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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 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

  • This post did not contain any content.

    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.

  • 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 similar story with BlackBerry 10

  • EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule

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    I just can't get over how little we hear from academics RE: AI. It shows a clear disinterest and I feel like if they did bother to say anything it would be, "Proceed with caution while we study this further." Instead it's always the giant corporations with vested interest in this technology succeeding. It's just so painfully transparent.
  • The End of Publishing as We Know It

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    beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.orgB
    Lol.. I wanted "DRM". But it's been a long day.
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    Only way I'll want a different phone brand is if it comes with ZERO bloatware and has an excellent internal memory/storage cleanse that has nothing to do with Google's Files or a random app I'm not sure I can trust without paying or rooting. So far my A series phones do what I need mostly and in my opinion is superior to the Motorola's my fiancé prefers minus the phone-phone charge ability his has, everything else I'm just glad I have enough control to tweak things to my liking, however these days Samsungs seem to be infested with Google bloatware and apps that insist on opening themselves back up regardless of the widespread battery restrictions I've assigned (even was sent a "Stop Closing my Apps" notif that sent me to an article ) short of Disabling many unnecessary apps bc fully rooting my devices is something I rarely do anymore. I have a random Chinese brand tablet where I actually have more control over the apps than either of my A series phones whee Force Stopping STAYS that way when I tell them to! I hate being listened to for ads and the unwanted draining my battery life and data (I live off-grid and pay data rates because "Unlimited" is some throttled BS) so my ability to control what's going on in the background matters a lot to me, enough that I'm anti Meta-apps and avoid all non-essential Google apps. I can't afford topline phones and the largest data plan, so I work with what I can afford and I'm sad refurbished A lines seem to be getting more expensive while giving away my control to companies. Last A line I bought that was supposed to be my first 5G phone was network locked, so I got ripped off, but it still serves me well in off-grid life. Only app that actually regularly malfunctions when I Force Stop it's background presence is Roku, which I find to have very an almost insidious presence in our lives. Google Play, Chrome, and Spotify never acts incompetent in any way no matter how I have to open the setting every single time I turn Airplane Mode off. Don't need Gmail with Chrome and DuckDuckGo has been awesome at intercepting self-loading ads. I hope one day DDG gets better bc Google seems to be terrible lately and I even caught their AI contradicting itself when asking about if Homo Florensis is considered Human (yes) and then asked the oldest age of human remains, and was fed the outdated narrative of 300,000 years versus 700,000+ years bipedal pre-humans have been carbon dated outside of the Cradle of Humanity in South Africa. SO sorry to go off-topic, but I've got a big gripe with Samsung's partnership with Google, especially considering the launch of Quantum Computed AI that is still being fine-tuned with company-approved censorships.