Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff dot com. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot Com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Happy
Speaker 1: families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in
Speaker 1: its own way. Okay, now that was poignant. Yes, I
Speaker 1: saved that one for this part of our three part
Speaker 1: epic extravaganza on the Hewlett Packard story. Okay, and it's
Speaker 1: again if you are just joining us. A couple of
Speaker 1: guys named Dave and Bill started late on tech stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: A couple of guys named Dave and Bill started company
Speaker 1: in a garage in Palo Alto, California for eight dollars
Speaker 1: and a drill press. Yes, no kidding, They really did that,
Speaker 1: and then basically built it up into a powerhouse of
Speaker 1: electronic electronical electrical engineering feats of master. They were very
Speaker 1: suburbian kill suburbian, Yes, I totally checked over that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: They made all sorts of really cool stuff that that
Speaker 1: helped other companies build their businesses. They made a lot
Speaker 1: of electrical engineering, measurement tools, oscillators, um frequency device, all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff that you or I would probably never
Speaker 1: lay hands on about. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about stuff
Speaker 1: that behind the scenes is very important, but to the
Speaker 1: consumer is mostly incomprehensible. It started in thirty nine, made
Speaker 1: its way through the forties and fifties and grew exponentially. Um.
Speaker 1: And also they began to move into other fields medical technology,
Speaker 1: computers in the sixties, Yes, and computers. And when we
Speaker 1: were talking about computers in our last episode, we were
Speaker 1: talking about how they were computers. They were there too,
Speaker 1: how people compute things. Yeah, they're talking about business, business computers,
Speaker 1: research computers, that sort of thing, not something again for
Speaker 1: the consumer. We're talking about computers that are the size
Speaker 1: of say a person's desk, not not a desktop, large calculators.
Speaker 1: But um uh. Now we're getting into the eighties. And
Speaker 1: the reason why we decided to stop our last podcast
Speaker 1: at nineteen seventy nine is because in nineteen eighty that's
Speaker 1: when HP launched its very first personal computer for for
Speaker 1: the personal computer market, right before they released a very
Speaker 1: large calculator that got called at the first personal computer,
Speaker 1: but it was a scientific calculator. It wasn't a device
Speaker 1: meant to run programs and have an operating system and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Right, it's not a computer.
Speaker 1: It is a computer, literally, but it is not a
Speaker 1: computer in what we in the twenty first century consider
Speaker 1: a computer. Um so in marketing terms, that's what they
Speaker 1: had called it. But yeah, this this is when we're
Speaker 1: getting into the time of real um of modern personal computers.
Speaker 1: So nineteen eight launches the HP eight five and it
Speaker 1: had input output ports that allowed it to connect to
Speaker 1: other computers and also to various electronic instruments. So uh
Speaker 1: not again not necessarily something for the average consumer, but
Speaker 1: we're slowly moving that way. Now in nineteen eight one
Speaker 1: we get yet another calculator. So I expect Mr Plette
Speaker 1: will dance around the room and squeel like a little
Speaker 1: joyful I like calculators. Apparently you do. It's the HP
Speaker 1: twelve C. It's a business calculator. Yeah, that the twelve
Speaker 1: The funny thing about the twelve C is now that
Speaker 1: this device was introduced in they still sell them. Uh
Speaker 1: They're they're tiny devices. About the sizes we would expect
Speaker 1: a pocket calculator to be now, um, but it was
Speaker 1: designed to be a financial calculator. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of kind of interesting because again HP had been
Speaker 1: was started as a company that made electric electronic testing equipment.
Speaker 1: So now they are really moving like making a dedicated
Speaker 1: push into other areas of business and trying to reach
Speaker 1: out to other business customers who might want their products.
Speaker 1: Because again, if you've listened to our previous podcast on HP,
Speaker 1: you know that one of the foundation, uh parts of
Speaker 1: their philosophy is that you have to continue to grow
Speaker 1: as a business or you perish. And the best and
Speaker 1: the best part is it had a gold tone, so
Speaker 1: you knew it was good. Um. Two, they introduced HP
Speaker 1: seventy handheld computer. It's actually a mobile computing device and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of interesting it if you look
Speaker 1: at it today. I mean, granted, it looks bulkier than
Speaker 1: what we think of as a mobile computer now, but
Speaker 1: HP really had they were ahead of their time, really,
Speaker 1: but they had really predicted the whole mobile computing UM movement.
Speaker 1: Although at this point movement see what because they're mobile
Speaker 1: but although at this point the they're much more primitive
Speaker 1: than the ones we use today. The HP seventy five C, however,
Speaker 1: even had input output drive so you can connect it
Speaker 1: to a printer or a digital cassette drive. Remember digital cassettes.
Speaker 1: These are not not like disks. You actually stored things
Speaker 1: on tape magnetically. But yeah, it was. It was ten
Speaker 1: inches long, about twenty five point four centimeters um by
Speaker 1: five inches by one inch, so it was only you know,
Speaker 1: two point five four centimeters thick. It was. It was
Speaker 1: glad I have that memorized, because that's about the only
Speaker 1: metric conversion I have memorized. It was a bit larger
Speaker 1: than uh, your typical calculator at that point, forty eight
Speaker 1: k of RAM sixteen k ram. You know. It ran
Speaker 1: basic and visit calc and and you could use it
Speaker 1: as a clock or an alarm for appointments only cost
Speaker 1: nine when Mickey's big hand is on the digital one. Anyway.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen two they also HP introduced within the
Speaker 1: company itself, an electronic mail system where you could send
Speaker 1: messages to other HP employees. So oh and yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's right. Okay, I was like, what but the electronic
Speaker 1: mail was all internal, It wasn't this wasn't something Whearing
Speaker 1: an HP pioneered email. Email actually had existed for a
Speaker 1: little while and other research facilities, but this was It
Speaker 1: was a pretty big move for a company to do that. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: HP at this point is a very large company that's
Speaker 1: continued to expands, got more than fifty employees, so it
Speaker 1: was very important that they developed a way to communicate
Speaker 1: between different departments and within departments because it's getting too
Speaker 1: large to just rely on paper all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and frankly, it's inconvenient to staple notes to people's foreheads
Speaker 1: as they walk by. Yeah. I have had many people
Speaker 1: talk to me about my habit of doing that now,
Speaker 1: and I'm just pointing it out. In AP two, they
Speaker 1: also introduced the HP nine thousand, Ah, the HP nine thousands.
