By: Hillel Fuld

Oh, Siri, Siri. I want to like you, I really do. The thing is though, coming from a company known for products of excellence and near-perfection, simply put, you  stink!

Here is the thing with Siri, the new “Voice Assistant” on the iPhone 4S. It is a marketing stunt that we are all falling for. I have been using a 4S for a while now and I would say 90% of my use of Siri is to show her off. Yes, I occasionally add a reminder to my calendar, update my Facebook, or send out a tweet using Siri while I drive, but my main use of Siri is as a conversation starter.

Siri is, if I am not mistaken, Apple’s first ever Beta product and truth be told, use Siri for a few minutes and you will see why it is labeled Beta. Putting aside the technological side of Siri, when it comes to marketing, Apple to no one’s surprise absolutely blew it out of the park when it comes to how the company markets Siri.

There was of course the Santa commercial, which was named the most effective tech ad of 2011 and there have been countless parodies about Siri (like this one but beware of bad language!).

All of that is great for geeks like us who hang out on the Web, but that won’t get my father to want Siri, now will it? You know what will? Primetime TV! And Apple can now put a little check mark next to that too.

I started receiving messages by the hundreds a few days ago that I just “MUST” see this week’s episode of Big Bang Theory. No one would tell me why. They all said “Just watch it. You’ll see”. And I watched it. And I saw.

See below as Siri makes its debut on TV and more importantly, enters mainstream consciousness. Beta? Who cares? Perception is reality and Siri is all over the place. Kudos, Apple. You did it again.

Oh, and did I mention that Siri’s appearance on Big Bang Theory absolutely cracked me up? Watch!

By: Hillel Fuld

Samsung is killing it in the mobile space by all parameters. in fact, Samsung is killing it in many different spaces by all parameters. The company has recently become a true symbol of innovation. Just see this!

Samsung marketing executive Younghee Lee recently told AllThingsD that the company’s strategy is to take the U.S market by storm and steal the “cool” factor away from one of its biggest competitors, Apple.

In her interview, Lee said “Especially in U.S., people are obsessed with Apple,” Lee said, in a lengthy interview at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. “It’s time to change people’s attention.”

Of course, Samsung is taking a very different route than Apple, one that can only be compared to Google in the mobile space and Microsoft in the world of PCs. Namely, Samsung wants to be everywhere. I actually just came back from Samsung’s local offices where I was given a sneak peek at some of the upcoming innovation we can expect to see from the Korean giant.

Let’s just say, 2012 is the year of TVs, but not TVs like we are used to. I am talking Smart TVs with customized OSes, app stores, voice and motion recognition, 3D technology, and much more. Of course, to no one’s surprise, Samsung is the market leader in smart TVs, something not many companies have the ability to challenge.

Well, back to mobile, Samsung’s flagship Android devices are now the Galaxy SII and the Galaxy Nexus, but from a purely hardware perspective, the SII takes the crown. The Galaxy SII has been a tremendous success for Samsung, as was its predecessor the Galaxy S. Which leads of course to the upcoming SIII device.

There has been much speculation about its launch and whether it would show its face in the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Samsung just put all the rumors to rest with the following statement.

“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012. The successor to the GALAXY S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product. Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world.”

Having reviewed the Samsung Note, it is going to be interesting to see just how much farther the company can push the envelope, but some specs we can expect to see in the SIII include:

• A quad-core processor of an unspecified speed (probably 1.5 – 1.6 GHz)
• Significantly improved battery life
• A 12 MP Camera
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

The screens on these mobile monsters can’t get much bigger without getting to the awkward mini tablet stage, so it will be interesting to see what size screen the SIII has.

In any case, as Samsung stated, we can expect to see the unveiling of this superphone sometime in the first half of 2012. The big question remains, will the iPhone 5 be announced in June and steal the SIII’s thunder or will it follow in the footsteps of the 4S and make its appearance in October? I bet Samsung is hoping for the latter.

By: Hillel Fuld

While I have said before that I have issues with Windows Phone’s branding, especially its name, Microsoft clearly decided that the message they were going for with this platform was speed. That is the common denominator between almost all the Windows Phone ads I have seen, starting with the famous “Really?” campaign.

When I say “speed”, I am not referring to the specs of the phone or its processing power, I am talking about the fundamental way Windows Phone, the OS, was designed.

