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General Magic was an American software and electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat at Apple Computer and spun off in May 1990.[1] Based in Mountain View, California,[2] the company developed precursors to "USB, software modems, small touch screens, touchscreen controller ICs, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions."[3] After announcing it would cease operations in 2002,[4] it was liquidated in 2004,[5] with Paul Allen purchasing most of its patents.[3]

Products and technology

Magic Cap

General Magic's main product was Magic Cap,[6] an operating system which allowed users to "set their own rules for message alerts and acquiring information" on personal digital assistants (PDAs). The basic idea behind the system was to distribute the typical computing load across many machines in the network using Magic Cap, which was a fairly minimal operating system that was essentially a UI. The UI is based on a "rooms" metaphor; for example, e-mail and an address book can be found in the office, and games might be found in a living room. User applications were generally written in Magic Script, a utility language variant of the C programming language with object oriented extensions.[1] General Magic had planned to release Magic Cap software development tools with Metrowerks by the summer of 1995.[7]

SONY_MagicLink_PIC-1000_PDA

SONY MagicLink PIC-1000 PDA

Magic Cap was implemented in the Sony Magic Link and Motorola Envoy PDAs, released in 1994 and 1995, respectively.[4] Both were based on variants of the Motorola 68300 Dragon microprocessor.[1] The launch suffered from a lack of real supporting infrastructure.[8] Unlike Apple's Newton MessagePads and other PDAs being introduced at the same time, the Magic Cap system also did not rely on handwriting recognition,[1] putting it at a marketing disadvantage. Partners ended production of Magic Cap devices by 1997.

Telescript

Its other software, Telescript, was "software-agent technology that would search the Web and automatically retrieve information such as stock quotes and airline ticket prices."[4] The script was introduced with the intent of creating a "standard for transmitting messages among any machines that compute, regardless of who makes them."[9]

The Telescript programming language made communications a first-class primitive of the language. Telescript is compiled into a cross-platform bytecode in much the same fashion as the Java programming language, but is able to migrate running processes between virtual machines. The developers saw a time when Telescript application engines would be ubiquitous, and interconnected Telescript engines would form a "Telescript Cloud" across which mobile applications could execute.

Legacy

The company achieved many technical breakthroughs, including software modems (eliminating the need for modem chips), small touchscreens and touchscreen controller ASICs, highly integrated systems-on-a-chip designs for its partners' devices, rich multimedia email, networked games, streaming television, and early versions of e-commerce. According to former General Magic employee Marco DeMiroz, it was the "Fairchild [Semiconductor] of the 90s."[5]

A documentary film about the company opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 20, 2018.[10] It was later shown at the SFFILM Festival in San Francisco on November 3, 2018.[11] The company founders had hired filmmakers including Sarah Kerruish to document their development process in the 1990s, and Kerruish included some of that original footage of General Magic's offices in the film. The film includes interviews with Tony Fadell, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Marc Porat, and Megan Smith.[10][12]

A new company bearing the same name and similar logo emerged in 2016, offering a map product called "Magic Earth" that utilizes the OpenStreetMap dataset.[13][14]

Videos

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II", Wired, April 1994. Retrieved on 2015-02-10. 
  2. ↑ Andrew Pollack (November 30, 1991). 3 Companies Said to Invest In Venture. The New York Times. Retrieved on December 10, 2018.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 David Manners (June 9, 2016). Fable: The Hubristic Huddle. Electronics Weekly. Retrieved on December 10, 2018.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Kanellos, Michael (2002-09-18). General Magic calls its quits. CNET. Retrieved on 2015-02-10.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Michael Kanellos (September 18, 2011). General Magic: The Most Important Dead Company in Silicon Valley?. Forbes.
  6. ↑ Mark Sullivan (2018). "General Magic" captures the legendary Apple offshoot that foresaw the mobile revolution. Fast Company.
  7. ↑ A developer's introduction to General Magic and Magic Cap. MacTech.
  8. ↑ Kanellos, Michael (2011-09-18). General Magic: The Most Important Dead Company in Silicon Valley?. Forbes.
  9. ↑ John Markoff (February 8, 1993). Spreading the Word on Mobile Messaging. The New York Times. Retrieved on December 10, 2018.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 General Magic. General Magic (2018-04-20).
  11. ↑ SCREENINGS & EVENTS – Doc Stories 2018. SFilm.
  12. ↑ Adi Robertson (April 22, 2018). General Magic is a nostalgic film about the ‘90s startup that imagined the smartphone. The Verge.
  13. ↑ Magic Earth - Free Navigation & Maps App for Android and iPhone (en-US). Magic Earth. Retrieved on 2020-07-21.
  14. ↑ Magic Earth - OpenStreetMap Wiki. wiki.openstreetmap.org. Retrieved on 2020-07-21.

External links

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