Speaker 1: It was a main frame computer, but a desktop main frame.
Speaker 1: Now when what when you hear the term mainframe computer,
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to think about is a computer that's
Speaker 1: so large it fills up an entire room. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think of specifically of the digital vacts yeah vas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're talking about these enormous computing machines that uh
Speaker 1: that you know, you'd open up a door and you're
Speaker 1: looking at a computer. That's pretty much what these things
Speaker 1: look like. Now. The HP nine thousand was a departure
Speaker 1: from that. It was a computer that had mainframe capabilities,
Speaker 1: one that was just as powerful to say, a supercomputer
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixties, but it could it on a desktop. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a really good illustration of a an observation
Speaker 1: made by um Uh, an Intel co founder. We're of
Speaker 1: course referring to Moore's law here, and Moore's law is
Speaker 1: really an observation. If you've listened to our podcast, you've
Speaker 1: heard us talk about it a number of times quote
Speaker 1: unquote law. But the observation essentially is that about every
Speaker 1: two years or so, and the time changes depending upon
Speaker 1: when you look at this law, about every two years,
Speaker 1: the number of discrete elements that can be fit upon
Speaker 1: a square inch of silicon waffer Uh doubles. So what
Speaker 1: that means to the layman is that the number of
Speaker 1: transistors on a microprocessor tends to double every two years,
Speaker 1: which means that you can cram more transistors onto the
Speaker 1: same space as you could two years ago, and thus
Speaker 1: devices can get smaller while maintaining a level of power.
Speaker 1: So by two it was possible to build a machine
Speaker 1: that fit on a desktop that would have the same
Speaker 1: amount of power as in nineteen sixties super computer super
Speaker 1: which is you know, that's a pretty big deal. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, today the computers that you run out and
Speaker 1: buy in the store have more power to them than
Speaker 1: some of those supercomputers did back in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: You know, you could buy a netbook that has more
Speaker 1: power than some of those supercomputers. But but you know,
Speaker 1: this was this was a good illustration of that that
Speaker 1: that observation. You can buy a smartphone. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. But that's the thing about Moore's law, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's exponential growth. So if if More's law
Speaker 1: were not correct, then we wouldn't be able to do
Speaker 1: those things. But it's so far held out to be true,
Speaker 1: although of course, every single year that passes someone predicts
Speaker 1: will be the final year for Moore's law to be
Speaker 1: able to hold true, because we keep thinking we're going
Speaker 1: to run into some sort of fundamental obstacle that will
Speaker 1: prevent us from continuing, and yet engineers figure out a
Speaker 1: way around it because they're crafty that and because they
Speaker 1: want I think, haven't we established that they generally want
Speaker 1: to try to. It's a self fulfilling prophecy when you
Speaker 1: try to make it work, right, Yeah, it becomes one
Speaker 1: of those things where you know, engineers in general and
Speaker 1: even companies in particular, will dedicate a lot of resources
Speaker 1: to keep it going because you never I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone wants to reach the point where they say, we've
Speaker 1: reached the end of of what Moore's Law has predicted.
Speaker 1: We cannot we cannot continue at that pace. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean when Moore's Law does come to an end,
Speaker 1: whenever that may be, it doesn't necessarily mean that we
Speaker 1: that progress will stop. It may just slow down significantly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we got way off track there. They introduced the HP
Speaker 1: one fifty touch screen computer. Yes, which you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, the touch screen PC. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're still talking about I mean, think about this. HP
Speaker 1: is has managed to launch a mobile device much earlier
Speaker 1: than mobile computing takes off. They launched this touch screen
Speaker 1: computer way before we start seeing a lot of these
Speaker 1: touch screen interfaces come out, really ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: The the HP one also had a keyboard, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't exclusively touch screen, but you could select items on
Speaker 1: the screen by touching them, so again kind of predicting
Speaker 1: the craze. Now granted almost three decades too early, but
Speaker 1: but it's still pretty impressive. And oh you uh, you
Speaker 1: didn't mention one thing about Mr Hewlett, Which are you
Speaker 1: going with the awards? Yes, I did not. I did
Speaker 1: not include the awards. I didn't well, we don't have
Speaker 1: as many as uh in our Texas Instruments podcast. But
Speaker 1: he did get the National Medal of Science. But you
Speaker 1: were going to mention the big ants actually two of them,
Speaker 1: both coming from the the Graphic Recording Division. Yeah. Um, specifically,
Speaker 1: I was going to talk about the thermal ink jet printer. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's the year that HP introduced that idea. And um,
Speaker 1: I guess that's where the name think jet comes from.
Speaker 1: Think jet comes from thermal ink jet. And this was
Speaker 1: a new way of printing. Now, the major kind of
Speaker 1: printer that was on the market before this was a
Speaker 1: dot matrix printer. Those things were loud, very loud. When
Speaker 1: that when they were printing you, you pretty much couldn't
Speaker 1: hear yourself think. You had to sort of train yourself
Speaker 1: to ignore the root noises. Um, as well as the
Speaker 1: crunchy noises of the paper getting caught up in spokes
Speaker 1: and things. It was not always pleasant. That's all right.
Speaker 1: I had a daisy wheel even better. Whack whack, black Whackum.
Speaker 1: So they do have. Earlier in the podcast we were
Speaker 1: talking about, how about how HP has descriptions and photos
Speaker 1: of these items on their history part of their website. Um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting they have a they have a sound sample
Speaker 1: of the think jet, and it's funny because the literature
Speaker 1: surrounding it talks about how much quieter it is. It's
Speaker 1: not what you would call quiet swissbur quiet. It's quieter er. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as loud. How about that? So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a big deal, you said, You said too. Was
Speaker 1: there a second part to that that you wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about? That? That's all I jotted down. Oh well yeah,
Speaker 1: there was another big printing advance right about the same time,
Speaker 1: the laser jet. Oh, the laser jet. Yes, I didn't
Speaker 1: have that down. Yeah, the laser I think jet and
Speaker 1: laser jet were both both came out in the same year. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing jet was thing that you might would be
Speaker 1: obviously well maybe not obviously, but a less expensive um device.
