Lessons from the failure of General Magic | Hacker News Reader

Lessons from the failure of General Magic

fastcompany.com

130 pointsadrian_mrd50 comments

> and email addresses. All of these things were trying to make technology more accessible to people

Uh nope. Nothing like that happened. SNDMSG allowed sending messages between users on the same computer. Then Ray Tomlinson added his file transfer code to SNDMSG and needed a symbol to separate user names from the host names, and he picked the @ Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email addresses more accessible to people.

The only reason there were host names and not just numbers on the right hand side was because ARPAnet really has grown and just a few months before Tomlinson's invention names were added https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc226 (20 hosts! really, big network) but this, again, predates email addresses.

Another very early example of email in 1970 was integrated into the NLS (short for Online System) at the SRI ARC https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned-original/1... but this used usernames and not addresses "mail distribution was addressed by peoples Idents with no need to know or specify which host they used".

"Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email addresses more accessible to people."

That's not what it says ... it says trying to make technology more accessible to people. user@hostname email addresses, as opposed to the old UUCP bang paths, does indeed make technology more available to people. (FWIW, I worked on the ARPANET at UCLA and was there when the IMP arrived in 1969, so I do know a little something about this topic.)

Perhaps what the article tried to say then it's the Domain Naming System which tried to make technology more accessible to people.

I worked for France Télécom on their General Magic project, circa 1996. My job was to work on the payment and e-commerce aspects of the platform, and I came to the conclusion it was bound to fail because it lacked any provisions for transactional integrity, and asked to be transferred to another project.

The Magic Cap UI, while cute, was hampered by the limitations of hardware back then, but the backend was the real killer. Their distributed-agent technology was half-baked, and despite AT&T Bell Labs's heroic efforts to make it work (including building an entire language, High Telescript, to make it usable), it failed anyway.

The article misses General Magic's most successful alum, Pierre Omidyar, who founded EBay while working at GM.

Unless I missed it, they may have forgotten Andy Rubin as well. It's interesting how both Android and iPhone has connections to General Magic.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a tendency for an inner gestation period whereby fundamental ideas prosper from exposure to additional experience before maturing. Perhaps largely subconsciously.

Where do people still care about pushing the boundary, exploring new paradigms, and building shit? I'm so sick of hearing about this mythical "silicon valley of yore" where there was community, and fellowship, and a desire to improve humanity. I came here looking for that and all I see is rent-seeking mega corps bent on scaling their surveillance platforms. Is that dream still alive somewhere?

I work out of my garage in Sunnyvale, building a platform trying to make the web better. I eat lunch regularly with friends who do similar things, and I've been a part of several companies (via VC work) that have desired to improve humanity and are doing it.

There are people out there doing what you've described, but it doesn't (and never did) get headlines because most headlines are paid for.

"There are people out there doing what you've described, but it doesn't (and never did) get headlines because most headlines are paid for." well said!

Could you expand on the platform part please? I'm sure many people here would be interested and exposure on HN is free, so why not? ;)

Yes I can do that -- it's a platform for building software modules that can be added to any website or web app. Right now it does most of the popular build steps automatically (Babel, SCSS, Handlebars) so developers can just focus on actual code.

We have an open source library of ready-to-use modules that can be forked/tweaked or used as is.

It's called Anymod https://anymod.com. Hoping we can become something useful for developers.

Your "how it works"[1] page makes it look a little like a cross between Codepen and Google Tag Manager. Is that a fair characterization of what Mods do? I like the 'shared library' idea, that's something GTM makes actively harder.

1: https://anymod.com/how-it-works

The editor is similar to CodePen, with the biggest difference being you can easily add what you've built to any website. I haven't ever used GTM but I think the "make changes without re-deploying" approach is conceptually similar.

What are you building?

Those companies are still around, flying under the radar under silly code names like "General magic", remember most of them try and fail. You have to look for them, be in the know (probably because you've worked with one of the early employees and impressed them) or be one of the founders. I lived in the valley for 20 years and only ever worked for startups, only got one job (the first one) that was advertised

Here’s a hint - it’s not in web development. That world was taken over by ad-tech years ago. If you want to find people punching the envelope, it won’t be in last decade’s tech.

