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HP Delays WebOS Decision
itwbennett writes "Following Tuesday's report that HP is looking to sell WebOS, CEO Meg Whitman and HP employees gathered for a late-afternoon meeting. According to The Verge, Whitman told those gathered at the meeting 'It's really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,' adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks."
"a decision would come in the next three to four weeks".. and then a reverse decision every three to four weeks thereafter.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Can't HP just keep their business strategy for the next year or so to themselves?
Sheeesh.
This company's fucked. It's been bent over and pounded on by so many different 'short-term thinking managers' that I'd be surprised if it could walk in a straight line, much less maintain a consistent business strategy. If corporations were people, HP could file rape charges.
Somehow it all seems cursed. Assuming it has vestigial BeOS bits in it, the history includes having been shunned on Apple hardware, not bought out by Apple, then bankrupted by Microsoft's anticompetititve practices, firesold to Palm who evolved too late to make a difference, acquired with great promise by HP who failed to capitalize and finally made a rash decision in thinking it has no value. Can't it get a break from all the turmoil?
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Sell WebOS. Even if HP decides that the OS has a solid strategic future, their release of the TouchPad only to can it in under two months will raise significant doubts in the mind of customers and developers.
By selling it off to another company, those doubts will be of less significance - HP can license the OS from the buyer if they want to release products built on it, but knowing that primary development will be away from HP, and that companies other than HP can (and, hopefully, will) release hardware will raise the chance of the system flourishing in the marketplace.
It'd be a shame to see it die - having diversity is a good thing; much as I'm something of an Apple fanboy, I'm not blind to the need to have solid alternatives. If HP holds onto WebOS, I can't see it doing anything else - so please, HP, for the sake of WebOS, and the world community, let it go. Sell it to a good home.
HP board is a bunch of retards that is determined to screw up a perfectly good company. I think it's time for rest of us to move on and let HP be.
As a WebOS user on the Palm phone, I will be sad if it dies. It seems a decent OS, and the only complaint I have about the phone is its hardware (bad keyboard, short battery life).
Any other users here?
Turning to HP, this week was their Board’s opportunity to solidify its reputation for incompetence and bad manners. They rose to the occasion.
http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/09/25/how-bad-boards-kill-companies-hp/
Someone fix /. already.
PS. Gassée's blog is the best I've read.
Have you guys seen theverge.com ?
For a bunch of geeks who left whatever site the left, in some sort of righteous exodus, they sure put together one shitty looking site.
I don't think I'll ever go back there again.
Total visual cacophony. Or cacorasi. I DON'T KNOW GREEK.
Thanks for posting that! I always liked Gassée and was wondering what he'd got up to.
Breakfast served all day!
>Your thoughts.
Deja vu.
I really wish i could understand the mentality of the sad mind that posts this stuff. What is the possible gain from this?
Good-bye
Oh look, and indecisive company who doesn't know what to do with an OS that consumers don't want. Why don't they just let it die and move on?
As a developer and longtime HP fan, I am encouraged that they have announced that they don't have an announcement, but that they will announce a future announcement at which time they will announce an event where they will announce a decision. Surely this will catapult them back into relevance!
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
open-source it, and license it freely as with Android. This will attract developers and grow the market for WebOS devices. It will do much more to remove doubts about the longevity of the platform, because it will no longer be in any one company's hands.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
You're welcome - I'm glad I had people to share it with. I have zero geek friends, even on FB.
His posts on Apple have been great. He talks about Apples' BeOS vs Jobs decision with humility too.
"I'm really hoping that the bloggers can come to a consensus so I know what to do. I've never actually had to make a decision while in a leadership decision, and I'd hate to have that change now."
Really? You think that Leo made decisions like that without the board's approval? LOL! The board agreed with every last announcement Leo made. This wasn't a Leo issue, this was an "HP's board has no fucking clue what they're doing". They now keep making announcement like they have been with no action to test the waters of wall street. Do you really think these "rumors" about webos, the pc division, etc. are just rumors? They're being floated by HP marketing to watch the stock market to determine what to do. They literally have NO IDEA what they're doing. At this point they're just praying that they don't get murdered any harder than they have, because they'll ALL be out on their asses. To be quite honest, I can't believe they aren't all already out on their asses. The only reason they aren't is because the board and the executives of companies no longer actually answer to their investors; they answer to the hedge fund managers who control their real investors funds.
The real decision should be whether to open source it or not.
If they had a lick of sense, they'd give that a shot.
But they don't. And they won't.
Android really needs some competition...(and no, that crappy iOS doesn't count--I mean real, proper, open source OS competition).
expandfairuse.org
The decision is a proxy for your own confidence of being a premier IT solution provider who can turn out a working useful OS. Decision to sell means you have confidence someone can do it becuase you can't. How about you just let them do your job instead?
From what we know about American executives and their habits, it's obvious that "the rumors...floated by HP marketing" are a way for HP execs to manipulate the stock market and time when to cash out. That's what business is all about these days.
