HP shareholders question why company isn't more like Apple - Page 4

Shareholder: "Why isn't HP more like Apple?"

Meg Whitman: "I am Republican."

Remember that when Jobs returned to Apple, his first big success was the iMac, which was actually pretty traditional, but had a very interesting and fun design (which actually looks pretty clunky in retrospect).

The primary reason for Apple's success beginning with the iPod was the introduction of the ecosystem.

I think there is a way for HP to be successful in printing: while it's true that people are printing less and less, it's primarily because printing is a pain. It's a pain to get proper color and it's a pain to work with crappy cartridges filled with an ounce of ink that clog all the time. If HP solved this, I believe they could own the printer market AND they could get it to expand. But instead, what all the printer manufacturers have done is to sell low-priced, poorly constructed and unreliable printers in order to sell very profitable ink. HP should up-end this model.

If HP was innovative, they could probably beat Apple to market with a comprehensive TV/Media/AV component control device.

You don't have to beat Apple at the Pad game because the market has become so large. You just have to create a profitable and growing business. The first company who creates a "best of both worlds" device which supports both electronic ink AND a full color traditional display in one screen, can win big, IMO. I think there are still a lot of people sitting on the sidelines because they can't decide whether they want the benefits of a Kindle-type device or the benefits of an iPad type device.

If you believe the rumors, Apple is going to give up the high-end in computers. While the iPad is enough for many consumes, there's still a large market of professionals who need high-end computers. If Apple does give up making the MacPro and they merge the MacBook Pro line into the Air and only have computers with limited disc space, no optical drives, very limited connectivity options, etc., I think HP can go after the high-end even if they are stuck with Windows 8.

And looking much farther into the future, HP could be working on devices with holographic displays and new navigation models.

I also think that there will eventually be a big market in consumer robotics. It would be a big investment for HP and they probably couldn't get a viable product out of it for another ten years and profitability for another 15-20 years, but if you really wanted to plan for the future, this would be one area to concentrate on. IMO, this is going to be an especially big area as the average age of most western populations ages considerably (due to low birth rates and lower death rates) over the coming decades.

The reality is that most of what we're seeing from Apple is still products that were initiated during the Jobs era. The real test for Apple is what's going to come 2-3 years down the road and whether those products are evolutionary (which is all we've really seen so far since he left us) or revolutionary and whether Apple will develop yet another line of products that we haven't even thought of yet. (Based on the increases in office space and server farms, I think Apple is already planning something major beyond Siri, iCloud and the rumored Apple TV set.

It's a mistake to think of the iMac in isolation, though, and instructive as to why Apple is Apple.

Sure, it was "fun", but Apple was selling much more than that-- they were selling an experience designed around integration and ease of use. An internet machine with "no third step" just as the great rush to get on the internet was really taking off.

No ports outside of USB. Huge gamble, forward looking, paid off. They positioned it as the "digital hub" for the burgeoning "digital lifestyle" that included cameras, camcorder and (a little later) music devices. Then they set about building out iTunes to provide the glue to hold everything together.

Tightly integrated hardware, software, and services, with an easy to grasp story as to why. That's what Apple started with when Jobs returned, and it's what has made them so successful.

If HP wants any of Apple's success, they need those things. They need software that works with the hardware like it was made that way, an ecosystem of content and services that makes that hardware and software way more compelling, and a corporate narrative that makes it clear to consumers why that stuff exists.

Just throwing individual products onto the market with ad campaigns that emphasize specs or some vague lifestyle cues or wacky scenarios or surreal urban tech-scapes isn't going to do it. Getting all brusque and corporate with ads that stress how grimly efficient and grownup HP is isn't going to do it. The odd content deal, or some value added bloatware isn't going to do it.

I say they actually can't do it, because doing what Apple has done would mean changing every aspect of their business, top to bottom. Basically starting over, from scratch.

It cracks me up how the "left", "democrats", "insert title here" keep telling everyone how compassionate and understanding they are, yet it is unbelievable how this thread has mentioned everything from her teeth to Sarah Palin...

Wait, let me guess, you're neither republican or democrat, conservative or liberal, right?

