Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
HP Open Source

HP Delays WebOS Decision 77

Posted by samzenpus from the on-second-thought dept.
itwbennett writes "Following Tuesday's report that HP is looking to sell WebOS, CEO Meg Whitman and HP employees gathered for a late-afternoon meeting. According to The Verge, Whitman told those gathered at the meeting 'It's really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,' adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

HP Delays WebOS Decision More

HP Delays WebOS Decision

Comments Filter:

  • The HP Way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hope Thelps ( 322083 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2011 @06:02PM (#38005452)

    "a decision would come in the next three to four weeks".. and then a reverse decision every three to four weeks thereafter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      "a decision would come in the next three to four weeks".. and then a reverse decision every three to four weeks thereafter.

      I wonder if the decision process will outlast Meg's tenure at HP.

    • Meanwhile, WebOS will continue to languish unwanted, losing even more of its value.
  • This company's fucked. It's been bent over and pounded on by so many different 'short-term thinking managers' that I'd be surprised if it could walk in a straight line, much less maintain a consistent business strategy. If corporations were people, HP could file rape charges.

    • I don't know. I disagree with Meg Whitman's politics, but I think she's got a good shot at this.

      Then again, the whole thing could go under even if they had the best managers ever steering the ship because the damage is already done.

      • Whatever makes you think she is a good manager?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          Whatever makes you think she is a good manager?

          What makes you think the GP thinks she is a good manager?

        • I'm not saying she's a good manager, just looking over her history at eBay, it wasn't that bad and she seemsn better than Apoetheker. Well, let's face it, slime on a rock face would be better. Still.

          • Someone in a coma would have done a much better job than Apoetheker.

          • Steve Jobs considered her a 'bozo'. When Jobs got rid of the Apple board in 1997, she was suggested to him as a member of the new board, he declined.

  • Somehow it all seems cursed. Assuming it has vestigial BeOS bits in it, the history includes having been shunned on Apple hardware, not bought out by Apple, then bankrupted by Microsoft's anticompetititve practices, firesold to Palm who evolved too late to make a difference, acquired with great promise by HP who failed to capitalize and finally made a rash decision in thinking it has no value. Can't it get a break from all the turmoil?

    • Palm may have bought BeOS, but webOS is built upon Linux with a fairly standard GNU userland with a few proprietary bits and toolkit centered around HTML/CSS/JS (along with a native devkit.)

      Can't it get a break from all the turmoil?

      It'd be a steal for Samsung/Intel if they could snag it and open it up as part of Tizen. Squeeze out some efficiencies on ARM (and the native toolkits to boot) and leave the GUI a blank slate, and they'd have a ready to use platform that was fully open source at all phases of dev

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbwolfe ( 241413 )
        Would you happen to know if any of it is closed. I thought it was somewhat similar to OSX- BSD Darwin with Aqua as an interface. BeOS was all closed but partially POSIX compatible- what a shame it never went open. I just figured Palm had to have something in mind when they bought the remains of the company.
    • Palm never really did much with their BeOS code, and HP doesn't even own it (PalmSource, makers of the Access Linux Platform, do.) webOS was killed by a fickle market and the incompetence of HP and Palm, not by any kind of curse in an unrelated product.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by funkboy ( 71672 )

      Somehow it all seems cursed. Assuming it has vestigial BeOS bits in it

      Nope, Access owns BeOS [wikipedia.org]. They used the multimedia bits in their Access Linux platform [wikipedia.org].

      Where you're right is that both BeOS & PalmOS have a long history of being championed by companies unable to gain sufficient for their technology...

  • HP board is a bunch of retards that is determined to screw up a perfectly good company. I think it's time for rest of us to move on and let HP be.

  • As a WebOS user on the Palm phone, I will be sad if it dies. It seems a decent OS, and the only complaint I have about the phone is its hardware (bad keyboard, short battery life).

    Any other users here?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bought a firesale Touchpad, it's a wonderful interface, and solid Hardware. I just bought it to throw android on It, but I Genuinely love WebOS now... I hear it's an absolute mess under the hood, but I hope SOMEBODY brings out new hardware for it, it's too good an interface metaphor to just abandon.
    • Finally upgraded from my Palm Pre Plus to iphone 4S. I REALLY was hoping Palm was going to make something great out of WebOS. The Pre Plus hardware was nice and i never got the bad keyboard or any other mechanical issues and it ran pretty damn good.
    • One of the (relatively) few U.S. users of the Pre3 here. First WebOS device I owned, though a Touchpad came only weeks later. Great system as a whole. The hardware on the Pre3 is finally up to snuff after a long history of issues like he ones you described. Other than a frustrating unwillingness by HP to provide a software keyboard when in portrait mode, the whole package finally feels like something competitive with the big 2. After playing with WebOS phones for a few years I really think the poor hardware
    • I used a Palm Pre (the original on Sprint) for two years. It was a decent phone. I didn't even mind the keyboard. What drove me away was the appalling lack of apps for it. Keep in mind: At the time I abandoned the platform, it didn't even have a Kindle application yet. (I'm not sure if any of the phones do, even now, even though I know the TouchPad does.) Palm and HP both dropped the ball on that. A beautiful OS with a dearth of apps might as well be an ugly OS, for all it matters.

