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 According to Steven Levy soon after the deal with HP was inked, Apple upgraded the iPod, making HP's version outdated and because of Fiorina's deal HP was banned from selling its own music player until August 2006.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.

Comments

Carly may have outfoxed of by Apple's late leader

[sexconker]

Carly may have outfoxed of by Apple's late leader

Why do you even post things anymore, timothy?

weakly disguised hit-piece

[argStyopa]

Aside from the incomprehensibility of "...it turns out Carly may have outfoxed of by Apple's late leader.." anyone else find it curious that we suddenly see a deal between HP and Apple (that allowed a downward-trending computer mfg company to tie itself to the "big up and comer") spun as "Jobs OUTFOXED Fiorina"?

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[Fire_Wraith]

Considering she's running for president, it shouldn't be surprising at all that her record gets raked over with a fine-toothed comb.

As for the deal itself, it definitely sounds like HP tried to gain advantage, but Apple came out as the clear winner, with HP (and Fiorinia) looking entirely foolish. Given the rest of her tenure at HP (and elsewhere), I'm not surprised in the least to hear it. She's never been any sort of true visionary, and having Jobs leave her in the dust with having doubled down on what was soon to be yesterday's technology, while he focused on what was really key is exactly what I would expect.

So is it really a "hit piece" to tell what happened, and put it in proper context? Why was HP wasting its time doing things like buying Compaq, and trying to piggyback on Apple's successes? If she was really a visionary, shouldn't she have been leading the market and innovating the way Jobs was?

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[kaizendojo]

Fiorina couldn't lead lemmings to a cliff. Given the two bad alternatives, I'd have to choose Trump.

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[HiThere]

HP made a *really* stupid agreement. It wasn't the only one, and at least this one was legal, but it sure doesn't make Fionna look good. She'd have been better off to not cause this idiocy to be brought back to light.

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[cas2000]

Given that the rest of the Republican candidates seem to be experts at leading lemmings off cliffs, I'd say that was a point in her favour.

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you know, vote for the decent alternative, Bernie Sanders (even if you disagree with his politics you have to admit the man is objectively a decent human being such rare, much weird, wow)

captcha: Decoys

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[Solandri]

So is it really a "hit piece" to tell what happened, and put it in proper context?

The facts may be right, but the context it presents seems suspect. AFAIK HP never made its own MP3 player. If the presented context were correct, HP would've made one as soon as their contractual prohibition with Apple expired in 2006. That doesn't seem to have happened.

So the proper context is probably that HP didn't want to make an MP3 player, but they wanted to keep their name recognition up in the MP3 player market just in case they were wrong and it took off. So they inked a deal with the most successful MP3 player maker. And they tricked Jobs into giving additional concessions by agreeing not to build their own MP3 player - something they weren't planning on doing anyway.

If that's what happened, in retrospect HP did the smart thing. The MP3 player market died when phones picked up music playback capability. So HP came out ahead by never devoting resources to developing an MP3 player. Of course they totally missed the boat on smartphones, even though they used to be one of the leaders in the PDA market.

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[Foobar of Borg]

To call a man decent because he admits that he wants to steal everything you own, is missing the point.

Since when did Bernie Sanders become a Capitalist?

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[circletimessquare]

socialism: public safety nets. much cheaper and higher quality healthcare. affordable higher education. source: canada, denmark, germany, norway, etc... countries richer, healthier, happier, better educated, and *freer* than the usa: no financial parasites funneling money out of their society via cozy relationships paid for by corrupt elections, for nothing in return, because regulating corporations and plutocrats is "against freedom"

communism: gulags and mass starvation and no free speech and no free press and no freedom of religion and control and fear and genocide and hour long lines to get scratchy toilet paper. that's canada and germany, right?