Speaker 1: But the laser jet uh started in three thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, and it was a completely different kind of printing.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was now talk about quiet. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot quieter than that ink jet printer. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is also the point where uh, you know,
Speaker 1: computers are becoming more common sites in offices and and
Speaker 1: and they will be in homes uh in very very
Speaker 1: short period of time. Is also the same year that
Speaker 1: the mac uh, well, the Macintosh, I should say, the
Speaker 1: Macintosh computer premiered in nineteen eight four, and we had
Speaker 1: the IBM PC. Yeah, IBMPC had been out for a while,
Speaker 1: and of course you know Apple had some computers help
Speaker 1: for a few years before the Macintosh, and even the
Speaker 1: Commodore sixty four, which debuted in nineteen eight two. So
Speaker 1: the personal computer is starting to gain ground, yep. And
Speaker 1: so you know you might have a think jet and
Speaker 1: a in a home because it's a less expensive printer.
Speaker 1: Still a lot of dot Matrix and Daisy Wheel out there,
Speaker 1: but laser chat was what you might see in an office,
Speaker 1: and uh, talk about a popular product. Of course, the
Speaker 1: line still exists today. Um. It was uh in eight
Speaker 1: four two, I believe that's when HP made Fortunes list
Speaker 1: of the hundred Best Companies to Work for, number seven
Speaker 1: on that list. So it's another indication that HP took
Speaker 1: taking care of its employees very seriously. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything for eighty seven, because my next thing is, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I had had eighty six when HP introduced the RISK
Speaker 1: architecture Reduced Instruction Set computing, which is, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a type of architecture for micro processor for many computers. UM,
Speaker 1: it's typically less expensive than other architectures. It's also, according
Speaker 1: to many people, a better UH way of computing than SISK,
Speaker 1: which is it's it's counterpart. But um, that's a that
Speaker 1: goes back to the power PC versus Intel days. When
Speaker 1: you can hear that you can get so much, you
Speaker 1: can get some some debate going upon. It's funny because
Speaker 1: when you when you bring this up to computer engineers
Speaker 1: and computer scientists, you can get to some pretty crazy
Speaker 1: debates on the various benefits and um and problems with
Speaker 1: various kinds of architecture. Most of us just say, I
Speaker 1: just want my computer to go fast and do things
Speaker 1: I don't I don't care how it does that. Oh
Speaker 1: and we didn't talk about the integral computer they were
Speaker 1: released in all in one. I didn't find it very
Speaker 1: integral on the podcast, and it anyway, it's also rather heavy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also came out with a number of different UH
Speaker 1: scientific calculators, like the HP eight teen C and thirty
Speaker 1: two S eight nine. I gave up on the calculators.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of them. I couldn't I couldn't keep up,
Speaker 1: but it was it was a lucrative line of business
Speaker 1: for me. And in eight seven they began their hardware
Speaker 1: recycling program, which is again ahead of its time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of those things again about HP. If you've listened
Speaker 1: to the previous podcast, HP wanting to be a good
Speaker 1: corporate citizen, so trying to do responsible things and not uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not contribute too much to pollution and other problems.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are a lot of initiatives that HP
Speaker 1: launched that help make it a at least put it
Speaker 1: in light of as a company that is UH is
Speaker 1: concerned about the environment, including things like tracking greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: that that happened later on UH. Oh, I'm sorry, you've
Speaker 1: got a point here, just a small point that Jonathan
Speaker 1: thought was long dead and you might have to if
Speaker 1: you listen to the parts one and two. UM. In
Speaker 1: in the first part we talked about the birthplace of HP.
Speaker 1: That UM after UH Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard moved
Speaker 1: out of the house where the garage was, they left
Speaker 1: it to other owners and tenants over the years, but
Speaker 1: HP decided that, uh the garage was significant UM and
Speaker 1: probably I think because of something that you mentioned before too.
Speaker 1: Other companies looked to HP as a leader and they started,
Speaker 1: I think the the mythos of the whole uh starting
Speaker 1: a tech company in your garage thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been done by others, Apple and Google, you mentioned Microsoft,
Speaker 1: Origin Games started out of a garage well, and and
Speaker 1: many other businesses have too. But I think HP decided
Speaker 1: at that point that, look, other people have done this
Speaker 1: so much that we want to we want to keep
Speaker 1: track of this. So they decided to have the that
Speaker 1: the garage would be on the list of historic landmarks.
Speaker 1: So they actually started pursuing landmark status and in the
Speaker 1: Palo al To Historic Resource His board named the garage
Speaker 1: a city landmark. Yeah. We'll get into more of that
Speaker 1: in a little bit, YEA, because I've got eighty eight
Speaker 1: and the next part of that story happens in eighty nine. Yea,
Speaker 1: in eighty seven, California did the same. I have it,
Speaker 1: I have California naming it a California Historical Landmark in nine. Okay,
Speaker 1: my timeline said August. See it's sometimes sometimes you run
Speaker 1: into little differences and along these timelines. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's actually now a national landmark. Yes, originally it was
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, then California now national. Uh. Yeah, this little
Speaker 1: bit shack where HB started and you can see it
Speaker 1: on Google Maps if you'd like. Yeah, we HP launched
Speaker 1: the desk Jet printer series, which was its first mass
Speaker 1: market ink jet. So um, they've started to bring the
Speaker 1: costs of manufactured down so they can bring down the
Speaker 1: cost of the actual units and start selling them to
Speaker 1: to uh to consumers because before it was you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like the early adopters who were getting hold
Speaker 1: of these early think jet printers. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: we the desk Jet series that started to fall into
Speaker 1: the range of the average consumer because you know, early
Speaker 1: adopters tend to have a lot more money to play
Speaker 1: with because it's expensive to be an early adopter. Um
Speaker 1: and at this point in the company is doing quite well.
Speaker 1: The revenues are now at nine point eight billion and
Speaker 1: they have more than eighty seven thousand employees. That's kind
Speaker 1: of large. Yeah, so you've got the historical landmark thing
Speaker 1: happening either in eight seven or eighty nine, or perhaps both,
Speaker 1: because you know, well I got my information from HP timelines,
Speaker 1: so they have it listed as both. I would I
Speaker 1: would think that eighty nine is is it? Because I
Speaker 1: had it on that one? So interesting? And so they
Speaker 1: did get a plaque in eighty nine that that declared
Speaker 1: the garage the birthplace of Silicon Valley. There is a
Speaker 1: monument there with a sandstone rock in the front yard. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, just well we can get to that later.
