HP: WebOS devices are dead

[lothar]

All the gains from Hurd were short term. He hacked and slashed away the good developers, engineers, and managers to make the company look more profitable and well run. He cut down the "expensive" employees who just so happened to be the most talented ones. This looks great in the short run, but is disastrous long term.



I'm not saying that Leo is doing a great job. The webOS stuff was short sighted at best. But I am saying that Leo has a pretty rotten hand. It doesn't help that Hurd is still trying to destroy HP from the outside (See oracle pulling support for itanium processors).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hurd

Hurd's management style was basically, take away all the resources from your employees and hope that they can still do the same job. Yes, it makes the company less expensive, but ultimately it does A LOT of damage.

Hurd had to do what he did because of his predecessor's disastrous merger with "Crapaq"(Compaq).
Many people hated him for it, but he still had to do it.

Itanium is the "WebOS" of processors. It will die sooner or later. Wasting resources on software development/support doesn't achieve anything except rearranging the deck of chairs on the Itanic. Even RedHat and Microsoft dropped support much earlier than Oracle did.

Almost all Fortune 500 companies do this...It's called "Doing more with less". Payroll hours are the easiest expense to cut.

 

[Skel]

Why not?

These mega corporations aren't charities.

You sure? The more I read the forums the more I get the impression people think Google is.. "android is open source, everyone should just use it"

 

[Deeko]

Really, people? Its bad enough that every thread in this subforum devolves into Android vs iOS. Now you want to turn a thread about WebOS into Windows vs Mac? Really?

 

[runawayprisoner]

Back to webOS. It seems like HP engineers did the unthinkable and hacked webOS to run on an iPad 2.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/19/hp-tested-webos-on-an-ipad-it-ran-over-twice-as-fast/

Not sure how credible the source is, but given that it's an iPad 2 vs TouchPad, dual-core ARM Cortex A9 versus crippled Cortex A8 on the Qualcomm side, it makes some sense.

Funny they should mention webOS as a website. That kind of sounds suspicious...

 

[senseamp]

Does it work the other way, can Touchpad run Android?
If so, it may be a steal once HP starts clearing inventory.

 

[Cogman]

that's because so much of what HP does is just reselling someone else's products with your own branding or it's a commodity like a server. even with servers they now have to pull stunts like licensing RAID controller features to make money

Windows and linux doesn't really care if you run it on HP, dell or ibm. HP is like a giant QA department that takes other companies' products, tests them to make sure they work together and then resells it under their brand name.

few years back we used to buy Emulex brand HBA's. one time i was updating the HP drivers on a server and by accident overwrote the Emulex driver with the HP one. no one ever noticed. in fact when we started buying HP branded emulex HBA's they still say Emulex on them.

Some of HPs most profitable areas are the ones where they do more than just rebrand hardware. Their Superdome stuff, for example, is a big cash cow for them and has quite a bit of HP made hardware. Printers are another area where they make a fair amount of their money. Again, these are products that are (usually) more than just rebranded products.

These areas are the ones that hurt the most from the cost cuts of Hurd.

 

[Cogman]

Hurd had to do what he did because of his predecessor's disastrous merger with "Crapaq"(Compaq).
Many people hated him for it, but he still had to do it.

Itanium is the "WebOS" of processors. It will die sooner or later. Wasting resources on software development/support doesn't achieve anything except rearranging the deck of chairs on the Itanic. Even RedHat and Microsoft dropped support much earlier than Oracle did.

Almost all Fortune 500 companies do this...It's called "Doing more with less". Payroll hours are the easiest expense to cut.

That he had to do the cuts is pretty clear. However, the way he approached it was more of the "torch the world" instead of a long term sustainable move. It made him look great in the markets at the cost of sabotaging future products and development. HPQ was just on the downturn when Hurd retired.

