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I Convinced HP's Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days

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  • I had a similarly high opinion on Meego's future at Nokia and then they suddenly went all-in on Windows Phone.

    I also had a somewhat high opinion of Windows Phone before MS killed it.

    No one wants to maintain an OS for any less than like 25% of the market — which pretty much only leaves room for Abdroid and iOS... and KaiOS I guess, though I don't know how much effort the put into maintaining that. webOS and Tizen (resting place of Meego) are now pretty much only in TVs.

    Nokia didn’t suddenly go all in on Windows Phone, they were bought by Microsoft.

    There were only ever like 2 phones that used MeeGo. Nokia primarily used an OS called Symbian before they were bought out.

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    I love hearing these kinds of retellings from industry insiders, I was deep in Tech and high up in the games industry, and I know the kinds of shenanigans that happen at the CEO and board level!

    But in my view the mobile game was over already in *2001-2003. That's when Microsoft had everything wrapped up in their hot little hands, but decided that mobile computing was not the future, and that embedded Windows CE on every device is the way to go.

    Everything that happened after 2003 to 2005 basically sealed everything in stone. I think he's vastly over playing whatever revolution was in his mind.

  • 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 wouldn't have qualified to be a Executive Vice President at HP, yet the board put him in charge of a $125 billion technology company.

    HP's board has done a lot of messed up stuff. I wouldn't touch HP gear with a stick.

    (This is only tangentially related, sorry for the notification. I just want to complain. I hope you understand)

    I bought a used, old HP laptop with a fairly capable AMD apu for some power and cost efficient gaming. Problem is that even though modern games can theoretically run on it at playable frame rates at very low settings, HP does not allow you to change how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU in BIOS. They have a setting, but its locked behind a BIOS only they have access to. Its quite frustrating that I have capable hardware but cannot use it to its full extent because of this software lockout. Knowing that they lock their consumer BIOS' down like this is absolutely keeping me from buying HP basically ever again, because I really want to make the most of my hardware and keep it all alive as long as possible to reduce waste, and they won't let me.

  • And I've had two HP laptops work for over 5yrs+ without problem. The only laptop that died in less than a year was a Toshiba.

    Only had one Toshiba, and it was put together poorly. Thermal paste was improperly applied and it would simply shut down within 30 minutes. It’s hard to find a faultless brand, but cheap hp laptops are rarely worth the money.

  • And I've had two HP laptops work for over 5yrs+ without problem. The only laptop that died in less than a year was a Toshiba.

    My company only buys HP laptops, so I've had quite a few. Each one has lasted me longer than the company mandated refresh cycle of 3 years. My last two HP laptops lasted 4 years before I was forced to get new machines. I'm not saying HP is perfect, but anecdotes are only anecdotes.

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    That pissed me off so much back then. I was a big Palm/WebOS fan, having a Treo 600 and 650, then a Pre and a FrankenPre 2 (the Pre 2 didn't come out on Sprint, only Verizon, so I had to buy the Verizon version and swap out the Sprint radio from my Pre 1 and sideload custom OS modules). I also bought the TouchPad on day 1 and loved the shit out of it.

    After HP killed WebOS, I sideloaded Android onto the TouchPad and kept using it for a couple more years.

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    I never understood how they could choose Apotheker.
    He was literally fired from SAP in less than a year and yet HP got him as a CEO.

    WebOS had its flaws,but it could have made HP market leader - at that time Apple was far from "enterprise ready", Android even less so, so if they had done it right they would have every CIO in their pocket within 4 years.

    But of course that doesn't count for the next quarterly shareholder report. And Apotheker had to go "all in" on Software, because that's what he, the salesman he is, sold them.

  • (This is only tangentially related, sorry for the notification. I just want to complain. I hope you understand)

    I bought a used, old HP laptop with a fairly capable AMD apu for some power and cost efficient gaming. Problem is that even though modern games can theoretically run on it at playable frame rates at very low settings, HP does not allow you to change how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU in BIOS. They have a setting, but its locked behind a BIOS only they have access to. Its quite frustrating that I have capable hardware but cannot use it to its full extent because of this software lockout. Knowing that they lock their consumer BIOS' down like this is absolutely keeping me from buying HP basically ever again, because I really want to make the most of my hardware and keep it all alive as long as possible to reduce waste, and they won't let me.

    This is VERY HP and does not surprise me at all. If they don’t know why they’re going down, it’s not because everyone didn’t tell them.

    The regular HP printer threads are another example.

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    I developed one of the top ten apps in the webOS App Store. I released it about 6 months before they shuttered Palm and started the transition of webOS in to a vague "embedded and mobile things" open source OS that eventually ended up on, primarily, LG televisions.

    It was my first big success as a computer science student. When I started working on my next big app idea it was about 80% complete when the new dropped that they were discontinuing all phones and tablets. Palm used to send me free phones and tablets too, and I spent a lot of time in the community forums, I had reviews on webOS Nation, and so on

    I maintain to this day that enyo is one of the greatest app development frameworks ever written and I wonder what the landscape of web development would look like today if they'd moved faster to liberate it from mobile devices. The webOS team were also earlier adopters of nodeJS for their native services. It felt like living in the future using them at a time when the iPhone 4 was barely out.

