Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss IFA 2020 Special Edition, online learning, rumored new Google devices, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Robin Daniels, Chief Marketing Officer - Matterport

Ray in Niagara Falls, New York listens online and asked: "I'm having problems with my iPhone X. I'm losing contacts in my phonebook and also if somebody calls me, the call goes right to voicemail unless the person is in my favorites list. Hope you can help me with that."

https://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2020/09-04-2020/09-04-2020-H2S1.mp3

Ray, your second question has an easy answer, your first one not so much.

For your second question, we suspect you must be using the Do Not Disturb functionality. Apple built exceptions into their DND functionality. One of them, and the most relevant one in this case is Allow Calls From Favorites.

There are two easy ways to get around one, the first one is to just turn off Do Not Disturb, you can do that by pulling down from the top right corner to activate Control Center. From there just tap on the half moon button and youll be all set.

If you want to be able to continue to use DND but still allow calls (for example, if you just dont want to be notified of apps trying to get your attention). You can go into the settings and open Do Not Disturb.

From that pane you should be able to turn it off and on, check to see if you have scheduled DND hours, and set who is exempt and can still call you.

Your first question is tougher, there is no reason for your contacts to disappear. Something must be misbehaving somewhere and that something must have access to your contacts.

To try to figure out what app could be causing that behavior, you can go into Settings, then Privacy, and finally Contacts. That will show you which apps youve allowed to access your contacts. Any that dont have to access them should probably lose the privilege since, why allow it? But most importantly, one of those is the likely culprit if your contacts disappearing.

Eddie in Columbus, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk and asked: "I just wanted to know the best Wi-Fi extender. Cost, reliability, that sort of thing."

https://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2020/09-04-2020/09-04-2020-H2S4.mp3

Eddie, in terms of cost your least expensive solution will be just any old style repeater. Any normal WiFi extender or repeater will be very cheap, think $20, but they are usually harder to set up and not as seamless to use.

The set up process sometimes requires (or more like strongly encourages) a repeater of the same make as your WiFi router. If they are not compatible, some will force you to either connect it via a wired network, or create a second WiFi network to repeat the signal.

Thats not every repeater, some work better, but its often a far-from-seamless experience.

On the other end of the spectrum you have mesh devices that just talk to each other and for the most part self-manage. The set up in this case will be pretty simple and theyll likely work as set it and forget it devices. Theyll also hand off your device between each other depending on what node your...