
Earlier today HP introduced a new line of products based on the newly acquired Palm WebOS, including its iPad clone, the TouchPad. Capping off a segment of the presentation where he presented press accolades, former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein presented the above slide from Laptop Magazine’s OS Bowl boasting, “Yesterday, Laptop Magazine voted us the champion of the OS Bowl.”
According to Laptop Magazine, Palm WebOS beat Windows Phone 7 in the “Which is best?” category by 590 votes. Now I am by no means a gadget person, but I can smell a bowl of BS when I see it, or more specifically poll gaming.
From what we hear these polls are some of the highest trafficking content on Laptop Magazine, but far from an accurate assessment of what consumers actually want. As Kevin Marks commented, “so in this tournament smallest market share wins?”
The image above is sort of like the opposite of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field, where the person onstage is the only one convinced. It’s no surprise that Rubenstein’s “Voted us the champion of the Super Bowl” quote has now gone mysteriously missing from the YouTube video of the “Think Beyond” event.
The blog Three Guys And A Podcast has made its own version of the now infamous slide, below.

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Now that’s a little more like it.
Thanks: @alexia_tsotsis