Former Apple iPod godfather and Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has finally left HP after a complicated saga of wasted resources, squandered talent and dumb executive decisions. He was made HP’s Senior VP for Product Innovation in the Personal Systems Group after HP bought Palm in 2010. After 19 months of turmoil and failure, the man people affectionately know as Ruby is walking away.
Apart from his time at HP, he led Palm to what could have been a turnaround. In record time, the dying company developed a new smartphone with the iPhone in its sights and an operating system with great promise- webOS. In an exclusive interview to The Verge, Rubinstein says this departure was planned all along, but the outcome of the HP acquisition of Palm wasn’t. But, he isn’t pointing fingers at who is responsible for the boondoggle of the HP TouchPad, HP Pre 3 and Veer. He told The Verge’s Josh Topolsky, “I don’t think it really matters at this point. It’s old history at this point.” Focussing on the positives of the situation, he’s still enormously proud of the work that he oversaw:
We built an amazing OS in webOS. It’s very advanced, it’s where things are going. But we ran out of runway, and we ended up at HP and HP wasn’t in good enough shape on its own to be able to support the effort. I had four CEOs! Mark acquired us, Cathie Lesjak took over as the interim CEO, then Leo, and now Meg.
Rubinstein sounds pleased that Enyo and HP webOS are on their way to being open-sourced. He hopes that the operating system could eventually gain traction:
I put blood, sweat, and tears into this thing. And look, I think it had tremendous potential, if people put some real effort into it, I think you will see a resurgence of devices at some point.
Happy trails, Jon. Even though his departure is fresh news. he’s already in Mexico chilling out. Given the tangled web of drama and ineptitude he’s been tangled in for the last 19 months, he deserves a break.