LGR Tech Tales - General Magic: Creating the Cloud

These golden era tech jobs seem exciting except for the fact you often have to live in the bland, expensive ass valley.

I love this channel and its Tech Tales, Tales of Tech

I miss Tech Tales.

Just watched the documentary ‘General Magic’ brilliant. As you say in the video, the vision just too WAY ahead of its time, like 30 odd years! But ye, if it wasn’t for General magic, I wouldn’t be watching or writing this comment right now.

This story is even deeper and more interesting than what is told in this video. There is an actual documentary movie about General Magic and the people working there to revolutionize technology.

Oh wow. I remember watching computery stuff on ME/U back in the day!

what's the song??

Very good Clint! Love Tech Tales

General Magic seems to be to the handheld tech world what Jodorawski’s Dune was to 80s cinema.

You forgot to mention Apple Newton, almost exactly same product also funded by Apple at the same time, kind of ruined the General Magic when it was announced.

Vack when companies cared about pushing the limits to what is possible as opposed to just churning out garbage to make more money.

thats ipad circa 90s

"General Magic" was a bad name. It's not even special? Just a bland generic form of magic.

I do like the fact that the hand picked team of engineers and designers image all have hard hats and are pointing at blueprints. That's exactly how it looks and works. If you don't think so, then you just don't know the real real.

so, in short: the technology wasn't there yet.

One of the General Magic software creations that probably will not make any of these videos is the banking software commissioned by Visa International. I worked on the software team that created Magic Banking that ran on the Magic Link. Actually paid bills and transacted with real checking accounts. But--Visa went with software written elsewhere for this same purpose to run on the PC.

I really like the General Magic logo so much.

Great video! I still remember interviewing there when I moved to California in ‘96.

Hi dude nice video!

Hi Clint. As a French guy, I have a request for a Tech Tale. It is about the French Minitel. That was dead on in the 90's.

What happened? Apple secretly were building the Newton using GM ideas they were privy to, they released it and it flopped, taking the wind out of the sales of GM.

is it just me or i hear gran Turismo 4 menu swips sound effect when bill Atkinson showed up on screen ?

that’s the shittiest iphone i’ve ever seen

"The still-in-development Apple Newton." For a second I was like what? it's still in development?? Then I realized how stupid I am.

Sounds like GM and Disney partnered up lol

Man you are such a great tech story teller, and I love listening to rise and fall of great companies! You do a great job man, honestly.

So, what I'm getting from this is that Apple has been trying to build the iPhone since the late 1980s...

Paradigm comes from the Greek Paradigma (Παράδειγμα) that means example

You capture the right words. Too ahead of its time. I came into the internet scene at the end of 1992. It was still at a growing stage for the masses and it was at a painful speed. These guys were doing a prototype of the smartphone.

Never buy a computer that turns itself on whenever it feels like it AND has built in speakers with zero volume control. Also, don't make a computer that complains if it's not hooked up online. That's what the Magic Cap was, in my experience. Then again, I get paranoid with any electronic device that turns itself on.
Then again, most people don't buy computers to "do their taxes" anymore, no matter what dated programming books that don't believe in graphics teach.

1994-I can tell you having a Motorola wedge,ThinkPad 340 , university internet...was novel. I carried it all in a briefcase with an audio modem running dial up on my mobile.
Thank God Rogers had local calling minutes free.
Net nav. Was my phone providers base "access" aol disk came free in the mail.

Watching on my magical pocket crystal.

Atkinson wasn't just the creator of HyperCard. He did QuickDraw and coded regions masking before square masking was cool. He was the heart of everything graphic that made both Lisa and Mac ROM, giving  an edge for so long.

All LGR videos: A tier. Tech Tales: S tier

hehe, the magic was getting money for free.

I was a heavy use of portico. Two key features: giving you an 800 number anyone could call you on and find you ringing which would ring numbers either together or in series.

I love these vids. I found LGR through a tech tale about AOL and have been working through the LGR backlog ever since.

Abracadabra!!!

Worth noting that a lot of General Magic's former patents have been used by patent trolls in recent years. Company called Minero Digital tried to get royalty payments for every USB hub in existence using patents they bought off of General Magic.

I love getting a small whiskey buzz and BINGING LGR. my friend

watching this while using an apple newton message pad 120

So what do you think of Cloudera

Even without the internet, the product wouldn't have necessarily succeeded. Just because you can do your spreadsheets and taxes on that small device, doesn't mean that it would have been practical to do so. So what if it had the same features of a desktop? Does that mean that it would have been more convenient to use it, rather than an actual desktop?

Typical example of tech that was ahead of its time. Look at it 20 years later and we have lightweight, cheap and blazing fast laptops that rely on this very concept; Barebones OS that relies on powerful cloud servers for the vast majority of it's capabilities. Look at the Voice Typing feature in Google Docs; A function that used to require a very powerful PC to process the input in realtime, now you simply use a node and let offsite servers do all the heavy lifting.

Wow, dream team indeed!

Need more of this!