Here I go breaking my rule not to reply to Anonymous Cowards...

Yes, I am sad that an interesting interface idea didn't get a chance to show off to the general public the talents of the engineering team. What does the fact that I'm happy with my iPad have anything to do with it? Are you such a partisan jackass that you think because I own one it somehow disqualifies me from appreciating the good points of a rival device? By your pathetic rationale Nikon owners should be prohibited from saying good things about Canon cameras.

Are you such a purblind, hidebound fool that you believe that for something to succeed something else must fail? The very concept that other people have differing opinions is obviously a shock to a deep thinker such as yourself.

Are you such a narrow-minded simpleton that you believe that my owning an iPad doomed the TouchPad to irrelevance? HP didn't need my help; they did it themselves when they released a half-baked tablet and expected people to buy them.

For your information I didn't even buy my iPad; it was a gift. For your further information, I received it before the TouchPad was even announced, so it would have taken some sophisticated time-traveling gymnastics to have chosen one instead. For your further consideration, while I appreciate the interface, all reviews I read about the TouchPad stated that it was an unfinished product, and I don't know about you, but I don't have money to waste on a device that I am reasonably certain beforehand will probably disappoint me, just because I like the interface. There are others, but these are the main reasons why I "didn't bought one".

Fucking idiot.

Agilent did not exist before 1999. Before that it was a division of HP, which created all the technology that Agilent now sells. Agilent was spun off from HP in 1999 in order to separate the test and measuring equipment business from the computer and peripherals divisions. Hewlett Packard is the single company most responsible for making Silicon Valley what it is.

I couldn't care less about Fiorina's personality, and frankly it has no bearing on the success of the company. By all accounts Steve Jobs is a complete asshole to work for, the proverbial boss from hell, but investors will forgive anything if he delivers results. Fiorina did not deliver, and the acquisition of Compaq was in my opinion a dramatic strategic mistake. The culture of engineering innovation at HP seemed to go out the window on her watch, and the company became a low-margin mass producer.

I've compared her before with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. Both come from marketing backgrounds; when both assumed leadership of their respective companies engineers took a distant back seat; and investors rewarded both with flat stock prices in recognition of their inability to innovate and grow the business.

That's an insightful observation, and of course the best example that HP could hope to emulate is IBM's brilliantly successful transformation from a hardware to a service solutions company under the superb leadership of Louis Gerstner.

But why on earth would they even consider getting into bed with RIM? RIM's problems stem directly from their bizarre Frankenstein's monster leadership (2 CEO's and 3 COO's? Seriously??), and management appears to be in serious denial about the nature of their competition. Plus it seems as if the board doesn't see anything wrong with how the company is being led, so don't expect the situation there to change anytime soon.

That 25,000 sales figure doesn't include customer returns for refunds, which anecdotally have been startlingly high. The TouchPad has been an unmitigated disaster for HP, and apparently Best Buy is extremely unhappy with the situation, demanding that HP take back unsold inventory.

I hope that HP will somehow weather the turbulence and emerge stronger than ever. This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this. And I'm especially saddened that WebOS never really had a chance to strut it's stuff. I'm a very happy iPad owner, but I have the greatest respect and admiration for what the Palm team accomplished with WebOS's interface, and I was hoping that it would take off and keep Apple on their toes.

I personally blame Carly Fiorina for the travails of a once-proud company.

I was going to finish by saying that I have to agree with Gruber on this one. While Google was in active negotiations with Motorola, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, and their largest shareholder, Carl Icahn, were making public statements about attacking other handset manufacturers with their patent portfolio, as well as the possibility of licensing Windows Phone 7. The timing of the statements can't have been a coincidence, and I'd be wiling to bet that they were designed to pressure Google at the bargaining table. The deal so generously favors Motorola that it sounds to me as if the terms were dictated by them. I think Motorola was in the driver's seat the entire way.

I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Google agreed to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility. Google's 2010 net income was $8.5 billion. Unlike you I didn't pull that figure out of my ass. That's according to Google's own financial statement.