The best example I’ve seen recently is Dynamicland, which is building a self-hosting, collaborative computer.

Pieces of paper represent programs and UIs, and you can grab a wireless keyboard and place it in front of anything to inspect and modify it with the help of projectors: https://dynamicland.org

Start-up ISPs doing high speed last mile and middle mile access with self-built infrastructure. It's not sexy cloud based SaaS bullshit. You can't do it all sitting at a desk in a shared office in a WeWork studio. It requires physically going places and doing things at OSI layer 1.

But there are still a number of places in the world (and indeed within the US and Canada) that lack real broadband Internet. Or have truly terrible shitty noncompetitive options. It's capital intensive and requires a team encompassing the "full stack" of network engineering skill sets. If you're unhappy with Comcast type huge shitty unethical ISPs, build your own. Make a principled commitment to not "selling out", network neutrality, and high quality attentive customer service and no-nonsense billing.

There are plenty of challenges out there if you seek them out.

sounds like less money than SaaS BS. Most SaaS BS doesn't make any, either, but at least investors like it...

It very much depends, fiber construction can have a very long ROI and be very costly depending on how much of it has to be underground, right-of-way issues, etc.

How about fixed wireless? I have ISP experience and a decent amount of startup capital. It just seems like potential for a real money pit and massive losses with cable and fios both in the area...

Fixed wireless should definitely a part of any small/start-up ISP plan. If you're in an area that's solidly served by GPON and ADSL2+/VDSL2 by the ILEC phone company (FIOS), and they're really built the fiber network out a lot, that's hard to compete with. And hard to compete with a solid DOCSIS3 network that reaches everyone. You'd have to find an area on the far outlying reaches of your metro area that is much worse off, where a market need exists.

> all I see is rent-seeking mega corps bent on scaling their surveillance platforms

Those always were around. In the days of yore there was IBM using FUD everywhere and trying to monopolize the PC through proprietary technologies, AT&T trying to shut down Unix as free software, Microsoft's monopolistic practices, etc. But at the same time a lot of people worked on free software and much more to make the world a better place, and they succeeded.

What the histories leave out, what they can't convey, is the uncertainty of being one person or a small team taking on megacorp, of the experience of trying help a world where most people don't understand the problem and many who do understand still don't care. History can't convey not knowing if the story will end in a wasted career and never even being noticed, much less forgotten, or in being Linus or RMS or Graydon Hoare. That's all just normal in any project of social change. In another domain, IIRC, MLK's popularity was underwater even after the Voting Rights Act passed; can you imagine what he faced when he started - a small group, a politically oppressed minority (thus limiting their ability to get anything done), a barely educated constituency (due to the discrimination), taking on a much larger majority and centuries of Southern (and Northern) tradition.

Totally agree. General magic tried to do something really innovative and failed. I think they deserve a lot of respect for trying something hard.

There used to be plenty of room for innovation. General Magic made a PDA to compete with the Apple Newton Messagepad (the first "Personal Digital Assistant"). The Newton had a lovely pen-based user interface, and with the second revision, a handwriting recognition engine that worked perfectly. But sadly the early version failed to meet expectations (google "Beat Up Martin!") and Steve Jobs killed the project when he came back to Apple.

So both the General Magic and the Newton Messagepad sadly lost out to the inferior-in-nearly-aspect Palm. (curiously, Palm got its start writing an alternative alphabet interpreter for the Newton. So if not for Newton, Palm would have never been born, and would not have defeated Apple.)

The Newton also failed because it had a much shorter battery life than the Palm devices and was a great deal larger. And was a lot more expensive.

Palm devices shipped out of the box with a docking station and ability to sync calendar/data with almost any Windows 98 or NT4/2000 PC.

Also, Graffiti was fast once you got it down. Newton's handwriting recognition, even when it wasn't a total disaster, was kind of laborious.

But mostly it was the price tag. Palm Pilots really did almost everything a Newton could do at half the price or less. The Outlook sync feature made sure they had a place in business as well.

I actually never used a graffiti palmos device as my personal every day pda. Bought a handspring Treo 180 with the physical keyboard. When it was new, it was one of the best wireless pda available... I still miss that keyboard.

