Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

philmckinney.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 517 posts

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

#311

Post by hajile »

Zigurd wrote: post #27

This is not to take away from the corporate Vogon tragedy described in the blog post. WebOS could've been a credible competitor to iOS and Android. But the weak spot is right in the name: It's a web UI platform. Look at Google's attempts to make ChromeOS into a tablet OS. While it's less clear cut now, back when HP acquired WebOS, they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS a…

WebOS had a native development kit in addition to the web one.

They were way ahead of the game with stuff like wireless charging and the SoC was cutting-edge for its time with fast (1.2GHz, but the chip was designed to run at 1.5GHz and overclocking to 1.8-2GHz was not too hard) partially OoO dual cores and 128-bit SIMD instead of 64-bit like A9 paired with a good LCD. The UI as shipped was already ahead of its time and if you look around for the cancelled Mocha UI, I think it would look pretty modern even today.

The big issue is that they were a web-first platform, but their version of Webkit and JS JIT were years out of date which meant they were behind on web standards and WAY behind on JS performance at a time when JITs were still getting faster at a very rapid pace. The CPU was fast compared to everyone else, but it was still slow and they needed to focus on performance a bit more.

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

#312

Post by IshKebab »

RajT88 wrote: post #268
IshKebab wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The devices sold like hot cake after the price cut. Yeah but that's because they cut the price to to 1/4 of it's price!! They were offloading unsold stock at huge cost. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/22/hp-touchp... I bought one, and ... honestly even at that low price I regretted it. The software was trash. I don't know why WebOS got so much praise, it was clearly not fit for purpose. I have an LG…

WebOS LG TV owner, and TouchPad owner here. As far as I can tell, there's nothing obviously connected to the UI experience of the TV and the TouchPad. The TV is a lot more locked down and filled with ads, but still snappy. Sideloading IPK's is limited. I would love to neuter all the ads and auto-updates, that's my main gripe.

> but still snappy

It's about the least snappy thing I've ever used, apart from cheap Android tablets (we made the mistake of buying an Amazon Fire Kids tablet which is the only device I've ever used that was literally unusably slow).

I even bought the higher spec version of the TV because apparently the cheaper version is even slower. Great image quality but I'll definitely never buy another LG TV again.

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

#314

Post by itomato »

He honestly thought UNIX on iphone was something other than multitasking?

A company that bought into the bad premise would be one to be done in by its own successive CEO choices that are legendarily bad.

Sucks to be powerless, but a surgery shouldn’t really have any bearing on the colossal failure that lived out in 49 days.

It’s a big, ready to fail HP on display.

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

#315

Post by senderista »

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.

I can still remember when they had a sterling reputation (including but not limited to their legendary calculators). Our family had a friend who was an HP engineer and I once got to go to work with him and see one of their giant plotters in action. It was awesome. Now I actively avoid all of their stuff. Not sure I can think of another brand whose reputation has changed so much for the worse.

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

#316

Post by 1oooqooq »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #254
IshKebab wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The devices sold like hot cake after the price cut. Yeah but that's because they cut the price to to 1/4 of it's price!! They were offloading unsold stock at huge cost. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/22/hp-touchp... I bought one, and ... honestly even at that low price I regretted it. The software was trash. I don't know why WebOS got so much praise, it was clearly not fit for purpose. I have an LG…

I distinctly remember the Autumn day of 2011 when we stood in the line of the local Best Buy in West Des Moines to grab one of these. It was miles ahead of anything that was in the market that time. It could do multitasking and had a lovely intuitive UI (cards!!). I remember being blown away by it. Android and iOS freely stole features from it later. I still have the device and it’s one of my cherished vintage device…

yeah it was years ahead of apple and android (this was and2.3 days if i recall, or 4.3 which typical google was worse than 2.3)

and the emulator was better dev experience than anything else. but actually putting things on the device that had anything more than js was impossible.

and the hardware was garbage. buttons would stuck. I don't know what sort of museum you live but mines lasted 4 and 2 years before turning to literal bits (used by adults)

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

#317

Post by nicoburns »

Marsymars wrote: post #300
c-linkage wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow was that forecast bad! It reminds me of a meeting long ago where the marketing team reported that oil was going to hit $400/bbl and that this would be great for business. I literally laughed out loud. At that price, gasoline would be about $18/gal and no one could afford to move anything except by ox cart.

> At that price, gasoline would be about $18/gal and no one could afford to move anything except by ox cart. Just for some rough math here - I’m currently paying around $1.20/L for gas, and crude oil cost is roughly half of that, so if crude went up by 6x, I’d be looking at $5/L for gas. Gas is currently about 20% of my per-km cost of driving, so that price increase at the pump would increase my per-km cost by about…

> by buying more expensive cars

Not to mention less efficient cars.

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

#318

Post by nkrisc »

wvenable wrote: post #227
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.

We pulled out an old Windows Phone from a drawer at work a few years ago. I had never used one before but I was actually quite impressed with the fluidity and design of the UI. The design was a little dark but I could understand now what it had it's fans. Ironically Microsoft is a company that knows that apps make the platform more than anything else and they botched it so badly.

Up until 2011 I was still using one of those Samsung phones with the slide out keyboard, maybe an Intensity II or something. My first smartphone was a Windows phone, an HTC Titan. I really liked the phone and the OS - I thought it was very well done. The only problem: the app store was complete shit. There were barely any apps and the ones that were there were trash barely discernible from malware.

After about a year I bought a Nexus 4 instead.

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

#319

Post by hajile »

timschmidt wrote: post #197

I have a theory I've not read elsewhere about the HP TouchPad's abrupt cancellation and firesale. I bought one, and was slightly shocked at how faithfully it's physical dimensions copied the iPad 1. It used the same exact make and model LCD. Buttons and headphone jack were in identical locations. The TouchPad even had a gesture sensor where the iPad had a home button. It was a close enough facsimile that you could us…

Touchpad had rounded edges vs the sharp aluminum ones on the ipad. Touchpad was visibly shorter and the corners were much more rounded.

If there were a real reason here, it would be that the iPad 2 launched in March 2011. When Touchpad launched 3-4 months later, it was twice as thick with worse battery life and a lot fewer apps were available while it had more bugs.

I think this was the real reason.

HP could have overcome all of these issues if they'd just given the hardware/software teams more time to finish the software and make thinner hardware.

The could have been a big player in the phone, tablet, TV, and even laptop market if they'd stuck with it.

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

#320

Post by FlyingSnake »

1oooqooq wrote: post #316
FlyingSnake wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I distinctly remember the Autumn day of 2011 when we stood in the line of the local Best Buy in West Des Moines to grab one of these. It was miles ahead of anything that was in the market that time. It could do multitasking and had a lovely intuitive UI (cards!!). I remember being blown away by it. Android and iOS freely stole features from it later. I still have the device and it’s one of my cherished vintage device…

yeah it was years ahead of apple and android (this was and2.3 days if i recall, or 4.3 which typical google was worse than 2.3) and the emulator was better dev experience than anything else. but actually putting things on the device that had anything more than js was impossible. and the hardware was garbage. buttons would stuck. I don't know what sort of museum you live but mines lasted 4 and 2 years before turning t…

I might be lucky because mine’s still chugging along.

May horde contains: few old MacBooks running Linux, old Kindles running dashboards, Android phones & tablets, iPhones from OG era and even a Chumby. All of them are still working fine.

Post reply on HN