone calls. And yeah, today’s a big day. It was already a big day ’cause it’s my Tuesday for all my radio spots. But then we end up with a huge announcement at about 6:00 AM our time in Australia, in Sydney anyway, that Tim Cook would be standing down. Now, long rumored. And this is the thing, I got this question a lot. Is this a shock? Da da da da da. The announcement was a shock, but the contents of it were not, right? So we weren’t made aware it was gonna happen. We weren’t sitting by the phone waiting for an email, but when it was announced, it was not a shock what was announced. Does that make sense? Uh, John Ternus, the new Apple CEO, um, was well rumored. And I think that’s probably part of the strategy over the last couple of years, or certainly last 6 months. You know, people like Mark Gurman at Bloomberg have been solidly reporting this, and I think that is a strategy. I think from a business perspective, you leak the hell out of what’s happening and see how it lands. and it landed okay. There wasn’t any major pushback. Um, they, they aren’t struggling to justify this. Um, it’s kind of made perfect sense in many ways. So Tim Cook will become the executive chairman of Apple. John Ternus will become the CEO. And obviously the quotes are, uh, glowing. Uh, you know, Tim Cook says it’s been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company. Um, But he says of Ternus, he has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and honor. He’s a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are too numerous to count. So 25 years, the bloke is not old. Like I’m talking, I have to find out, we could probably find out, I guess. But I’d say he’s not 50. I’m gonna Google him as we speak. Yeah, born 1975, so he is 50, just 50. Now Tim Cook’s 65, so that to me is the indicator here. Tim’s direct leadership team are senior, you know, Greg Joswiak, Bob Borchers, people who have been at Apple for a very long time and frankly at some point have to question their own desire to retire. And so Ternus is the youngest of them, and that’s the smartest pick because he’ll last the longest. If Bob Orches or Greg Joswiak were appointed CEO, you’d be questioning when they were going to retire because they’re of Tim Cook’s ilk and age. So it makes sense to go with someone younger who has absolutely got 15 more years, maybe 20 in him as CEO. So Tim Cook did 15 years as CEO. That is a solid innings. It’s now a $4 trillion company. So Ternus says, I’m profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward. Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I’ve been lucky to work under Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. So that’s fascinating, right? Because it’s also a way for Apple to cement the Steve Jobs mantra legacy vision for another 10 to 15 years. So if you wait another 5 years for Tim Cook to leave, you lose Ternus ’cause he’d go somewhere else. You’d lose some of the senior executives who are getting older and you have a bunch of young people have the Steve Jobs legacy built into them. The distortion field is strong there, and that’s a really important part of the business. So, um, under Cook’s leadership, it’s grown from a market capitalization of $350 billion to $4 trillion, representing more than a 1,000% increase. Yearly revenue has quadrupled from $108 billion in the first year of Tim Cook’s time to $416 billion. Wow, it’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of revenue. So congratulations to John Ternus. Uh, he’ll be great. He’s an engineer. He’s led some of the most amazing products. He’s worked through the iPad line, the AirPods line, iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch. There’s talk online about how he was a mechanical engineer designing virtual reality headsets at a company called Virtual Research Systems before he joined Apple in 2001 as a member of the product design team. So that’s a fascinating thing for me because it means he has that kind of VR knowledge, and obviously that probably played strongly into the Vision Pro. But where does it go from here? And that is the vision for Apple’s future. It is he’s not going to change anything in the next little while. All right, but where the teams that we don’t see, the rooms that we’ve never seen, what are they working on and what will he push them to work on? That’s the big change. He is gonna take the role of CEO on September 1st. Now, September 1st, by my calculations, is one week and one day. Actually, it’ll be one week exactly ’cause the event, the iPhone event would normally be on a Tuesday. It’ll be one week before the iPhone event this year. Do you have Tim Cook and John Ternus on stage as a handover at their first major event, or do they do that at WWDC? It’s going to be fascinating, but nothing much will change. But we do have the Apple foldable launching this year, and that story is going absolutely bonkers right now on EFTM. We have not seen traffic like this in a very long time. Um, so a lot of interest in the foldable from Apple. All eyes on Apple because of the foldable and because of the AI. So let’s just see how it all plays out for John Ternus. Congratulations, the new CEO of Apple. Um, he’ll be fine. Nothing can go wrong for years. It takes I think, I think of a company the size of Apple with a product lineup like Apple’s, like a cruise ship or an oil tanker on the open seas. It doesn’t just turn around. It has to be turned over much time. So you won’t see any vast changes in the early stages. But yeah, change is definitely afoot.

[00:07:50]  ANNOUNCER

Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

SEGMENT 2: CALLER — JOHN (Gmail Security & Home Network)

[00:07:55]  TREVOR

That’s all you gotta do. I’ll take your email. Producer Rob will be in touch and we’ll get you on the line. John’s on the line. G’day, John.

[00:08:03]  JOHN (caller)

G’day again, mate. How are you?

[00:08:05]  TREVOR

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

[00:08:07]  JOHN

Um, I noticed something strange in my Gmail, uh, on my Android phone.

[00:08:13]  TREVOR

Okay, let me, let me open up Gmail on my Android phone so we’ve kind of got a bit my bearings. What did you notice?

