HP to acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion - Page 3

People keep saying this, but "desktop" computing is not going anywhere soon. It is a bit naive to think that any mobile device will be able to serious computing for quite awhile.

As an example, here I am on my MBP, typing on the internet/working on a manuscript, have music playing, converting a 4 GB fMRI raw file to nifti format, and analyzing a subject's data with FSL.

I defy anyone to remotely attempt anything like that on a current mobile device, now, or in the 5 years.

Apple should have bought them and closed them down.

I wouldn't want my daughter or anyone's child to be drinking coke, eating McDonalds, driving a GM product, or working at walmart ( or shopping there for that matter) on a Dell using a Windows OS....it's all crap. My point is there is a business choice. Either work really hard innovating as Apple does or take the easy way and sell crap products more efficiently! I would also include Goldman Sachs in this group too.

Good point, a bit more bit evidence that anything other than M$ is better than nothing.

Out there tonight, Carly Fiorina pumps her fist in the air with a loud "YESSSSSSSS!", knowing that she no longer owns the most bone-headed decision by an HP CEO.

Yep, there are few companies out there actually earning their keep like Apple, the MO of most is find a way to screw their clients.

Are they laughing 'cause it's funny, or are they laughing to hide their insecurities. I think it's a great acquisition.... but what the hell do I know?

I bet you Apple isn't laughing...

I bet Apple couldn't care less.
I bet they would much rather the IP went to HP than say MSFT or Google.

i'm not really sure what to think of this. on the one hand i have a bid of a nostalgic soft spot for palm - ever since the days of the newton, when they brought graffity to the platform.

yeah, i know that the palm from then bears little resemblance with what we call palm today, but thanks to handspring, they did at one point rule the phone market, and despite having changed hands so often (and now once more), i always thought that their customers deserved better.

after the newton got 'steved', i had a look at the palm pilot, but it just didn't measure up. combining the palm os with a phone sounded like it could fulfil the promise of motorola's marco efforts with the newton os, but it was clear that they weren't that ambitious.

palm's mac support got worse and worse, steve jobs toyed with the idea of buying them, but when 3com scooped them up i thought that was the end of palm. somehow the brand survived it.

webos looked promising, so even after getting an iphone (having lived without a cell phone for ten years) and loving it almost as much as the newton from back then, i went to a store to have a look. the moment i picked it up i knew i would never want it. the hardware felt like crap on first touch. it felt as if they just didn't have the money to do it right.

palm will survive hp as well. and maybe with some deeper pockets they will produce a great device again, before they go through another deathspiral. what palm lacks (IMO) is inspired leadership with passion for technology. just like apple under spindler and amelio, they suffered from having guys in charge of their direction that couldn't care less if they sold phones or cars or burgers. shame really.

i somehow don't see that changing under hp's ownership.

i could be wrong of course. for all we know hp bought palm because they're secretly planning to take over the world with beos.

That would have probably caused some anti-trust concerns for Apple, or at least wouldn't have looked good, just icky... Just my gut feeling...

Now HP/Palm will be pestering Android and MSFT, and as they fight among themselves, Apple would only look better!

Rubinstein gave me an icky feeling. Bono bet on the wrong horse. Amazing, having had an iPod named after his band -- a fool...

In reality, we all can only guess how this merger will work out!

The original Palm lost it's way years ago... I do give them the credit for allowing me to carry a lot of data in my pocket... But, with iPhone and now iPad it's a New Day now! Web OS is a Me Too... iPhone Wanna Be, or so it seems!!! The same probably could be said about other OS's too, I suspect! But, I don't care... I want the Simplicity and the Stability of Apple's Echo System...

The Old Palm OS was the best advertising for OSX and Apple's "Closed" System.

As I am on my last days with Palm Treo 700p, I recall many battles with it and Tungsten III... 3rd Party Apps crashing those devices, and me having to play a detective, trying to isolate the suspect app... Resetting daily as a defensive move....

Apple's "Closed" System does that "isolation" for me, pre-screening apps!

If then Android folks want to play Detective, like I used to with Palm, installing apps, and then call who for tech support? The Carriers, Manufacturers, or does Google have Android Care? Happy Monkey In The Middle Games, and So Called FREEDOM to be SCREWED in that Zoo!!! NO THANKS! NEVER AGAIN!!!

