HP’s Abandoning TouchPad, WebOS Not Going Down Well In The Bunker

By Sunday August 21, 2011





32 Comments
  1. foobar says:
    8/21/2011 at 3:28 pm

    It’s become pretty clear that when Leo Apotheker (Ex CEO SAP) took over from Mark Hurd that HP’s main focus was shifting away from end user computing to software. Big ass software.

    HP board member Marc Andreessen on the why software is eating the world. You might not agree, but that’s the thinking.

    Reply
  2. chuck says:
    8/21/2011 at 3:46 pm

    Ok, it’s nice that Apotheker wants HP to be a software company. In which case, why doesn’t he quit HP and try to get a job as CEO of a software company, or maybe start his own company.

    Instead HP puts out the TouchPad in July, and less than 2 months later, kills it, along with all credibility they will ever have for future hardware.

    There’s a joke: How do you make a small fortune on Wall Street? Easy: start with a large fortune.

    Apotheker has decided to turn a large computer company into a small software company.

    Michael Dell must be laughing his ass off. His main competitor has just committed suicide. Dell still has to worry about Apple, but they seem to be happy selling phones.

    Reply
  3. deowll says:
    8/21/2011 at 4:19 pm

    I’m not happy. Most of the computers I’ve bought for myself are HP computers. They’ve been good machines. This is the largest computer company on earth and while profit margins may have been thin they were making money and the PC is not going away any time soon.

    Why doesn’t this %$^#@ just spin off the computer division and move on?

    No sane computer hardware competitor would pay jack for more of what they already own.

    Reply
  4. Grandpa says:
    8/21/2011 at 4:22 pm

    H-P has always been an inkjet consumer company. What product, that is unique to H-P, has H-P invented for the consumer? Other than inkjet there isn’t any. Trying to be Sony or Apple won’t work. Management lost their way and failed to see the importance of “Invent” for consumers. They outsourced their culture, lost their way, and now must start over and hope for success. Instead of copying others, H-P needs to “Invent” something new and unique. Not an easy thing to do.

    Reply
  5. What? says:
    8/21/2011 at 4:30 pm

    Great link foobar.

    Marc Andreessen appears to be a douchnozzle who enjoys pimping bubble-value stocks to help his friends out. Did he forget to say software would solve the energy situation, I think he didn’t.

    Andreessen sounds like one of these people that have latched on to a hammer as the solution every problem (which he sees as a nail). His solution is the “software” hammer.

    And then he rambles on about what software could do, while giving examples of ridiculous games, like “Angry Birds”, as an example of the promise of software.

    Has that douchnozzle ever really written real software, or used a computer to do work?

    Or, does he just run his mouth all day?

    Reply
  6. Miguel says:
    8/21/2011 at 4:46 pm

    The Fuhrer is making progresses with his anger management lessons. He took it much better this time compared with when his HD DVD player became obsolete…

    Reply
  7. Dallas says:
    8/21/2011 at 4:51 pm

    I love these and they make me giggle like Anderson Cooper.

    Reply
  8. Derek says:
    8/21/2011 at 5:13 pm

    Ehhh… Apple and Dell will make a similar choice eventually. Once you can display a tablet on a TV or a base to a computer monitor/keyboard/mouse, a standalone computer will only be useful to gamers. I love computers, but I can see the writing on the wall. Computers are too big, too bulky, and require too much space, materials, and power when a tablet can do 90% of what the average person uses a computer for in the first place. It’s only a matter of time before that last 10% gets filled.

    My parents got a tablet and they haven’t used their computer in months. Why have a huge computer in the house when you can take a tablet with you everywhere.

    Reply
  9. ReadyKilowatt says:
    8/21/2011 at 5:17 pm

    Bob X. Gringely had some good comments:

    http://cringely.com/2011/08/losing-the-hp-way/

    To me, HP stopped being HP when they spun out Agilent. It was a crime that the name stayed with the PC and printer company.

