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How Steve Jobs Outsmarted Carly Fiorina
HughPickens.com writes: Carly Fiorina likes to boast about her friendship with Apple founder Steve Jobs but Fortune Magazine reports that it turns out Carly may have outfoxed of by Apple's late leader. In January 2004, Steve Jobs and Carly Fiorina cut a deal where HP could slap its name on Apple's wildly successful iPod and sell it through HP retail channels but HP still managed to botch things up. The MP3 player worked just like a regular iPod, but it had HP's logo on the back and in return HP agreed to continue pre-loading iTunes onto its PCs. According to Steven Levy soon after the deal with HP was inked, Apple upgraded the iPod, making HP's version outdated and because of Fiorina's deal HP was banned from selling its own music player until August 2006. "This was a highly strategic move to block HP/Compaq from installing Windows Media Store on their PCs," says one Apple source. "We wanted iTunes Music store to be a definitive winner. Steve only did this deal because of that."
In short, Fiorina's "good friend" Steve Jobs blithely mugged her and HP's shareholders. By getting Fiorina to adopt the iPod as HP's music player, Jobs had effectively gotten his software installed on millions of computers for free, stifled his main competitor, and gotten a company that prided itself on invention to declare that Apple was a superior inventor.
In short, Fiorina's "good friend" Steve Jobs blithely mugged her and HP's shareholders. By getting Fiorina to adopt the iPod as HP's music player, Jobs had effectively gotten his software installed on millions of computers for free, stifled his main competitor, and gotten a company that prided itself on invention to declare that Apple was a superior inventor.
You may not be aware of this, but Fiorina has been citing Jobs to deflect criticism of her for being fired by HP's board. She says that after she was fired he called her up and said "been there!" She's implying that because Jobs was fired and came back even stronger, her being fired from HP is proof she's a genius just like Jobs.
Since she brought up Jobs to make herself look good, it was inevitable that Jobs would be used to make her look bad. She opened that door.
A three-legged cat could out-fox Carly Fiorina.
http://www.politico.com/magazi...
You are welcome on my lawn.
There was a deal with Motorola too, to put a music player on a phone, which was limited to 100 songs or something. At the time I thought Apple came out ahead on that one.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I KNOW! If you tell these guys what minimum mandated vacation time looks like in France they flat out think you're lying.
Verizon and Comcast were not pushing for Net Neutrality and saying "we need it"; they were the principal forces opposing it, and they were the reason that FCC regulations were required to preserve it in the first place. They had plans for paid prioritization of traffic that would basically amount to charging websites for the privilege of not having their traffic throttled on the "last mile" link between the ISP and its customers. Google was diametrically opposed to this, as well as most small web sites and 3.7 million individuals who sent letters to the FCC.
The fact that an ex-CEO of HP, of all people, is pontificating about Net Neutrality while exposing her ignorance of even the most basic facts about who was involved and what sides they were on seems incredible. Was she merely confused herself or just trying to confuse everyone else? I have no idea.