"I Had Four CEOs!"

Speaking of prison terms, Josh Topolsky scored an interview with Jon Rubinstein on his way out of the door from HP.

Rubinstein tries — and fails — to hold back his contempt for the past few HP regimes. It reads like he and fellow HP VP Todd Bradley had a grand plan (this one, perhaps?) for HP/webOS that disintegrated when then-CEO Mark Hurd was ousted. That, of course, kickstarted months of turmoil and turnover, highlighted by the disastrous Leo Apotheker reign (which didn’t even last a year).

The notion that Rubinstein’s exit was planned all along sure smells like total bullshit.

Best part of the interview:

There were things that didn’t work out the way everyone expected — can you talk about what caused the issues?

I don’t think it really matters at this point. It’s old history at this point.

You don’t want to talk about Leo?

Nah. 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, Les Jackson took over as the interim CEO, then Leo, and now Meg.

“Nah.”

While Rubinstein says he’s going to take some time off, he’s not retiring. Given the bad blood in recent years, I wouldn’t expect him back at Apple anytime soon. But remember, he is still an Amazon board member — and Amazon is pushing deeper into hardware…