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As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware

As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware?

pengaru 7y ago
HP's legacy runs deep in the valley, it's not unique to Jobs at all. It's shocking how far HP has fallen from its illustrious past.
- Isamu 7y ago
  Woz worked for HP, it was his dream job as an engineer. It was a big deal for him to give up his dream job to start Apple with Jobs.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    And Woz sold his HP65 calculator to get the money to start Apple. Jobs sold his VW Bug.
    - ken 7y ago
      VW but not a bug.
mikestew 7y ago
Crappy, ad-laden article from CNBC, but that's as hard as I care to look for a URL to back my point. The headline alone should be sufficient. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-his-way-to-an-internship-at-hewlett-packard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-h... Or are you asking why he'd even have wanted an internship there in the first place?
smacktoward 7y ago
He got a summer job at HP at age 12 by looking Bill Hewlett up in the phone book and cold calling him: https://nextshark.com/steve-jobs-12-year-old-summer-hp/ https://nextshark.com/steve-jobs-12-year-old-summer-hp/
crististm 7y ago
It goes back to where he was young and talked with Mr. Hewlett at length about a project. There is an interview of Jobs describing this scene. http://www.stevejobsthebiography.com/extras.html http://www.stevejobsthebiography.com/extras.html
cpach 7y ago
Good question. AFAIK they had some really high quality products back in the day and also lots of skilled engineers.
drfuchs 7y ago
HP’s oscilloscopes and other electronic lab equipment (at the time their exclusive focus) were beautifully designed and highest quality. Perfectionists would naturally be drawn to them. Ditto for their first calculators; they were drooled over. Printers came later; all the electronics got jettisoned into Agilent in 1999.
- azalemeth 7y ago
  ...and Agilent spun them out into Keysight, to focus on slightly random bits of lab equipment instead. What was a long and illustrious history is now...not. I much prefer my Rode & Schwarz machines. Incidentally, Agilent did the same thing with Varian -- an NMR company that was involved in the acquisition of data ultimately in several nobel prizes. They didn't make enough money in a two year period, and Excel and MBAs killed a multi-decade business [1], leading to unemployment and a monopoly in the field of preclinical MRI, EPR/ESR, and a duopoly in NMR spectroscopy. Ain't progress grant? [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090780714003395 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109078071...
  - pinewurst 7y ago
    https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2014.12.001 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2014.12.001
abawany 7y ago
HP used to be an amazing company up until the arrival of Ms. Fiorina in the late 90s. Their hardware used to be innovative and bullet-proof (HP calculators, early Laserjet printers, oscilloscopes, etc.) Even today, when the company is a shadow of a shadow of its former glory, I prefer buying their business class laptops for personal use (e.g. HP Elite x360, HP X2 Chromebook) since they have an innovative combination of unique features, user upgradability, and reliability. In the old days, HP and Intel used to be synonymous with 'Silicon Valley' as I understand it.
jjoonathan 7y ago
HP was the top-shelf electrical engineering instrument company. Every top-tier lab would have HP equipment. Aspiring computer-makers wouldn't be able to afford it and would lust after it from a distance. This probably includes young Steve Jobs. HP built plotters and printers because their customers wanted hardcopies of what they saw on their instrument screens. They built computers to control the instruments and calculators to assist engineers with calculations. Then, for some reason, the computers and printers started selling even better than the instruments. HP, which still thought of themselves as an instrumentation company, didn't catch on quickly or aggressively enough to capitalize, so their computers and printers did not keep pace and became... other than undisputably first tier. Eventually they span off the first-tier instrumentation company as Agilent (bio + EE) which in turn eventually span off Keysight (EE). Electrical Engineers are still salty that the mediocre printer company got to keep the HP name while the best-in-class instrumentation company that still commands respect to this very day had to rebrand as "Keysight."
- hermitdev 7y ago
  When I was in college, studying EE, we had HP oscilloscopes and digital logic analyzers. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was the logic analyzers that had an easter egg that if you held down a specific set of buttons while powering on, you could play Tetris on it. I also remember the oscilloscope being so sensitive, that without any leads connected, it could detect the signal of someone walking by it.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Yep! Their legacy continues today. Here's HP (sorry, I mean Agilent, sorry, I mean Keysight) dropping a 110GHz real-time oscilloscope: https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32 https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32 I'd like to think that if Bill and Dave (Hewlett and Packard) were still alive they could still take pride in their T&M legacy, even though it's the DRM-hobbled one-quarter-full printer ink cartridges that wound up with their names on the front.
  - mauvehaus 7y ago
    Don't know about the logic analyzers, but I played tetris on an HP scope in a lab on campus years ago.
rodgerd 7y ago
1. They were the original Silicon Valley startup. 2. They were very innovative in a lot of the areas they touched. Instrumentation, which was their core business, but also printing, plotting, portable computers (I own one of their mid-80s HP-UX portable computers), touchscreens (the HP-150, for example). 3. Quality was hugely important. That 35 year old workstation still powers up. I have a similar vintage plotter that still works. HP laser printers were an absolute gold standard. Everything they made was the absolute highest build quality. 4. They had an rmarkable culture. For example, Hewlett and Packard mandated that managers would sit in an open area, while their engineers and scientists would have offices. This was based on what now gets called servant leadership - the idea that the manager needed to be available to facilitate the staff, not the other way around. Employees could freely borrow equipment for personal projects. Sadly, all of that was flushed away starting in the 90s.
- drivebyubnt 7y ago
  HP also was a leader in device ergonomics. Their devices were pretty and easy to use, as well as reliable. I don't think anyone had offices. It was all cubicles. (I worked at HP Labs in the 80's and met both Bill and Dave a couple of times.) One cool thing HP had was "lab stock" cabinets on every floor that were full of free-for-experimentation ICs and other components. I think it's likely that the Apple I and Apple II computers were designed using components taken from those lab stock cabinets. (The story is that Steve W. tried to get HP interested in producing the Apple computers, but they just wouldn't go for it.)