american moron: socialism = communism, because hysterical low iq propaganda that hasn't had an original thought since mccarthy's 1950s red scare bullshit means that binary choices between communism and capitalism are the only choices in a subject matter, economics, that in reality, has thousands of complex variations. but... we'll just stick to our ignorant kneejerk biases, because it serves our plutocrat masters who produce the propaganda to keep us misinformed, poor and unhealthy, and we like it because we're useful fools

Re: weakly disguised hit-piece

[circletimessquare]

your healthcare system costs 100-1,000x less than ours does and you live longer with a higher quality of life

your higher education is so cheap, you'll even take americans for free if they do good on their exams, no need to even learn german

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

of course germany has problems, every nation does, you're an idiot if you think i was describing germany as some sort of paradise

but from this side of the pond, germany is clearly and unequivocally doing better on the issue of social safety nets, for which us americans are paying many multiples of, for far less benefit, because morons here think it's a free market, and plutocrats corrupt our elected officials to keep thew gravy train flowing

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[drinkypoo]

Jobs got booted and went on to outdo Apple sufficently that they ended up buying him back and more or less gutting their own products to rebuild them around his.

Not really. Jobs got booted and went on to meander around aimlessly in computing. His success was with Pixar, not with NeXT. The only reason NeXTStep was superior to Apple's other options is that they had been dicking around incompetently with a variety of OS projects which never went anywhere. It's also not clear that NeXTStep was actually a better option than BeOS, but it's cleat that Jobs and NeXT were a package deal, and the rest is history.

The fact that NeXTStep, an overpriced and antiquated wacky Unix variant based around a development system and language nobody wanted to use at the time was superior to MacOS of the day is a testament to how aimless and pointless Apple was without Jobs, not to the quality (or success) of NeXTStep.

Re:weakly disguised hit-piece

[Grishnakh]

It's been repeatedly demonstrated that it wasn't, in fact. It was just a better effort than similar devices which preceded it.

Right, but not innovation. That's not what this is about.

Oh please. I hate to defend Apple of all companies, but "innovation" is not being the first to come up with the very first version of something, that's "invention". The two are not the same. Putting together existing parts (and refining them significantly) into a new overall package is innovation; it's really the same thing as engineering, but also combined with design.

I still remember when the iPhone first came out. It was truly intuitive and easy to use for people who hadn't used one before, and it was actually attractive; this just wasn't true for preceding devices with their tiny screens with resistive touchscreens and crappy OSes. Thankfully, Android came along later (though it has major problems too, namely mfgrs abandoning devices quickly), but I have to give credit where it's due. The iPhone is the whole reason everyone has a smartphone now; no one cared about them before because they really weren't easy to use (nor attractive).

Re:Sad to see the HP culture disappearing

[Anonymous Coward]

I always took a full week of vacation off when I worked there.

Is this what USasians think is a generous vacation policy? You're seriously impressed about being able to take a whole week of vacation?!? LOL.

Re: I still don't understand why iTunes sucks so m

[Anonymous Coward]

It ran through an OSX emulation layer, that was half baked.

sad

[TsuruchiBrian]

The fact that these candidates are the best that we as a country can muster is pretty pathetic. I know we have really thoughtful and intelligent people in this country, but for whatever reason, they don't seem to be able (or want) to compete with the horribly inept batch of clowns that we inevitably get.

America is basically like a very badly run company (e.g. like HP). The mediocre rise to the top. Actually Carly seems exactly like the sort of president we deserve. She can speak well enough to disguise the fact that what she is saying is completely retarded. Compare this skillset to Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, and Trump, and it makes her look like a teacher in a room full of shitty kids.

Re:Because 2016 elections...

[jcr]

Fiorina's not stupid.

Stupid? Maybe not. Incompetent? Hell, yeah. Just ask anyone who worked at Lucent, HP or Compaq.

-jcr

Re:I sure hope one of the other ten candidates

[Grishnakh]

Carson is a young-earth creationist and a crackpot. He's definitely not "thoughtful".

Cruz follows Dominionist Theology and keeps trying to shut the government down.

I like Sanders, but I'll take Trump any day over these two wackos. Biden would probably be OK too.

