Links for Sunday July 1^st, 2012

Tim Cook: my first-person impression of Apple's new CEO: Michael Grothaus on Tim Cook:

Tim Cook is one of those rare people who stop and think before speaking. Standing in the same room with him I realized that he's comfortable with silence as long as that silence is productive and appropriate. He's not like other tech execs who ramble almost immediately and incoherently at any question lobbed at them, as if doing so will convince others they know everything about everything."

HP’s decade-long departure: I love this quote from Horace Dediu:

"Consider how HP and Apple faced the changes in the PC market almost exactly a decade ago.

• On September 3, 2001, HP announced that they would acquire Compaq.
  
• On October 23, 2001, Apple announced the iPod.
  

The rest, as they say, is history."

Palm post mortem: what could have been: Interesting analysis of the Palm/HP thing, with a fair amount of insider info.

70 Years is Enterprise Services: Jesper delivers a wonderful eulogy for the HP that we have known.

Will Jon Rubinstein and Todd Bradley Stick With HP?: Kara Swisher examines the possibilities for some top HP execs, if HP decides to spin their PC and webOS divisions into separate companies.

OuchPad: Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of HP Tablets: Assuming Arik Hesseldahl's report is true, than this just reinforces the notion that there isn't really a tablet market — there is just an iPad market.

Groupon Panic: Is It Insolvent--and Could IPO Get Pulled?: Groupon really feels like an Enron-ish scam, so if their IPO doesn't make it, that could actually be a really good thing.

VT220 on Mac OS X: Justin Ouellette acquired a nearly 30 year old VT220 terminal, and got it to work on his Mac Pro with very little hacking. When you have a design as elegant as UNIX, carrying compatibilty with old protocols isn't a burden. It's actually kind of cool.

One fan's salute to Portal 2: an animated, talking Wheatley puppet: Be sure to watch the video — this is absolutely brilliant work.

The Most Hilariously Effective Signs Supporting Gay Marriage: Some funny, creative stuff. (via Khoi Vihn)

What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard? - Apple - Stack Exchange: Pretty great list of all of the cool stuff that is in Lion. I'm really enjoying Lion on my Mac at home, and can't wait until it's allowed on my Mac at work.

Why HP is smart to slash the TouchPad’s price: To put it another way: HP needs to get Touchpads in the hands of users, so that they'll buy apps, which will encourage developers to make more apps, thus building the ecosystem.

Facebook’s Design Vacuum: I'm starting to buy into the rumors that Facebook is going to make a phone.

One month with Google : why this social network has legs: Jacqui Cheng, reporting for Ars Technica, has used Google+ every day for a month, and found that it has legs. I'm still not using it a whole bunch, but I can see some advantages to Google+ if you want to share things online with restricted groups of people.

Apple's iCloud.com Error Pages Have Personality: I'm not sure if iCloud is going to be any good or not, but these error pages are great.