HP and Apple Separate; Apple gets Custody

Kasracer writes "Yesterday, The Register reported that HP separated from Apple's iPod selling agreement. 'Doing its best to erase Carly Fiorina's mistakes, HP has culled an iPod reselling agreement in place with Apple since January of 2004.' It is unclear whether or not HP will create an mp3 player or partner with another computer to fill the void."

Not too surprising

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The iPod line was changing quicker than HP was getting updated models, currently a sub-generation behind with just getting the 30GB Photo in and Apple cut it from their own line, I think that's about a three or so month delay.

As the Register article points out, it points out that HP really wasn't about "invent", despite their logo.

HP's "digital enterprise strategy"

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The day they quit making calculators is the day everybody knew HP's strategy was going to become utterly wrong. Whatever venture they decided to pursue after that can be safely regarded as not-very-sensible. The wording of their PR statement after the iPod settlement simply confirms that they still don't have a clue what to do next.

Not sure about the rest of you

[gunpowda]

But I came across little or no advertising for HP's version of the iPod. If I remember correctly, the only differences were the extended support time and the logo on the back.

How did such an agreement ever make sense from HP's point of view? When people buy an iPod they're often buying into the ethos as well as the functionality. They want the brand. HP re-marketing iPods is just brand dilution. And there was nothing special about 'their' model anyway.

Not really surprising

[Wizard Drongo]

I'm not surprised at this. Apple weren't really all that bothered with this, it would only generate so many sales. Apple are all ready selling iPods in almost every shop imaginable, so it won't harm then, and HP aren't gonna make much money, since who want's an HP iPod when you can get a real one straight from Apple. Frankly I'm surprised it lasted this long. I doubt HP will bother trying to develop something. After all, Apple already have like 85% of the market wrapped up, and what they don't, Creative and iRiver can haggle over. By the way, just once could we please have some actual reporting from Slashdot, not reposts from The Register or BoingBoing.

Good.

[sootman]

I never got why HP did this. It looked nothing more than what it probably was--a desperate attempt to try to cash in on a popular name. Was there any reason to buy an HP iPod instead of an Apple one? Same price, same warranty, same everything, right? Didn't even have an HP logo on it, IIRC. I always thought the only people who would buy one were people who bought one at the same time they were buying a machine. Is it worth it to advertise, track inventory, etc., for what must have been only a handful of sales? (Evidently not.) No sense mentioning that carrying a competitor's product always seemed pretty dumb.

I hate to sound like one of those people who say "Apple is perfect and everyone should copy them" but one of the good things Apple has done recently is simplify and standardize their line and ComHPaq should really follow. PowerMac and PowerBook have been around for ages, and even if people might not know the name "powermac" (thinking instead of it as just "a Macintosh") there are just as many people who think *any* notebook is "a powerbook." iMac and iBook have both been around for over 5 years. Those items, plus the iPod, are the core of their line and just about everyone knows them. Those items, plus the Mac mini, eMac, and displays, are pretty much Apple's *entire line*, so it's easy to figure out what's going on, there is very little overlap and, even more importantly, clear distinctions as to *why* you should buy one over another--not just categories for categories' sake. (The only fuzziness comes from the 12" PowerBook. Lots of people ask me about that versus the iBooks, especially now that the iBooks have G4s. Otherwise, everything else is clear as day. People pretty much look at the line and figure out what they want in a few minutes.)

OTOH, only a few people even recognize the names 'Presario' and 'Pavilion' (nothing like carrying two lines that totally overlap; I see no difference today compared to how the lines were when HP & CPQ were two companies) and beond the general product names, look at the items--d4100y, d4100e, a1050y, a1010y, a1030e, a1000y, SR1020T, SR1010Z, SR1020V. (Yes, the mix of upper- and lower-case letters is just as ComHPaq describes them.) What the fuck is all that?

This means an end of iTunes bundling with HP PCs

[aristotle-dude]

I think MSFT put some pressure on HP to drop this partnership. Sure, there were other issues such as price protection and what not but I certainly don't buy the "not invented here" excuse.

Just look at their line of PC's. They are just branded and assembled from off the shelf parts and motherboards leaving really nothing to distinguish them from the hundreds other PC assemblers. They don't even have unique software to offer as it all comes from another company (MSFT) now. HP Invent? Sure, if the definition of Invention is it take some product and slap on a sticker.

Their whole business model, outside of printers, is to resell other companies products as their own brand.

WAL-MART

[slashpot]

Its all about selling iPods in Wal-Mart. HP could get them on Wal-Mart shelves fast - so Apple "partnered".

Do you see any Apple powerbooks or ibooks in Wal-Mart? No - and soon you won't see iPods anymore. So the bulk of joe blow americans who buy all their crap and wally world will soon only have the choice of non-iPods mp3 players. Like creative's zen. Which supports wma (i.e. joe blow can use it with yahoo music and not have spend money buy iTunes songs). Which leads us back to Microsoft waging a DRM war.