The Windows Phone CES booth that conducted speed tests against any phone on the market shows that the time it takes to post an update or do many other basic things with your phone takes significantly less time on Windows Phone than it does on the competing platforms.

Anyway, this ad is another great one from Microsoft. Enjoy.

By: Hillel Fuld

OK, let’s just get this out of the way from the get-go. Steve Jobs was not a nice man by any accounts. The man, however, was directly or indirectly involved in revolutionizing anywhere between seven and nine multibillion dollar industries, depending who you ask. They include home computing, mobile, music, tablets, software distribution (apps), digital publishing, animated films (Pixar), online video, and retail shopping.

Of course, the way Jobs conducted himself on a daily basis ticked a lot of people off and many find it difficult to separate the man’s accomplishments and his behavior. Well, if you read the recent bio of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, you have somewhat of an idea of just how particular he was about how Apple is run and what kind of products the company releases.

Whether it was the case of the original Macintosh, which despite being presented with thousands of shades of beige, Jobs had to design his own, or many other stories, Jobs was clearly a very difficult man.

Well, like the title says, you ain’t seen nothin yet. It is not often I recommend you watch a 50 minute video and I realize most of you don’t have that much time to waste, but the below interview with Adam Lashinsky, the author of the newly-released book Inside Apple is super interesting. Adam addresses the secret nature of Apple and sheds some light on just how far Apple, led by Jobs went to keep things secretive and under the radar.

Well, if you do not have the time to watch the whole thing, I have some good news for you. I did! Here are some of the most outrageous things mentioned in the interview:

 - Apple often hires engineers then puts them on fake products till they can establish that the engineer is trust-worthy.

- Apple isn’t only secretive to the outside world like the press, the company is also secretive inside the company. Secret rooms, cards that only open certain rooms, and a common phenomenon of employees getting access to rooms to which their superiors do not have access.

- Meetings at Apple start with the person leading the meeting ensuring that everyone in the audience is “disclosed” on the topic of the meeting.

- There is no suggestion box at Apple. All ideas come from the top.

- Jobs was the one and only address for deciding what product gets released.

- Jobs was the head of marketing, head of advertising, head of public relations, and more.

- Apple led by Jobs did not believe in the fundamental principle “The customer is always right” or “The customer knows best”. Apple’s philosophy is “We know what customers want better than they do.”

- Apple employees often stay in the same exact position for decades without moving up in the ranks.

- For a 30 second part of a Macworld Apple video to promote iMovie, Jobs had to shoot a wedding scene and he decided to fly out the team to Hawaii because anything else did not “feel right” to him.

OK, I think you get the point, the man was off the wall and super O.C.D. Now the question is, is that too steep of a price to pay for excellence. Is it ok to behave the way Jobs did to create a brand like Apple and could he have accomplished the same without these quirks? Well, I guess we’ll never know, but one thing’s for sure, Apple did something right if I am judging by its latest numbers.

Enjoy the interview.

By: Hillel Fuld

Well, I usually put the video at the end of the my posts, but for obvious reasons, you had to watch the video before reading my thoughts. Now, the video above is not an ad for tech of any kind, it is a message to drivers to beware of cyclers.

Having said that, I think anyone can take that lesson and apply it to many different aspects of life. Technology is no different.

In fact, I think all startups and especially mobile developers have what to learn from the awareness test in that video. The lesson to be learned is that people have limited attention spans or more accurately, humans have a difficult time truly focusing on more than one thing at a time.

So what does that mean for you? It means several things, but let’s focus on two.

What Does It Do?

When I meet with app developers, my first question is “What does it do”? While it is a simplistic and even childish question, if you are unable to answer it without hesitation, you are doing something very wrong.

I am not talking about the problem of your marketing or how difficult it will be to raise money without a short and clear elevator pitch, that is another topic. If your app does not answer a need, a real need, you might very well be wasting your time.

The need does not have to be a cure for cancer, it could be a need to entertain by means of flinging birds at pigs, but you know what? Entertainment is a need.

If the app you are developing DOES answer a need, then you should be able to explain it very clearly. 30 seconds is way more than you need. Perfect examples of apps/services that just work and that you would be able to pitch in a matter of seconds include Dropbox, Instapaper, Instagram, Path, Facebook, and the list goes on. You might not agree with the need, but it exists, no question about it.

