Apple has gone from being a curiosity in Fiorina's day, an emerging irritant for Hurd, to a major threat to HP today. That's all due to the success of its iPad and .

Finally, Apotheker's plan to ship WebOS (From the former Palm, which was acquired under Hurd in 2010) on all its PCs has put a question around HP's relationship with Microsoft.

Apotheker's HP, in effect, is at war with just about everybody.

Although Apotheker stressed the company's in remarks this week, his real plan for prevailing is more about utilizing the power of HP's broad consumer base.

Apotheker needs to create cloud services. That's not optional.