As for Itanium being the "webOS", far from it. Itanium still has a lot of support and demand. Oracle's move to stop support was purely a "let's see if we can screw over HP and take their customers" move. Oracle's main goal was to get HP customers to move over to their Sun servers. (which has somewhat backfired).

 

[Cogman]

Does it work the other way, can Touchpad run Android?
If so, it may be a steal once HP starts clearing inventory.

Should be able to. The platform is relatively open. I don't know if anyone has installed android on the touchpad yet.

 

[sciwizam]

Back to webOS. It seems like HP engineers did the unthinkable and hacked webOS to run on an iPad 2.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/19/hp-tested-webos-on-an-ipad-it-ran-over-twice-as-fast/

Not sure how credible the source is, but given that it's an iPad 2 vs TouchPad, dual-core ARM Cortex A9 versus crippled Cortex A8 on the Qualcomm side, it makes some sense.

Funny they should mention webOS as a website. That kind of sounds suspicious...

Touchpad has 1.2GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon APQ8060 (Cortex A9).

EDIT: Snapdragons are not Cortex A9. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4508/hp-touchpad-review/17

 

[smartpatrol]

The Snapdragon isn't A9 or A8, it's Qualcomm's custom design (Scorpion).

 

[indamixx99]

16gb/32gb Touchpad for $99/$149 anyone?

http://www.precentral.net/hp-begins-touchpad-liquidation-16gb-cut-99-32gb-149-1

 

[dennilfloss]

You decided to share this with us in a thread about HP killing WebOS?

OT/SFF Laptops is ------->

That was in response to poofyhairguy's post about premium computers and XPS laptops, above mine.

 

[ViRGE]

16gb/32gb Touchpad for $99/$149 anyone?

http://www.precentral.net/hp-begins-touchpad-liquidation-16gb-cut-99-32gb-149-1

It's a great deal on the hardware, but what good is the device when there won't be any software updates?

 

[MagickMan]

It's a great deal on the hardware, but what good is the device when there won't be any software updates?

Someone will figure out how to root it to run Android.

 

[dennilfloss]

It's a great deal on the hardware, but what good is the device when there won't be any software updates?

Still a nice media player.

 

[lothar]

Why would anyone want to just license it though? That means HP remains in charge of development; what does that get you exactly? And if you're HP you have all the costs of developing the OS but none of the profit from selling finished devices.

Nothing short of a sale makes sense for anyone in the industry.

The idea of HPQ licensing WebOS is nothing short of idiocy.

What moron manufacturer is going to pay HPQ to be a WebOS licensee?
They might as well license Windows instead or just use Android for free.
HPQ didn't give any indication that they will continue software development of WebOS on Thursday's announcement.

Only a sale makes sense.

 

[lothar]

It's a great deal on the hardware, but what good is the device when there won't be any software updates?

If all you need is a web browser I think it's worth it.

I don't see the reason why people are rushing to get iPads, Xoom, and 10" tablets when they can get an i3 Core processor with 11" for the same price and do much more.

But can I see $99 for a web browser WebOS paper weight? sure.
If it's being sold for $99 when I check tomorrow, I will probably buy it and just keep it at my bedside.

I wouldn't spend $150 for the 32GB version.

 

[senseamp]

If all you need is a web browser I think it's worth it.

I don't see the reason why people are rushing to get iPads, Xoom, and 10" tablets when they can get an i3 Core processor with 11" for the same price and do much more.

But can I see $99 for a web browser WebOS paper weight? sure.
If it's being sold for $99 when I check tomorrow, I will probably buy it and just keep it at my bedside.

I wouldn't spend $150 for the 32GB version.

I spent $150 (tax included) on 32GB one. I wish they had the 16GB though, but even a $150 it's a solid deal. Nook Color is $200, for crying out loud.

 

[Fox5]

Ordered two touchpads off HP's website for a total of around $180 with coupon code. Hope I get them.

The price is finally right for tablets, imo tablets always should have been $100-$200 devices, so long as they use cheap cell phone SOCs. $300 at the upper maximum.