Your app needs to do one thing and do it well. I am not saying it cannot have more than one feature, it can, but the core of your app should be one main feature that your app does perfectly. Otherwise, when the user launches the app for the first time, you will lose them almost immediately when they cannot figure out what problem of theirs the app solves.

All of your app’s features will quickly become the “Moonwalking bear.”

Don’t Become your Own Competition

Now that you narrowed down the functionality of your business or app, it is time to do the same for its UI. You know what  happens when the interface has different buttons, options, or features all jumping out at the user? They all start competing for the user’s attention and you know who ends up as the main loser? You!

Make the UI of your app as simplistic and clean as you can possibly imagine. Don’t present the user with unnecessary distractions because as you saw in the video above, people can only concentrate on so many things at once.

Interestingly, all the apps I mentioned in the list above have among the simplest interfaces of any mobile app out there. Coincidence? I think not. The point is that Dropbox (and the rest of the crowd) realized that their offering is super simple and their UI should be designed accordingly.

Oh, and by the way, if you are one of those people who think that the success of an app correlates with its complexity and advanced features, Steve Jobs disagrees, so do 15 million other people.

Conclusion

If there are three words by which you should conduct yourself when creating an app or any business in today’s fast-paced world, I would have to say those words are “Keep it simple”!

Spotify Apps have been available to developers for nearly two months now. It’s changed the way I’ve listened to music. Actually, it’s more subtle than that. In the way that the best products disrupt deeply ingrained habits, Spotify + Apps combines services I already use and makes them more powerful and easier to use. A lot of people had been trying to persuade me to use Spotify, but I wasn’t convinced until now.

I started using Spotify a little over a year ago while living in the U.K. My initial impression was poor. I didn’t want to pay for a music service, it’s why I never subscribed to Rhapsody or Napster (or any form of satellite radio). I also didn’t want music with commercials – I might as well listen to music I already have or visit a blog that lets me find and listen to new music without ads.

When Spotify launched in the U.S. I had moved to New York and decided to give it a try again. The biggest disappointment to me, even with all of the Facebook integration, was the lack of tools to discover new music. Any content provider faces the same problem – how do I help users find something when they don’t know what they’re looking for. Netflix has struggled with perfecting their recommendations and Amazon usually does an impressive job of helping you find a new product. Spotify lets you follow your friends, but no Pandora-style discovery special sauce.

Now let’s talk about the game changer – Apps.

Last.fm has been one of my favorite services since I first joined. The funny thing about last.fm – it’s been showing me what my friends listen to for the past 5 years and well…I don’t use last.fm to get recommendations from friends. This confirms I need something else for discovery. The magic combination = Last.fm + Spotify. That formula has made both services more valuable ot me.

If you don’t have an account on last.fm yet, I can’t promise that this app will be useful to you. But once you hear about it, I think you might just give it a try. Last.fm tracks what you listen to to share with your friends and create radio stations based on your interest. So it knows what you listen to and sticks it into its recommendation engine. Opening the last.fm app inside Spotify gives you a list of recommended albums and because you’re a Spotify subscriber you have access to all that music and other albums by the same artist. I now listen to about 8 new albums a day.

It gets better. If you’re on the go, you can turn the entire list of recommendations into a playlist and sync it to your phone (iOS/Android).

Okay, you’re not convinced by last.fm…and that’s why you’ve never used it. There are three other apps that hint at the potential greatness of Spotify Apps – Pitchfork, We Are Hunted and Billboard. The Pitchfork and We Are Hunted apps fill the gap between music reviews (whether on a blog or a magazine) and the listener. Sometimes you’ll be lucky enough to get a sample track when checking your favorite music blog, but you’re often left empty-handed. Inside the apps you get everything – the rating, the review and the entire album. Instead of using a recommendation engine, these apps leverage the curated content from their sites.

Want to just listen to the Top 100, but don’t want to buy 100 songs or listen to commercials on the radio all day? Well, the Billboard app will help you out. Noticing a theme here? Existing content that you know about but can’t access in one place all of the sudden at your finger tips. Yeah, that’s what’s happening – great sources of new or popular music all incredibly accessible.

Spotify Apps do two things particularly well. One, it kills the MTV curse – the trend of all things music related having nothing to do with music – by just giving you music. Two, it gives you immediate access to the music you want.

