Comment by potatolicious

Agree. I'm sympathetic to the CTO here, but I remember the disaster of the HP TouchPad launch very well - there were multiple fatal errors here that don't seem possible to commit in an 8-week window.

The hardware had basically ~no app ecosystem. That's not a problem that occurs over 8 weeks. The software was also incredibly under-baked, and I'm doubtful that the company pivoted from "this needs more time and should release later" to "full marketing push, press events, and big launch" in that short a time either.

I don't doubt that there was a lot of conflict over strategy with the new CEO, but the framing that all of this happened while he was on the sidelines doesn't seem very plausible.