As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware?

pengaru 7y ago

HP's legacy runs deep in the valley, it's not unique to Jobs at all. It's shocking how far HP has fallen from its illustrious past.

Isamu 7y ago
Woz worked for HP, it was his dream job as an engineer. It was a big deal for him to give up his dream job to start Apple with Jobs.
- bluedino 7y ago
  And Woz sold his HP65 calculator to get the money to start Apple. Jobs sold his VW Bug.
  - ken 7y ago
    VW but not a bug.

mikestew 7y ago

Crappy, ad-laden article from CNBC, but that's as hard as I care to look for a URL to back my point. The headline alone should be sufficient. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-his-way-to-an-internship-at-hewlett-packard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-h... Or are you asking why he'd even have wanted an internship there in the first place?

smacktoward 7y ago

He got a summer job at HP at age 12 by looking Bill Hewlett up in the phone book and cold calling him: https://nextshark.com/steve-jobs-12-year-old-summer-hp/ https://nextshark.com/steve-jobs-12-year-old-summer-hp/

crististm 7y ago

It goes back to where he was young and talked with Mr. Hewlett at length about a project. There is an interview of Jobs describing this scene. http://www.stevejobsthebiography.com/extras.html http://www.stevejobsthebiography.com/extras.html

cpach 7y ago

Good question. AFAIK they had some really high quality products back in the day and also lots of skilled engineers.

drfuchs 7y ago

HP’s oscilloscopes and other electronic lab equipment (at the time their exclusive focus) were beautifully designed and highest quality. Perfectionists would naturally be drawn to them. Ditto for their first calculators; they were drooled over. Printers came later; all the electronics got jettisoned into Agilent in 1999.

