John Gruber:

I sup­pose Apotheker gave the Palm/WebOS guys a chance, and let them get the TouchPad on the mar­ket. But appar­ently their chance was a one-strike-and-you’re-out oppor­tu­nity to gain trac­tion in the mar­ket imme­di­ately. But the TouchPad didn’t get any trac­tion imme­di­ately, so, boom, that’s it, Apotheker is done with them. [...]

I get the feel­ing the Palm/webOS guys wanted more time to fine-tune the TouchPad. But Apotheker, the guy who stated with much bravado that HP wouldn’t release a prod­uct that isn’t per­fect, pushed it out any­way know­ing it wasn’t ready. He wanted webOS to strike out. Which makes sense for an ex-SAP CEO focused on enter­prise soft­ware and consulting.