Speaker 1: But they they you can actually go by and see
Speaker 1: the plaque. It is there at the at the place
Speaker 1: you can't go into the garage. I can imagine just
Speaker 1: these people constantly coming out of that house yelling, get
Speaker 1: off my lawn, you nerds. That'll come up later, Okay.
Speaker 1: So in uh, the desk Chet, yeah, which was a
Speaker 1: color printer, so this is the early days for color
Speaker 1: printers for the consumer market. Um. They also created the
Speaker 1: HP l X, which was a palm top PC I
Speaker 1: love how these these terms get bandied about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that every single product is well, not every
Speaker 1: single most of the products are HP. Couple of numbers,
Speaker 1: a couple of letters. Yeah, still so confusing. Like if
Speaker 1: you if you started rattling them off to me at
Speaker 1: this point, even though we've just talked about them, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, Um, is that a calculator? No, silly, that
Speaker 1: was an awful leader. John Young retires. Now if you
Speaker 1: were listening to our last podcast, you would have heard
Speaker 1: about John Young becoming the president and CEO of HP. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he retires, and a man named Lou Platt becomes
Speaker 1: the new president and CEO. UH, and then in Packard
Speaker 1: finally retires. Hewlett had retired several years earlier, but Packard
Speaker 1: retires ninety three as chairman. So Platt then becomes the
Speaker 1: new chairman. So he's the president, CEO, and chairman of
Speaker 1: the board. Now this is when that becomes sort of
Speaker 1: common for the leader of HP. From that point forward,
Speaker 1: you start to see a lot of the HP leaders
Speaker 1: assume all three of those roles. So, um, now we
Speaker 1: finally have it where both of the founders have stepped
Speaker 1: back from the company UH and then the company introduces
Speaker 1: the Omnibook three hundred Done. Done. It was a portable computer.
Speaker 1: Weighed three pounds, not that heavy really, um and kind
Speaker 1: of a predecessor for the laptops that we'd see later on.
Speaker 1: I mean I had a folding form factor just like
Speaker 1: a laptop dead uh and you know not you know,
Speaker 1: almost like a predecessor to netbooks in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again it was supposed to be extremely portable. I
Speaker 1: would like to point something out here. Um, at this point,
Speaker 1: I would argue that HP still sees itself as a
Speaker 1: business to business company. They're making products for primarily for businesses. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do have their eyes on the consumer. They're selling
Speaker 1: products to consumers, but I think they still sort of uh,
Speaker 1: they're making a lot of these products for people who
Speaker 1: are using their stuff in companies. Uh. And that's that's
Speaker 1: a wise move on their part because that's a lucrative
Speaker 1: market for them. Um. But they will they will be
Speaker 1: branching out in the near future. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point that out. Um. They did begin work on sixty
Speaker 1: four bit microprocessor architecture with Intel. Yeah. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: partner with Intel to work on this. Uh, this architecture
Speaker 1: design for sixty four bit microprocessors. If you listen to
Speaker 1: our thirty two bit versus sixty four bit podcast and
Speaker 1: you know more about that. If you haven't, will wait,
Speaker 1: welcome back. The HP then produces the world's brightest led
Speaker 1: for no reason. No, that's not that's not true. Well,
Speaker 1: remember we talked about HP Labs UM, and that was
Speaker 1: a division of the company created decades before to come
Speaker 1: up with new and innovative uses of technology. So I
Speaker 1: think that was that had a lot to do it.
Speaker 1: But they found UM applications in a number of things
Speaker 1: like message signs and cars and traffic signals, so that
Speaker 1: that's one of those things. And uh, this is when
Speaker 1: we started seeing the office yet you know, the all
Speaker 1: in one facts copier, printer, the latte machine, except maybe
Speaker 1: not with the latte machine. Um, but that was the
Speaker 1: what hpiece as is the world's first of those mass
Speaker 1: market all in ones, yeah, which you know you see
Speaker 1: a lot of those today. Yeah, very compact ones now too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that that was aimed at the home office, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea being that you know, if if you only
Speaker 1: you only have so much space, and most people don't
Speaker 1: have space to have a printer, a copier, and a
Speaker 1: VEX machine altogether. That would be much easier to conserve
Speaker 1: that space and have a one all in one unit,
Speaker 1: which is what HP did. They created the Pavilion PC.
Speaker 1: And that's really when HP went after the consumer market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what that that's sort of what I meant
Speaker 1: before they were they weren't really aiming for that market.
Speaker 1: They were they were just sort of hitting it anywhere.
Speaker 1: So now they're going, hey, all you home people, we
Speaker 1: make stuff for you to listen hear home Chicken, Home Chicken.
Speaker 1: You need yourself a computer. And then there was the
Speaker 1: p d A that they released in ninety eight, the Jornada, Yes,
Speaker 1: the Jornada Personal Digital Assistant for those of you who
Speaker 1: don't remember what PDAs are. Look at a smartphone, take
Speaker 1: the phone part out. Um reduced its ability to run
Speaker 1: apps dramatically, and that's a p d A. Also, just
Speaker 1: jumping back really quickly, because there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: we need to talk about. That's when Packard published the
Speaker 1: HP Way, right, and we talked about the HP Way before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was something that was inside the company, was
Speaker 1: company information about how basically a plan, how they wanted
Speaker 1: the business to be run kind of a guideline. And
Speaker 1: then so he publishes a book that really expands upon
Speaker 1: that and also just talks about the experiences of creating
Speaker 1: this company. But in nineties six he passes away. So Packard,
Speaker 1: the one of the co founders of Hewlett Packard, passes
Speaker 1: away in UH. So in n lou Platt retires, and
Speaker 1: here's where we get into some thorny controversy and problems
Speaker 1: with Hewlett Packard. Really uh you know, Packard had just
Speaker 1: passed away. And then three years later ninety nine, lou
Speaker 1: Platt retires and the new president and CEO elected to
Speaker 1: HP is Carly Fiorina. Now is also when again this
Speaker 1: goes back to our very first episode. They used to
Speaker 1: make electronic measuring equipment UM. HP decides to divest itself
Speaker 1: of that and it spun off a company that handled
Speaker 1: it the measurement equipment, chemical analysis and the medical stuff.
Speaker 1: Remember they acquired a medical company a long long time ago,
Speaker 1: and they decided that they would become its own company,
Speaker 1: and now that company is called Agilant Technologies UM. But
Speaker 1: the divestiture UH finished in the year two thousand. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: to to jump back over to Fiorina for a minute.