Re:I sure hope one of the other ten candidates

[unixisc]

I sure hope neither Fiorina or Trump gets the nomination. And Biden rather than Sanders or Clinton. Dr. Carson seems like a far more capable and thoughtful person. Cruz knows what he's talking about and has actually produced full workable legislation like a federal budget, whereas the other candidates only produced sound bites. There are several options better than Fiorina and Trump.

Cruz, Trump and Carson are all my top choices. Cruz is right on all the issues, but seems too one dimensional. Trump has a handle on all his critics and knows how to fight back at personal attacks, and take on the media. In addition to that, his reading of foreign policy, like the situation in Syria, happens to be spot on: whether it's as a result of knowing the issue or accidentally getting it right is yet to be seen. Carson is right on the issues, but his personality seems to suggest that he might be too much of a pushover, particularly when it comes to dealing w/ Congress people like Pelosi, McCain, Graham, McCarthy, Reid. For this reason, either Trump or Cruz would be better than him. Actually, a Trump/Cruz ticket would be ideal, since both complement each other very well.

"Cruz follows Dominionist Theology"

[Nova Express]

[[Citation Needed]]

Preferably not something from The Big Popup Book of Liberal Political Smears...

Re:Because 2016 elections...

[denzacar]

A presidential candidate's demonstrated incompetence in a leadership position is "stuff that matters". So is major corporate executive's, since it helps dispell the lingering idea that leaders get paid more than underlings because they're worth more, rather than just more powerful. The remains of the myth of the divinely appointed kings are hindering our democracies by making the decision-making positions extremely attractive to psychopaths, narcissists and people with other mental issues, and need to die.

One - incompetence has NEVER stopped anyone getting elected.
Nobody cares about incompetence. Neither the people at the voting booth NOR the people in the party pushing that person for office.
People care about "Is he/she like me?". Can they identify with the candidate and his/her ideas or in other words - do they LIKE the candidate.
It's a popularity contest.

Just a while ago US had an incompetent lunatic with a history of substance abuse problem who believes he talks to god, with god giving him instructions on how to run the country - running the country and starting decades long wars.
Remember that time when an undiagnosed Alzheimer's patient ran a country, with plans to "win" a nuclear war with USSR by using "lazors"?
Remember that airhead from Alaska being and actual presidential candidate?
Remember that other guy being "a robot" and "not cool" to be president?
Remember that certain senator from Kansas being "too old"?

It's a popularity contest. People vote for whom they like more based on their public image.
Hint: A sex scandal does not mean someone is incompetent at their job - except in politics.
People don't care about competence. If they did, there'd be a test and an "experience in office" requirement for political positions.
You know... something to show that a politician actually knows how government works.
Imagine THAT crazy thing - politicians with actual governing GRADES and stats.

Instead, elections are about the ability to pretend to be everything to everyone.
Which is what's "making the decision-making positions extremely attractive to psychopaths, narcissists and people with other mental issues" - not a myth of divine kings.

Thus, elections being a popularity contest...
"Jobs fucked Fiorina" is irrelevant historical information (over a decade old) which, were elections about competence, would actually indicate more that she was a high stakes player who once lost to Divine Steve.
But it's not.
It's a cheap, "dirty laundry" attempt at painting old news as relevant in order to affect someone's popularity by labeling them as "totally tricked" and "outsmarted" instead of what they are - incompetent at running a company.

Which might actually mean that she has great chances - in politics.
After all... People loved that other MBA who kept ruining businesses he ran. Maybe she should get herself a baseball team?

Re: Carly may have outfoxed of by Apple's late lea

[pepty]

In november if the ballot says Ghost of Ronald Reagan (D) vs Ficus Tree (R), the Tree will win the slashdot electorate by a landslide.

Considering how far (R) has shifted to the right since the 80's the party would immediately declare the Ghost of Ronald Reagan to be a Dem. That and declare him satanic.