Even if Android won't have viruses, and same for Windows Mobile, I suspect it'll be like the Old Zoo described in my previous paragraph!!!

Those competitors will all try to paint Apple as some kind of Dictatorship, and themselves as Freedom Fighters! Freedom to play the masses for stupid, and pass the buck down the road of Don't Call Us for Help!!!

Life is short, and we are supposed to enjoy it, with a some of these devices, instead of spending hours and days on tech support calls!!!

This is not Fan Boy gushing... I am just describing my and my friends' experience of many years!

I am counting seconds till my New iPhone and MBP 17', eventually iPad too.

Let the Apple Haters cut their noses to spite their faces, in order to fight Apple. Let those OS's and companies fight among themselves for that Silver Medal... I don't care if they collectively have a bigger piece of the world market then Apple will have by itself!

I want my Apple stuff, I know it'll work, and I'll be enjoying life!!!

I for one do not believe that "desktop" computing is not going anywhere soon. However the "sheer numbers potential" of the mobile platforms will garner all the attention... people will buy and use them for different things than most desktop uses.

To support that, I have been a techie for way too many years-- and, while it is important to you, I don't know (or care) what: "converting a 4 GB fMRI raw file to nifti format, and analyzing a subject's data with FSL." means... and that's the point-- most mobile users will not want/or need to do those things.




One additional advantage that Apple has over all the competition: they have a single, common, OS/Application codebase across all their devices. That means when, say, a new codec (or app to manipulate it) is implemented on Mac OS X, it is easy to migrate it to AppleTV, iPhone OS, iPod, etc.

One really interesting aspect of this is that the migration works in all directions-- you can easily migrate location services to the laptop/desktop OS from the mobile OS. There is no [longer a ] reason that AppleTV needs to be tethered to a TV (or an AV cabinet)-- it could be built into your car.


Apple could easily add multitouch capability to the desktop/laptop-- and migrate all the APIs and apps (that make sense) to that platform.

Google and HPalm are faced with different, incompatible OS offerings for the mobile and laptop/desktop.

Say HPalm releases a Boffo tablet with their mobile OS. How do they migrate anything to their (Win+HP) desktop OS? Or, vice versa!

.

What? Is Carly Fiorina running HP again? How else does one splain this?

Current add on page:

Buy one Palm Pre Plus for $49.99
and Get One FREE!

I agree about product quality (who wouldn't). I only queried the "lack of Innovation" tag - all those guys have innovated in very important ways to be ultra-successful (in selling cheap "crap"). I barely use any of them but doesn't mean I can't appreciate what they have achieved in their markets.
It is somewhat snobbish to say that creating the world's largest company by revenue, most recognized brand, revolutionize the PC industry are all easy things to do and only expensive elite products have a place in the world.

Most people would say the Apple screws us all hard, just that we enjoy it. Pay much more, wait longer for the latest, let Apple control our access to things, but we forgive them this for the experience and the quality.
Why should people who enjoy saving pennies at WalMart, enjoy rotting their teeth with Coke and clogging their arteries at McD's be looked down on by us who pay huge multiples of what PC users do for a little lighter, stronger, longer-lasting, better looking, better feeling device.

Commerce is about "screwing" customers (extracting profits and supernormal ones if you can) - success is about getting them not to care that you are.

Exactly, the last thing 'Steve' wants is to think up another way to out-do Google.
He's already taken care of MS

BTW IMO - it was cheap at a 23% premium - but, as you said Monsty - WHO CARES!

Wow, this is the best outcome for Apple! HP has had very little success in the mobile business and they are far from being an innovative company. They are in the commodity business. Their corporate culture will likely kill any innovation Palm has left. Get ready for a brain drain.
Furthermore, a billion dollars is ludicrous especially if you look at Palm's latest financial results. RIM, although more expensive, would have been a more suitable acquisition. They own the business smartphone segment.

While HP does run a mildly succesful hardware business (that I would think the ASUS's, Gateways, Toshiba's of the world would be jealous of), they are not strictly commodities.

They run a rather successful services organization as well. Wouldn't the brain drain have occurred when Palm was looking for a suitor?

Most of their stuff is commodity kit in that it can be replaced by its competitors stuff with little to no switching costs. They are successful but it doesn't give them skills for this fight. They do claim to sell hardware for 8 of 10 top carriers but I doubt any of it is not commodity kit. Not much leverage...
Same with services - they bought Digital (through Compaq) and EDS, but neither have much to do with success in the mobile market.
We shall see...