  • Jean Louis Gassée, ex-employee and creator of (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UpnAtom ( 551727 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2011 @06:45PM (#38005928)

    Turning to HP, this week was their Board’s opportunity to solidify its reputation for incompetence and bad manners. They rose to the occasion.

    http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/09/25/how-bad-boards-kill-companies-hp/ [mondaynote.com]

    • Someone fix /. already.

      PS. Gassée's blog is the best I've read.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Thanks for posting that! I always liked Gassée and was wondering what he'd got up to.

    • Perfect quote. Thanks for that link, made great reading. Interesting site, as well.

      Credit where due, at least Meg's almost on record about wanting to make a right decision. Could be a first. She seems to have been saying some of the right things recently (appearing thoughtful, balanced, realistic); it remains to see what comes of that.

      D'you happen to know of a good study on why any innovative, successful company ends up a bad board? It doesn't seem to be a rare occurrence.

  • Have you guys seen theverge.com ?
    For a bunch of geeks who left whatever site the left, in some sort of righteous exodus, they sure put together one shitty looking site.
    I don't think I'll ever go back there again.

    Total visual cacophony. Or cacorasi. I DON'T KNOW GREEK.

    • Yep all the engadget dudes left and went and started the verge, but I agree, its one ugly mother of a site!!! But joshua topolsky loves it and that all that matters. That guy things he walks on water! His a Steve Jobs 2.0 in his eyes.
    • For once I agree with you. They need to lighten up on the javascript too. Geez.
  • Oh look, and indecisive company who doesn't know what to do with an OS that consumers don't want. Why don't they just let it die and move on?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Really? You think that Leo made decisions like that without the board's approval? LOL! The board agreed with every last announcement Leo made. This wasn't a Leo issue, this was an "HP's board has no fucking clue what they're doing". They now keep making announcement like they have been with no action to test the waters of wall street. Do you really think these "rumors" about webos, the pc division, etc. are just rumors? They're being floated by HP marketing to watch the stock market to determine what
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Righhhtttt, which is why the first thing out of Whitman's mouth was that Leo wasn't acting alone, and that she had no plans to change his plans for the company. If you think a CEO at a company that size makes announcements like that without board approval you simply have no idea how a company that size works. Leo wouldn't even legally have the ability to sell off ANY division of HP without board approval. What the hell makes you think a veteran CEO would make an announcement on plans he couldn't enact wi
  • "I'm really hoping that the bloggers can come to a consensus so I know what to do. I've never actually had to make a decision while in a leadership decision, and I'd hate to have that change now."
    • Then she added "We're really just seeing how far we can push the stock down this quarter, after all this is still all Leo's fault - right Carly?"
  • The real decision should be whether to open source it or not.

    If they had a lick of sense, they'd give that a shot.

    But they don't.  And they won't.

    Android really needs some competition...(and no, that crappy iOS doesn't count--I mean real, proper, open source OS competition).

  • I bought a Veer, which I like but which also has some pretty blindingly obvious bugs and deficits. HP announced the WebOS hit 3 days after I bought this device. Pretty simple; if HP really abandons my brand-new phone them I'm not buying another HP product again, ever. They did the same thing to my OfficeJet 5500, fine, but only after I'd had it for five years. Not 3 bloody days.

  • http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/08/webos-fate [daringfireball.net] - "When you’re faced with a “we need to stop the bleeding” problem, you need a fast decision."

  • 'It's really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,' adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks."

    Its a shame they didn't know that before killing the touchpad ... announcing that they are leaving the PC business ..... announcing that they are not leaving it ... and so on

  • I'm posting this as probably one of the last people who was still using a Palm Pilot. I only recently quit using my Palm Pilot because of the d--n Touchpad that I bought for next to nothing. I'm not in any way an HP fan, but this whole thing has me so disappointed. Let me get this straight, when I finally get ready to upgrade to a smartphone the nice OS that I've grown to love on the tablet that I bought on the cheap is probably dead? Maybe. Are you f--king kidding me? I buy one of your tablets (Thanks, Apo

  • So how is waiting 2-3 weeks going to fix things? People are flocking away from WebOS because of it's lack of support, and with Android for Touchpads just around the corner, I feel HP's decision will be too late! They need to decide now, or the user base will decide it for them!

Slashdot Top Deals

"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

Close