[00:08:20]  JOHN

Yeah, um, some time back, what email asks for, um, confirmation of your credentials every now and again, and you’ve just got to re-enter. It’s usually OptusNet. Email that happens with. So I do that and then it’s okay. But then just before Christmas, Optus had problems with their emails and I couldn’t re-establish contact with OptusNet through my Gmail accounts. And so I kept doing it and then I realized that my name had been spelled differently. If I give you an example, maybe an email address is abcd@optusnet.com.au. Well, that would be my email address, but this other email address had a line above the A.

[00:09:18]  TREVOR

Okay. Now, when you say you’re seeing this alternate email address, where? In emails that are received or sent or in your actual account?

[00:09:27]  JOHN

No, I’ve not had any problems from it, but I went and looked for a Gmail address that I wanted to do some eBay shopping. And so if I had an email and it was there was problems with it, I could just delete it and forget about it.

[00:09:45]  TREVOR

Sure, sure.

[00:09:47]  JOHN

Sort of a throwaway thing. So I went into, um, settings. So if you go into your email and then your top left corner with the lines.

[00:09:59]  TREVOR

Yep. If you hit that down the bottom settings.

[00:10:01]  JOHN

Yep. Settings, general settings.

[00:10:05]  TREVOR

And then it lists your email accounts.

[00:10:08]  JOHN

Yeah. And then you, with your email accounts, you, yeah, you manage notifications. So in there was my other email addresses. Plus this one with this line, right?

[00:10:21]  TREVOR

So you’re saying if you go on your Gmail, if you hit the hamburger menu, you go to settings, and on the very next page where it says general settings, and then at the very bottom it says add account, but in between are any email addresses you have set up through the Gmail app. You’re saying, you’re saying you could see an extra one which was yours misspelled?

[00:10:43]  JOHN

No, excuse me. If you go into general settings you then go into Manage Notifications. What I wanted to do was to add a sound bite to tell me, you know, I was getting emails, alerts from this email address and it was listed in there. And so there’s like a double up of my email address. So abcd@optusnet.com.au. And then the second one was sitting there with a line above the A. Hmm.

[00:11:15]  TREVOR

But are you sure it doesn’t appear in that settings list as well as under general settings notifications?

[00:11:21]  JOHN

No, it’s not in any accounts or anything at all. It’s just something odd. When I was trying to fix things up with Optus when they were in trouble before Christmas, I did notice that this address was coming up automatically. You know, as you put your information in, automatically fills out the boxes.

[00:11:42]  TREVOR

Of course.

[00:11:42]  JOHN

Yep, I was trying to do that, and of course you’re not looking for a little line across the letter A.

[00:11:48]  TREVOR

Not at all.

[00:11:50]  JOHN

So you just do it blindly for how many times do you hit your head before you stop trying to put the information? Um, so then I spotted it and went, oh, that’s where’s that come from? So I retyped it in properly, and then it connected and I’ve not had problems and I’ve not received because if you got that email from me and you were one of my friends or contacts, you would just blindly click on it thinking it’s from me.

[00:12:18]  TREVOR

Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:19]  JOHN

And then if there’s a link there, you’re in trouble. So I’ve actually fixed it.

[00:12:27]  TREVOR

Um, I mean, I think, I think you’re right. It’s, it’s nefarious. It’s, it’s probably happened somewhere where you’ve typed it, and because the A that little line over the A comes when you hold down the A on the keyboard for 20 seconds, and it’ll come up. So it could you could feasibly see how that might happen, right? But my only concern, and I think it’s probably wildly, um, overcautious, but, but there is, there is a slight concern that, you know, you never know what might have happened here, I would be changing my password for that email account. So the OptusNet, the one that had the A over it on the standard regular one, just for safety, just for security, just for pure peace of mind, I would change my password on that account.

[00:13:18]  JOHN

But that email is not something I want to use, that one with the line above the A.

[00:13:23]  TREVOR

No, no, no, the normal one, the one without the line.

[00:13:25]  JOHN

Normal one, yeah, the one without the line.

[00:13:27]  TREVOR

Just, just in case, mate, just in case, right? Someone somehow infiltrated something, just for pure peace of mind, mate, um, change the password so that you know for sure. And if, if you go into Gmail on your desktop, so on your computer, um, you should be able to find a place to log out of other devices. So if anyone happened to have somehow gotten into you, um, you can so when you’re on gmail.com, you can scroll all the way down the bottom and it says last account activity. You can click on details and it will tell you what other computers are logged into your account, and you can actually just log them all out.

[00:14:06]  JOHN

All right, I’m going to have a look later.

[00:14:08]  TREVOR

All right, just for safety, mate.

[00:14:10]  JOHN

I did get rid of it.

[00:14:12]  TREVOR

Yeah, good, well done.

[00:14:14]  JOHN

Um, I went in and, uh, it’s a, it’s a bit of a risky take. Um, I deleted storage in case in the, uh, app settings for Gmail. So it took it all the way back, and I was going to try and see if I could just re-update it, but it wouldn’t do it through, um, Play Store. So then I went and I’d taken all my emails, deleted them all, and then reinstalled them all. And because I’ve got rid of the storage settings, this nefarious email address disappeared. So it’s no longer there. So yeah, that was at 3:00 this morning.

[00:14:53]  TREVOR

All right.