This is probably not the forum for bringing this up, but I finally get why Apple are so anti-Flash.

I've just joined the YouTube HTML5 beta, and whilst on the negative side the video players controls don't look quite as good as the Flash player, on the plus side I still have 2:30 of battery life left and my legs aren't on fire from the heat coming off my Macbook.

I'm a convert!

After the glory of the PalmPilot and Handspring, I had the unfortunate urge to try out the Dell Axim for a few months. What an utter regret I had. Never touched a PDA again until the iPod Touch and then iPhone 3G.

Call me an Apple fanboy, but since the Palm glory days 10 years ago, geez... nothing comes close to an iPhone. I mean, it's not for everyone, and people love their Blackberries, but... still, iPhone is the one to catch up to, and the iPad is pretty much going to be sold as fast as Apple can make them for the rest of the year, globally.

Also, WebOS-Palm is pretty much nonexistent internationally, where the iPhone and iPod Touch continues to gain significant footholds. There's Samsung/HTC Android/etc but I don't know how much traction their getting.

Ah well, call me an Apple fanboy...

So what did you think when previously sacked, NExT-fiasco-infamous executive wannabie joined leave-the-sinking-ship fruit company..? \

A billion dollars is pretty damn cheap for a once glorious company that made a ding in the PDA universe, then opened new doors in the smartphone arena.

Once glorious...

Check out the new Flash 10.1 Beta for Mac OS X. It just got HW decoding acceleration with the new framework Apple added to 10.6.3.

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http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/gala/ It's pretty stable and showing notable benefit over 10.0.x.

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http://www.anandtech.com/show/3682/a...s-x-we-test-it However, I'm still seeing 3x to 6x more CPU usage with Flash on YouTube over HTML5 for the same video at as the same bitrates/resolutions. The only drawback for HTML5 is that there is currently no fullscreen option, which is a drawback for many.

^^qft

Yuo can have tablet in two flavours, not unlike netbooks were available in both Linux and XP flavour.

At the end of the day, market will decide on each platform success.

Whoring is acceptable practice in business. Just look at Apple belly-dancing between Intel, Nvidia and AMD.

And opinions can be very wrong. Millions of people buying the iPad are not upset at all - in fact, surveys show them to be extremely happy.

I for one predicted a total success knowing the genius level involved, the skill set at Next and the potential at Apple and bet the farm on AAPL, how went your prediction on that one?

Hey thanks for the info. I am testing the 10.1 beta on a MacBook and it does seem less toasty. Meanwhile on the HTML5 beta at YouTube I wonder what the hold up on more features for the HTML5 full screen is, they have the 720p working beautifully. I also just saw a new control for slow down and speed up above the play button that doesn't work for me yet. I hadn't noticed that till just now.

Yes it did but I was referring to people leaving the organization because of the culture clash. Anyway, the point was that I think Palm is not suitable for HP, a company more focused on business customers than electronic consumers.

In what universe do you live where the #1 pc manufacturer is mildly successful?

The "turtle/rabbit" button has been there for a few months. I don't think fullscreen will be coming for awhile.

Jilion's Sublime video demo has a fullscreen option with newer version of WebKit. I'm not sure what has changed to allow this but the fact that you need to hold down the Command button whilst clicking the button to make the window larger is far from an ideal solution. It will have to a separate button that is usable across the board with browsers supporting HTML5 video. It doesn't look fast-tracked to me.

http://jilion.com/sublime/video

The best thing HP can do is continue to use the brand PALM.

So many phones, so little room at the top. Unless Palm/HP/WebOS can come up with an iPhone-like revolution in the way smartphones behave, they are doomed to be just another struggling also-ran in the market.

Sorry, should have put my sarcasm face in

Because it's the only Pad out. if it continues to dominate the market like the iPhone after the other release theirs, then you can make that statement. It's easy to win a one horse race.

It's a high propability that the forum is running on the hardware manufactured by this A crapware PC maker

Pocket change compared to her acquisitions and the size of HP. MS has spent more just to strangle promising tech they never employed. And HP probably will scrape a bit of useful flesh off the bones even if it never pans out to a big plus.


I would.

Is there any danger that any of your posts might actually.... mean something?