Medium:
Ms. Fiorina’s trainwreck stint at HP has been well documented. But I want to address one tiny but telling aspect of her misbegotten reign: an episode that involved her good friend Steve Jobs. It is the story of the HP iPod.
The iPod, of course, was Apple’s creation, a groundbreaking digital music player that let you have “a music library in your pocket.” Introduced in 2001, it gained steam over the next few years and by the end of 2003, the device was a genuine phenomenon. So it was news that in January 2004, Steve Jobs and Carly Fiorina made a deal where HP could slap its name on Apple’s wildly successful product. Nonetheless, HP still managed to botch things. It could not have been otherwise, really, because Steve Jobs totally outsmarted the woman who now claims she can run the United States of America.
I can talk about this with some authority. Not only have I written a book about the iPod, but I interviewed Fiorina face to face when she introduced the HP iPod at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show, and then got Steve Jobs’s side of the story.
Hindsight is 20/20 but many of us saw this deal as a “Huh? WHY!?” kind of move by HP. Many more of us predicted it would be a disaster, but not for Apple.
I remember the HP iPod. My first thought on seeing Carly waving it around on stage was “HP will try anything to look relevant and cool. Here’s yet more proof.”
Also, Carly Fiorina is living proof that you don’t need to be a man to be a total dickhead. Her dickhead move #1 was, believe it or not, to remove the portraits of Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard from her office. Dickhead move #2 was to put up her own portrait in her office.
While some parts of this article might be true, some parts are plain not incredible. If HP was in possession of IP that Apple might be violating, they could still sue Apple after Fiorina was gone. This smells like piling on. Everyone who has been within spitting distance of Fiorina is spilling the beans. I don’t like what she stands for, but she seems to getting a disproportionate amount of negative press, all of which shows that business and tech journalists can hold a grudge for a long time.
During that particular time, though, I don’t think anybody was going to drive that company anywhere except downhill. HP without Florin flailed about in iPod territory too. At least it was Steve who fleeced her. Steve could have fleeced any of us.
Except Bill Gates, who clearly got the better of Jobs more than once in negotiations, even if Apple produced better products.
Beware of any politician attesting to their business prowess
Like RIM, Hewlett-Packard deserved better leadership.