HP's No Apple, Whitman No Jobs, But I'm Bullish

In late September, when Steve Jobs was a fortnight from his long night, HP, whose co-founder Bill Hewlett had once chatted with and inspired the high-schooler Jobs, named Meg Whitman as its latest CEO. Meg Whitman has many positive and unappreciated qualities, but no one has ever compared her to Steve Jobs. He was the West Coast acid-dropping dropout and seeker; she was the East Coast Ivy Leaguer who kept her nose clean. Her rise up the corporate ladder to eBay was as predictable as any Harvard Business School grad’s can be: Disney, Procter and Gamble, Bain Capital. Even her husband’s name, Griffith Harsh IV, has an East Coast ring to it (though Dr. Harsh is a neurosurgeon at the Stanford Medical Center).