CC BY 2.0 ↗
General Magic
- Year
- 1990
- Creator
- Marc Porat, Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld
- Company
- General Magic
- Location
- Mountain View, California
- Room
- Homebrew ↗
Description
General Magic is a software company that former Apple employees incorporated in California in May 1990. Its Magic Cap software ran on handheld communicators from partners, and Sony started to ship the Magic Link shown here in September 1994.
Importance
Marc Porat started the project inside Apple, and Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two Macintosh software designers, joined him. The partners included Sony, Motorola, Apple, AT&T, Philips, and Matsushita. The market for Magic Cap devices grew slowly, and by 1997 General Magic had changed its plan to a network service.
Interesting fact
The company named its conference rooms after famous stage magicians, and one of them was the Houdini Room.
Sources
- Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II ↗Wired (Steven Levy) · 1994-04-01
- General Magic annual report on Form 10-K ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 1997-03-31
- General Magic annual report on Form 10-K405 ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2000-03-30