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Schiller Says Apple Is the Last PC Maker From the Mac Era, Forgets About HP
An anonymous reader writes "Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, recently claimed that Apple is the only computer company left from the early days of the Mac. Unfortunately for him, HP still exists. "Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," Schiller told Macworld in an interview on Apple's Cupertino campus. 'We're the only one left.' I'm sorry Apple, but when exactly did HP declare bankruptcy? We contacted an HP spokesperson for a statement on Apple's ridiculous claim and were pointed to its timeline history page."
Wow, he really must be the spawn of satan. How dare he make a mistake. We must hate on Apple as hard as we can.
Isn't IBM still around
Comparing today's HP to the HP of the 80s, I'm inclined to side with Schiller.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
HP still exists, but do they still make computers? All their systems that I know about are made by someone else like Quanta or Foxconn and have HP logos slapped on them. Does anyone know of systems HP actually makes?
The company that started in the garage in the picture is now called Aligent. HP that is in business now was a spin off that has little to do with the company started by the founders of HP
Homie forgot Poland.
and they are still making computers...
What? We were all thinking it.
... HP didn't release its first PC until 1980. Apple was releasing computers years earlier. So Apple would have been correct if they said "PCs".
... to look at that timeline and see how it basically stopped around 2000. They haven't done anything I respect since then.
Michael Dell started assembling and selling PCs from his dorm room in 1984, the same year the first Macintosh was made.
A marketing guy said something untrue? SAY IT ISN'T SO!
I'm guessing the only reason this story is here is so they can rack a couple OMG APPLE IS SO ARROGANT FUCK THEM posts from 7-digit newcomers around here.
God I miss the pre-Dice Slashdot.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Ouch, hurts to be reminded that IBM stopped. Or to think back on the short lived but glorious Commodore and Atari. Still have one of each.
01/01/01
They just split the company yet again, and the electronics test/measurement operations (the descendant of the original HP business) got rebranded as "Keysight Technologies":
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...
A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs. Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I clicked on that timeline link, using my iPad. Thing is, that page doesn't work well with touch devices. Schiller probably did the same thing I did, and naturally came to the conclusion HP's history ended in 1966.
#DeleteChrome
HP was selling the HP-150 MS-DOS computer starting in November, 1983.
At nearly $3000 it wasn't on my radar.
IBM doesn't make PCs anymore. Sold to Lenovo.
Neither does DEC or Sun. They are dead and sold.
None of these qualify as counter argument.
IBM, Sun (as Oracle), DEC (as HP) are also around and they are still making computers...
The Apple statement was about PCs HP markets PCs, but I don't think Sun does, and IBM sold off their PC/Laptop business to Lenovo, recently divesting themselves of their x86 server business as well.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Didn't IBM sell off pretty much all their personal computing stuff to Lenovo?
And being bought out and having all of you tech rebranded is not the same as still being around. DEC and Sun are gone.
Foxconn
Megatron
Alpha Trion
Pegatron
Computron
#DeleteChrome
Dell was around then. They were called Austin Microcomputers.
What he meant to say is that since the early days of the Mac, Apple CRUSHED any and all competition, which apparently makes Apple the only survivor in the twisted logic of a Mac user anyhow.
Personal Computers (PC).
HP counts; although, they merged Compaq and I used to really hate those and HP seemed to make that crap afterwards. I got out of IT work before I had a chance to see if their PCs were Compaq rebranded or HP. Servers are not PCs. If they are really Compaq PCs and their killed their PCs only to remain building servers-- then are they really still a PC maker?
There's still Dell.
I can think of a couple of other manufacturers who are still going, and were producing machines at the the time of original Mac. One of these is a major name, another is obscure, even in it's own country. The first is of course Toshiba, who were producing CP/M systems in 1980, if not earlier. The other is the British manufacturer Research Machines, who produce exclusively for the UK educational sector. Their RM 380Z, another CP/M box, appeared in 1977. RM are still producing PCs for education today, but I believe that they will soon be moving out of hardware whilst continuing with their software and support services.
Well if you think about Apples market that home personal computer. HP claims to have entered the home personal computer market in 1995 with the HP Pavilion PC. So while they did make "computers" before that, if you look at the home PC, it was 1995. So the question begs, when the statement was made, did he mean home PC market?
