Why HP Fell - Hackdot

Re:Why HP Fell by tonyedgecombe on Monday August 20, 2018 @09:26AM (#17799686)

I was always surprised they let Microsoft come in and commoditise their business, why wasn't there an HP operating system to compete with Windows?

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Re:Why HP Fell by yardie on Monday August 20, 2018 @09:33AM (#17799723)

There was WebOS. Which I felt was really ahead of its time. But an OS takes time to develop because of the chicken and egg problem. Once Hurd was fired it no longer had C-level interest. They sold it to Samsung, who renamed it Tizen. The UX designer went to Android. And the engineers were scattered across the mobile ecosystem.

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Re:Why HP Fell by maxsilver on Monday August 20, 2018 @09:53AM (#17799853)

I agree that WebOS was great and ahead of it's time, and agree with almost all of the above.

But just for clarity: HP sold webOS to LG (not Samsung), and it (mostly) kept it's webOS name through various aquisitions and rebrandings. See http://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/smart-tv-features and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#History

Samsung's Tizen is it's own thing -- not some acquisition or rebranding of webOS.

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Re:Why HP Fell by yardie on Monday August 20, 2018 @10:23AM (#17800119)

Wow it didn’t realize that and you are correct. Was using a SmartTV and the interface felt awefully close to WebOS that I thought it was a derivative.

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Re:Why HP Fell by toyg on Monday August 20, 2018 @10:37AM (#17800237)

> There was WebOS.

That was 20 years after Windows came on the scene.

Parent poster was wondering why 1980s/1990s HP let Microsoft commoditize hardware (courtesy of IBM). I think the answer is the same as for IBM: old management who couldn't see the revolution coming. After 40 years of Cold War, where the business landscape had been more or less stable and consistent, people struggled to conceive the notion that fundamental shifts could happen.

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Re:Why HP Fell by MBCook on Monday August 20, 2018 @10:47AM (#17800340)

I do wonder if WebOS had a chance. There was so much overhead in the UI I’m not sure it would have gotten to the point where performance was good enough before it failed anyway.

Today it wouldn’t be an issue, but in ‘09 or ‘10 it was non-trivial.

Great UI design though. I’m still amazed how long it took for others to steal the card metaphor and some of the other great features. Like the Touchstone. We’re finally living in that world most of a decade later.

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Re:Why HP Fell by lostgame on Monday August 20, 2018 @07:45PM (#17805241)

I absolutely loved and kind of miss my Pre. :)

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Re:Why HP Fell by Yhippa on Monday August 20, 2018 @01:30PM (#17801895)

I still haven't seen anything as fluid to use on mobile as webOS. Android Pie gestures still don't do it justice. I thin in 2018 we finally have the hardware to see the true potential of webOS but it's too late.

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Re:Why HP Fell by AdmiralAsshat on Monday August 20, 2018 @10:12AM (#17800009)

WebOS was an acquisition from Palm, however. And they dumped it almost immediately after the Touchpad and the Pre3 sales tanked.

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Re:Why HP Fell by yardie on Monday August 20, 2018 @10:29AM (#17800171)

They dumped it because of Apotheker. This was Hurd’s project and once he was out they firesaled the whole line. It didn’t even have enough time to make a sale.

That’s when I HP was in real trouble. Instead of pursuing new markets in mobile they retreated back to PCs, printers, and services. They were trying to grow into a market o it’s way to stagnating.

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Re:Why HP Fell by linker3000 on Monday August 20, 2018 @02:34PM (#17802546)

HP tried a bizarre 'one weird trick' with NewWave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_NewWave

I remember being trained up to support the product, wondering all the time WTF was the gameplan - a 'Windows' within Windows.

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Re:Why HP Fell by opencl on Monday August 20, 2018 @12:33PM (#17801348)

There was an HP operating system, HP-UX that ran on all of their workstations. They even made their own line of CPUs for a while, until Microsoft and Intel gutted the whole RISC/UNIX workstation market by massively undercutting their prices.

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