According to the same statement their 2009 net income was $6.5 billion, so they paid nearly two years profit for MMI. Coupled with the facts that the $12.5 billion price represent a 60% premium over MMI's share price, and that Google agreed to pay a penalty of $2.5 billion if the deal falls through for whatever reason, this certainly smacks of desperation on Google's part.

And the deal could very well fall through. It's still subject to regulatory approval, and with Google being investigated worldwide, this is certain to ratchet up the scrutiny. And then there's good ol' Microsoft. What if they decided to play spoiler and offer more for MMI? I certainly wouldn't put it past them.

There certainly have been a great many pre-orders —and shipments— of Tabs, but how many have been converted into sales to actual customers? And of those, how many have been returned? There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that the return rates have been quite high.

I'm not trying to troll; I'm really keenly interested to see if any competing tablets have managed to gain traction against the iPad, because as it stands at the moment, Apple seems to be asserting iPod-like dominance over the category. Their competitors are fighting a juggernaut, and the longer they take to bring a viable rival to market, the much more difficult it's going to be for them to get some mind share. Right now the general public, not those of us who frequent tech blogs, only know that there's the iPad, and may have heard that there are some other devices available. This is the major reason we're seeing so many half-baked tablets being rushed out the door: the manufacturers know that the device isn't quite ready, but they have no choice but to ship if they have any hope of gaining some sort of attention for their offerings. They may stumble, but they know that every second longer they take to throw their hat into the ring is another second Apple is using to lock up an incredibly lucrative market.

The unfortunate thing for Apple's competitors is that they may find themselves battling for a very distant second place. The iPad is riding high, wide, and handsome, and the Xoom, TouchPad, Playbook etc., are slugging it out among themselves for Apple's scraps.

It's extremely unlikely that Apple co-opted any of their competitors' hardware ideas for the iPad 2, which was released less than a year after the original. The design would have been finalized months before, probably before the original model shipped, then there would have been consultations with manufacturers, procurement of components, tooling up for production, testing, etc.

Organizing the supply chain for production of a complex, high-volume device like the iPad 2 doesn't happen overnight, and once the trigger is pulled on the decision, altering specs is like trying to turn a supertanker on a dime. Even if they saw something they wanted to copy for iPad 2, it would have been next to impossible to incorporate it into production. It would have caused havoc with component procurement, manufacturing, testing, marketing, etc., and would have introduced delays which would probably have been unmanageable.

Nice summation of the idiotic Android/iOS fanboy mentality. I salute you sir.

No, we don't. He only said he had permission, received from a security guard, who isn't authorized to give that permission. And I like how you managed to get your panties in a knot and turn this issue into an anti-Obama rant.

Fealty to Apple? Hahahah! Now you're just being silly. You're presuming to fit my motivations for replying to you into your own skewed little worldview. And you didn't give any plausible grounds on which Apple could or should be broken up, besides your saying so. Wah wah wah! Grow the fuck up.

Gotten too big? By what arbitrary standard could that be decided? Because you don't like Apple?

Please give even a single instance of "left-hand not knowing what right-hand is doing" where Apple is concerned. That's about as far from reality as you can get in Apple's case. Not only is their integration working remarkably well for them, but their focus is almost terrifying in it's scope. Everything Apple does informs everything else, from the design of their hardware, software, and retail stores, to the thrust of their advertising and their carefully managed public image. That is their culture, which is diametrically opposed to your assertion. You're really describing Microsoft, with their multiple competing fiefdoms.

When Apple first announced their guidelines for subscriptions and the publishers protested in outrage, I predicted in a discussion that Apple would change them before they went into effect. I argued at the time that it seemed to me that Apple were merely floating a trial balloon to see how far they could push, and were probably well prepared in advance to exercise some flexibility. This also works for them, because they can then give the public impression that they're prepared to be reasonable, when in fact they had probably planned internally for less stringent terms. As I said, Apple manages their public image with extreme care, and I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised that they pushed their original terms knowing full well that they had no intention of implementing them. In fact I would argue that they would have been surprised if they had been widely accepted.

The vocalist sounds like a seal in distress. That would draw a great white shark like a dinner bell.