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HP and Apple Separate; Apple gets Custody
Kasracer writes "Yesterday, The Register reported that HP separated from Apple's iPod selling agreement. 'Doing its best to erase Carly Fiorina's mistakes, HP has culled an iPod reselling agreement in place with Apple since January of 2004.' It is unclear whether or not HP will create an mp3 player or partner with another computer to fill the void."
You missed the point.
It worked for Apple because it got iPods in more retail outlets, expanded production lines, spread liability and production expense, and got iTunes put on HP computers.
It worked for HP by allowing them to associate themselves with the cool cachet of the iPod brand.
That was the idea, anyway. I think Apple got a lot more out of the deal, though, which is why HP pulled the plug.
"Partner with another computer to fill the void?"
Does nobody edit these submissions?
The day they quit making calculators is the day everybody knew HP's strategy was going to become utterly wrong. Whatever venture they decided to pursue after that can be safely regarded as not-very-sensible. The wording of their PR statement after the iPod settlement simply confirms that they still don't have a clue what to do next.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
As far as I know, their contract stated that HP has to wait until 2006 before they can release their own MP3 player.
No wireless. Same size as an Apple iPod. Lame.
I never got why HP did this. It looked nothing more than what it probably was--a desperate attempt to try to cash in on a popular name. Was there any reason to buy an HP iPod instead of an Apple one? Same price, same warranty, same everything, right? Didn't even have an HP logo on it, IIRC. I always thought the only people who would buy one were people who bought one at the same time they were buying a machine. Is it worth it to advertise, track inventory, etc., for what must have been only a handful of sales? (Evidently not.) No sense mentioning that carrying a competitor's product always seemed pretty dumb.
I hate to sound like one of those people who say "Apple is perfect and everyone should copy them" but one of the good things Apple has done recently is simplify and standardize their line and ComHPaq should really follow. PowerMac and PowerBook have been around for ages, and even if people might not know the name "powermac" (thinking instead of it as just "a Macintosh") there are just as many people who think *any* notebook is "a powerbook." iMac and iBook have both been around for over 5 years. Those items, plus the iPod, are the core of their line and just about everyone knows them. Those items, plus the Mac mini, eMac, and displays, are pretty much Apple's *entire line*, so it's easy to figure out what's going on, there is very little overlap and, even more importantly, clear distinctions as to *why* you should buy one over another--not just categories for categories' sake. (The only fuzziness comes from the 12" PowerBook. Lots of people ask me about that versus the iBooks, especially now that the iBooks have G4s. Otherwise, everything else is clear as day. People pretty much look at the line and figure out what they want in a few minutes.)
OTOH, only a few people even recognize the names 'Presario' and 'Pavilion' (nothing like carrying two lines that totally overlap; I see no difference today compared to how the lines were when HP & CPQ were two companies) and beond the general product names, look at the items--d4100y, d4100e, a1050y, a1010y, a1030e, a1000y, SR1020T, SR1010Z, SR1020V. (Yes, the mix of upper- and lower-case letters is just as ComHPaq describes them.) What the fuck is all that?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I think Godwin needs to come up with another law, the one that says at some point in a discussion, someone will find a way to point the finger of blame at Microsoft.
For an iPod out of the box. They are all HFS+, but if you install the PC software before connecting the iPod it will prompt you to restore it to be FAT32. If you connect the iPod before installing the software, things get all confused, the OS will prompt you to reformat it, and it'll cease to play music until you restore it.
There used to be FAT32 iPods and HFS+ iPods from the factory, but not any more.
iPods don't journal their HFS+. I'm honestly not quite sure what good journalling HFS+ is anyway, I've seen many friends have their drive go corrupt even with journalling on, and it does slow things down a skosh too.
Carly Fiorina was their mistake. I hate that woman. She ruined one of the most respectable companies in engineering. It's not just the calculators. HP used to be synonymous with quality in instrumentation. That's what Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started doing in their garage fer cryin' out loud! Now that's been spun off (how can you buy an instrument named "Agilent" with a straight face), the Australian Calculator Division is closed, THEY MERGED WITH FRIGGIN' COMPAQ, MAKERS OF THE CRAPPIEST COMPUTERS SINCE PACKARD BELL, and the HP brand means nothing more than "Mediocre PCs." Honestly, does she go and piss on their graves every week too? Is she sleeping with Satan? What's up with that woman?
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Journaling is 100% purely a way to repair the filesystem quicker than doing an fsck. It does not prevent any corruption on a drive ever, and it does not identify or correct problems when they occur. The journal is just a log, and instead of an fsck you replay the operations in the log file to ensure that every operation that was supposed to happen actually finished happening.