Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdcarter | Hacker News Reader

I worked there for 5 years, and I maintain some historical artifacts from the time, including a gallery of Magic Cap handheld devices and some interesting concept art from Magic's very early days:

http://joshcarter.com/magic_cap/

View on HN

Always loved your site, and my DataRover thanks you too. I have a couple 840s and one of the original Sonys. There was nothing quite like these devices, and they were way ahead of their time.

I have one of the CodeWarrior dev kits with the Mac emulator around here somewhere too.

Thanks! Glad you found the site useful. Unfortunately, we were too far ahead of the time in lots of regards--processors were slow, screens were bad, battery technology iffy, no mobile data service that normal humans could afford... These days an iPhone costs just as much as a Magic Cap device did, and you can definitely see that that's what we were trying to accomplish, but there was no way for General Magic to stay in business long enough to see it realized.

This must have been a fun place to work at. I did a lot of work on the Newton during that time and it was super exciting how the industry developed.

Having seen “General Magic”, I’d say calibrate your sentiments when you see it.

Back in the 90s, I was so envious of those who worked at General Magic. From the outside at least, it seemed to be _the_ place to be to do cool stuff.

Plus, I have always thought that it was one of the finest company names imaginable.

These are great. How have I never heard of this business?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com