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Comment by gompertz | Hacker News Reader

I watched the General Magic documentary couple years back... I'm sure it was just my perception, and maybe the video editing, but by what I recall it looked like they mostly goofed off and it was more a think-tank than actually building stuff. It's possible the video was cut this was to align with the "fun, silicon valley" narratives. Perhaps others felt the same who saw the documentary?

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I got the same impression, although just from a few scenes. It's impressively bad that the Newton was a "clone" of General Magic yet it shipped years earlier.

While acknowledging the influence of General Magic on Apple's Newton work, I think it's inaccurate to characterize it as a "clone".

A brief use of Magic Cap and Newton OS reveals in my opinion very little in common in the shipped products.

Agreed.

Magic Cap was more like Microsoft Bob than it was like the Newton.

I wouldn’t be that pejorative about it — the Magic Cap UI was actually useful — but yes, that’s closer.

Both Magic Cap and Microsoft Bob had a user interface with a room based metaphor.

You would select an object in a picture of a room to launch applications. You would navigate from room to room to find other groups of applications.

That's not pejorative. It's descriptive.

My impression was that they were high on their own supply and there was no adult supervision at all, which I think aligns with your impression.

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