HP developing smartphone for 'post-PC era' - Page 2

You think the previous guy did better??

 

 

Yes ... A first lousy non-working prototype (no price, no delays ....) in one year time .... 

If you think that was bad, you should look back a couple more years at how bungled the Be assets were at Palm before HP bought them. There was a near-complete product, ditched for the buzz of Linux, which lead to a completed product that never shipped at all.

I wonder if any original Be developers rode the whole wandering path from Be to Palm to HP to nowhere.

HP is best served reabsorbing Agilent Technologies and putting energies into new digital high end printing to middle-tier printing, to pre/post-press hardware solutions and scientific equipment; and even be smart by developing Resolution Independent Displays, etc.

"Better right than faster than we should be there."

?????

Say what?
That's quite some 'mantra'....

 

 

You should be awarded the best first post prize....

I disagree on Canon printers. I have both Canon and HP printers in the house and they're both junk. In both cases, I bought one of their higher-end consumer AIO printers. The build quality is mediocre on both and the software is horrible in both cases.

It's been a while since I used Epson, but the last time I did, they were very comparable to Canon and HP. It's too bad there isn't really an option for a durable, reliable consumer printer. Everyone seems to be focused on driving the cost down so they can give away free printers in order to sell you overpriced ink.

Man, are you right.  I have a Canon AIO and an HP AIO and they both suck.  The HP stopped accepting ink cartridges during the warranty period, but I didn't contact HP until a few weeks later (obviously I didn't realize when the warranty ended) and I was told I was SOL.  I'd pay real money for a well designed printer that wasn't tied to $30+ ink cartridges.  

I recently bought an HP color laser and it was junk so I returned it. Wasn't that easy to return either. HP would not take it back even though I had it only 2 days use before it broke. Something in the electronics. It would not turn on. They would only send me a refurbished replacement. I finally got Amazon to refund my money and I sent it back to HP. Then I went to a local computer retailer and bought a Samsung top of the line color laser and it is fabulous. I know, Samsung but the hardware and build quality is outstanding as are the prints.

Think Solar!!/s

HP won the printer market because Apple, during their bozone layer management phase, dropped the ball. Although Apple was never that great on inkjet printers, they had far superior laser printers for the same reason they own markets they now dominate: they had the best software. One of Jobs's biggest mistakes was getting out of the Postscript printer market; that was a real cash cow and could have easily been pushed into the Windowa user space (much as the iPad was), since the printers worked well with non-Apple platforms. (I suspect antipathy to Adobe rather than rationality.) I've had to use HP printers since, and they are not nearly as good. It's a joke the way my Mac and Linux boxes can access all the features of the latest HP model in my corridor using generic drivers, while our Windows users can't e.g. print double sided.

 

How is HP going to make it in a market that Apple already owns, and where Android (Samsung mainly) is already already a credible alternative for those who won't touch Apple? They will have to add significant value, and they have no track record to suggest they can.

I think they meant it is now a 'me too' industry. As Time Magazine rightly pointed out in 2007, the iPhone is the "phone that has changed phones forever". Whatever comes along from now on will be derivative until someone fundamentally changes the way we interact with electronic devices.

Devices can be built without a display for example and project images onto your eyes or perhaps one day via inducing an electrical current into your optic nerve or brain and there can be a volume of interactive space projected out in front of you like LEAP or Kinect. You would then interact with a virtual display of unlimited size.

Google is experimenting using glasses and it will have a market somewhere - teleprompter for example - but not everyone wants to wear glasses and batteries will play a big part in this.

One day technology will be so advanced that you can be in bed with someone and your device can track your partner's face in 3D and virtually render someone else's face on top. That's pretty much why we started developing this technology in the first place. Once we get to that point in time, we don't really need anything else.

Even in that scenario though, the gestures that Apple has implemented will still be used.

 

 

I prefer to append a /s on this .... (your "bed partner" will object, I guess ...)

 

(but that was you intention, of course, and previous sentences are OK)

Edited by umrk_lab - 9/15/12 at 10:39am

Potted plant is a great idea. No doubt it will also be more attractive. 

Look at the total lack of leadership. First they brought in Leo Apoplectic who proceeded to take a hammer and go mad rage through the company and destroy whatever there was to destroy. So they paid him off with enough millions to help him retire comfortably back in Germany. Then they bring in a person who sole qualification is that she ran a site for second hand goods. The thinking no doubt is once HP is totally wiped out there will be a lot of stuff to sell on eBay. 