[00:14:54]  TREVOR

Well, well done. You nailed it. But just for safety, let’s change that password.

[00:14:58]  JOHN

Yeah, I will.

[00:14:59]  TREVOR

Good on you, John. Yeah, go on.

[00:15:01]  JOHN

Have you got a minute just for a quick question?

[00:15:03]  TREVOR

Yeah, hit me, hit me.

[00:15:04]  JOHN

All right. I have a home network and I have smart devices. As I mentioned before, I’m with Optus. So did they do all my — they’re my server and I’ve got their latest modem, big black box thing. I can’t give you the model number. Yeah, I have about 22 different smart devices, Tapo switches and energy monitors, a couple of Hue Cubes, Fetch TV and 2 computers, but they all don’t run all at the same time. I’m getting lagging. I’m getting things slowing down and Optus told me that I’ve got too many devices. Is there any way to up the network so that I can use these devices?

[00:15:56]  TREVOR

How many networks show in your home? Does it show John’s network and then John’s network_5G or does it just all show John’s network?

[00:16:04]  JOHN

I’ve got two. I’ve got the 2G, 2.8G and 5G networks I set up myself.

[00:16:11]  TREVOR

And, and well, the first thing I do is I do a little mini audit of all the devices and make sure that all the ones that aren’t important, i.e. your TV, your phone, they’re important, right? Things that need bandwidth, make sure they’re on the 5G network and make sure everything else is on the, on the 2.4.

[00:16:29]  JOHN

Yeah, done all that.

[00:16:31]  TREVOR

Because, you know, it’s the whole thing of what something must be slowing it down. The other thing you could do, so are you able to replicate and see the problem through a speed test, for example? Like you’re up to you’re able to see the speed concerns?

[00:16:44]  JOHN

I did up my speed. I paid a bit extra to get 500 megabytes, so it hasn’t really helped. The TV just lags every now and again. Get a whole lot of messages on it about broadcast errors.

[00:17:01]  TREVOR

And have you done a speed test at the TV area or on the network anywhere?

[00:17:07]  JOHN

Oh yeah.

[00:17:09]  TREVOR

What do you see? What speeds do you see if you’re paying for 500?

[00:17:13]  JOHN

It’s pretty close to about 200 or 300.

[00:17:16]  TREVOR

It’s not horrible. Yeah, it’s not horrible.

[00:17:19]  JOHN

No, it’s not. But is there a device I can get that can give the network a bit more capacity?

[00:17:30]  TREVOR

Well, it’s really about that modem, you know, so you’re probably at the point where if they’re not willing to help, then you probably need to contemplate look, before I get to what you, what you could do, just one more troubleshooting exercise. Run a stand at the TV. Is your TV connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi?

[00:17:49]  JOHN

It’s Wi-Fi.

[00:17:50]  TREVOR

So stand at the TV. We’ll put a laptop next to the TV, put it on the Wi-Fi and do a speed test. Do 3 speed tests. Get yourself an average. Okay. You’re seeing 250 or whatever. Yeah, that I mean, there’s no way that should create a problem for the TV. Let’s be honest, if you’re seeing 200 there, so one thing with the TV is to forget the Wi-Fi network and reconnect to see whether it just needs a kick up the bum, basically. But aside from that, you could go around and turn things off. So the best, the best scenario of all is turn everything off except the modem and your TV and your laptop, for example, and do the speed test again and see whether you get vastly better speeds. And if you do get vastly better speeds, then one by one turn things back on, let it connect, let us do a thing and see which, which thing is dragging the network down.

[00:18:41]  JOHN

Yeah.

[00:18:42]  TREVOR

And if, if it turns out that nothing’s dragging the network down, it’s just rubbish. So it’s just bad Wi-Fi. Then you need to contemplate getting yourself a different Wi-Fi solution. Forget the you can still use that existing modem. Are you on fibre or hybrid fibre coax or HFC? What do you want?

[00:18:58]  JOHN

Supposed to be hybrid fibre.

[00:19:00]  TREVOR

Yeah. So you’re on the old Foxtel Optus cable. Yes.

[00:19:03]  JOHN

Yeah.

[00:19:03]  TREVOR

So then you don’t need the modem at all. You can just plug a mesh router into the little black NBN box and connect, connect that way. So it would be an investment, but you could buy yourself a better mesh system, you know, Netgear Orbi or Amazon Eero, something like that.

[00:19:19]  JOHN

Yeah, I thought so. I just did a speed test. 197 download, 40 or 40, 48 upload.

[00:19:31]  TREVOR

I mean, it’s not amazing for 500 speed.

[00:19:34]  JOHN

No, it’s not.

[00:19:36]  TREVOR

So there’s that. And so you should walk around the house. What I often do is you draw, draw a floor plan in your house and then walk around riding those speeds around to see whether it’s a distance thing, or if you’re standing next to the modem and you do a speed test and you’re not getting 400, dude, yeah, you need better Wi-Fi.

[00:19:53]  JOHN

All right, okay, cool. Thanks for that.

[00:19:56]  TREVOR

All right, mate, good luck.

[00:19:57]  JOHN

Yeah, have a great day. Thank you, mate.

[00:19:59]  TREVOR

Good on you. Thanks very much. Um, yeah, trying to solve those problems as best we can. Um, you know, not always easy, not always easy.