Speaker 1: Her tenure at HP is one of those that is
Speaker 1: sort of steeped in I don't know, controversy is probably
Speaker 1: not the right word, but there there's been some pretty
Speaker 1: heavy criticism directed towards Greena and her the way she
Speaker 1: led HP. Now, I want to say, first of all,
Speaker 1: she had an incredible burden placed on her because one
Speaker 1: of the one of the co founders had passed away. Um,
Speaker 1: she was looking at the at a company that was
Speaker 1: very much accustomed to doing things a very particular way,
Speaker 1: and perhaps in her mind she felt that this was
Speaker 1: a sign of complacency and that in order to really
Speaker 1: be a successful company they were going to have to
Speaker 1: try and break out and do new things that were
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe we're outside the comfort zone of
Speaker 1: the company, but you can argue that, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the best leaders in industry had that same sort
Speaker 1: of idea. You know, you can't. I think some of
Speaker 1: the criticism is is well founded, and I think some
Speaker 1: of the criticism might be a little exaggerated. However, there
Speaker 1: are certain results that you cannot argue with, and one
Speaker 1: of those is that during Fiorina's tenure at HP, the
Speaker 1: stock price dropped dramatically. UM. Now, it's high was around
Speaker 1: seventy four dollars before Fiorina took over, but by the
Speaker 1: time she did take over, it was right around UM
Speaker 1: fifty one dollars or so, and by the time she
Speaker 1: left it was around twenty one dollars. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a dramatic drop. That's why when I made that joke
Speaker 1: in the previous podcast about if you could travel through time,
Speaker 1: you would want to go back and buy the HP
Speaker 1: stock when it launched at sixteen dollars a share and
Speaker 1: sell it in ninety nine when it was at its
Speaker 1: highest point, just before UM lou Platte decided to retire. UM.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little bit more about the decisions
Speaker 1: that Fiorina made. She actually uh ended up on a
Speaker 1: list made by Conde Nasta's portfolio UH that was called
Speaker 1: the twenty worst American CEOs of all time, which is
Speaker 1: that's an ouch right there. Um. She had come from
Speaker 1: A T and T and Lucent Technologies, by the way,
Speaker 1: that's where she was before she came over to HP.
Speaker 1: And that was another big point of contention, was that
Speaker 1: she was the first CEO to come from outside of HP.
Speaker 1: She had not been working there and then grown from within.
Speaker 1: She was brought from outside. She actually ended up prevailing
Speaker 1: over an internal candidate to become the president and CEO
Speaker 1: and um and and this sort of marks the beginning
Speaker 1: of a very uncertain time and hps uh existence which
Speaker 1: extends all the way up to present day. So UM
Speaker 1: so that we'll go more into what happens with Fiorina
Speaker 1: in the next few years. Um and, do you have
Speaker 1: anything for two thousand, Well, I was just going to
Speaker 1: tell im, I was just going to point out that, uh,
Speaker 1: Fiorina took over with the spinoff of Agulant Technologies, um
Speaker 1: HP was getting away from some of the core businesses
Speaker 1: that made it the company that it it is now.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the things that Dave Packard
Speaker 1: had set aside as important to stick with what you
Speaker 1: know and and find ways that the company can make contributions,
Speaker 1: but at the same time reach out and and grow.
Speaker 1: And one on the one hand, you say, well, this
Speaker 1: has now grown so big that it really belongs as
Speaker 1: its own company. It's we obviously let's see a lot
Speaker 1: of growth and computing, personal computing, business computing. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: doing well here. Let's let's stick with it and get
Speaker 1: rid of these guys and let them be their own thing.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you go, well, at the
Speaker 1: same you know, you've you've got this. It's strong and
Speaker 1: it could survive and be a thriving part of of HP.
Speaker 1: So they kind of the company kind of broke with tradition,
Speaker 1: both in hiring as a CEO who was not brought
Speaker 1: up within HP culture and in spinning off some of
Speaker 1: its core from the founding of the company core businesses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and things just got a little things get worse from
Speaker 1: there on. Out two one, Hewlett passes away, So now
Speaker 1: both the founders have passed away. Uh. And meanwhile the
Speaker 1: company creates HP Services, which is a consulting branch. It's
Speaker 1: meant to provide support and solutions for mostly enterprises, big
Speaker 1: businesses when they're looking for things like network support and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Um, so it's it's again another
Speaker 1: departure from hpce core. They're not you know, they're mainly
Speaker 1: a products company, not services company. And then that year
Speaker 1: HP stocks fall really sharply. But to be fair, the
Speaker 1: entire market in two thousand one suffered quite a bit,
Speaker 1: especially after September eleven, the terrorist attacks on September eleven.
Speaker 1: Took a had had far reaching implications in multiple avenues including, uh,
Speaker 1: the world of finance, and so the technology g industry
Speaker 1: took a big hit in two thousand one, and of
Speaker 1: course HP had its own uh personal corporate tragedy as
Speaker 1: well with the passing of Bill HEWITTT. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was it was a difficult ear for the it was.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand two, HP acquired a company called Indigo,
Speaker 1: which is help it's digital publishing branch, which again you're
Speaker 1: you know, it seemed kind of interesting compared to what
Speaker 1: HP had been doing up to that point. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they also started getting into in a big way. They
Speaker 1: start conducting research and development in the field of nanotechnology UM.
Speaker 1: And then there was a merger that one of the
Speaker 1: most heavily criticized mergers, Like it's right up there with
Speaker 1: with A O. L and Time Warner. As far as
Speaker 1: the criticisms, now, I would argue that Time has been
Speaker 1: kinder to this merger than some of the other ones
Speaker 1: we've heard about it in the past. But the initial
Speaker 1: remarks at the short term implications of this merger, we're
Speaker 1: not good, but I'm dancing around it. But HP merged
Speaker 1: with Compact to become this mega PC company. And UH,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people, a lot of industry analysts,
Speaker 1: a lot of shareholders. UH, there were people of the
Speaker 1: the children of the founders who objected to this merger,
Speaker 1: said that this was a bad idea, that it was
Speaker 1: going to cost the company too much money, that it
Speaker 1: just didn't make any sense. And UH as a result,
Speaker 1: the stock price you don't dip down again, and Fiorina
Speaker 1: ended up getting even more criticism directed toward her for
Speaker 1: this merger. Now and in two thousand eleven, at least
Speaker 1: the early part of two thousand eleven, the stocks for
Speaker 1: HP had improved quite a bit, back up to pretty
Speaker 1: much the the era before Fiorina took a UH. The
Speaker 1: second half of two thousand eleven is a totally different story.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that. But but the the improvement of
Speaker 1: the stock prices as well as the revenues generated through
Speaker 1: this merger have sort of played out in such a
Speaker 1: way that the murder doesn't look like it was such
Speaker 1: a bad idea. It was just it was a long
Speaker 1: it was a long play. It wasn't a short term
Speaker 1: gain thing. So it may be that some of that
Speaker 1: criticism was not completely warranted. Now, I am not a
Speaker 1: financial genius by any stretch of the imagination, or else
Speaker 1: I would be um listening to podcasts and not doing them.
