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HP Wants To Be Apple, But With More Crap |
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 HP today announced over 150 new products, all of which fall under it's new plan for simpler, more unified products that supposedly work better together. The new products include printers, scanners and cameras as well as PC's. According to CNET, HP's plans includes such innovative methods such as, "adding wireless networking and common memory card slots to all of its consumer devices" - which are supposed to make the HP brand more attractive and sought after.
Whether such groundbreaking efforts (watch your head, low sarcasm) will indeed help HP's profits remains to be seen, but what they're doing definitely sounds like what Apple has been doing for the past umpteen years, with a big difference being that Apple does things right and thinks about the interoperability of devices during the design phase - NOT as an afterthought. Adding a wireless card or memory card to a product may be a very good thing, but it's by no means innovative.
Now, we all know that pretty much the entire industry copies Apple because they don't have an original thought amongst them, but just for kicks, let's look at HP's press release about today's product launch. First off, the release states HP's new lineup "offers a wide choice of user-friendly, high quality and innovative products aimed to add a new dimension to one’s digital lifestyle." Why this sounds oddly like the strategy put forward by one Steven P. Jobs (CEO of Apple Computer, Inc.) in January of 2001! It only took HP two and a half years to copy Apple. Not too shabby. But let's continue picking apart this press release. HP calls their new strategy the "Recipe for Life" which depicts the "complementary nature of its menu of products, and the ways in which customers can pick and choose the ingredients to make up a digital solutions 'sandwich' to suit their own taste". Er...yeah...does anyone else find that metaphor a little bit of a stretch?
Well enough of that before I hurl. Anyway you slice it, HP may gain some ground among it's PC competitors, but we all know they can't match Apple's true innovation, elegance, and ease-of-use (which is planned from the ground up).
As followers of the Apple Way will know, this is just the most recent in a long line of ideas that have been "borrowed from Apple". It can be quite funny, especially when the idea isn't implemented as well as the way Apple does it, and the company falls on their head (i.e. eMachines iMac ripoff). Now, when a company steals ideas from Apple and actually does well it kind of hurts (i.e. every version of Windows since 3.1). I, for one, hope that karma exists and that it comes back to bite HP in the ass on this. |
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August 11 2003, 12:41 PM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| jbelkin |
8/11/03, 1:30 PM EDT |
Guess we'll be getting HPLife apps - HPtunes, HPphoto, HPDVD ... and of course, 25ish years ago when Woz was working for Hp and wanted to talk HP into personal computers, they thought he was nuts.
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| andrew |
8/11/03, 2:14 PM EDT |
I'll take my digital sandwich without Windows, please.
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| todd |
8/11/03, 7:23 PM EDT |
Have you tried their latest PocketPC hardware? It is *very* nice...so good that it almost makes up for the clunky OS. So good that I've ditched my Tungsten T and now use an HP 2215 along with Personal Informant as the PIM. That along with an old windoze laptop and active sync provides absolutely seamless integration with our backend exchange server. And I mean seamless.
I still use my Mac for everything else (as I have since '85), but HP and PocketPC is a better solution than Palm for me right now...sad to say, but Palm has dropped the ball. I still wish I had my Newton 2100 though...that was the best of any of them.
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| cj |
8/11/03, 11:00 PM EDT |
I tend to disagree with you a little. I think HP would like to be a little more like Apple but doesn't know how. For one, most of what they are annoucing is hardware. The only mention I see of software is something that comes with the DVD burner and who knows how good it is.
I think Apple has the right idea. Software, software, software. Software makes the world go round. Add a few key devices here and there like the iPod and you are off to a good start.
For example, one thing HP is enabling people to print photos straight from their printer. You put the card in the printer then select the picture on a tiny LCD. First, I don't have my printer anywhere that's accessible. It's either on the floot, under the table or something. I don't want to have to mess with my printer. Second, it isn't flexible. You can much more with iPhoto like design albums that would be hard on a screen that small.
HP has the right idea, but until I see the software o back it up it's all just talk.
(The see through scanner is pretty cool though)
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| Matt |
10/19/03, 7:28 PM EDT |
Yeah....Apple Also invented the mission statement...Every other company before apple..or wait,was there companys before apple?
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