[00:20:08]  ANNOUNCER

0477 657 657, that’s the text line. Thanks to Vodafone. Get in touch and ask Trev today. That’s it, get in touch.

[00:20:17]  ANNOUNCER

I’d love to hear from you.

SEGMENT 3: PAYPHONE TAG — WITH CREATOR ALEX

[00:20:18]  TREVOR

0477 657 657. 857. Send a text, send a WhatsApp, and, uh, we’ll get you on the show if you’ve got a tech question or you want to talk about something cool, uh, in your tech life. Doesn’t matter what it is. Now, something, something cool in my tech life is these TikToks have been frustrating me for the last week. I keep getting them in my feed, and then I thought, oh, I’m gonna dive deeper into this. It’s a game called Payphone Tag. Now, I don’t know how best to describe this to you, so Producer Rob was set a task — FindMe, the creator of Payphone Tag, and the Croissant Alex himself is on the line. Alex, g’day.

[00:20:57]  ALEX (caller)

Good morning, how you going?

[00:20:58]  TREVOR

Very well, mate. I call you the Croissant because every user on Payphone Tag gets an emoji. I’m like a torchlight. My code name, my agent name is Quick Torch. Is there a limit to the number of emojis before we go on? Because that’s problematic for you.

[00:21:16]  ALEX

Well, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m slightly concerned at this stage because, yes, there is a limit to the number of emojis that exist. You know, when I built the game, I didn’t think that’d be a problem. But yeah, I’m having to kick people off if they don’t capture anything so I can keep the emojis free.

[00:21:34]  TREVOR

Well, I look, here’s the thing. So I started out here. I saw it’s you in the TikToks, right? Is that who I’m seeing in the TikToks?

[00:21:41]  ALEX

I’m in the TikToks.

[00:21:43]  TREVOR

Let’s, let’s go back to basics. And when your family say, what the heck? What have you done? Well, how do you explain Payphone Tag to them?

[00:21:51]  ALEX

Well, I just say, look, you know, you go around to a payphone, you get given a PIN, you call my number, and then you appear on the map. And it’s simple as that. But you’ve got to make sure that you don’t lose your payphone and have someone else steal it. And then they sort of look at me a bit funny and then I point them to the website and they pull it up and they go, shit, you know, this is a thing and people are playing it everywhere.

[00:22:16]  TREVOR

Yeah. There’s a Pokemon style attachment to it in my mind, Pokemon GO, where you have to leave the house. You can’t do this from home. You have to leave the house. And in the case of Pokemon GO, you have to find a Pokemon GO in your area. In your case, it’s find a payphone. Now payphones are fixed, they’re set in place. There’s 13-odd thousand of them in Australia. And you’ve essentially, ’cause you are head nerd here, I’m assuming. You are the number one nerd who not only went, I’ve got a phone number, what can I do with it? You then programmed some sort of voice app to answer the phone. Then you back-ended it by creating a map of all the payphones in Australia, which is public data, so you’ve been able to do that pretty easily, I assume, but still nerdy. But the key here is that everyone who signs up gets their own code, as you say, and all you’ve got to do is go to a payphone, ring this phone number, enter your code, and you claim that. It’s like capture the flag in a computer game, isn’t it?

[00:23:13]  ALEX

That’s correct.

[00:23:14]  TREVOR

You’ve claimed the phone. So of the 20 or 30 that I’ve claimed thus far — anyone today could be out and about and claim them off me, which affects my ranking.

[00:23:26]  ALEX

That’s right. That’s right. And you get a little notification to say, you know, you’ve just lost this phone or that phone. And it’s always a little bit disappointing when, when that comes through, but it just gives you the motivation to go out and claim it back.

[00:23:36]  TREVOR

You know, what would you say to a user is the goal of the game to capture the most or how what’s the best approach statistically?

[00:23:45]  ALEX

I don’t know about the best approach, you know, obviously to have fun. And a lot of people have different sort of goals, you know. Um, there’s a bit of a scoring method, there’s various leaderboards and ranks, you know, the most captures in total, the most that you currently hold, the most territory. I think that one’s really interesting because it’s not just the payphones, um, they make little triangles. So if you capture all 3 in a triangle, that then becomes your area on the map. And you can continue to expand your area. And I couldn’t believe it when there was Easter, I saw this person going from Mildura all the way across Victoria in this massive line. And then they went back and they kept going.

[00:24:28]  TREVOR

It’s a fire truck. Is that who you’re talking about?

[00:24:30]  ALEX

Yeah, the fire truck, the fire truck. And this person’s just, you know, must be a truckie or loves driving. They’ve done so many kilometres, but their points aren’t that high, but they really stand out on the map, which, you know, some people really like that.

[00:24:45]  TREVOR

This is the thing, you’ve got a real map of Australia which shows a dot for every payphone, and if you’ve triangulated 3 payphones, you own the area within. And there’s someone, the Alarm Clock, that’s captured something out at Oodnadatta, Cooper Pedy, and somewhere else near the Woomera Defence Site, and they’ve created the most enormous triangle in the middle of Australia. Yet here I am in Northern Sydney going, you know what, it’s 3 o’clock this morning, mate. You know what I did? I didn’t go straight to the office. I drove to Hornsby and captured 5 or 6 bloody payphones. And I’m gonna tell you, mate, I spent an hour this morning capturing payphones at 3 AM. That’s crazy. That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. And now I own an area quite large around my local area where the EFTM office is. And I have plans this evening to go over the valley and capture a couple more, which will expand my area greatly. But I’ll be disappointed if someone captures my area. Fun of it really, isn’t it? There is no purpose other than the challenge.

