I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it • Hacker News Board

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#141

Post by ianburrell » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #92

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other thing to point out is that the entire tablet market only exists today due to re-use of the phone ecosystems. Just look at any popular app on a tablet - they all have massive borders/sidebars and within those it's just the phone app as-is. Not even Facebook makes a dedicated tablet app. It's all just the phone app ported across in a very crude way. The simple fact is that the tablet market isn't big enough t…

> Just look at any popular app on a tablet - they all have massive borders/sidebars and within those it's just the phone app as-is. What apps are you using? That's not the case for any of the iPad apps I use anymore, though early on it was fairly common since quick ports could be made by checking the "release for iPad" box or however it worked back then. That was 15 years ago, though, things have changed quite a bit…

There is a difference between iPad and iPhone apps. The former run full screen, and the latter letterboxed.

I don’t use iPhone apps on this iPad Mini, they are too painful. I use the Instagram and Blue Sky web sites instead.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#142

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #125

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HP was definitely in a position to compete with apple, and always has been. In 1990-2000? Sure, maybe. In 2010? Not a chance. HP was not a SW company like Apple. Apple wasn't making much money from selling Macs in 2001. Their big cash cow came from the iPod which HP couldn't pull off something like iTunes and licensing deals with record labels, they were just a commodity HW company (ignoring the oscilloscope, sensor…

I agree. OEMs have always been weird because in some sense consumers attribute the computers to them. But they don’t have a core competency in software. And they don’t have a core competency in the hardest parts of hardware—chip design, etc. Picking the right parts to buy, assembling them, shipping them, that’s all important stuff. They weren’t in a position to win against Apple; they were playing one of the three ga…

HP did have competency in a lot of those areas though. They were a large company that did have fingers in a lot of different things, both software and hardware. Their PCs were visible, but they had lots of other divisions doing lots of things.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#143

Post by dartharva » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

stratosgear wrote: post #32

He refused a generous exit package because he wanted to maintain his ability to talk about his experience with HP, but waited 15 years to do so? I think i missed something, or he's not completely honest?

Author admits he held (and still holds) a lot of HP shares. Had he spoken out back then after the fiasco, HP's stock price would have tanked further. He'd be cutting down his own wealth unnecessarily, in addition to harming his prospects at the peak of his career.

Today he is probably past his corporate ambitions, and has a good personal relationship with current HP leadership. There is little to no harm getting it out now.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#144

Post by akudha » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

Apotheker had made the discontinuation choice without even informing the Palm team beforehand

Is this how big decisions are made in big companies? Or is this an exception? Shouldn’t people in high positions have basic humility to get the opinions of experts, have basic decency to inform before making massive decisions like this? Even if it was the right decision (I have no idea)? sounds insane

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#145

Post by HeckFeck » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #67

HeckFeck wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HPE Also with one of the worst logos ever. Have you seen RECTANGLE? It encapsulates our venerable company in two dimensional space. It's at least honest - Three dimensions would imply we're solid, and four would imply that we're moving anywhere.

Oh shit, that's their logo? I don't exactly know what I though it was, but I didn't consider that it might be their logo.

It's so subtle you can't even tell! That's what you get when you commission with a blank cheque.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#146

Post by Henchman21 » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #105

ang_cire wrote: post #77

> I realized the fundamental problem wasn't my absence. It was a systematic mismatch between Leo Apotheker's experience and the role he was asked to fill. > SAP's annual revenue while Leo served as its CEO was approximately $15 billion. The HP board hired a CEO whose largest organizational experience was running a company smaller than HP's smallest division. Based purely on revenue management experience, Apotheker wo…

>> At some point "management" and "executive management" started (falsely) being viewed as their own dedicated skillset that is independent and unrelated to the business itself, when in reality they still require specific understanding of the skills and processes over which they preside. You can't just drop any CEO into any other CEO position, and think they'll succeed. There are aspects of management that are indepe…

> "management is a generic function independent of the business being run. With an MBA and you can run Coke GM or Intel into the ground all the same."

I felt it needed a little tweak. You are exactly right otherwise IMO.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#147

Post by coredog64 » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:15 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #80

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP was definitely in a position to compete with apple, and always has been. They might not have been in a position to beat them, but you don't have to be on top to be profitable.

>HP was definitely in a position to compete with apple, and always has been. In 1990-2000? Sure, maybe. In 2010? Not a chance. HP was not a SW company like Apple. Apple wasn't making much money from selling Macs in 2001. Their big cash cow came from the iPod which HP couldn't pull off something like iTunes and licensing deals with record labels, they were just a commodity HW company (ignoring the oscilloscope, sensor…

Circa 2005, HP did a licensing deal with Apple to sell their own iPod Photo.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#148

Post by silent_cal » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

No sympathy from me. Guy was the CTO, probably making millions a year, and now he's whining about how a $1.2B investment failed on his watch and nothing was his fault? Sorry guy but you are the leader, you are responsible.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#149

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

ianburrell wrote: post #141

Jtsummers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at any popular app on a tablet - they all have massive borders/sidebars and within those it's just the phone app as-is. What apps are you using? That's not the case for any of the iPad apps I use anymore, though early on it was fairly common since quick ports could be made by checking the "release for iPad" box or however it worked back then. That was 15 years ago, though, things have changed quite a bit…

There is a difference between iPad and iPhone apps. The former run full screen, and the latter letterboxed. I don’t use iPhone apps on this iPad Mini, they are too painful. I use the Instagram and Blue Sky web sites instead.

I don't use either of those services so I was unaware. So I guess there are still some apps out there without a proper iPad interface. I haven't encountered any in at least a decade though and they seem to be in the minority. Apple has gone to great lengths to make it easy to at least make something that fits on the iPad even if you don't try to make it properly native and use the screen real estate effectively. So that strikes me as laziness on the part of the Instagram and Bluesky app developers to not even try.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#150

Post by hajimuz » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:18 PM UTC

Palm is the Xerox in mobile era. Back then, It’s obviously better than Android, which is not a complete OS in any sense of quality standard. It’s even better than iOS in many technical specifications. HP flop could be one of the worst disasters in computing history.