One app that doesn’t feel ready for prime time is the Rolling Stone app. I’m not sure if this is still in beta or just another example of print media not getting it. The app loads slowly to the point where I lose interest.

2 Spotify Apps I’d Like to See

1) Dropbox Integration
You’re first thought here is probably nooo way – connect a music streaming service to an incredibly easy to use file sharing and storage site! Well, if you’ve ever tried to create a shared playlist with songs from your iTunes library that didn’t make it to Spotify you’ll understand why – it doesn’t work. Have a great remix you want to put on your shared playlist? Can’t do it. It’d be great if Spotify dropped the song into a folder that it shared with anyone with the app on the playlist.

2) Hype Machine
If you don’t use Hype Machine, take a look its a great way to find music from all over the music blogosphere. Songs are ranked by the community based on likes and listens. Having this delivered through an App where you also get access to entire albums would be another great discovery tool.

How would you change Spotify?

Make Apps Even Better

My favorite thing about Spotify Apps is that it connects awesome sites together and the sum is more than parts. To make a truly superb service, Spotify needs to take this to another level. When I add the Pitchfork app, integration of Pitchfork reviews should occur throughout Spotify. If last.fm is recommending me a new album, but Pitchfork gave it a poor score I can skip that album.

It’s still early though and I’m excited for the possibilities.

By: Hillel Fuld

If you have even looked in the direction of the interwebs lately, you surely noticed the newest viral phenomenon of “Sh_t <Blank> Says” videos. At the risk of being a party pooper, I have to admit, I cannot even make it through most of them, they are so dumb. However, when someone tweeted the “Sh_t Silicon Valley Says” video yesterday, I knew this was would be different.

I watched it and laughed, then watched it again and laughed some more. This video is spot on and if you, like me, find yourself saying most of these things on a daily basis, then you have a free pass to the “Geeks of the World” club.

Some of the geeky references in the video include Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare, TechCrunch, Leweb, Ashton, Tumblr, Quora, Instagram, Pandora, iPhone, Airbnb, Techmeme, Netflix, Youtube, Path, Facebook, API, Uber, and many more.

For a few examples of my favorite and most realistic lines in the video, you can see this TechCrunch post in which Alexia (the author) was kind enough to include my list. Enjoy and feel free to count how many of these you get and how many of these you say.

By: Hillel Fuld

When I approach the topic of a blog post, I ask myself a few questions first. The primary question is “Do I have something to add to what has already been said?”. If not, I do not write a post just for the sake of writing a post. Then there are some exceptions, this is one of them!

Yesterday, Apple announced its Q1 numbers and the entire world is talking about it, and then some. Take a look at the screen shot below, which was taken from Techmeme and you can see how many different publications are covering this story.

 So, on the one hand, I felt like I could not possibly add anything here to what has already been said by writers bigger and better than me, but on the other hand, how could I not? I mean, these numbers are by all standards, outrageous!

So much to say about Apple’s ridoncolous Q1 numbers but it’s all pretty much been said already. Just read is.gd/CopbGs

— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) January 25, 2012

So, instead of trying to force some unique analysis here, which will most likely fail since, again, it has all been said, and besides, the numbers speak for themselves, I figured I will put things in perspective for you.

I am no analyst of the stock market and writers like MG Siegler are now throwing around all sorts of technical terms to describe Apple’s unprecedented success, so I figured I would dumb it down and present the numbers as they are.

1: iPhones

Apple sold 37.04M iPhones in fiscal Q1 of 2012, that is 412k iPhones per day. Compare that to 371k people born around the world every day and you have some perspective. Even the most “fanboyish” analysts predicted 33m iPhones, no one expected Apple to sell 37m. No one!

2:  Cash

Apple generated $46.33 billion of revenue in the quarter and $13.06 of quarterly profit. PROFIT. That is more money than all of Google’s revenue, which stands at $10.6 billion. Not a small margin either. Overall, Apple has, sit down for this one, $97 billion in cash.

3: Apple vs Samsung

Apple has one phone, the iPhone. Samsung has dozens. Yet, Samsung, which was previously the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer sold 35 million smartphones in the quarter between all its devices, Apple sold 37 million iPhones. Need I say more?

4:  iPad, Mac, iOS, and iCloud

Well, Apple doesn’t only sell, iPhones, right? What about its other products. 5.43 million iPads sold, a new record for Apple. 5.2 million Macs sold, also a new record for Apple. The craziest number is a whopping 315 million cumulative iOS devices. Oh, and only 85 million iCloud users.

