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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

#381

Post by m3kw9 »

iconara wrote: post #69

> "Then, in late June 2011 […] I faced a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery and a eight-week recovery period confined to bed. […] On July 1, 2011, HP launched the TouchPad tablet running WebOS 3.0 […] The launch was botched from the start. HP priced the TouchPad at $499 to compete directly with the iPad, but without the app ecosystem or marketing muscle to justify that premium. The device felt rushed to ma…

They weren’t ever winning because iPad is riding on the massive marketing advantage iPhone gave it. It’s an iPhone but now huge.

The other produce was likely clunky as heck and yes the App Store was the other genius stroke

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

#382

Post by zubiaur »

knuckleheadsmif wrote: post #334
iconara wrote: post #69

> "Then, in late June 2011 […] I faced a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery and a eight-week recovery period confined to bed. […] On July 1, 2011, HP launched the TouchPad tablet running WebOS 3.0 […] The launch was botched from the start. HP priced the TouchPad at $499 to compete directly with the iPad, but without the app ecosystem or marketing muscle to justify that premium. The device felt rushed to ma…

I was at Palm when launched working on the device end user software startup experience. The software I think was ready but the hardware was far inferior to the current iPad at the time. However it’s possible that the next iteration could have been more competitive, they just had to stick with it. But neither the hardware or software mattered because it was the CEO who killed it through poor long term judgement As the…

They were learning. The pre 2 was so much better than the original.

WebOS felt much more polished than Android was at the time.

The app ecosystem was lacking, but the tooling seemed to be constantly improving.

Having had palms since pOS 3, it was sad, but not foreign, to see them struggle.

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

#383

Post by ghaff »

detaro wrote: post #224
detourdog wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find interesting about your comment is that iPhone launched with out an ecosystem and 4 years later a. App Store was tabled stakes.

The iPhone opened up the smartphone market to many many more people. We had smartphones before, but it didn't need to convert their tiny userbase to be a success (and I know some people who stuck with PocketPC-based smartphones for quite a while, because they had their use cases and workflows on them that other smartphones took time to cover). Once the smartphone for everyone was a category, it was much more fighting…

I got a Treo in 2006 mostly because I had a badly broken foot and needed an alternative to carrying a computer on some trips. Didn't get an iPhone until a 3GS or thereabouts in around 2010.

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

#384

Post by hajile »

jmtulloss wrote: post #329
hajile wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

webOS really needed low-level help. It took over forever to boot because (seemingly) nobody ever bothered to optimize even the low-hanging fruit. The webkit version used was slow and way behind standards and (as was the JS JIT). This was crippling for a web-first system. That aside, the actual UX of webOS itself is still better than anything we have today and I liked my Touchpad despite the flaws.

Yeah, there's a lot of context there that isn't obvious from the outside and is behind my feelings that Palm just had too little too late. They shouldn't have been blindsided by the iPhone, but with that happening they really did the best they could. I'll make some brief points, but maybe I should write a blog post at some point. - Kernel talent was never a problem at Palm. The ex-Palm folks lead or are technical lea…

Boot times for alternative kernels were a lot faster. I can't recall exactly (it's been years), but I seem to remember that there were some simple config settings in the bootloader that could cut boot times by a lot.

Was battery life the reason stock clocks were 1.2GHz instead of Qualcomm's recommended 1.5GHz? I used to run mine at 1.7-2GHz without any trouble (aside from battery life).

Maybe I'm wrong about the JIT, but as I recall, the JS benchmarks under webOS were significantly worse than Android (preware ultimately wasn't enough to keep up with things and LuneOS wasn't really viable without a lot of effort, so dual-booting to Android extended the life of the tablet for quite a while).

I wasn't at Palm, but it was noticeable during browsing (especially vs Android) and was extremely noticeable when it came to missing features. I did some EnyoJS work, but that was actually targeted at web apps rather than a webOS-specific app.