azalemeth 7y ago
...and Agilent spun them out into Keysight, to focus on slightly random bits of lab equipment instead. What was a long and illustrious history is now...not. I much prefer my Rode & Schwarz machines. Incidentally, Agilent did the same thing with Varian -- an NMR company that was involved in the acquisition of data ultimately in several nobel prizes. They didn't make enough money in a two year period, and Excel and MBAs killed a multi-decade business [1], leading to unemployment and a monopoly in the field of preclinical MRI, EPR/ESR, and a duopoly in NMR spectroscopy. Ain't progress grant? [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090780714003395 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109078071...
- pinewurst 7y ago
  https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2014.12.001 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2014.12.001

abawany 7y ago

HP used to be an amazing company up until the arrival of Ms. Fiorina in the late 90s. Their hardware used to be innovative and bullet-proof (HP calculators, early Laserjet printers, oscilloscopes, etc.) Even today, when the company is a shadow of a shadow of its former glory, I prefer buying their business class laptops for personal use (e.g. HP Elite x360, HP X2 Chromebook) since they have an innovative combination of unique features, user upgradability, and reliability. In the old days, HP and Intel used to be synonymous with 'Silicon Valley' as I understand it.

jjoonathan 7y ago

HP was the top-shelf electrical engineering instrument company. Every top-tier lab would have HP equipment. Aspiring computer-makers wouldn't be able to afford it and would lust after it from a distance. This probably includes young Steve Jobs. HP built plotters and printers because their customers wanted hardcopies of what they saw on their instrument screens. They built computers to control the instruments and calculators to assist engineers with calculations. Then, for some reason, the computers and printers started selling even better than the instruments. HP, which still thought of themselves as an instrumentation company, didn't catch on quickly or aggressively enough to capitalize, so their computers and printers did not keep pace and became... other than undisputably first tier. Eventually they span off the first-tier instrumentation company as Agilent (bio + EE) which in turn eventually span off Keysight (EE). Electrical Engineers are still salty that the mediocre printer company got to keep the HP name while the best-in-class instrumentation company that still commands respect to this very day had to rebrand as "Keysight."

hermitdev 7y ago
When I was in college, studying EE, we had HP oscilloscopes and digital logic analyzers. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was the logic analyzers that had an easter egg that if you held down a specific set of buttons while powering on, you could play Tetris on it. I also remember the oscilloscope being so sensitive, that without any leads connected, it could detect the signal of someone walking by it.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Yep! Their legacy continues today. Here's HP (sorry, I mean Agilent, sorry, I mean Keysight) dropping a 110GHz real-time oscilloscope: https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32 https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32 I'd like to think that if Bill and Dave (Hewlett and Packard) were still alive they could still take pride in their T&M legacy, even though it's the DRM-hobbled one-quarter-full printer ink cartridges that wound up with their names on the front.
- mauvehaus 7y ago
  Don't know about the logic analyzers, but I played tetris on an HP scope in a lab on campus years ago.

rodgerd 7y ago

1. They were the original Silicon Valley startup. 2. They were very innovative in a lot of the areas they touched. Instrumentation, which was their core business, but also printing, plotting, portable computers (I own one of their mid-80s HP-UX portable computers), touchscreens (the HP-150, for example). 3. Quality was hugely important. That 35 year old workstation still powers up. I have a similar vintage plotter that still works. HP laser printers were an absolute gold standard. Everything they made was the absolute highest build quality. 4. They had an rmarkable culture. For example, Hewlett and Packard mandated that managers would sit in an open area, while their engineers and scientists would have offices. This was based on what now gets called servant leadership - the idea that the manager needed to be available to facilitate the staff, not the other way around. Employees could freely borrow equipment for personal projects. Sadly, all of that was flushed away starting in the 90s.

drivebyubnt 7y ago
HP also was a leader in device ergonomics. Their devices were pretty and easy to use, as well as reliable. I don't think anyone had offices. It was all cubicles. (I worked at HP Labs in the 80's and met both Bill and Dave a couple of times.) One cool thing HP had was "lab stock" cabinets on every floor that were full of free-for-experimentation ICs and other components. I think it's likely that the Apple I and Apple II computers were designed using components taken from those lab stock cabinets. (The story is that Steve W. tried to get HP interested in producing the Apple computers, but they just wouldn't go for it.)