[00:25:48]  ALEX

That’s right. That’s right. You know, a bit of self-reward. And look, I think it’s interesting. We’ve got a Discord channel where people are chatting away and that’s growing over time and you get to know some of the characters and there’s people that are going out every day, every night, you know, particularly there’s a person on the Central Coast and they’ve just claimed that area, you know, as soon as someone attacks them, they’ll go straight back out and claim them all back again. And, you know, I don’t know if they’re getting frustrated, but they obviously enjoy because they keep playing. And then you’ll get someone that’ll just come into the center of their territory and take one. And then all of a sudden, all the triangles in that area disappear because, you know, they don’t have all the edges connected. And yeah, it sort of ruins their map for a moment and they’ll go back and claim it again.

[00:26:31]  TREVOR

You know, it’s a simple, simple thing. But you mentioned, I think in the info page, you’re like, you know, have fun, go outside, explore your city. That’s actually a really cool part of it. I’ve got to be honest, I was thinking it’s annoying I found this after the school holidays because I’d love to — I used to take my 14-year-old out because a lot of payphones on the train lines, right? Let’s just get on the train and get off at every station. Correct. And keep capturing because a lot of them are on the platforms too. You don’t have to actually tap out.

[00:26:59]  ALEX

Well, the question is, though, can you get off the train, get to a payphone, claim the payphone and get back on the train before it leaves? You know, like, you know, some, some are only every half an hour and you might have to wait around a little bit for the next train.

[00:27:14]  TREVOR

You’re a thinker.

[00:27:14]  ALEX

But you’ve got to have your dialling down, down pat.

[00:27:18]  TREVOR

What’s your day job, Alex? What do you do for a job?

[00:27:22]  ALEX

I’m a data guy.

[00:27:25]  TREVOR

No!

[00:27:26]  ALEX

Yeah, who would have guessed? I’m a data guy, I do data things, but my passion is actually maps, which links in here. I studied geospatial engineering. There were 4 of us that studied it at UNSW a few years ago. They’ve since cancelled the course, but yeah, I loved it and I did it because I was interested in that sort of stuff. I’ve got a background in bushwalking. That’s my real passion. And yeah, so I like that sort of stuff.

[00:27:51]  TREVOR

What a great combination of two things, a passion and a skill, mapping and data, because it is really just a dataset, isn’t it, from Telstra that says, here’s where the payphones are down to the metre. And then you’re just placing them on a map and using code to draw lines between them. Not rocket science, but it just takes thought.

[00:28:14]  ALEX

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. A bit of sitting and thinking and look, you know, the reality is I bought I heard that you could buy numbers pretty cheaply. You know, I bought a number and I said, what do I do with it? And I already had an earlier website called Free Phone. And the idea was that it would tell you your nearest payphone to where you were and give you the phone number. Right. And then you could call it. And then so, you know, if you were standing near a payphone but not quite at it, it could be ringing before you get to it because you called it on your phone, you know, and you could, you could do funny things like that and see if anyone picks up that sort of stuff.

[00:28:49]  TREVOR

Which brings me to a great user suggestion from Reddit. Someone in the I posted this in one of the Telstra forums yesterday and someone made a suggestion. This is quite cool. I love this idea, but it’s wild, right? Imagine you claim a phone. And then it rings another random payphone. And if someone picks up, you earn extra points and you steal that phone at the other end and you get the opportunity to actually talk someone into joining the game.

[00:29:19]  ALEX

Oh, I see. Hey, it’s going viral. Okay, that’s, that’s, that’s quite the idea. I reckon we can make it work.

[00:29:28]  TREVOR

Diplomatic, diplomatic.

[00:29:29]  ALEX

There’s a secret, there’s a secret party line. I don’t know. I assume you’ve been around when they were a thing. I wasn’t, but essentially, you can dial in with a special PIN, secret PIN, and instead of capturing the phone, it puts you on a conference line. So if anyone else dials in with that same number, you can talk to each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The party is a clue, you know, there.

[00:29:56]  TREVOR

Okay.

[00:29:57]  ALEX

But yes, I’ll leave that for the listeners. But yeah, that’s already there. But I like the idea. I’m going to have to I haven’t been following Reddit, so I’m going to have to find out about this idea and maybe add it in.

[00:30:07]  TREVOR

Yeah, I think the great thing about it is it’s super nerdy, right? So you’re only going to get the nerdiest of ideas, but you do really have a challenge because you’ve got a limited scope, limited scale. You know, I do love also that you’re not capturing people’s data. You didn’t make me sign up with email or anything. It’s just sign up and you get a pin. And because there doesn’t need to be security on this thing, it’s a game. No, but until it gets serious, until it gets—

[00:30:35]  ALEX

Well, yes.