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

#385

Post by jorvi »

ghaff wrote: post #364
melbourne_mat wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 2 charts are amazing! At least the Itanium people adjusted their curves downward over time, looks like the IEA just carried on regardless!

It wasn't the Itanium people so much as the industry analysts who follow such things. And, yes, they (including myself) were spectacularly wrong early on but, hey, it was Intel after all and an AMD alternative wasn't even a blip on the radar and 64-bit chips were clearly needed. I'm not sure there was any industry analyst--and I probably bailed earlier than most--who was going this is going to be a flop from the earl…

  an AMD alternative wasn't even a blip on the radar
Aside from it not being 64bit initially uh.. did we live through the same time period? The Athlons completely blew the Intel competition out of the water. If Intel hadn't heavily engaged in market manipulation, AMD would have taken a huge bite out of their marketshare.

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

#386

Post by hajile »

timschmidt wrote: post #376
hajile wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also owned a touchpad. You are misremembering if you think they look the same. Here's a side-by-side image https://i.insider.com/4e0cb173ccd1d561390e0000?width=900&for... Here's a close-up detail of an ipad on top of a touchpad. As I stated, you can clearly see sharp, flat edges on the ipad where it meets the back of the device while the Touchpad has a much more continuous rounded edge. In the side-by-side shots, y…

I'm sure whatever differences you see seem important to you. None of them prevented a $15 iPad case from working flawlessly with my TouchPad for a half dozen years. Tapping into Apple's ecosystem in such a way is exactly the sort of action Apple dislikes, for obvious reasons.

Those differences are precisely why suing wouldn't be possible. Apple barely won against Samsung and they were claiming not only the hardware design (where almost every element was ripped off), but also that Samsung copied Apple software design too.

In my opinion, Touchpad's different edges, corners, and radically different software meant HP wasn't likely to get sued.

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

#387

Post by ghaff »

microtherion wrote: post #359
adastra22 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much Remember that the Apple Watch did this. The initial release was priced way outside of market conditions--it was being sold as a luxury-branded fashion accessory at a >$1k price point on release. It was subtly rebranded as a mass-affordable sports fitness tracker the next year.

I believe you are mistaken, in several aspects: 1) Entry level watch models were available for about $400 right away, which is still more or less the starting point (though due to inflation, that's a bit cheaper now, of course). 2) Luxury models (>$1K price) are still available, now under the Hermès co-branding. The one thing that was only available in the initial release were the "Edition" models at a >$10K price po…

That comports with my memory. I have no idea what Apple's internal sales projections were. But there was a ton of nerd and tech press criticism to the effect that young people didn't wear watches any longer so obviously this was a stupid idea for a product.

Even if I'm not really sold for day-to-day wear because of the limited battery life, I do have one.

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

#388

Post by paulddraper »

bluGill wrote: post #99
iconara wrote: post #69

> "Then, in late June 2011 […] I faced a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery and a eight-week recovery period confined to bed. […] On July 1, 2011, HP launched the TouchPad tablet running WebOS 3.0 […] The launch was botched from the start. HP priced the TouchPad at $499 to compete directly with the iPad, but without the app ecosystem or marketing muscle to justify that premium. The device felt rushed to ma…

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 out for years, no?

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

#389

Post by Shog9 »

cogman10 wrote: post #287
RajT88 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't remember the touchpad performance being all that bad for the time. Was pretty snappy IIRC. My LG TV, on the other hand, definitely struggles particularly running apps. That might just be due to the age of the tv.

My observation, after using LG TVs at countless hotels (occasionally internet-connected), AirBnBs (usually internet connected) and at home (never internet-connected) is that even in quite old TVs the UI is blazing fast until you connect it to the 'Net. At that point... It spends a painful amount of time waiting on requests with no visible feedback and the whole UI starts to chug, with some apps becoming almost unusable until the thing has been on for long enough for all the background stuff to finish.

Granted... If they aren't 'Net-connected, most "apps" aren't of much use. But, fast access to settings and inputs is sorta nice too.

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