Speaker 1: But but so I can't really comment on this because
Speaker 1: you know, I honestly I don't have enough insight into it.
Speaker 1: I can only mentioned about the analysts. But moving on
Speaker 1: to two thousand four, By that time, HP was number
Speaker 1: eleven on the Fortune five lists. So clearly the company's
Speaker 1: doing something right, right yep. And that's that's when it
Speaker 1: UH went all in on the consumer market. To um.
Speaker 1: They had a whole bunch of new consumer devices including
Speaker 1: uh uh flat panel TVs, plasma and l C D televisions,
Speaker 1: both of them, and the HP Digital Entertainment Center, and
Speaker 1: they partnered with Apple Apple iPod from HP. I don't
Speaker 1: remember that at all. I remember it, and I remember
Speaker 1: it making my eyes bug out and going really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no memory of this, and uh I didn't
Speaker 1: mention something for two thousand, But it's all right because
Speaker 1: I can roll it in here. And two thousand HP
Speaker 1: had finally purchased the house at three sixty seven Addison Avenue,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand four they announced that they would
Speaker 1: be renovating it and rehabilitating the house, garage and the shed,
Speaker 1: um which it has successfully done. It basically as a
Speaker 1: company owned property, which they are basically keeping up and
Speaker 1: they say it looks very much as it did back
Speaker 1: in when Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard started the company,
Speaker 1: which I think is again I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: cool that they're showing that devotion to their history and tradition.
Speaker 1: It was definitely in dire need of rehabilitation because in
Speaker 1: the late seventies it got into this whole punk glam
Speaker 1: thing and it just fell in with the wrong crowd.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad it finally got the help it needed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and UM moving on. In two thousand five, HP acquired
Speaker 1: a company called cy Text Vision, which, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a company that made printers that could print in super
Speaker 1: wide formats, so like really wide posters or banners or signs, billboards, billboards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about like stuff that you know when you
Speaker 1: look out there and you see something that's a huge poster. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the business this company's And if you've
Speaker 1: ever been to an industry convention or driven by one, UM,
Speaker 1: that's the sort of stuff we're talking about, Like I
Speaker 1: think of things like C, E S and E three.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just see these banners everywhere, and it's
Speaker 1: companies like cy Text Vision that print those up and UH.
Speaker 1: February two thousand five was when FI Arena was forced
Speaker 1: to resign from Hewlett Packer. The board of directors had
Speaker 1: had enough. They felt that the stock price was really
Speaker 1: just not where they wanted it to be. The shareholders
Speaker 1: were unhappy. The merger with Compact at that point was
Speaker 1: not paying off, but it was again early days for that,
Speaker 1: and so they decided to Um to give her the boot.
Speaker 1: She would later get into politics. She actually ran for
Speaker 1: a Senate seat in California and did not win that,
Speaker 1: but Um still very active in the political arena. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: UH for the for a short time, Bob Weyman acted
Speaker 1: as the interim CEO, but then they hired on Mark
Speaker 1: Heard to become the president and CEO, and in the
Speaker 1: following year in two six, he also becomes the chairman.
Speaker 1: So again we have a president, CEO, and chairman all
Speaker 1: in one, all those roles held by one person. Two
Speaker 1: thousand and six was a big year. They HP acquired
Speaker 1: Voodoo PC. Yeah, it's voodoo, Yeah, exactly. They produced high
Speaker 1: end gaming rigs, so kind of like alien ware, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing like the super Fast, which was
Speaker 1: purchased by Dell. So trying to really reach out to
Speaker 1: the consumer market to an even greater extent than it
Speaker 1: had already. They also acquired a company called Mercury Interactive Corporation,
Speaker 1: which was a business software company. Uh. And then there
Speaker 1: was a story that broke in newsweek. Do you remember
Speaker 1: this story about the spying, the internal spying at HP. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the story said that that the HP chairwoman, Patricia Dunn,
Speaker 1: this is before heard, has become the chairman, but that
Speaker 1: Patricia Dunn had hired a security team because there were
Speaker 1: stories leaking out from the executive level at HP, and
Speaker 1: they were reaching the media, primarily they were reaching c net.
