This email from my mother, just now.
She's never expressed interest in a tablet of any kind, ever before. She's extremely smart, but not so interested in tech. Well, she sure is now. And there are millions like her.
My thoughts? Get one.
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Bloomberg reports that the HP board is going to meet soon to decide whether or not to fire CEO Léo Apotheker. And I don't see how that makes matters anything but worse.
Look, we've been as critical as anyone about HP's recent maneuvers, from the TouchPad fire sale fiasco to keeping PCs at arm's length to the Autonomy acquisition. And yes, it would be negligent of the board not to at least talk about how the company ended up in such a bind. But if Apotheker goes down, he'll be the most transparent scapegoat since Bill Buckner.
As surprising and seemingly erratic as HP's actions have been over the last few months, it's important to remember who Apotheker is, and where he came from. That is to say: the guy the HP board hired in the first place. And if you know that guy, a lot of what's gone down lately makes perfect sense.
Apotheker joined HP from SAP AG, where he'd helmed one of the world's foremost enterprise software companies since 2008. He's not a hardware guy. He's not a consumer guy. He's a solid enterprise salesman who, if you're a company coming off of the shaky and occasionally sordid leaderships of Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd, represents stability. More importantly, in a post-PC world, he gives you the chance to remake yourself in the vision of an IBM. Or an SAP.
The HP board knew that's what they were getting. And that's essentially what they got: the TouchPad debacle killed off a platform Apotheker had inherited and a market he wasn't comfortable with. Ditto the move away from PCs. And the Autonomy purchase (even though HP likely overpaid) is the company's chance to leverage Apotheker's expertise and rebuild itself into an enterprise software powerhouse. Whether any part of that strategy is right is highly debatable. And the execution has been inarguably sloppy. But I find it hard to imagine that HP's board feels blindsided.
What did they think was going to happen? They brought in a guy whose skill set made him uniquely qualified to turn HP into a company that's barely recognizable from the one we all grew up with. And if they're chalking Apotheker up to an unfortunate choice, well, just add him to the ever-longer list of bad hires. And maybe start looking at the people who keep handing contracts to disappointing CEOs. You know, themselves.
And then there's this: while Apotheker's dramatic transformation of HP may have been for the worse, he's also (ironically?) the most qualified person to run what's left. Why not give the guy a chance to prove he knew what he was doing? Who's more capable of milking every last synergy out of Autonomy? Meg Whitman's name has been floated as a possible successor, but she's every bit as detached from HP's core business now as Apotheker was when he signed on.
Give the guy a chance, HP board. No one's going to put HP-Dumpty back together again, not like it was. So you might as well stick with the guy who can make the best omelet. [Bloomberg]
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After killing the TouchPad and fire sale-ing them at a $100 to get rid of them, HP has announced that they'll still make TouchPads through October. What in the deepest depths of hell is going on?
Couple theories: According to analyst Shaw Wu of Strene Agee, HP's deal with Taiwanese manufacturer, Compal, was for between 500,000 and one million TouchPads. Maybe HP hasn't sold enough TouchPads to finish that contract and opting out of the contract would cost more than just building dead dead dead tablets. Or maybe they've paid for parts and figured they might as well use them. Or maybe the HP exec who said the Touchpad will make a comeback was right.
BUT WHAT IF it's the greatest bait and switch in technology history and HP ISN'T REALLY GOING TO KILL THE TOUCHPAD AND WEBOS. Yeah, um, probably not that. A boy can dream, though. Either way, if you've been itching to land the TouchPad for a 100 spot, more will be on its way. [HP via AllThingsD]
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???? ????????! Let us toast the Russians and their $65 billion Siberian-Alaskan underwater train tunnel! At 65-miles, the proposed tunnel would be twice as long as the Chunnel between France and England, and could connect New York City with London.
Unfortunately for vagabonds, the high speed rail system proposed by the Russians would be used for cargo purposes (approximately 100 millions tons/year), not passenger travel, yet even with that bummer of a caveat, its engineering chops are nevertheless indisputable.
This private- and publicly-funded project would also be very, very green reports Inhabitat (via The Times):
Proposed tidal energy plants could provide 10 gigawatts of energy and a string of wind power fields could churn a constant supply of clean energy, serving as a vital link to a worldwide energy grid. The tunnel alone would take fifteen years to complete - and an energy and railway network would take many more - but the project would significantly change the shipping and energy industry.
Fifteen years! We'll be flying our cargo around in hovertrains by then. [The Times via Inhabitat via Autoblog - Thanks, Keith]
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