    If you can believe it, after that I moved over to Windows Phone, where history repeated without the afterlife. After that, I felt cursed but, honestly, I chose both platforms because the stores weren't saturated with 100 versions of every app imaginable.

    They were great times. Five big mobile platforms, free devices, open APIs to work with - it really was a digital gold rush.

    I now have LG TVs in every room and it's so strange to use webOS in it's final(?) form. Wonderfully, there's a homebrew community just as there was back in the day, albeit on a much smaller scale. I've even made a wrapper for some home assistant features.

    webOS is dead. Long live webOS

  • I had a similarly high opinion on Meego's future at Nokia and then they suddenly went all-in on Windows Phone.

    I also had a somewhat high opinion of Windows Phone before MS killed it.

    No one wants to maintain an OS for any less than like 25% of the market — which pretty much only leaves room for Abdroid and iOS... and KaiOS I guess, though I don't know how much effort the put into maintaining that. webOS and Tizen (resting place of Meego) are now pretty much only in TVs.

    Counterintuitively, ms phones good reviews were also a good reason for ms to kill it. By the time ms got moving with phones, they were way behind and the market was already consolidating. They had a lot of inertia to overcome. They dumped tons of money into phones, exercised the famous ms marketing arm twisted, pulled out all of their usual tricks … and no one bought them. They ended up with phones that people liked, that got excellent reviews … and no one bought them. Even worse, phones were being sold on the strength of their app stores, and despite sinking tons more money persuading developers to port apps to windows phones, they could never get the critical mass of a sustaining ecosystem. It was pretty clear that even ms would not be able to overcome the consolidation of the market into only two

  • That was particularly grisly. It sure went to shit fast, didn’t it.

    Up until that point hp had a stellar engineering reputation. They could have milked that for many more years, but it takes real talent to destroy that so quickly and completely

  • I developed one of the top ten apps in the webOS App Store. I released it about 6 months before they shuttered Palm and started the transition of webOS in to a vague "embedded and mobile things" open source OS that eventually ended up on, primarily, LG televisions.

    It was my first big success as a computer science student. When I started working on my next big app idea it was about 80% complete when the new dropped that they were discontinuing all phones and tablets. Palm used to send me free phones and tablets too, and I spent a lot of time in the community forums, I had reviews on webOS Nation, and so on

    I maintain to this day that enyo is one of the greatest app development frameworks ever written and I wonder what the landscape of web development would look like today if they'd moved faster to liberate it from mobile devices. The webOS team were also earlier adopters of nodeJS for their native services. It felt like living in the future using them at a time when the iPhone 4 was barely out.

    If you can believe it, after that I moved over to Windows Phone, where history repeated without the afterlife. After that, I felt cursed but, honestly, I chose both platforms because the stores weren't saturated with 100 versions of every app imaginable.

    They were great times. Five big mobile platforms, free devices, open APIs to work with - it really was a digital gold rush.

    I now have LG TVs in every room and it's so strange to use webOS in it's final(?) form. Wonderfully, there's a homebrew community just as there was back in the day, albeit on a much smaller scale. I've even made a wrapper for some home assistant features.

    webOS is dead. Long live webOS

    That was a good read, thank you

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    It's amazing how long I can stay pissed about how WebOS was squandered. My Pre had personality; it's the only mobile I actually miss (aside from nostalgia).

  • Nokia didn’t suddenly go all in on Windows Phone, they were bought by Microsoft.

    There were only ever like 2 phones that used MeeGo. Nokia primarily used an OS called Symbian before they were bought out.

    Sounds like a sex toy!

  • (This is only tangentially related, sorry for the notification. I just want to complain. I hope you understand)

    I bought a used, old HP laptop with a fairly capable AMD apu for some power and cost efficient gaming. Problem is that even though modern games can theoretically run on it at playable frame rates at very low settings, HP does not allow you to change how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU in BIOS. They have a setting, but its locked behind a BIOS only they have access to. Its quite frustrating that I have capable hardware but cannot use it to its full extent because of this software lockout. Knowing that they lock their consumer BIOS' down like this is absolutely keeping me from buying HP basically ever again, because I really want to make the most of my hardware and keep it all alive as long as possible to reduce waste, and they won't let me.

    I had an hp laptop with a locked bios and there was a red flathead screw near the ssd that unlocked it.

  • I developed one of the top ten apps in the webOS App Store. I released it about 6 months before they shuttered Palm and started the transition of webOS in to a vague "embedded and mobile things" open source OS that eventually ended up on, primarily, LG televisions.

    It was my first big success as a computer science student. When I started working on my next big app idea it was about 80% complete when the new dropped that they were discontinuing all phones and tablets. Palm used to send me free phones and tablets too, and I spent a lot of time in the community forums, I had reviews on webOS Nation, and so on

    I maintain to this day that enyo is one of the greatest app development frameworks ever written and I wonder what the landscape of web development would look like today if they'd moved faster to liberate it from mobile devices. The webOS team were also earlier adopters of nodeJS for their native services. It felt like living in the future using them at a time when the iPhone 4 was barely out.