Speaker 1: And one of those stories was about um Fiorina. The
Speaker 1: board being unhappy with Fiorina and wanting to get rid
Speaker 1: of her. This was before she was forced to resign,
Speaker 1: and HP at the time denied that there were any
Speaker 1: such talks, and then about a week later, Fiorina was
Speaker 1: fired and uh, Meanwhile, Patricia Dunne was very upset that
Speaker 1: such sensitive information was leaking, and so she hired a
Speaker 1: security team to kind of find out what was going on,
Speaker 1: and allegedly the security team consisted of private investigators who
Speaker 1: were spying on HP employees and on journalists. So there
Speaker 1: was a big scandal that broke because of this spying, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the HP board doesn't trust HP employees and
Speaker 1: that this mistrust is fundamentally against the principles that HP
Speaker 1: was founded upon, and that you know, it just was
Speaker 1: unconscionable and done would actually were sign That's when Mark
Speaker 1: Heard became the chairman UH and the state of California
Speaker 1: actually filed charges against Patricia Dunn, but the case was
Speaker 1: later dismissed so it never went to trial. UH. And
Speaker 1: then two thousand seven, HP introduces the touch Smart PC,
Speaker 1: which was an all in one computer with a touch
Speaker 1: screen interface. Again two thousand seven being a little early
Speaker 1: for that. We're just starting to see these kind of
Speaker 1: touch screen computers start to gain widespread acceptance in well,
Speaker 1: started in the late part of eleven and continuing into twelve,
Speaker 1: especially when we start seeing things like Windows eight. UH,
Speaker 1: the preview, I guess you could say, of what it
Speaker 1: is eight, which really seems to be geared towards that
Speaker 1: kind of interface. Um, whether or not that will end
Speaker 1: up being successful, we can't say because it's too early
Speaker 1: for us yet. But also in two thousand seven, HP
Speaker 1: did something really really interesting with ink jet technology. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I think this is funny because they're using inkject technology,
Speaker 1: but they've already spun off their medical unit. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, they're they're using printers to achieve a
Speaker 1: medical purpose, basically by creating a method of drug delivery
Speaker 1: through a skin patch that can be printed with medicine
Speaker 1: using a printer, so it can release these controlled dosages
Speaker 1: to the skin and there's no need for an injection
Speaker 1: or to take a pill or anything like that. Right, So,
Speaker 1: very creative use of that technology. I thought that was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Uh. In two thousand and eight, they introduced
Speaker 1: the HP thirty three Mini Note PC, which is a
Speaker 1: sort of like a kind of like a netbook, a
Speaker 1: very lightweight mobile computing device. They also acquired a company
Speaker 1: called Electronic Data Systems or e d S, which is
Speaker 1: a technology services company. Can I finish? Can I finish
Speaker 1: Ross Perro's company? Oh? Yeah? Uh so, hey, kids, ask
Speaker 1: your parents who Ross Pero was? So Russ Perro was
Speaker 1: Trump before Trump was Trump. And in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: of course, it acquired a three comm Yeah, which this
Speaker 1: is the one that made you scratch your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so three com um that would be an interesting story
Speaker 1: in and of itself. By by two thousand nine, basically
Speaker 1: it was a networking um company, basically network switching technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had been involved in modems. They hadn't been involved
Speaker 1: in all kinds of u uh really kind of innovative
Speaker 1: stuff handheld technology in the nineties, uh, internet enabled stuff.
Speaker 1: And then they started having some problems and uh they
Speaker 1: got into a different Some of their other background businesses
Speaker 1: became the ones that they were successful for, so they
Speaker 1: really faded from the public life. But um HP picked
Speaker 1: him up. They said, you know, we want this technology,
Speaker 1: and so far um as far as I know, it
Speaker 1: hasn't been a bad deal for them. The next one
Speaker 1: was more troublesome. Yeah, we'll get into that in a second.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand nine they also introduced a web
Speaker 1: connected home printer we're just starting to see more of
Speaker 1: today now as well, where you you can create a printer.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a printer at home, and you
Speaker 1: can even if you're on the road, you can print
Speaker 1: stuff to your home printer just by connecting through the
Speaker 1: right website. So that acquisition of Graphic Recording Company back
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, decades before. Yeah, the HP is
Speaker 1: a big name in printers. So on August six, Mark
Speaker 1: Heard resigns. He's actually forced to resign by the board
Speaker 1: of directors. Now, this is a case that is pretty odd.
Speaker 1: Originally there were allegations of sexual harassment brought up against
Speaker 1: Mark Hurd. Uh. The investigation that could that followed seemed
Speaker 1: to say there were no actual implications of sexual harassment. However,
Speaker 1: there were some cases of Mark Heard having uh, some
Speaker 1: expenses improperly build to HP. So it was it was
Speaker 1: you know, it was definitely something that Mark Hurd should
Speaker 1: not have done. If he was improperly billing stuff to HP,
Speaker 1: then that that's the problem. You know, it needs to
Speaker 1: be resolved. But there were people who wondered if the
Speaker 1: board pushing him out of the company was in fact
Speaker 1: a bad decision. Many people suggested that Mark Herd was
Speaker 1: a very good leader. He had made a terrible mistake
Speaker 1: that needed to be addressed, but that he should not
Speaker 1: have been forced out of his position. One of those
Speaker 1: was Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, who who was
Speaker 1: also a personal friend of Park Hurd, who then brought
Speaker 1: Mark Herd over to become co president of Oracle. You know,
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison is always afraid to speak his mind and shy,
Speaker 1: shy man who was not known for being incredibly blunt,
Speaker 1: um not at all. So after Mark hard left CFO,
Speaker 1: Kathy les Jack stepped in as an interim CEO until
Speaker 1: Leo Apotoker becomes the CEO and president. Now Leo Apotoker,
Speaker 1: of course we'll talk about well, we might as well
Speaker 1: just go right into twenty and Shelley. Yeah. Even last year,
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, another incredibly rough
Speaker 1: year for HP. Back in March, Leo Podka announced that
Speaker 1: there was going to be a big move to cloud
Speaker 1: based services within HP and also said that web os
Speaker 1: the um because oh I mention in HP bought Palm, Yes,
Speaker 1: the former manufacturer of p d A S and the
Speaker 1: Palm Pre and other smartphones and later smartphones and uh
Speaker 1: that company of course we've talked about before, but if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard the podcast, in a nutshell as time
Speaker 1: wore on their operating system for their smartphones fell out
Speaker 1: of favor. It was it was dated. Um. Yes, the
Speaker 1: palm os was dated and it really was better suited
Speaker 1: for PDAs than smartphones. Um, especially once with newer technology
Speaker 1: and other newer devices were showing it up. So they
Speaker 1: introduced this new operating system and new phones that would
Speaker 1: run on it. But by that point it was kind
Speaker 1: of too late and they started to founder. So HP
Speaker 1: picked him up in two thousand ten. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: all thought, oh, they found somebody will save them. You know,
Speaker 1: we thought, first maybe HP is going to get into
Speaker 1: the smartphone market, but HP said, no, we're not really
Speaker 1: interested in that. We're looking at putting web os on