[00:30:36]  TREVOR

Well, that’s what happened, right? Yesterday I’m walking around Central Station. I’m like, oh, Bank of Five phones, Bank of Four phones. I’m just going nuts. And by the time I walked away from Central Station, I had a nemesis in the app. I had an enemy. I mean, I love that gamification of the simple concept. It’s fun.

[00:30:55]  ALEX

I have been thinking about the rules and talking about them, you know, as it evolves. And one of the ideas was, you know, should we have a cooldown period, you know, that sort of thing. And I don’t know, I’d be interested in people’s—

[00:31:06]  TREVOR

Cooldown period? What do you mean?

[00:31:07]  ALEX

Like, you well, you know, once you capture it, it’s yours for a day or something like that, you know. Well, maybe there’ll be physical confrontations at payphones. Yeah, between nerds. Yes. Yeah, between nerds. Yeah, they’re pretty friendly, I guess.

[00:31:23]  TREVOR

Actually, you know what? But you know what? You know, it’s the opposite, actually. It needs to be a 5-minute window because nerds well, I’m introverted. I don’t want to come across anyone else. So that’s I’ve already done confrontation. To me is conversation. So, can we just make it 5 minutes or something like that? You know, I went to I did a video this morning and I went to record the sound of the agent, the picking up. And I went back to the same phone and it played some horrible voice.

[00:31:53]  ALEX

Yeah, yeah, yeah, monkeys, monkeys screaming at you.

[00:31:56]  TREVOR

And I’m like, oh Jesus, I’ve got to go and drive to a different phone now so I can record this whole thing.

[00:32:01]  ALEX

I’m sorry about that. You can’t recapture a phone, so that’s your problem.

[00:32:06]  TREVOR

I am. I’m pretty proud though, mate. In less than 24 hours, I’m 68th. I reckon that’s pretty good.

[00:32:13]  ALEX

Okay. What’s your agent? I’ll look it up here.

[00:32:16]  TREVOR

My agent is Quick Torch.

[00:32:19]  ALEX

Quick Torch?

[00:32:19]  TREVOR

Quick Torch.

[00:32:20]  ALEX

Yeah. Okay.

[00:32:21]  TREVOR

So I’m 68th out of 525. I’ve had 130 no, no, I’m 139th in captures. Yeah.

[00:32:30]  TREVOR

You know, everything else looks pretty standard, fair numbers, really.

[00:32:33]  ALEX

Oh, and you’ve got to, you’ve got to claim as well.

[00:32:36]  TREVOR

Oh, you know, I’ve started a claim for the EFTM group. A sell.

[00:32:39]  ALEX

Yes. Well, you’re lucky I let 4 characters. You’re very lucky.

[00:32:44]  TREVOR

When you did that, I thought that was fantastic.

[00:32:47]  ALEX

You know, you’ve got to have your schedule profile. There’s a social media profile link. It even previews the number of captures that you have and your current stats, you know, in the URL preview.

[00:32:57]  TREVOR

So where do I do that?

[00:32:59]  ALEX

When you go to your agent in the agent section down the bottom, it says share profile and you’ll get a little link there.

[00:33:07]  TREVOR

Okay, I’ll get onto it. I’ll get onto it. But mate, you know what? Good on you. I just wanted to say good on you. I think it’s cool. I think it’s fun. I think it’s simple. I think it’s clean. And that’s what’s great about it. Yeah, it’s, you’re not, I mean, you’re an idiot ’cause you’re not making money off this thing or anything like that. But that’s what’s great about it is it’s just a bit of fun. And you just need to think about scale now. What if you do get 2,000 people, 3,000 people, and you run out of emojis, you know, that’s what you need to work out.

[00:33:35]  ALEX

Do I lobby the Emoji Consortium and ask them to create more emojis, or maybe I come up with another solution? I reckon I’ll probably do the second one.

[00:33:43]  TREVOR

I think the second one is probably the way to go. Get AI to generate a bunch of images or something.

[00:33:48]  ALEX

You know, is the crypto revolution over? NFT is still a thing, or?

[00:33:52]  TREVOR

Yeah, a bunch of weird monkey faces. Just do that.

[00:33:57]  TREVOR

Mate, congratulations. The, the, the website is payphontag.com. If you’ve got Android, you can install an app as well, which makes it really easy. payphontag.com. Have some fun, folks. As, uh, as Alex says, get out, explore your city, capture some payphones. Simple as that. Good on you, mate. Thanks heaps for the chat.

[00:34:19]  ALEX

See ya.

[00:34:19]  TREVOR

Bye. See ya, buddy. Cheers.

[00:34:22]  ANNOUNCER

Tech Cuz. Lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.

SEGMENT 4: CALLER — WHITTY (OPPO Find X9 Ultra)

[00:34:32]  TREVOR

Great to have your company. Thank you very much for listening, and, uh, happy to help if I can. Uh, send me a text 0477 657657. Whitty’s on the line. G’day, Whitty.

[00:34:42]  WHITTY (caller)

That’s right, how are you?

[00:34:43]  TREVOR

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

[00:34:46]  WHITTY

Yes, so, um, this is my question. I’ve been I’m a Melbourne-based photographer. I shoot mostly weddings and portraits. I’ve also been an OPPO fan for a while.

[00:35:02]  TREVOR

Yep.

[00:35:02]  WHITTY

I was part of their product ambassador program in 2024 and ’25.