Potted plant is a great idea. No doubt it will also be more attractive. 

Look at the total lack of leadership. First they brought in Leo Apoplectic who proceeded to take a hammer and go on a mad rage through the company and destroy whatever there was to destroy. So they paid him off with enough millions to help him retire comfortably back in Germany. Then they bring in a person who sole qualification is that she ran a site for second hand goods. The thinking no doubt is once HP is totally wiped out there will be a lot of stuff to sell on eBay. 

 

 

Sure these people would like to have smartphones too,but they mostly cannot afford it. Solution : cheaper smartphones (which, combined with the intensity of competition on this segment,  means low profit margins). Not really interesting. But they can also (as it happens with cars) buy second hand devices. Like it happens in premium cars, the healthy state of the second hand market gives a strong advantage to the manufacturer ... Apple, again ....

We call it, the hPhone!

What partner? Just warm up the 3D printer, and its a party!

It wouldn't be one-sided or anything, both people could use them. An elderly couple for example could have digital versions of themselves a lot younger.

Imagine if everyone wore these, we could all walk around as avatars being seen how we want to be seen. You want a different look, just change your virtual body. No race, colour, gender, disfigurement. It would be a neat experiment to see how far people deviate from their own natural image.

It changes everything - maps/directions are on the road, advertising is digital so Time Square is different for everyone, you can watch two different TV shows in the same room, you can drive a Ford but every morning wake up to an Aston Martin.

I think that's the next step in computer technology. There are examples of this already:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_cZQp9yqos

The iPhone made a big leap because it's a fundamental shift that pushes the computer itself towards being irrelevant. Taking the computer out of the way entirely is the next big jump and all you are left with is software.

If companies like HP want to replicate Apple's success, they have to make innovative shifts in technology and own them. Just throwing another phone in the pile isn't going cut it.

Plastic and lifeless, yeah that's familiar. There does have to be something tangible in the mix though, otherwise we end up with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=k80UQWWUIYs#t=75s (nsfw)

Tactile touch screens are probably going to be the next iteration as they would be contextual and tactile. 3D gesture space on top.

Hopefully the next iPad will have this sort of thing.

 

 

Ah, you were serious , then. Well, I respect this, but this Matrix-like future may well encounter some resistance. The social acceptance may not go together with the technological feasibility. I take the risk of being taken as a stupid old chap in the future (it is true that in this domain, you never can tell), but while it is true that reality may often need to be beautified, at the end we must face it ... (which provides a hope for making it better (improving reality is better than improving the appearance of reality))

Edited by umrk_lab - 9/16/12 at 7:03am

I agree entirely but we don't have that much control. If you are randomly walking along and a chimp takes your face off:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2064315/Charla-Nashs-new-face-Chimp-attack-victim-shows-results-6-months-transplant.html

getting the face transplant is of course the best thing but it doesn't restore sight or the way people see you. Being able to feed virtual data directly into the mind is the best way this situation can be overcome. They can place dual cameras on the face and get the 3D imagery directly into the brain and restore sight to anyone. Even if the virtual face was for the individual, it would have a significant benefit.

There is definitely another step to be taken with mobile technology but it will require a bigger leap than any that's gone before it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11892803

 

 

Thanks for the videos, interesting.

 

In Man machine interaction, it took many years to implement three main inputs categories : keyboard, gestures (mouse can be considered as a special "plane" case of gestures), and voice input. Other ideas can be explored, of course .. But this is for the input side only, and the potential seems limited to me (apart from special cases (disabled people). On the output side, many more ideas can indeed be explored, with 3D hologram capabilities.

 

But the human being architecture will remain the same, and I guess you will end up with devices adapted to situations where :

 

1) you are seated in front of your desk ---> some form of desktop device, (where you can have a large screen)

2) you are seated in an armchair (or lying in bed) ---> some form of tablet ... or future Apple TV

3) you are mobile, and in no one of these situations ---> some form of smartphone

 

Man Machine Interaction used to be a popular topic (if you judge by the amount of money ...). It does not seem to be, but I am sure Sony, Apple and others indeed continue in the secret of their labs ...

Palm OS was probably the only thing that would get me to move away from the iPhone/iPad. I picked up a Touchpad back in the day, and I have to say, in many ways it was a lot nicer than the iPad - rough around the edges for sure, but some of the core concepts feel so far ahead of the game. It's really a shame that HP screwed this up.