    And what the heck were they thinking buying Palm anyway? Carly Fiorina killing the calculator division (or did she?) basically made it a rough fit, at best. Imagine a WebOS based scientific calculator, could have been a contender. Instead we got talk of WebOS going into printer interfaces?!?!

    Reply
  10. ReadyKilowatt says:
    8/21/2011 at 5:19 pm

    Cringely. The guy’s pseudonym is Cringely, not Gringely.

    Sorry to all the perfectionists out there. I’ll write it out 100 times on the chalkboard.

    Reply
  11. ROB WEST says:
    8/21/2011 at 6:42 pm

    As I sit here in front of my 27″ HD monitor (which is beautiful) Like there’s ever going to be a 27″ iPad, oh wait that would be a MS Surface.
    Sad to see HP leave the PC world.

    Reply
  12. UncDon says:
    8/21/2011 at 7:29 pm

    I have an HP 23-inch monitor for my MacMini. Damn fine screen that is.

    Reply
  13. springfield_tom says:
    8/21/2011 at 9:12 pm

    Re: Grandpa said,

    “H-P has always been an inkjet consumer company. What product, that is unique to H-P, has H-P invented for the consumer? Other than inkjet there isn’t any…”

    I still have my HP-35 scientific calculator I bought in 1974! See wikipedia entry for HP-35.

    Reply
  14. Faxon says:
    8/21/2011 at 10:33 pm

    HP has NOT always been an inkjet company. I remember HP test and medical equipment as the only product they made. Inkjets were a detour, and now they can’t seem to find their way. Agilent is the name on the test equipment now, and printers are the only thing with HP on them, I think. Carly Fiorina fucked up the company, and it has not recovered.

    Reply
  15. Grandpa says:
    8/21/2011 at 10:58 pm

    #13 I’ll give you that one, but that’s a looooong time ago.

    PS: I actually ran the Tampo machine for the keys for that calculator in 1991 when I first started there in Corvallis, OR.

    Reply
  16. pedro says:
    8/22/2011 at 12:33 am

    #7 Funny, this morning I was about to ask you that although I refrain from asking the question because to me it was a given.

    Reply
  17. The0ne says:
    8/22/2011 at 2:40 am

    Since I had already planned to make apps for WebOS anyways I went ahead and bought 2 16GB for use. At $99 each it’s not too bad. If anything I can offload them to my sisters to replace their netbooks. They use mainly email, videos and photos anyhow.

    Since it’s dead I guess I’ll be making my own apps for them :D

    Reply
  18. foobar says:
    8/22/2011 at 2:54 am

    Theone It has a nice programming model. Clean and easy to learn. Every geek went “Aw crap! More Java and Objective-C”. And no, I don’t think HTML5 will rule the day on handsets. Just my opinion – and everyone says I’m wrong of course. :D

    What? I personally think that the big boys (Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, etc) and their partners (Accenture, Infosys, HP, etc) are trenching in against the new players. I think all the big players are too slow and expensive to compete while maintaining backwards compatibility for their current customers. I see billions spent on big package implementations now by companies. 5 years ago it was hundreds of millions.

    Therefore, I do think they are all vulnerable. New models for delivery and support are emerging and one of them will stick. It’s just a matter of time. Just my opinion, not based on numbers or anything. So, from that point of view I kind of agree with Andreessen.

    As for Angry Birds – there certainly is a lot of pressure on Nintendo to start porting games to iOS right now.

    Reply
  19. foobar says:
    8/22/2011 at 3:15 am

    BTW, screw HP, Apple and Google for tech news. This is the coolest tech story of the entire summer.

    Reply
  20. Uncle Dave says:
    8/22/2011 at 3:54 am

    #5: “Marc Andreessen… Has that douchnozzle ever really written real software, or used a computer to do work?”

    You mean other than write Mosaic/Netscape?

    Reply

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