Does that mean Apple is the next to go?
Then he's forgotten about Microsoft or the fact he's now swinging from Intel's tit.
Acorn are still around but sure they only license designs...
Granted, it had a name change, but it's been around since "Mac days."
Dell (1984), IBM (1981, now owned by Lenovo), Gateway (1985, now owned by Acer), and Acer (1981).
But go on, tell us more about how you are the only ones left from that time making personal computers. And how you created the GUI. And the portable music player. And the smartphone. And the tablet computer. Oh yes, tell us more...
Cray is still around building computers...
http://www.cray.com/Products/P...
They installed their first system at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976
I thought the story was a reasonable one. While I do miss the pre-Dice days, the days I really miss are the pre-Y2K days. Taco commentary, movie reviews, "quickies," Hemos, Cowboy Neal poll options... I just enjoyed the by-the-seat-of-their-pants feel. And that has been gone for quite some time. Certainly before you registered. ;-)
The quote is
"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone, we're the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over." said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing
As far as making personal computers before Apple and still doing it, I think it's a stretch to count HP because of a calculator, and I'm not even counting HP's attempt to get out of the PC market recently. The HP-150 that came out after they started working on the Mac... is that even in the same ballgame as the 1984 Mac, I don't think so.
Apple started on the Mac in 1980 from what I can tell.
The nitpicking is really skewing his point - HP is ALSO still around because they've had to reinvent themselves over and over.
HP and Compaq merged in 2002, breaking the line.
Hewlett-Packard / Compaq
Gateway 2000 now Gateway
Packard Bell
As always, you're not nearly as fabulous as you think you are, Apple.
"IBM doesn't make PCs anymore."
They still build computers...workstations, servers, business systems...just like they did before Woz cobbled together some Fairchild opAmps around 1974. Which incidentally was a copy of a device from Popular Electronics.
I didn't see anything about a personal computer qualifier in the FA. Schiller said "computers".
“Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they’re all gone,” Schiller told Macworld
HP doesn't have the tradition of a "Computer Company". They make computer hardware, but that doesn't put them in the same league as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Oracle. Same goes for Dell and Lenovo.
Full disclosure, I've purchased 2 HP laptops in the last two years, so I'm not bashing on HP. They made/make the best calculators and they used to make electronic test equipment. Those were rugged (as much as test equipment can be outside Fluke), accurate and high performance. They also used to make the best laser printers you could buy ( at a reasonable cost). Moving into the commodity PC market and selling off their test equipment branch was a huge mistake. They've had some really bad leadership over the years and they seem to keep killing their best products just at the point when it could really make a positive difference for them.
They're not a computer company, they just happen make computer hardware...this month...next month may be something else.
If you want to limit it to PCs (which the original quote did not), then you might as well rule out Apple too.
They build (or rather, subcontract offshore companies to build) phones and tablets, neither of which by any stretch could be considered general purpose computers the way PCs could, and an increasingly shrinking line of computing appliances, ditto. Of course that's pretty much true all the way back to the original Mac, except for a brief period when Jobs wasn't around.
Indeed, arguably Apple isn't around either. They got assimilated by Jobs's NeXT which then changed their name, same way Southern Bell is now AT&T. The original AT&T isn't around. (Of course, the Jobs Reality Distortion Field was such that Apple paid him to be assimilated.)
On the flip side, if you want to talk about companies that are still around which made PCs back in the day, then add Radio Shack and Texas Instruments. Arguably, TI still does make PCs, given what some of their hand-held calculators are capable of.
-- Alastair
I remember the Tandy computers from Radioshack. I didn't own one, but I remember seeing them in the stores. I forgot when Radioshack discontinued their computers.
If PC means "Pocket Calculator" :)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Sony Viao L-series all-in-one desktops PCs.
http://www.sony.co.uk/product/...
Fujitsu (no longer Fujitsu-Siemens) Esprimo desktop PCs.
http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/prod...
Panasonic tablet-based PCs running Windows 8.1
http://www.panasonic.com/busin...
I didn't see anything about a personal computer qualifier in the FA. Schiller said "computers".
Wrong. If you go to the ORIGINAL SOURCE of the quote, a story at MacWorld, you find that Schiller is in fact talking about PCs:
"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," said Philip Schiller, Appleâ(TM)s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in an interview on Apple's Cupertino campus Thursday. "Weâ(TM)re the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over."