And here is the chart I promised. A list of the top ten quarterly earnings of any company in the world. You will notice fast that every single company on this list is an oil or gas company. Every one, except one. Apple. Like I said, ridiculous!

I know I said one chart, but I just could’t help myself. Sue me.

By: Hillel Fuld

You can say a lot of things about Steve Jobs the person, but one thing no one in their right mind would say about him is that he did not give his work 100%. The man was by all means OCD about Apple products and his vision for the company’s future. Many have said that Jobs left Apple with over three years of products in the pipeline.

One of the many statements we heard in various interviews with Jobs was that he had plans to change three more industries. Just a reminder, Jobs was responsible for, yes I am about to use the R word, revolutionizing eight industries. These include home computing, mobile, tablets, digital publishing, software distribution, music, animated films, and online video.

The three industries Jobs had his eyes on were education, TV, and photography. As 9to5Mac points out, we can take education off that list with Apple’s recent announcement. It has of course not revolutionized the education world just yet but it is off to a solid start by any standards.

As for the TV space, by now everyone knows Apple is about to release its attempt at a fully integrated TV, so let’s put that one aside for a second as well. What about photography?

Did Jobs just say he wanted to change the photography space but not do anything about it before he died? That wouldn’t be very Steve Jobs’y of him, now would it?

Well, according to the new book Inside Apple, Jobs reached out to a man named Ren NG, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Lytro. Now, I am no professional photographer but I have been following this company closely after first hearing about the technology on the On The Verge show (watch below, it is truly amazing! Start at 33:28) and then in Robert Scoble’s feed.

Anyway, the book describes the events as follows:

“The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.”

When the iPhone 4S was introduced, Apple made a point to mention just how much light the new camera sensor lets it when capturing a photo. The way Lytro works is that it takes in ”all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space.”

No one knows if this futuristic photography technology will make its way into the iPhone 5, but one thing is for sure. The iPhone 4S, despite its stellar camera, instant shutter speeds, and on board photo editing is not the kind of revolution Jobs was referring to. Like I said, the man was not exactly known for doing things half way.

By: Hillel Fuld

Steve Jobs was a complicated man. Many idolized him, many hated him, but everyone agrees that when it comes to his presenting abilities as well as his vision in the world of design were breath-takingly inspirational. In fact, I believe that is the very reason most people put up with his personal issues of treating people the way he did and displaying the patterns of behavior for which he was well-known.

OK, but what does Steve Jobs have to do with an article on the future of RIM, the makers of BlackBerry?

If you recall, Apple was 90 days away from bankruptcy when Jobs came back to the company he had founded and from which he was later booted. It wasn’t long before it became clear to all that this man had turned this sinking ship around. Now, Apple is worth a whopping $400 billion dollars and counting.

RIM needs a Steve Jobs badly. The company has not displayed any true innovation in years, with the exception of the Playbook, which I loved from day one. Of course the lack of a native email client and apps quickly took care of that. So, we are back to square one. RIM is sinking fast and they need to make some drastic moves. Some say RIM will go bankrupt in 2012, others say they will sell to Samsung, while our sources tell us it is Amazon that wants to buy the company.

The company clearly agrees with this assessment, hence the recent announcement during the highly televised AFC and NFC championships (nice play, RIM), that its co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are stepping down and will be replaced by current COO for products and sales, Thorsten Hein.

My first thought was “Excellent, it is about time RIM shook things up a bit”. Well, you can watch the video below of the new CEO and how he views the company. Sorry to be so harsh, but he speaks for a full seven minutes and eighteen seconds, in which he says… Nothing! A lot of buzz words and self praise is not what BlackBerry users need to hear right now, RIM!

This new CEO, if I am judging by his first public appearance, is not the Steve Jobs that RIM needs. In fact, he does not even seem to be a Tim Cook. Not sure what he is, but all I can is, RIM, you are in my prayers and I will always have a special place in my heart for you. Remember, I used to be your biggest fan.

In fact, despite all the signs, I am still rooting for you, RIM, but please understand that BBM and a keyboard will not get you far in a world of Siri, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Lumias running wild. Get with the times and innovate, innovate, then when you’re done with that, innovate some more. Oh, and don’t forget some decent branding along the way, you are going to need that too.