I bought a Veer, which I like but which also has some pretty blindingly obvious bugs and deficits. HP announced the WebOS hit 3 days after I bought this device. Pretty simple; if HP really abandons my brand-new phone them I'm not buying another HP product again, ever. They did the same thing to my OfficeJet 5500, fine, but only after I'd had it for five years. Not 3 bloody days.
The decision to offer a touchpad with every pc purchase was great, though they should have offered it for free as a vertical integration with other services that can bring recurring monthly revenue. The problem here is that there isnt enough margin in any PC sale to allow a touchpad to be given as a courtesy so instead they have to charge 150 dollars for each one. No one will buy one and it will never catch on.
Very Conflicted.
_)e
Delete user where name == michael_kristopeit*
Perfect quote. Thanks for that link, made great reading. Interesting site, as well.
Credit where due, at least Meg's almost on record about wanting to make a right decision. Could be a first. She seems to have been saying some of the right things recently (appearing thoughtful, balanced, realistic); it remains to see what comes of that.
D'you happen to know of a good study on why any innovative, successful company ends up a bad board? It doesn't seem to be a rare occurrence.
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People reacting? Just ignore. Oh, and mods, please don't mod up my post and mod the parent down. If you leave one post in a chain with a positive moderation it becomes much more likely the whole chain will be seen by casual readers.
In future desktop PC will replace portable PCs, so Kill the PC, transform it into a portable star-trek-style handheld Tablet, in various form factors for personal, enterprise uses.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/08/webos-fate - "When you’re faced with a “we need to stop the bleeding” problem, you need a fast decision."
Fandroids hate facts.
'It's really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,' adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks."
Its a shame they didn't know that before killing the touchpad ... announcing that they are leaving the PC business ..... announcing that they are not leaving it ... and so on
I'm posting this as probably one of the last people who was still using a Palm Pilot. I only recently quit using my Palm Pilot because of the d--n Touchpad that I bought for next to nothing. I'm not in any way an HP fan, but this whole thing has me so disappointed. Let me get this straight, when I finally get ready to upgrade to a smartphone the nice OS that I've grown to love on the tablet that I bought on the cheap is probably dead? Maybe. Are you f--king kidding me? I buy one of your tablets (Thanks, Apotheker!); I grow to love the tablet; the tablet's simple interface which would be perfect for a phone is ALREADY ON A PHONE, BUT HP'S KILLING IT OFF? Maybe? Has anyone on the HP board even tried WebOS? I can almost, almost understand while Carly gutted the calculator line. Almost, since I've been using the same HP 32S for over 20 years, apparently oblivious to planned obsolescence and the need to sell me more s--t. But that's just it, they want to sell me more s--t. Maybe HP is psychologically incapable of making a decent piece of hardware that lasts and doesn't require expensive supplies (HP printer division, I'm talking to you).
I'm now essentially back to Android or iOS after having never considered WebOS until I used it, and it will probably be Android once I find the best phone for the best price which doesn't have too annoying a skin on it. Of course, since I'm not buying Apple there are CHOICES, and I'm going to have to actually "shop" for a phone unless I want to talk to phone salespeople. Sigh. If I had just bought a WebOS phone last year, I would be pissed that the OS was being killed off but at least I would have had a good year or two knowing that I could trade in my phone for a new one next year. Two years with a dying OS? That's a different story. If I had been an early adopter, I think that I would have been happier being hosed.
Make love, not reality television.
Righhhtttt, which is why the first thing out of Whitman's mouth was that Leo wasn't acting alone, and that she had no plans to change his plans for the company. If you think a CEO at a company that size makes announcements like that without board approval you simply have no idea how a company that size works. Leo wouldn't even legally have the ability to sell off ANY division of HP without board approval. What the hell makes you think a veteran CEO would make an announcement on plans he couldn't enact without getting approval first?
Look at HP now and look at how Sculley getting rid of Jobs prevented this from happening to Apple. Can HP survive? Time will tell.
So how is waiting 2-3 weeks going to fix things? People are flocking away from WebOS because of it's lack of support, and with Android for Touchpads just around the corner, I feel HP's decision will be too late! They need to decide now, or the user base will decide it for them!
The good news is if you are already dumb enough to still be a WebOS developer at this point, you're dumb enough to keep plugging away on your app while awaiting the final decision. You're also dumb enough not to care that there are about 3 users left, and most of them don't want your app, since it's so dumb, having been designed by a dummy like you. DUMMIES!
Another "me too": Thank you! Some great articles there
e.g.
This one reveals some interesting history between True Type -- Apple licensed TrueType FREE to Microsoft!?
http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/04/11/the-adobe-apple-flame-war/
In the time you folks have been trying to figure out if you are going to release a new phone or anything running WebOS, I have replaced my phone, ported all the applications that I wrote and what a few other wrote for PalmOS and WebOS over to that new phone, and am now replacing the system that had all the development tools installed.
You have been replaced. Accept that fact and move on.