That may or may not be an accurate opinon, none the less, the subject here is PCs.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
HP purchased Compaq and this became their PC line. IBM sold PC (laptop) to Lenovo. So, if you are only considering PC/Laptop that is still sold under the original name, then Dell may be the only competition to Apple for this timeframe.
1995 - HP enters the home computing market with the HP Pavilion PC.
Isn't that 11 years after the Mac was launched?
It's all about granularity. HP does plenty of design, just with components that are more standardized. To extend your argument, Apple doesn't really do the design work because someone else developed the theories behind their logic boards.
Tl;Dr Putting existing things together to create a new thing is still creating a new thing
Cray was bought out by SGI, and the name got sold to Tera Computer, which rebadged their older machines, and then tried a few other approaches. Unlike Apple and HP, there is zero continuity between the stuff that got sold then and now under this name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Vectra
"The HP Vectra was a line of business-oriented personal computers manufactured by Hewlett-Packard. It was introduced in October 1985 as HP's first IBM compatible PC."
Vaio's have been around for a while now.
They're still around and own Gatewy as well. While Schiller was probably correct in the sense most of the dozens of PC makers of any size from the early Mac era have come and gone he was not correct in saying none still exist. Of course, what constitutes still existing is a bit vague since many have been acquired or exit but have exited the PC business.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm not defending outsourcing or bad labor practices, but there's a big difference between **assembly** and **design**
Parent is right to say that HP's computers are designed and assembled in China w/ a logo slapped on them. That's different than what Apple does.
As someone else pointed out below, the architecture is designed by Apple's engineers in Cuppertino. They issue *specifications* that manufacturers must meet.
Big difference.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Under old occupational surnames model, "Schiller" was the surname for the marketing profession.
Understandable - I've been forced to use a few HPs and they sucked.
Mac suck too, just in a different way.
Let's be fair, Mac servers suck big donkey penises, but that is due to the software.
HP's HP-UX servers work forever - almost too long. Their PC servers suck.
You need to get out more. While the Fujitsu and Panasonic ones can be tough to find, Sony PC's and laptops are in just about every major electronics store.
... so technically dead. From cutting edge, high quality products to scammy consumer crap in 2 decades. It was amazing to watch.
I *do* think that the content was better back then. I really felt like Rob not only had a vested interest, but really put part of himself into the site. I strongly feel that Roblimo's entrance was a direct correlation with a diminishment in fun. I can't put my finger on it, but something about the guy just rubs me the wrong way -- though if I'm honest, it probably started with the Alex Chiu story (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/01/06/01/1250257/ask-internet-icon-alex-chiu). And damn, but that was 2001.
Time's flying.
I know I'm showing my age, but when I was little, computers were these huge things that sat in climate-controlled rooms. Unless that kind of hardware is now removed from the definition of "computer", I can think of a few pre-Apple manufacturers that are still around, like IBM, NCR, and Unisys.
I've forgotten about HP too. I think we all should.
ôó
From HP's own timeline: "1995, HP enters the home computing market with the HP Pavilion PC." Which is more than 10 years after the launch of the Macintosh. So, the point is still valid.
Must not be so high up there that the joke goes over your head :).
Fujitsu PCs were ubiquitous in Germany when they were still sold under the name "Fujitsu-Siemens".
Come meirda y morir, pendejo.
After all, Radio Shack introduced its first line of PCs in 1977. Sure, they stopped making their own clones in the mid-90s, but they still kept on selling them.
HP doesn't count because buying their computers is like buying the cheapo, home brand flour that's full of weevils or moths at your local budget supermarket.
Nobody who is serious about computing buys HP these days, only really dumb people.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am "platform agnostic". I don't hate on things because I don't like them, I hate on them because they're crap.
Don't give a shit if they started making computers in 1822, would still not waste my money on one of their polished, overpriced turds.
Seriously?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The PC reference is about growing faster the PC industry, it is not about being the only PC computer company around. In fact, Texas Instruments, Radio Shack, and Timex all made personal computers when Apple started the Macintosh. And IBM is still around. Sure, they sold off their PC division, their entry systems division, which predates the Macintosh.
