Quoting an article from Cnet’s Business Tech Blog:
Is the biggest PC vendor in the world looking to give customers an option besides Windows?
An article appearing in BusinessWeek this week cites anonymous sources who say Hewlett-Packard is at least looking into it. “Sources say employees in HP’s PC division are exploring the possibility of building a mass-market operating system,” the article states.
HP Touchsmart is an example of the company’s efforts to provide a user experience on top of Windows.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)
The operating system would reportedly be Linux-based, but would be tweaked to be more accessible to mainstream users. Those same sources say it’s part of an HP plan to become less dependent on Windows, and to compete better with Apple for the same type of person who would consider a Mac, which has its own operating system on its computers touted as more user-friendly than Vista.
I’m still a bit in shock that I’ve even read that. Though to be honest, the first time I used one of their new Touchsmart PCs, I was surprised by the AMOUNT of work they did to obscure the fact that it was running Vista. Now granted, they had to develop an environment that was touch-friendly, but needless to say I was impressed with what they accomplished.
But it all leads back to both a creative and sales team that I think are starting to feel stifled by the fact that they are more or less forced to offer Vista with their machines. The creative teams want to move into new and innovative user interfaces like touch, and the sales teams are tired of the fact that customers have the impression that VIsta is a piece of crap.
I’ll be honest, Vista isn’t terrible. It’s just horribly mediocre. People don’t see the point in upgrading hardware and causing problems with compatibility and speed to get the minimal jump in capabilities that Vista offers. After years of promises and then more years of those promised features being taken away, finally leaving the production version of Vista looking like a Lamb with all of it’s wool shaven off, the customers just didn’t really care.
And that is the fact of the matter. Customers don’t CARE about Vista. Even Microsoft fanboys are hard pressed to be really excited about it. Even the customer base that has always been pro-Windows, the hardcore gamers, are meh about Vista because it lowers the speed of their games. In a world where you have to spend thousands on a capable gaming machine, no one wants to see their frames per second count go down when they install a new OS.
In a world where netbooks running Linux (certainly not Vista), and Mac laptops are slowly but surely taking over the notebook market, HP is starting to question if it really NEEDS Windows to survive. With the push towards cloud computing, and platform agnostic applications, it begins to make the OS less and less important. HP has got to be thinking that they could invest and really innovate in the Linux space, create a fantastic and beautiful OS based off of decades of optimized code, and at least offer it as a Windows alternative. At best, they could start competing with the one rival that is WORTH competing with… Apple.
Ten years ago, if one of the major PC manufacturers would have taken it’s eye off of it’s rivals to go after Apple, they would have become the laughing stock of the industry. Ten years later, however, in a market that has become so commoditized that only the company with the biggest economy of scale can win, Apple has differentiated itself by “thinking different”. They develop drool-worthy hardware, and an elegant OS to go along with it. They aren’t subject to the same pricing restrictions as companies like Dell and HP, because they aren’t competing in the same market. While Apple may only have 10% of the market, the 10% they have includes a lot of affluent, well-connected, tech-savvy people. If HP can grab onto a little bit of that Apple magic, it could be enough to push past Dell and the other major manufacturers and start to differentiate themselves as well.
I’ll admit HP does have the design chops, and from what I’ve seen of the Touchsmart PCs, they have the software chops as well. If indeed they are going to eventually dump Windows in favor of some sort of home grown OS, I’d be very interested to see what they come up with. Chances are it would be pretty damned nice, and it would certainly be a boon for Linux. With a large manufacturer like HP focusing on Linux, I think you’d start to see a lot more development on the software side for Linux, with better driver support, and possibly even some mainstream gaming making it’s way over to the Linux side.
Regardless of whether or not this ever materializes, just the fact that HP may even be CONSIDERING something other than Windows, even unofficially, proves without a shadow of a doubt that while Apple may not be currently winning the war of marketshare, they certainly are winning the war of mindshare.
Tags:
Apple,
HP,
Linux,
Microsoft,
Windows Vista 
