Selective Amnesia Strikes Apple's Schiller, Forgets HP in Recounting the History of the PC
Once you hit your thirties, you begin to realize that the older you get, the better you used to be. You start to embellish your stories of past accomplishments and eventually that game tying layup in the third quarter of your high school basketball's regular season game becomes a slam dunk in triple overtime against an archival in a critical playoff match. The brain is a funny thing, twisting memories around and distorting reality, but c'mon, how can a major player at Apple forget that a company like Hewlett-Packard exists?
During a recent interview with MacWorld, Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Apple, talked about all the changes that have occurred in the PC industry since the introduction of the Mac 30 years ago. In his excitement, he made a comment that completely ignores the existence of HP.
"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," Schiller said. "We're the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over."
Like Apple, HP's origins trace back to a garage. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed "Hewlett-Packard" back in 1939, incorporated the company on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957. HP would go on to introduce the 9100A in 1968, which is widely recognized as the first personal computer (HP called it a desktop calculator) and in 1980, HP introduced the HP-85. Three years later, HP came out with the HP-150, one of the earliest touchscreen computers.
Fast forward to today and HP is the world's second largest PC maker by volume, having only recently conceded the top spot to Lenovo. We could also bring Dell into the argument, which came into existence four months after the original Mac.
During a recent interview with MacWorld, Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Apple, talked about all the changes that have occurred in the PC industry since the introduction of the Mac 30 years ago. In his excitement, he made a comment that completely ignores the existence of HP.
"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," Schiller said. "We're the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over."
Like Apple, HP's origins trace back to a garage. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed "Hewlett-Packard" back in 1939, incorporated the company on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957. HP would go on to introduce the 9100A in 1968, which is widely recognized as the first personal computer (HP called it a desktop calculator) and in 1980, HP introduced the HP-85. Three years later, HP came out with the HP-150, one of the earliest touchscreen computers.
Fast forward to today and HP is the world's second largest PC maker by volume, having only recently conceded the top spot to Lenovo. We could also bring Dell into the argument, which came into existence four months after the original Mac.
