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

philmckinney.substack.com

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

#241

Post by geodel »

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 ...

Correct. Not just CEOs I have seen it starting from position of Director and above in technical or related companies.

To hide skill gap of leadership is the cottage industry of metrics and reports where endless summaries of performance (technical, financial ... all varieties), operations, QA, development, customer feedback and myriad others are generated on daily, weekly, monthly basis. And during leadership review sessions teams are asked for 10% improvement for next quarter.

If these reports and feedback were any good, these companies would be operating like Navy seal teams by now.

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

#242

Post by draculero »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #210
bluGill wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP got split since then - the HP you think of today is not the company it was in 2010. Too bad, HP used to be a great company that earned their great name. Your questions though are valid.

Were they used to be great? I definitely remembered HP having a very bad reputation even back then. Like every time a ridiculous printer feature that costs user’s money it was HP.

We had a cheap LaserJet 1000 printer at my first job back in the day. I think that we printed hundred of thousands of pages and I aways trusted it.

But the InkJet printers sucked, just like everything else HP now. But HP had a good reputation.

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

#243

Post by alnwlsn »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #210
bluGill wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP got split since then - the HP you think of today is not the company it was in 2010. Too bad, HP used to be a great company that earned their great name. Your questions though are valid.

Were they used to be great? I definitely remembered HP having a very bad reputation even back then. Like every time a ridiculous printer feature that costs user’s money it was HP.

You would hardly believe they once made top of the line voltmeters, oscilloscopes, atomic clocks, calculators - even their printers were once the best.

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

#244

Post by throwanem »

Tteriffic wrote: post #202
commandlinefan wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never in a position to compete with Apple. I kind of wonder if Apple could pull off something like an iphone or an ipad or even an ipod these days, without Steve Jobs around.

Vision Pro, different kind of device but same idea

No one wants it, though.

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

#245

Post by JKCalhoun »

jerf wrote: post #20
JKCalhoun wrote: post #5

> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?

Your question is unclear but I assume you are thinking that iOS has always supported "multitasking". This is not the case. iOS4 introduced it on the iPhone side, and this is how AnandTech [1] describes it: "To switch between apps on the iOS3 you hit the home button, which takes you home, and then select your next app. Your previous app, assuming it isn’t one of a very limited list of apps that have services that can…

That's interesting. Yes, I had assumed, with a kernel, that iOS was multitasking — at least to the degree we've come to expect it.

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

#246

Post by ModernMech »

lukevp wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price was likely too high, though that is debatable. However the real take away is if you want something like this to work out you need to invest in to for years. There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much - it happens too often for anyone to call it wrong. It isn't clear what was predicted, but marketing should have predicted a range of units sold (and various price points havi…

Windows phones were incredible, the OS was the most responsive at the time by far. No apps though. They were building in Android app support when they pulled the plug.

I had Lumia 950, still my favorite phone.

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

#247

Post by bluGill »

timewizard wrote: post #170
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price was likely too high, though that is debatable. However the real take away is if you want something like this to work out you need to invest in to for years. There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much - it happens too often for anyone to call it wrong. It isn't clear what was predicted, but marketing should have predicted a range of units sold (and various price points havi…

> is years of investment. Or just don't be greedy and have an open store ecosystem that doesn't seek to extract money from it's own developers. > to get a lot of apps Phones are computers. For some reason all the manufacturers decided to work very hard to hide this fact and then bury their computer under a layer of insane and incompatible SDKs. They created their own resistance to app development.

That open ecosystem needs years of investment to develop. A few people will take the risk and make a first app, but a lot will wait longer.

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

#248

Post by kalaksi »

jaoane wrote: post #223
lukevp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows phones were incredible, the OS was the most responsive at the time by far. No apps though. They were building in Android app support when they pulled the plug.

Windows Phone was good if you liked staring at "Resuming..." screens all day.

You don't have to be snarky. If you actually have something to say, just say it so people can understand what you're even talking about.

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

#250

Post by scarface_74 »

timewizard wrote: post #170
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price was likely too high, though that is debatable. However the real take away is if you want something like this to work out you need to invest in to for years. There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much - it happens too often for anyone to call it wrong. It isn't clear what was predicted, but marketing should have predicted a range of units sold (and various price points havi…

> is years of investment. Or just don't be greedy and have an open store ecosystem that doesn't seek to extract money from it's own developers. > to get a lot of apps Phones are computers. For some reason all the manufacturers decided to work very hard to hide this fact and then bury their computer under a layer of insane and incompatible SDKs. They created their own resistance to app development.

People really overestimate how much people care about indy developers or how little the 15-30% commission actually makes.

Most of the popular non game apps don’t make money directly by consumers paying for them and it came out in the Epic trial that somewhere around 90% of App Store revenue comes from in app purchases from pay to win games and loot boxes.

If the money is there, companies will jump through any hoops to make software that works for the platform.

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