Schiller probably has no clue about the history of computers, especially those that predated the Macintosh. He is a marketing person, I am sure he was not into that scene in the late 70s and early 80s.
...if you were to loosely identify video game cabinets and consoles as computers (which of course they are.)
Really? This guy lied or is clearly and willfully ignorant. So what. So. What. Moving on. Meanwhile, someone somewhere just made a discovery or invented a tool or machine that will revolutionize our lives. That's why I came to slashdot to read and discuss with like-minded people. Crappy discussions like this need to stay on reddit and not here. : (
That doesn't count.
It seems HP forgot about HP as well.
What does He have to do with this?
Speaking of SGI, they're still selling hardware (despite being sold and rebranded ... as ... themself?)
I'd count SGI for the sake of this argument.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
The amazing/sad part is that I'm sure many of Apple's people really believe their own mind control, reality distorting hype.
Many big companies from that era still make excellent home computers. They're called LAPTOPS. Miniaturization is the essence of computer engineering advancement. Duh.
PC towers are old news, for many an outmoded form factor with little to offer over the basic portable computer. And if anybody really wants a tower PC, and there remain some excellent uses for such machines, (high power gaming rigs come to mind), why, we build them from OEM parts or buy them from resellers who do that for us. Gone are the days when big companies like IBM need to put their muscle into designing the innards of such machines. That problem is solved and the market shrunk to make way for the machines which everybody else actually needs and uses on a daily basis.
That Apple still has a stick in the tower PC fire speaks more to their astonishing ability to bamboozle people into bowing before their sticker logo, (regardless of the same OEM parts they use as everybody else. Apple doesn't make anything themselves. Bloody Foxcon and others make all that stuff, and everybody buys from them).
But that doesn't stop Apple from somehow believing that they are special. It's DIFFERENT when *they* contract out their designs to Asia. (And sell copies of broken Unix). Why is it different? Because, Apple is M*A*G*I*C.
Apple is so utterly out of touch with reality, it disgusts me. But more disgusting are the legions of people who buy into the illusion. Since Wozniak, (Steve Jobs, let us not forget, was never a programmer or an engineer; he's nothing but a marketing guy), the days of revolutionary engineering in PCs is long gone and Apple remains little more than a pyramid marketing scheme.
IBM discontinued their workstations years ago.
In the Late 70's as Apple Computer was getting started, HP sold the best RPN calculators and engineering equipment.
In the late 80s as Apple Computer was selling Macs and Laserwriters, HP was selling Injet and laserwriter printers and acquiring talent by buying smaller start up companies.
In the 90s when Apple Computer was burning through CEOs like a hot knife through butter HP was burning over its acquisitions and becoming a IP Patent warehouse without a business plan.
In the 00s when Apple Computer change to Apple Inc. and invented the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad HP bought Compaq (who had bought DEC in 1998, a Real Computer Company that they did not know what or how to do with) and finally became a "Computer Business" in name only.
In the 10s Apple Inc. is running out of gas under CEO Cook and will probably jettison him when the stock tanks by 90% around 2016 for lack of new gear, HP will still be sucking shit and still have no where to go but to become a litigation company for other legitimate corporations.
did you realize that HP didnt start selling PC's until 1995... over 10 years after the macintosh was released?
Apples SVP of Marketing indulged in a bit of uninformed hyperbole, surely this means Apple is doomed. DOOMED I tell you!
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Speaking of SGI, they're still selling hardware (despite being sold and rebranded ... as ... themself?)
I'd count SGI for the sake of this argument.
I guess in a lot of these cases we end up on a semantic discussion of what constitutes a 'company.'
Is it the people? Jobs=dead; Wozniak=gone; Wayne=long gone.
Is it their primary business?
In that case, Apple is now a phone company.
http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/...
http://files.shareholder.com/d...
Fujitsu brand is still common in the UK. Possibly related to their relationship to old UK giant ICL- which (I think) used to sell rebadged Fujitsu PCs, and was later taken over by Fujitsu.
In any case, they're still a common enough brand. I have a Vista-era Fujitsu laptop on my desk right now, albeit not in working order.
that Apple Is the Last PC Maker From the Mac Era that is *actually* worth it.
Last time I checked, IBM existed as well (and they have not sold their server business to Lenovo yet).