[00:35:09]  TREVOR

For OPPO?

[00:35:10]  WHITTY

So I’ve seen, yeah, so I’ve seen their cameras have evolved.

[00:35:15]  TREVOR

Yeah, very much so.

[00:35:16]  WHITTY

And I’ve been seeing this exciting phone, their new flagship, the Find X9 Ultra.

[00:35:27]  TREVOR

Right.

[00:35:28]  WHITTY

And honestly, it’s one of the few phones lately that made me want to dig deeper.

[00:35:36]  WHITTY

It feels like one of those phones that could be really interesting.

[00:35:41]  WHITTY

If it delivers.

[00:35:42]  TREVOR

Yeah, absolutely. And what, so what phone do you have today?

[00:35:47]  WHITTY

I’m currently with Oppo Reno.

[00:35:50]  TREVOR

Okay. Yeah.

[00:35:52]  WHITTY

Yeah.

[00:35:52]  TREVOR

I mean, you got to look at this one, right? This is a flagship phone, so it’s $1,800 for a start, but it’s got a Hasselblad system. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s as good as a Hasselblad camera. Let’s be real.

[00:36:01]  WHITTY

It’s nothing.

[00:36:03]  TREVOR

But it’s exceptional photography, no question. Right. What’s stopping you from just going and buying one?

[00:36:11]  WHITTY

Well, price. Yeah, but I’m not sure about this. This thing, I don’t know if it’s a gimmick or not, but they have this Hasselblad Art Explorer Master Kit.

[00:36:23]  TREVOR

Oh, is that that add-on that looks like a big telescope?

[00:36:27]  WHITTY

Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s right, that’s the one.

[00:36:30]  TREVOR

I mean, look, it’s not part of the base price, so you’re not going to get that, um, you’re not going to get that when, um, when you, when you buy it anyway, um. So, you know, you don’t need that, but it would be a good extra thing to have if you love photography.

[00:36:50]  WHITTY

Yeah, I mean, um, last time I went to Japan last year, um, I brought my bulky camera with me, but I took zero photos from the bulky camera, and I took all the moments captured by my phone. So it will be interesting if I have like a phone that really dependable, so I can depend on.

[00:37:22]  TREVOR

Bottom line is that will be a great phone, a great camera. And if you chose to buy that add-on, you’d certainly have a nice little gimmick to play around with. But I wouldn’t say it’s a necessary thing to add on. But you’re not going to have any disappointment with the Find X9 as a phone. It’s a genuine upgrade from what you’ve got today, and I think you’ll absolutely love it, mate.

[00:37:45]  WHITTY

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

[00:37:46]  TREVOR

All right, so don’t hesitate, mate. Save the money, buy the phone. Yeah, thank you. All right, mate, good luck. Happy shopping.

[00:37:55]  WHITTY

Nice.

[00:37:56]  TREVOR

Cheers. Um, sometimes you’ve just got to hear someone say, go and get it. I don’t know, that feels like that was that situation to me. Oppo ambassador previously, using an Oppo phone now. I’ve seen a great Oppo phone option. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a great option. Good luck.

[00:38:18]  ANNOUNCER

Be part of the show. Thanks to Vodafone, you can text 0477 657 657.

SEGMENT 5: CALLER — DEAN (Telstra to Tangerine Switch)

[00:38:27]  TREVOR

Great to have your company. I’d love to hear from you if you want to talk tech. Uh, Dean’s on the line. G’day, Dean.

[00:38:33]  DEAN (caller)

Good day, how are ya?

[00:38:34]  TREVOR

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

[00:38:37]  DEAN

Oh, I just heard one of your episodes. I think it was the last podcast about a gentleman and he paid his phone out and gone onto a different plan.

[00:38:45]  TREVOR

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Smart move if you can do it.

[00:38:49]  DEAN

Yeah, I ended up doing it with, oh, a few months ago and I went and I’d gone to Tangerine, but I paid out my Google Pixel phone and yeah, went to Tangerine. I went from a $70 a week, $70 a month plan each for me and the missus. We’ve Telstra to Tangerine, went to $15 a month for the first 4 and now and then it goes to $30 a month. We get 30 gig of data that rolls over a month.

[00:39:09]  TREVOR

So there’s a rollover as well. So if you don’t use the data, you get a bit of it next time.

[00:39:13]  DEAN

Yeah, for 12 months. So you get up to 1,000 gig of rollover.

[00:39:15]  TREVOR

Holy Jesus.

[00:39:17]  DEAN

Yeah.

[00:39:20]  TREVOR

And you’re paying, you’re paying. Hang on. So forget the discounted price.

[00:39:23]  TREVOR

Let’s go 4 months in advance. You’re going to be spending $30, so by 2, you’re gonna be spending $60 a month for you and your missus on a plan when you were spending $70 for one of you. Yeah.

[00:39:36]  DEAN

Well, we’re both on $70 plans, so paying $140.

[00:39:38]  TREVOR

Did the $70 include your phone?

[00:39:40]  DEAN

No, no, no. Plus I was paying me phone. I had, I, I, I, my wife’s phone we had paid out, which is a Pixel 7.

[00:39:47]  TREVOR

Yeah.