While this is a popular Fox talking point, I don't know of any "liberals" who go around talking about how compassionate and understanding they are. Perhaps it just seems that way when contrasted with "are not there poorhouses?" voices on the right.

At any rate, this is a pretty transparent strategy to work the refs, by crying "I though you claimed to be all about peace and love! Hypocrites!" every time anyone on the left throws an elbow, while reserving the right to call the opposition murders, traitors, a cancer on the country, vermin, sluts, thugs and elitists. A lot.

Look, I pointed out the facts of this thread, this stuff just gets old and tiresome. If you want to be funny come up with something original. Save the Madow/Oberman/Maher claptrap for the political forum.

It's nice that she can tell revolutionary innovation apart from incremental. From here on in, success should be as simple as redirecting the money supply. Whoever has the power to fire her should do so immediately before she has time to abuse the word 'innovation' again.


Yeah, that's PRiority number one.



I don't think vision and creativity has to come from the top down. The people at the top just need to know when to get out of the way and give the right people the control.


People can develop creativity in later life just as they can engineering skills. I think human beings are too complex to be put into distinct exclusive categories.


There are a great number of people who have strong values and passion for what they do. Certainly few will have the opportunity and drive to achieve the same things Steve Jobs did but if you acknowledge that his following statement was accurate then it also applies to people who observe his success:

"When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that
other people can use.

Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

Of course it doesn't mean to think you're smarter than everyone else, just realise that the means by which other people achieved their success should be accessible to anyone. The element of chance also plays a big part. Steve Jobs made most of his wealth from Pixar but he bought Pixar, he didn't write PRMan, he didn't develop RSL. He saw an opportunity and invested in it.

LOL The poor shareholder should ask why is he still bothering with HP. Time to move on. Their printers/scanners/whatever are garbage, and has been for 10 years now.

In Australia you generally can't buy a stand alone printer (cheapest ones are "all-in-ones"), because they're too dirt cheap, despite the unicorn-tear ink cartridges. So many extinct business models HP is still trying to milk.

Again, ironic, Steve wanted to build a company like HP but ended up superceding them.

There is only one manufacture that you by calculators from and those are from the folks of Texas Instruments. I have a TI-92 Plus that refuses to die, I even have a TI from 1972, the 1500 that's still ticken today, use it for my taxes. That being said HP did make two of my favorite devices of all time, the Omnibook 300 and the HP 95LX.

Wasn't HP thinking about getting out of the personal computer game all together at one point. If they don't reinvent that department soon I really think they should pack it up. I have never seen a company with so many different model types. They literally have a computer and laptop in every price category. I don't think you need 20 separate budget computers, a max of three should suffice. It's like their throwing hundreds of darts at the wall while blind folded hoping one will hit the target. It's not like HP doesn't make good products because they do, their new Folio 13 is a really decent laptop, fast, build quality is exceptional but it doesn't stick out from the rest of their line up. If they were to offer say a 1080p display with dedicated graphics for that model and charge 1200 or below for it they wouldn't be able to keep it in stock.

It's not just HP either it seems like every PC manufacturing are just randomly prodcing computers with zero thought into it. There are some exceptions of course, I believe Asus is a company really trying to make a difference in the industry. Their Zenbooks are amazing, the 13 inch is the only one of it's kind to offer a 1680 x 1200 screen with an i7 that's cheaper then a Airbook, now that's competing.

HP printers are still the best in the industry, I tend to stay away from inkjets like there the plague so I don't know how they perform but every Laserjet I have bought from them have been absolute a pleasures to own. They're still large in the server and storage market but they defiantly need to pull a rabbit out of their ass to make their current PC division viable again.

HP, Microsoft is about to release Window 8, I hope for your sake that you have a few awesome products on the back burner because if you don't please do us all a favour and sell the division to a company that could do something with it.

Look at Lenovo, I really thought that a Chinese company would destroy the ThinkPad name but they took it and ran with it in a big way. They are the only manufacture that I buy my non Apple laptops from, their fantastic. I recently bought a X220 tablet to replace my x61 tablet but the x61 is still such a good computer that I decided against selling it. Since it's still one of the very few laptops on the market that has multitouch I figured I would use it as a Windows 8 machine, it runs it flawlessly.