Speaker 1: tablets and other computers. But then, like the tablets never
Speaker 1: seemed to come to market. The problem well, there were
Speaker 1: many problems, and one of them being that Apple had
Speaker 1: such a strong hold on the tablet market that it
Speaker 1: was you know, you really need to make something special
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go up against Apple. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then in the smartphone market you had Apple and Android
Speaker 1: really getting a lock on that consumer smartphone market. So
Speaker 1: it was a tough place for HP two b in
Speaker 1: even with the resources it had. So in March h
Speaker 1: Apple taker said that the webOS operating system would be
Speaker 1: included on every HP computer going forward and you could
Speaker 1: boot either in Windows or in web Os, which had
Speaker 1: in my head. Yeah, So this was March. Now in April,
Speaker 1: there was a report that leaked. There's that leak problem again. Um,
Speaker 1: it was an earnings report that that showed that the
Speaker 1: earnings HP had in the previous quarter were far below
Speaker 1: what they anticipated and uh, and so HP was actually
Speaker 1: forced to hold its earnings meeting early because of that
Speaker 1: leak report. That was sort of a damage control sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And then shortly thereafter, appar taker takes the
Speaker 1: stage and says that you know, they're gonna stop supporting
Speaker 1: webOS to start stop developing it. Yeah, just gonna set
Speaker 1: that aside. It's they're no longer going to focus on
Speaker 1: developing webOS. So which was troubling because they had come
Speaker 1: out with their own tablet, the touchpad, and the touchpad
Speaker 1: was highly anticipated and all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to release and now they're saying that it's
Speaker 1: not gonna yes, so they get they said they're going
Speaker 1: to back off of web Os, and they reveal that
Speaker 1: the he is considering spinning off its personal computer division
Speaker 1: to make it its own company, so divesting itself of
Speaker 1: personal computers. And again this this made people question what
Speaker 1: is going on over at HP. Now, remember, historically HP
Speaker 1: had very little to do with the consumer market, but
Speaker 1: in the last decade or so, it's really become a
Speaker 1: big player in the consumer space. So to get out
Speaker 1: of that just seemed complete, especially after the merger with Compact,
Speaker 1: right because Compact was all about consumer electronics too. It
Speaker 1: seemed counterintuitive and people were really wondering what was going
Speaker 1: on over at HP, including as it turns out, the
Speaker 1: board of directors, who did not really care for the
Speaker 1: backlash that came out after Appo Taker had said these
Speaker 1: things UM, and so the board pushed Appo Taker out
Speaker 1: of the role, so he left, and then they looked
Speaker 1: to a new person to come in and lead the company,
Speaker 1: which was Meg Whitman, who was formerly the CEO of eBay.
Speaker 1: And that's where we stand today. Meg Whitman is currently
Speaker 1: the president and CEO of of HP. UM. They are not,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, spinning off their personal computer business.
Speaker 1: They they said back in October that they had reconsidered
Speaker 1: this and decided that was a poor decision. Actually, they
Speaker 1: said that the many of the things said on August
Speaker 1: eighteenth were bad decisions. That's what meg women said. Um
Speaker 1: So in October they announced that that's not going away,
Speaker 1: and in December they said the company said that they
Speaker 1: were no longer going to just abandon web os. Rather
Speaker 1: they were going to turn webOS over to the open
Speaker 1: source community as well as continued development of web os.
Speaker 1: It's on their own, so they were also going to
Speaker 1: contribute to web os as development. They weren't just gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, throw it out in the wild and drive
Speaker 1: away really fast. They were supposed to. Supposedly, they're going
Speaker 1: to continue working on it. So they've reversed a lot
Speaker 1: of their decisions. Now, whether or not that will be
Speaker 1: enough to convince people that HP is kind of refound
Speaker 1: its way, it's no longer sort of floundering around. That
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. Yes, because if you look from
Speaker 1: the time essentially when Packard passed away, moving forward, the
Speaker 1: company seems to have really kind of just it's had
Speaker 1: some rough spots, you know. It's it's not that the
Speaker 1: company has completely lost its identity. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: suggest that. I just mean to say that it looks
Speaker 1: like once the founders were no longer an integral part
Speaker 1: of running this company, uh, things got a little shaky.
Speaker 1: It's hard when a company loses its um, its founder,
Speaker 1: partially because the founders um belief system has worked into
Speaker 1: the company to the point where Hewlett Packard I think
Speaker 1: really exhibited uh Dave and Bill's d n A as
Speaker 1: far as what they really thought of as a good
Speaker 1: place to work in, a good place to come up
Speaker 1: with new ideas and um, you know, when you have
Speaker 1: somebody new come in, they have their own concept and
Speaker 1: right and and a lot of people want to uh
Speaker 1: put their own mark on a company and say, well,
Speaker 1: I want this to be I want HP in my
Speaker 1: years to be remembered for what I did with the
Speaker 1: company and not what Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard did
Speaker 1: back when they were in charge. Should accomplished for some
Speaker 1: of those yes, not necessarily the way they want to do,
Speaker 1: But I think that's that's part of it. As I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, now, I'm I don't mean to read minds,
Speaker 1: but I uh, I think that that's that that figures
Speaker 1: into it. You know, I want to want it to
Speaker 1: be special when I'm there, not just you know, business
Speaker 1: as usual, right. Um, So yeah, it's been an interesting ride,
Speaker 1: and uh it'll be very interesting to see what has
Speaker 1: in store with HP, um and see where they go
Speaker 1: from here. Uh. As we record this, it's the friday
Speaker 1: before I fly off to the Consumer Electronics Show CES
Speaker 1: of Las Vegas, and I am very curious to see
Speaker 1: what HP's presence is going to be like out there,
Speaker 1: and to kind of get a look around and just
Speaker 1: kind of get an idea here what the chatter is
Speaker 1: on the show floor, and see if it's more of
Speaker 1: a an optimistic discussion, um than it has been in
Speaker 1: years past. Uh. You know, one one holds out hope
Speaker 1: because you know, this is a company that has a
Speaker 1: very long history and it's uh, you know, even in
Speaker 1: its rough patches, it's it's been an important part of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Uh. One other thing I was going to
Speaker 1: mention I should have mentioned it during the Fiorina era. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we had talked about how HP had really
Speaker 1: been about dedicated about taking care of its employees. That
Speaker 1: was one of the major criticisms directed towards Fiorina, and
Speaker 1: that there were massive layoffs during her tenure as the presidency.
Speaker 1: More than thirty thousand people lost their jobs during her
Speaker 1: her time at HP, So you know, that's that's pretty
Speaker 1: stark indicator that the people who have come into HP
Speaker 1: after the founders may not have had the same philosophy,
Speaker 1: right heart, So hopefully that has changed, and we'll just
Speaker 1: keep our eyes on the company and see what happens
Speaker 1: from here on out. Meanwhile, if any of you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics that we should talk about on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether that's another company, whether it's innovative person within the
Speaker 1: tech community, or perhaps just some other topic in general,
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