We bring you highlight of our conversation with Megan Smith, who was part of the team at General Magic. In the early 1990s General Magic was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. Smith shares some of the  hardware challenges the General Magic team faced in developing their pocket crystal or personal communicator. 

General Magic was spun-off from Apple and co-founded by Marc Porat, Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. Their goal was to create a new personal communicator for the post-PC world. Their brilliant vision met with limited success and ultimately they had to shut down the company. 

What General Magic unleashed on the technical landscape in Silicon Valley was huge. Steve Jobs wrote a note to Atkinson that said – a little bit of your DNA is in this  (this was an iPad) and that DNA was the General Magic device.

The story of General Magic’s birth and why it failed is capture the market is the subject of the film General Magic that releases in May 2019.

This is a highlight of an extended interview with Megan Smith. Stay tuned for that.

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