[00:39:47]  DEAN

I got Pixel 9, but, and I paid my phone out, which I had, I had about $500 on.

[00:39:52]  TREVOR

Yeah.

[00:39:53]  DEAN

It’s all paid for itself, paying it out, then going to the other plan.

[00:39:57]  TREVOR

Isn’t that wild? And do you tell people this and they don’t believe you?

[00:40:01]  DEAN

Yeah. And like, it’s, it’s run on the Telstra network and my phone, it’s like I haven’t changed networks. The only difference is I’ve got Tangerine on my phone instead of Telstra.

[00:40:09]  TREVOR

It’s what actually says Tangerine, obviously.

[00:40:11]  DEAN

Yeah.

[00:40:11]  TREVOR

Have you done the numbers? That’s $960 a year.

[00:40:15]  DEAN

Yeah.

[00:40:16]  TREVOR

That’s crazy money.

[00:40:18]  DEAN

Well, that’s right. That’s right. I couldn’t. I tried it first to see, make sure the service is okay.

[00:40:23]  TREVOR

Yes.

[00:40:23]  DEAN

I brought the wife over.

[00:40:24]  TREVOR

Yeah.

[00:40:25]  DEAN

And yeah, just, it hasn’t folded. I just, it’s exactly what you said the other week. People should look at it.

[00:40:32]  TREVOR

Do you go anywhere where you feel like Telstra is the only option? Like you go on the outskirts, skirts of any towns or cities or areas or the country? Do you, have you tried Tangerine there?

[00:40:41]  DEAN

Yeah, well, I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been, I could go, I’ve been up to, drove all the way to Port Macquarie for work. I’ve been down past Goulburn. I haven’t been out west, but I’ve been as far as like the Blue Mountains and but I haven’t had an issue. It’s never dropped out on me. I actually honestly, I work in a, in the area I work in it, I come, my phone signal drops out on me, but it still picks up what Telstra used to.

[00:41:04]  TREVOR

Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is, even if you go to Timbuktu and you go, oh, there’s only one bar here and or it drops out or something, you go, but I’m saving $960 a year.

[00:41:16]  DEAN

That’s right.

[00:41:17]  TREVOR

That does offset it, doesn’t it? Like, even if, even if there was a small like, let’s say you were checking speeds. Let’s say Tangerine doesn’t get priority on the network or something. You don’t get the same 5G speeds as a Telstra customer. Who gives a rat’s? It still works.

[00:41:32]  DEAN

Yeah, it’s the 5G. I think it does it. I don’t think it gets it’s the second tier that Telstra offer, like, the speed-wise. But I haven’t noticed the difference of it because who—

[00:41:40]  TREVOR

You’re mate, because 4G was fine. Speed was—

[00:41:44]  DEAN

Let’s be honest, the 5G, the speed, I’ve never had an issue with like downloading or anything like that at all. But most of the time when I’m at home on my Wi-Fi anyway. But yeah, which is going over to them as well now. But Tangerine, because I was with Buddy, but—

[00:41:59]  TREVOR

All right. Oh yeah, because so Buddy was Aussie Broadband and then Tangerine bought them, didn’t they? So have they just gotten rid of the Buddy brand now? It’s just all Tangerine.

[00:42:07]  DEAN

Yeah, it’s going to Tangerine, but they kept me buddy plan going and I’ve still got the buddy speeds as well. So because of 1,100.

[00:42:14]  TREVOR

Yep, yep.

[00:42:15]  DEAN

Yeah, that’s it. I highly recommend it. I just thought I’d pop a message to you when I—

[00:42:20]  TREVOR

Mate, that’s awesome.

[00:42:21]  DEAN

Heard you talking about it on your last podcast and I thought, hey, people really want to look at it.

[00:42:26]  TREVOR

Good on you, mate. That is great real world feedback and good on you for saving your family some money, mate.

[00:42:31]  DEAN

No worries, mate. All the best.

[00:42:32]  TREVOR

Good to chat. Cheers, buddy. That’s Dean who’s saving $960 a year. Now, let’s say he had to pay out his phone there. So he had to jump up $500 upfront. So in the first 12 months, he’s only gonna save $460. But he owns the phone outright. $960 a year, which by the way, is enough to buy a nice new phone, a Google Pixel phone. There’s plenty of Google Pixels under $1,000 every year. So even if every 3 years they bought a new phone each, that’s still, $960 a year, 2 years out of 3. Makes sense, doesn’t it, folks? Makes sense.

[00:43:12]  ANNOUNCER

This is the EFTM Podcast.

[00:43:15]  TREVOR

All right, thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading. Great to have your company, and we’ll do it all again next week. I’m actually gonna be in China next week, but don’t worry, we’ve been working hard, so there’ll be a show next week. And then back on deck in May for yet more talkback technology right here on the EFTM Podcast. So if you would love to be part of the show, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. Doesn’t have to be a, what you might call a stupid question. Doesn’t have to be a product question. It can be a product brag. You bought something cool, you want to share it with the world, let me know. 0477657657. Download the EFTM app and make sure you enter to win. There’s always something to win. But also make sure you can contact me through there as well. You can just click the Ask Trev button right there in the app. So I would love to hear from you folks. Until then, have a lovely week. And we’ll do it all again very, very soon.

[00:44:08]  ANNOUNCER

Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.