    If you can believe it, after that I moved over to Windows Phone, where history repeated without the afterlife. After that, I felt cursed but, honestly, I chose both platforms because the stores weren't saturated with 100 versions of every app imaginable.

    They were great times. Five big mobile platforms, free devices, open APIs to work with - it really was a digital gold rush.

    I now have LG TVs in every room and it's so strange to use webOS in it's final(?) form. Wonderfully, there's a homebrew community just as there was back in the day, albeit on a much smaller scale. I've even made a wrapper for some home assistant features.

    webOS is dead. Long live webOS

    I was an avid Windows Phone user. What app did you develop? I might know it from the 10 that were available.

  • It's amazing how long I can stay pissed about how WebOS was squandered. My Pre had personality; it's the only mobile I actually miss (aside from nostalgia).

    My Pre and Kyocera 6035. Never forget.

  • Counterintuitively, ms phones good reviews were also a good reason for ms to kill it. By the time ms got moving with phones, they were way behind and the market was already consolidating. They had a lot of inertia to overcome. They dumped tons of money into phones, exercised the famous ms marketing arm twisted, pulled out all of their usual tricks … and no one bought them. They ended up with phones that people liked, that got excellent reviews … and no one bought them. Even worse, phones were being sold on the strength of their app stores, and despite sinking tons more money persuading developers to port apps to windows phones, they could never get the critical mass of a sustaining ecosystem. It was pretty clear that even ms would not be able to overcome the consolidation of the market into only two

    Loved my windows phone. Lack of apps made me go back to android at the time.

  • I had a similarly high opinion on Meego's future at Nokia and then they suddenly went all-in on Windows Phone.

    I also had a somewhat high opinion of Windows Phone before MS killed it.

    No one wants to maintain an OS for any less than like 25% of the market — which pretty much only leaves room for Abdroid and iOS... and KaiOS I guess, though I don't know how much effort the put into maintaining that. webOS and Tizen (resting place of Meego) are now pretty much only in TVs.

    Tizen (resting place of Meego)

    I'd say SailfishOS is the final resting place of MeeGo, especially since it's maintained by ex-Nokia devs.

  • Nokia didn’t suddenly go all in on Windows Phone, they were bought by Microsoft.

    There were only ever like 2 phones that used MeeGo. Nokia primarily used an OS called Symbian before they were bought out.

    IMO, Nokia's bread and butter was the hardware and the simplicity. The phone apps were just Java.

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    Same, but for enshittified apps. Just do your job goddammit; no more, no less.
  • Relo IT

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    This “study” is biased by design. But also even if it weren’t , one study does not prove anything. You’d need a lot more evidence than that.
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    I didn't care much about arc because it was chromium, but damn this is just bland and uninteresting compared to it
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    I always say there are drivers out there who only survive by the grace of other drivers.
  • Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

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    That's the thing, I wish we could just switch all enterprises to Linux, but Microsoft developed a huge ecosystem that really does have good features. Unless something comparable comes up in the Linux world, I don't see Europe becoming independent of Microsoft any time soon
  • CrowdStrike Announces Layoffs Affecting 500 Employees

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    This is where the magic of near meaningless corpo-babble comes in. The layoffs are part of a plan to aspirationally acheive the goal of $10b revenue by EoY 2025. What they are actually doing is a significant restructuring of the company, refocusing by outside hiring some amount of new people to lead or be a part of departments or positions that haven't existed before, or are being refocused to other priorities... ... But this process also involves laying off 500 of the 'least productive' or 'least mission critical' employees. So, technically, they can, and are, arguing that their new organizational paradigm will be so succesful that it actually will result in increased revenue, not just lower expenses. Generally corpos call this something like 'right-sizing' or 'refocusing' or something like that. ... But of course... anyone with any actual experience with working at a place that does this... will tell you roughly this is what happens: Turns out all those 'grunts' you let go of, well they actually do a lot more work in a bunch of weird, esoteric, bandaid solutions to keep everything going, than upper management was aware of... because middle management doesn't acknowledge or often even understand that that work was being done, because they are generally self-aggrandizing narcissist petty tyrants who spend more time in meetings fluffing themselves up than actually doing any useful management. Then, also, you are now bringing on new, outside people who look great on paper, to lead new or modified apartments... but they of course also do not have any institutional knowledge, as they are new. So now, you have a whole bunch of undocumented work that was being done, processes which were being followed... which is no longer being done, which is not documented.... and the new guys, even if they have the best intentions, now have to spend a quarter or two or three figuring out just exactly how much pre-existing middle management has been bullshitting about, figuring out just how much things do not actually function as they ssid it did... So now your efficiency improving restructuring is actually a chaotic mess. ... Now, this 'right sizing' is not always apocalyptically extremely bad, but it is also essentially never totally free from hiccups... and it increases stress, workload, and tensions between basically everyone at the company, to some extent. Here's Forbes explanation of this phenomenon, if you prefer an explanation of right sizing in corpospeak: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/rightsizing/
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    Just downloaded it, thanks for the info!