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Why HP Fell

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Re: Why HP Fell

#141

Post by astrodust »

vxNsr wrote: post #130
astrodust wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple had never gotten out of the embarrassment that was the Performa Era with a multitude of largely similar but wildly different priced computers, Apple would have gone the way of HP and divested itself of different business units until nothing of value was left. Instead Apple focused, got its shit together, and did something important. HP could have done the same, knuckled down and fixed the fundamental problem…

with a multitude of largely similar but wildly different priced computers As an aside, they seem to be headed back in this direction once again, with what appears to be 5 different-but-essentially-the-same phones coming out on the market this september. And a whole bunch of wildly priced desktops and laptops that don't seem to consider anything but the bottom line.

That's the trap. If they want to succeed they have to accommodate a wider range of use-cases but not without complicating the product line-up.

The problem is that phones are a way bigger deal than computers. If they made but one laptop model it'd be ridiculous. Having one or two phones isn't a big deal. Twenty or, like Samsung in its heyday, two hundred is a problem.

Re: Why HP Fell

#142

Post by apricot »

johnvanommen wrote: post #108
repolfx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

When I worked in engineering at T-Mobile, the Danger Hiptop was the device that all the engineers loved. At the time, Duarte worked for Danger. He left Danger to go work for Helio, then Helio was acquired. He left Helio to go work for Palm, and then Palm was acquired. Oddly enough, the team that wound up doing the OS for the iPod was in the mix during this timespan also. They pitched a product to T-Mobile, but T-Mobi…

> Danger Hiptop

(wistful sigh)

Re: Why HP Fell

#143

Post by tptacek »

rrauenza wrote: post #86
pvg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was easy to compile them on Sun The Sun machines were much more common and a lot of software was tested/built on SunOS.

In the 90's and early 2000's Sun machines were pretty much the default for developing new software during the dot com boom. I was told this was due partly because Sun sold a lot of hardware on credit (and then this crashed when the dot com boom crashed.) I worked at HP during this time helping software vendors port to HP-UX. I also spent some time on the side compiling open source projects for fun on HP-UX and then p…

In the 90's and 2000s, Sun machines might have been a kind of default for deploying new software, but they certainly weren't the default for developing it. By 1998, you'd be getting a much better machine from Intel than you could get even in the same ballpark cost as from Sun. If you did work on a Sun workstation, you probably did it grudgingly (except that they had a really good C++ compiler for the time).

Re: Why HP Fell

#144

Post by secabeen »

ams6110 wrote: post #139
mpol wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung gives out drivers for download. A simple search found it: https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/ I own a ML-1660 for now 7 years and the drivers still work fine for me. Just no duplex printing, which is a shame.

Yes but the drivers they have don't work on current MacOS. Mac OS X (Tiger) v10.4 is the latest.

Interestingly, this is to some degree an Apple problem. Microsoft has no problem supporting printer drivers from Windows 7 (or before) in Windows 10, or Windows XP drivers in Windows 7. It's so very Apple to regularly throw out history.

Re: Why HP Fell

#145

Post by rrauenza »

tptacek wrote: post #143
rrauenza wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90's and early 2000's Sun machines were pretty much the default for developing new software during the dot com boom. I was told this was due partly because Sun sold a lot of hardware on credit (and then this crashed when the dot com boom crashed.) I worked at HP during this time helping software vendors port to HP-UX. I also spent some time on the side compiling open source projects for fun on HP-UX and then p…

In the 90's and 2000s, Sun machines might have been a kind of default for deploying new software, but they certainly weren't the default for developing it. By 1998, you'd be getting a much better machine from Intel than you could get even in the same ballpark cost as from Sun. If you did work on a Sun workstation, you probably did it grudgingly (except that they had a really good C++ compiler for the time).

The companies I worked with primarily developed on the systems customers used. You really want to see the issues on your tier1 platform as you develop. Linux was not tier1 at that time.

This meant that code written on Sun that performed well performed poorly on HP-UX occasionally -- not because HP-UX was a worse platform, but because corner cases in architecture could bite you. On your tier1 development platform you tend to weed those issues out early.

