I remember shortly after Compaq disaster, Carly Fiorina pioneered this initiative called "Adaptive Enterprise". She went on CNET to do an interview about it. The interviewer kept asking her to explain what "Adaptive Enterprise" meant and she danced around the question talking about synergies and such. That's when a lightbulb went up in my head "This woman is a Category 5 moron".
Why HP Fell
51–60 of 161 posts
Re: Why HP Fell
#52I was always surprised they let Microsoft come in and commoditise their business, why wasn't there an HP operating system to compete with Windows?
There was WebOS. Which I felt was really ahead of its time. But an OS takes time to develop because of the chicken and egg problem. Once Hurd was fired it no longer had C-level interest. They sold it to Samsung, who renamed it Tizen. The UX designer went to Android. And the engineers were scattered across the mobile ecosystem.
I agree that WebOS was great and ahead of it's time, and agree with almost all of the above.
But just for clarity: HP sold webOS to LG (not Samsung), and it (mostly) kept it's webOS name through various aquisitions and rebrandings. See http://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/smart-tv-features and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#History
Samsung's Tizen is it's own thing -- not some acquisition or rebranding of webOS.
Re: Why HP Fell
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, past the LaserJet 5, their printers started taking a nosedive in quality. In my own experience at work, the 1000 didn't last long before it started spewing toner all over the page, and the 4550N, a gigantic color laser with extremely expensive consumables, did likewise. Don't get me started on their inkjets. Nothing like an all-in-one that won't even let you SCAN when it decides to "expire" a costly printhead.…
Mine too. I made the mistake of buying an HP printer a few years ago. What a user-hostile piece of junk. Apparently their ink cartridges are region locked – the first time a cartridge is inserted the printer is permanently set to the cartridge region. I didn't realise this until it rejected the ones I'd got to replace the starter pack. Even though I'd bought it from a big UK retailer it had shipped with US cartridges…
I haven't had an HP printer for a while, but I HATE my neighbors' HP printers. They're constantly screaming at max signal strength on almost all 2.4G WIFI channels with their wireless direct printing.
Re: Why HP Fell
#54At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is excellent about hardware, but terrib…
Having worked there long ago, this is 100% the case. They're a hardware company at heart and never made a good effort to modernize.
Re: Why HP Fell
#55[deleted]
Re: Why HP Fell
#56I never understood HP's acquisition and rapid scuttling of Palm. What a waste. The Touchpad was only on the market for just over a month before being discontinued. Why do that? WebOS had a lot of potential as a platform, to the extent that both Google and Apple subsequently borrowed major chunks of the UI.
The most tragic and ironical sales I've ever witnessed. 99$ Firesale of touchpads made them an instant success, people were buying them at 300 or above the following monthes.
I sold one years later for 90$~
Re: Why HP Fell
#57At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is excellent about hardware, but terrib…
similarly Sony was the semi god of electronics but fell so hard on software
Re: Why HP Fell
#58I was always surprised they let Microsoft come in and commoditise their business, why wasn't there an HP operating system to compete with Windows?
There was WebOS. Which I felt was really ahead of its time. But an OS takes time to develop because of the chicken and egg problem. Once Hurd was fired it no longer had C-level interest. They sold it to Samsung, who renamed it Tizen. The UX designer went to Android. And the engineers were scattered across the mobile ecosystem.
WebOS was an acquisition from Palm, however. And they dumped it almost immediately after the Touchpad and the Pre3 sales tanked.
Re: Why HP Fell
#59I never understood HP's acquisition and rapid scuttling of Palm. What a waste. The Touchpad was only on the market for just over a month before being discontinued. Why do that? WebOS had a lot of potential as a platform, to the extent that both Google and Apple subsequently borrowed major chunks of the UI.
They borrowed more than the UI. Google hired one of the chief designers of WebOS to become the chief UI designer of Android (Matthias Duarte).
Re: Why HP Fell
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was WebOS. Which I felt was really ahead of its time. But an OS takes time to develop because of the chicken and egg problem. Once Hurd was fired it no longer had C-level interest. They sold it to Samsung, who renamed it Tizen. The UX designer went to Android. And the engineers were scattered across the mobile ecosystem.
I agree that WebOS was great and ahead of it's time, and agree with almost all of the above. But just for clarity: HP sold webOS to LG (not Samsung), and it (mostly) kept it's webOS name through various aquisitions and rebrandings. See http://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/smart-tv-features and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#History Samsung's Tizen is it's own thing -- not some acquisition or rebranding of webOS.
Wow it didn’t realize that and you are correct. Was using a SmartTV and the interface felt awefully close to WebOS that I thought it was a derivative.