HP Gets It

Austin Carr, writing about HP’s WebOS and TouchPad for Fast Company:

Ironically, in order to compete with Apple, HP is taking a page from Apple’s playbook. Steve Jobs’s strategy has always been to control both the hardware and the software it runs on. While other PC makers, including HP, have relied on Windows, Apple’s Macs have always come with Mac OS, an operating system designed specifically for its hardware. Apple has followed the same approach when expanding to the iPhone and iPad with iOS. “Everyone is figuring out that if you want to survive, you really want to control the experience end to end,” McKinney says. “The ability to control both the hardware platform and OS is absolutely critical.”

Music to my ears. Here’s what I wrote about HP back in October 2009:

Operating systems aren’t mere components like RAM or CPUs; they’re the single most important part of the computing experience. Other than Apple, there’s not a single PC maker that controls the most important aspect of its computers. Imagine how much better the industry would be if there were more than one computer maker trying to move the state of the art forward.

★ Monday, 27 June 2011