Re:Don't be so hard on them

[gooman]

It isn't that no one wanted it. Apple just made it too simple.
HP couldn't figure out how to incorporate a 50MB Windows driver that required 15 background processes to make it work.

I bought two, owned three

[paiute]

I bought two HP iPods for my daughters at Costco for Christmas last year. They were 20 bucks cheaper each than other places, and they worked fine with an iMac and an eMac. I discovered the hidden benefit to buying them at Costoc when one got dropped and the screen cracked. It was unusable and unrepairable. It looked like I was out of luck until I called Costco. No problem, they said. Return anytime up to a year. No questions asked. So I did, and they did. I bought another iPod, same style, same Costco.

I drop several hundred bucks each month at Costco just on food. Now I look there first for all other items on my wish list.

Obvious reasons why HP sold the Ipod

[trixy_1086]

At the time that HP began to sell the IPod, it was a brilliant move on the part of Apple, because their distribution network was not as robust as HP's at the time. It was only during the deal that Apple began letting anyone that wanted to sell Ipods, and not just their approved retails like CompUSA or the Apple Store. HP was able to sell them at places like Fry's and Circuit City. I know that only reason that I have an HP Ipod is that when my father went looking to buy me one last christmas, there seemed to be a large number of HP ipods from various retailers.

Re:Good.

[FCYTravis]

Did you mean a Sony Vaio U101, a Sony Vaio VGN-A690, a Sony Vaio R505JL or a Sony Vaio PCG-C1VE? Is there some computer randomizer that comes up with these product codes?

Re:Good.

[toddestan]

Well, Apple isn't that different. For example, take the 20GB iPod. What generation is it? Does it have the clickwheel? Is it an iPod photo? What revision? There are many different things that can be called a "20GB iPod".

Or how about the PowerMac G5 dual 2Ghz machine? What revision is it? Is it one of the machines from a couple years ago with all the goodies, or is it the newer low end 2Ghz model that's been stripped of some of the high end features?

Or the iMac. Is it one of the gumdrop CRT ones? Does it have a tray or slot loading drive? Or is it a DVD drive? Does it have firewire ports? What revision is? What color is it? How much video ram does it have? If you're trying to buy a used iMac, these can be very important questions - a DVD drive and firewire ports means you can probably get Tiger on it, otherwise you might have settle for an older version of Mac OS.

The model names may be cryptic, but to someone who knows them, they can be very descriptive. If I say I have a Sony SDM-S204 DVI-D monitor or a Sony STR-DE445 reciever, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about, as opposed to a "20 inch Sony flatscreen" or "some Sony stereo thingy".

Of course, Sony also comes up with names like "Vaio" and "Walkman" for everyone else to use. If I say I have a Sony Vaio, atleast you'll know that I have a laptop.

Re:Why does everyone misunderstand journaling?

[alienw]

The only benefit you get from journaling is that the filesystem check doesn't take half an hour if the computer isn't shut down properly. There are no other benefits.

Re:Why does everyone misunderstand journaling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want software to tell me everytime it successfully does what its supposed to do.

Do *you* want software like this? Your puttering around double click a spreadsheet on your desktop.

Popup:

Hey! I just freed up some RAM that wasn't being used! This memory allocation can be hard what with all the crappy memory leaking software out there. Have a nice day!"

Popup:

"Hey! Someone on your LAN, your laptop I think, just pinged you, but I STOPPED that ATTACK! Hurrah for me and have a nice day! And Be Safe!"

Popup:

"Hey! The window you are about to see was going to be partly off the screen, I've decided to resize it a bit. Just thought you should know that I'm here doing my job!! Have a nice day!"

Popup:

"Hey, this is the filesystem, I just disk a disk access, the spreadsheet was actually link, but not ro worry I followed it good and found your file!! Have a nice day!"

Its how I envision an operating system from Norton.

Re:Good.

[JimBobJoe]

yup, using cryptic model names is bad for business as far as I'm concerned.

There are exceptions to this, but I'm not sure if they really are exceptions, or the companies think they are exceptions.

One of the main ones is luxury vehicles. European brands (MB, BMW, Saab, Volvo) never named their cars, and stuck to number/letter combinations. When Honda introduced Acura, they kept to the Japanese idea of naming vehicles, but, when Infiniti and Lexus were introduced, Nissan and Toyota, respectively, wanted to emulate the European style of number/letter combinations. Eventually even Acura dumped names for number/letter combos. (As I said, I'm not sure if it makes any difference or not.)

Another example is home appliances. You can go to Best Buy and find the exact same Whirlpool washer that's at Circuit City and the two of them will have completely different model numbers (which will be long and violently complex.) One hypothesis a friend of mine has, to explain this, is that all appliance stores have policies saying they won't be undercut on the same model, and the way they can get away with such a a policy is by not selling the same "model." I can't see any reason why Whirlpool would build the billions of different types of washing machines that's offered by the model number combinatorics, so I remain mystified.