> inferior-in-nearly-aspect Palm

worse is better https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

x86 was worse than RISC, Linux worse than BSD, Windows worse than MacOS, etc

Palm got the the things right that mattered to adoption (price, simplicity, data syncing) even if you think Newtown was technically superior. Focusing on technical superiority is a common trap.

For anyone less than enthused by that webpage's anti-HN redirect to a photograph of a testicle in an egg cup, here's an archive link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180322163944/https://www.jwz.o...

Maybe try a not-for-profit or a social enterprise as many of them are trying earnestly to solve difficult problems (climate change, obesity crisis, opoid addiction, access to clean water, homelessness, better treatment of animals, decreasing electronic waste, etc.), and they are not bound to any particular locale.

As Martin Luther King once said: "it's always the right time, to do the right thing", and as some other commentators have stated, many 'good' people are trying to improve our world - it's just that the tech bros often have better PR teams and that all important 'network scale'.

Hang in there, the dream is definitely still alive :)

I would look in robotics, location based entertainment, and wearables.

You mean people who "make" stuff? I think the dream is still alive and all you have to do is start doing it. The way the Internet is these days the ability to link up with other people making stuff is pretty easy. My only problem is that I haven't figured out how to structure my own life to do more of it, but I think that's a local and temporary personal problem more than a system of repression.

I work out of my home office on the side trying to help people bridge the gap between programmer and software engineer. Does that count?

At the day job I build a tool/platform/thing for high school students to get instant help with math homework.

We're out there! We just don't make it to the top of HN anymore.

I work on building technology (an iOS app) to help people with newly implanted cochlear devices understand and differentiate sounds in speech. There is technology for solving real human problems being developed, but it doesn't take a huge team to create such technology.

Willow Garage until very recently.

Pushing boundaries? seriously? General Magic tried to deliver Microsoft Bob 'on a mobile device'.

Move to China and work with us. A month ago I pitched Tony Fadell of General Magic personally, passed his filter, and got our current raise material through. He didn't invest in the end (we are raising quite a large round) but we remain in touch. He left a good impression, and I believe we did too.

My favourite quote from the piece: “If you have a bunch of self-motivated and smart people and you put them together they’ll produce something incredible. But you can’t minimize the importance of management.

It’s a dirty word. It’s prosaic. It’s not vision. It’s not dream. It’s not technological excellence. But unfortunately, it makes all the difference.” - Joanna Hoffman, Head of marketing at General Magic

Good management in technology environments is akin to tracks for a train/monorail.

Boring: yes, but they provide the 'connective tissue', the velocity and the direction for everyone in the organisation to leverage, the support infrastructure for everyone else to produce great 'stuff' (products, services, outcomes, whatever). They should also build upon years of experience and/or brilliant thinking - which is what tracks do!

Great tech management teams also help (all) staff understand why the tracks are there to begin with: to solve problems for users (relevant to the Andy Hertzfeld 'put the user first' and the Tony Fadell 'understand your audience' quotes).

And yeah, reframing rejections and criticisms (the Marc Porat quote) is great advise for any entrepreneur.

I like embrace criticism part. It's so real. Sometimes while making a screen's layout I don't recognize bad decisions my colleagues see with first sight. It's amazing lol

That's why teamwork is so important in every step of the development process, every step needs a review. If someone is such a rockstar they don't to have their items reviewed, all the review will do is show their rockstarness to someone else.

Just make sure the reviewers are very good. I see a lot of team reviews by mediocre people that kill any kind of creativity.

Hagiography, meet Silicon Valley. "Would Android exist without General Magic? Absolutely not!" An overstatement which perfectly summarizes this film.

I'm planning a road bike tour of old silicon valley offices for next saturday, does anybody know where in Mountain View the offices of General Magic were located?

Looks like Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale. Just keep your wits about you — Sunnyvale isn’t the greatest town for biking.

https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...

I remember that building! I used to pass it all the time going to the then Sunnyvale main post office at the corner of Mary and Maude (now, shockingly, an Apple building).

Thanks!

No prob. Not sure the safest way to get there, but I'd probably start by taking Stevens Creek Bike Trail to Evelyn ave and then maybe heading up Mary (which is a pretty busy street, so maybe there's a better way.) Strava might be a good app to check.

Wow, this title would make a perfect fantasy book title.

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