Re: Why HP Fell

#146

Post by johnvanommen »

apricot wrote: post #142
johnvanommen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in engineering at T-Mobile, the Danger Hiptop was the device that all the engineers loved. At the time, Duarte worked for Danger. He left Danger to go work for Helio, then Helio was acquired. He left Helio to go work for Palm, and then Palm was acquired. Oddly enough, the team that wound up doing the OS for the iPod was in the mix during this timespan also. They pitched a product to T-Mobile, but T-Mobi…

> Danger Hiptop (wistful sigh)

It was a magical time. I wish I'd taken more pictures. I had no idea that these guys would go on to create Android and kinda change the world.

At the time, I honestly thought it was all a bit silly TBH! "Why would I want to take a picture with my phone when I have a perfectly good camera?"

"Why does Paris Hilton have her pictures stored on OUR servers, doesn't she know that's a security risk?"

Fun fact - all those pics, from all the customers, were stored completely unencrypted. They were uuencoded for some reason, but if someone wanted to, they could've hoovered up every last file.

I was working the day that Paris Hilton had her account hacked, that was not a fun day. It was looking like some heads would roll, and then it turned out the hackers exploited her account by simply guessing her password. The initial fear was that someone had penetrated the network.

Re: Why HP Fell

#147

Post by abawany »

opencl wrote: post #63
Scarblac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? I made the mistake of buying a Canon once and now I'm looking for a new printer.

If you don't do a lot of photo printing I'd highly recommend getting a laser printer. Far more reliable than inkjets, never dry out, and the toner is cheap. I got an $80 black and white Brother nearly a decade ago and it still works fine. These days you can get color laser machines under $200 and the toner remains far cheaper than ink cartridges. The other way to avoid paying through the nose for tiny ink cartridges…

I was able to get a Ricoh 250SF (all-in-one color laser with fax) for under $200 last year. It is an overbuilt and heavy tank with slight driver unfriendliness but I have no complaints with its superb print quality, ability to scan to a USB drive/Samba share/email, and good support on Win 7/8/10 and OSX.

Re: Why HP Fell

#148

Post by lostgame »

MBCook wrote: post #67
yardie wrote: post #46

Earlier 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 do wonder if WebOS had a chance. There was so much overhead in the UI I’m not sure it would have gotten to the point where performance was good enough before it failed anyway. Today it wouldn’t be an issue, but in ‘09 or ‘10 it was non-trivial. Great UI design though. I’m still amazed how long it took for others to steal the card metaphor and some of the other great features. Like the Touchstone. We’re finally livi…

I absolutely loved and kind of miss my Pre. :)

Re: Why HP Fell

#149

Post by Annatar »

pjmlp wrote: post #31
Annatar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was solved in the newer versions of aCC. I had no issues compiling most contemporary code all the way ‘till 2014 when I finally retired my private HP-UX server infrastructure. For particularly badly written software, there was GCC on HP-UX.

GCC wasn't an option on our case back then, as we were required to use the system compilers due to our customer base.

I don't understand what that would have to do with anything, as long as you made a PSF SD-UX "gcc-runtime" fileset with libgcc_s.so.1 in it. That's what I did, worked just fine.

Re: Why HP Fell

#150

Post by Annatar »

acdha wrote: post #82
Annatar wrote: post #22

Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating their lunch.

The interesting thing is that a single executive had a large share in killing both HP and SGI as major players. Richard Belluzzo was the guy who decided that HP should switch from HP UX on PA-RISC to Windows NT on Itanium, and then moved to SGI to preside over the decision to turn SGI into a Windows reseller and gave the SGI 3D graphics team — which at the time had a legendary reputation — to nVidia along with their…

Yep, I've studied this in great detail as I was very personally affected by it: it's always the same people who were the root cause of this. Sun Microsystems was the only company which stuck to its guns and continued with UNIX, sometimes in direct competition with the Microsoft corporation, because the engineers fought for their life's work like crazy, ultimately resulting in illumos today, so it lives on.

Scott McNealy, bless his heart, was the only executive openly willing to testify in the case against Microsoft versus NetScape: none of these other "executives" had the balls to testify for fear of making Bill Gates angry.

It was always the same set of people hopping companies, selling their bullshit and ruining them. Now we have an inferior operating system on inferior hardware, total chaos in virtualisation and cloud, low salaries and bad working conditions, in good part thanks to them ruining these UNIX companies.

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