This reminds me of the 90s and 2000s when Apple and Apple fans would incorrectly state how Apple's digital video was the first when http://www.truevision.com/ with their Targa boards, were the true pioneers of digital video.
Well played, sir. Well played.
I use a company Apple laptop, must say it's very solid and robust compared to other leading laptop brands, and I sure appreciate having BSD on there as opposed to the other alternative my employer would have handed me, a windows thing. Don't have to worry about driver configuration issues either, the hardware designed for an OS and driver set. I drive two other screens with it on my desk, nice to have three total screens that work well together. Major softwares in the business/professional world can run on it, for some things there just aren't alternatives yet in the open source world. Now at home I run GNU/Linux, on the two systems under my desk nvidia and radeon driver issues sometimes a pain. But there are things I have to do for work that just can't run on that platform, so I have to fire up windows 7 under vmware workstation. ew.
... of Apple's historical representation patents.
MSX was a standard set by Japanese computer manufacturers to reduce fragmentation in the home PC market. Microsoft parterned with them and provided the BASIC language for them as well.
They were sold here in the States. I remember seeing them in electronics departments in late 83 and well into 84. Furthermore, after they crashed the could be bought from vendors like DAK and others in the back of COMPUTE! or Creative Computing until 86.
They failed not because they weren't capable but because they had no games.
I almost got one in early 84, because I love quirky tech...but I came to my senses and bought a C64.
They were extremely popular in Japan and in South America.
I wish I still had my C64, 128 or Amiga 500...
Those were they days... Looking at 1040STs and Amiga 1000s... Looking at the new brown and white line from Atari.
The Commodore 64 was the best selling personal computer of all time and you can still buy a new model today, so suck it Mac.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
HP took a shitty terminal product, and made it run a DOS, in 1981. It was a PoC and the salesforce blew it off. I know, I was there. Their PCs where nothing more than a collection of off the shelf parts, no innovation. No better than Dell or no-name Asian junk. Nothing innovative has come out of HP computer systems since 1980. Laser printers were OEMed from Canon, PCs were just clones, UNIX stuff was mediocre and overpriced. The great company that I had started with when I graduated from college became a collections of old, bitter men and people who couldn't get a job anywhere else. Good luck, Meg.
IBM is selling off the remainder of their server business to Lenovo just like their PCs were 10 years ago. What's left is only services and some military HW.
back in the '80's, but i don't know who they are any more.
It's merged so many times with other corporations that you really can't say it "still exists".
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Such is the hubris of Apple.
gosgog:
Schiller is nothing more than a PR guy for Apple. Who gives a fuck, want a computer, there's HP, Acer, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung etc., etc. All at any good IT store.
I just recently bought a new PC box, put in AMD stuff, etc, have a nice 19 " samsung monitor...its MY COMPUTER.
SLASHDOT, please stop wasting time with dumbass Shit like this.
I would point out that technically Apple doesn't make PC's any more either(and perhaps never did), they are Intel(PC) boxes running a bsdSkin(OSX) rather than Windows.
They only thing that differentiates them from, say, Dell, is that they adopt closed standards and have vertical branding(but certainly not vertical integration)...
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, Intel/IBM/Motorola(the three company's that have supplied them with chips) are essentially the only "PC" makers in the world, and are still going strong.
Apple and almost every other brand just make the boxes containing the said company components.
Apple showing signs of hubris? Say it ain't so!
Compaq computer starts shipping in March 1983.
http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html
However, it was started in 1982, after Apple started the Macintosh project.
I think Toshiba was making IBM AT compatibles, including laptops, back then, and is still in the business.
He is correct, but not from mac
This is sad nerd semantics, even for Slashdot. A rational human can tell by the context that Phil Schiller was talking about “personal computers” when he said “computers.” Today, Ford makes “computers” but Ford has never made PC's. Same with HP in 1984.
Further, what was HP in 1984 was sold off around 2000 or so. Trying to say there is continuity between the 1984 HP and today's HP is a real stretch. It's like today's AT&T — same name, totally different company.
And the stupidest part of this is that Steve Wozniak used to work for HP, and offered the Apple II to HP and was turned down. HP took a pass on PC's and that didn't change until the 1990's when HP was just another Mac cloner.