In Hindsight: HP, Apple, IBM and our 'computer overlords'

Last month in Silicon Valley:

Monday

At Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), the cast may possibly change, however the drama continues. from the newest plot twist, the Palo Alto tech pioneer revealed that 29-year veteran Ann Livermore was selected for just about any seat on HP's board of directors -- but stepped decrease from her pivotal part as executive vice president in cost of HP's business business. three other best HP executives -- Dave Donatelli, executive vice president of business servers, storage, networking and engineering services; costs Veghte, executive vice president of software; and Jan Zadak, executive vice president of throughout the earth income -- now will report straight to CEO Léo Apotheker. "These companies hold out a vital part within our ongoing improvement and success, and as such, Dave, costs and Jan will report straight to me and help generate the standard path for HP," Apotheker explained. HP's board, you may recall, chose Apotheker as CEO last twelve weeks shortly after ousting his predecessor Mark Hurd, who later on landed on his ft as co-president of Redwood village tech juggernaut (and HP "frenemy") Oracle (ORCL).

Tuesday

We haven't been to some J.C. Penney within numerous years. In Silicon Valley, there are only two. By contrast, we have 5 Apple (AAPL) stores (and, of course, we've been to all of them). Speaking of Apple Stores, Ron Johnson -- the senior vice president in cost of Apple's list operations -- will most probable be J.C. Penney's new CEO commencing in November, the division store chain revealed. "I've consistently dreamed of principal a key list business as CEO," Johnson explained. "I am thrilled to possess the chance to help J.C. Penney re-imagine what I think to acquire the solitary most effective chance in American retailing today, the division store." Johnson, who have been using the Cupertino maker of Mac personal computers and "i" gadgets for even more than a decade, produced this type of innovations since the Genius Bar, in which potential customers will get tech help for their Apple products. Previously, Johnson worked for 15 many years as an executive at Target, in which he assisted the low cost store develop a "cheap chic" reputation. As for Apple, a spokeswoman said: "We've obtained a terrific list set in area and so are actively recruiting for his replacement."

We ordinarily listen to Pandora Media's on collection r / c service, on the lowest when our iPod touch is within of Wi-Fi range. The Oakland upstart priced its first neighborhood providing of store at $16 a share. That was up by method of the earlier week's anticipated range of $10 to $12 a share, which by itself was bumped up from an earlier $7 to $9. The up coming evening ...

Wednesday

... Pandora's shares (trading below a coveted single-letter ticker symbol, "P," inside the brand ny store Exchange) skyrocketed as considerable as $26, earlier to pulling decrease and closing at $17.42, up 8.9 % by method of the IPO price.

In Silicon Valley, the real estate industry may possibly be divided in the "haves" and "have-nots," genuine estate tracking company DataQuick reported. Well-off tech employees may possibly be bidding up fees on this type of leafy areas as Cupertino, Mountain check out and Palo Alto. However, income last four weeks have been decrease elsewhere from the Valley of Heart's Delight. standard in Santa Clara County, the quantity of homes that transformed arms plunged 22 % from the twelve weeks earlier. At $585,000, though, the median advertising price was especially what it experienced been in may possibly 2010.

As for Pandora ...

Thursday

... the store plummeted almost 24 % on its 2nd evening of trading, closing at $13.26, nicely below the IPO price.

IBM, meanwhile, turned 100. A century shortly after it experienced been founded in 1911, large Blue is keeping up with this type of more youthful tech upstarts as Facebook (founded in 2004), search engines like google (1998), Apple (1976) and HP (1939). right here in Silicon Valley, IBM is recognised for this type of innovations since the challenging disk generate -- which was invented from the 1950s by Reynold Johnson, an enormous Blue engineer in San Jose. IBM and its individual pc (yes, it experienced been uppercase on the time) have been the implied nemesis in Apple's "1984" ad, which introduced the youthful Cupertino company's Macintosh computer. Of course, that wasn't the 1st time IBM was an implied cinematic villain. large Blue's mainframes inspired HAL 9000, the calculatingly paranoid, artificially intelligent antagonist in "2001: A space Odyssey." from the genuine world, IBM has offered that marketed its San Jose challenging disk generate operation to Hitachi and its PC business to Lenovo. However, IBM nonetheless attributes a Silicon Valley presence, also it remains to be considered a computing powerhouse. large Blue's trivia-obsessed Watson supercomputer defeated this type of human being "Jeopardy" champions as Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter earlier this year. "I for just about any solitary welcome our new pc overloads," Jennings authored on his screen.

Friday

In Silicon Valley, organisations additional 2,100 people to their payrolls last month, as well as the jobless price from the eye-catching (if bureaucratically named) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area dipped to 9.9 percent, the California work improvement division reported. twelve weeks much more than year, the valley additional 9,500 work opportunities -- which include 4,600 (perhaps hastening our demise) in pc and electronics manufacturing.

HP laptop battery
Apple laptop battery
IBM laptop battery