General Magic

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General Magic was an American software and early smart phone electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller Integrated circuits, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions. The company's main product was Magic Cap, the operating system used in 1994 by Sony's Magic Link and the Motorola Envoy PDAs. It also introduced the programming language Telescript. After announcing it would cease operations in 2002, it was liquidated in 2004 with Paul Allen purchasing many of its patents. The original project started in 1989 within Apple Computer, when Marc Porat convinced Apple's then-CEO John Sculley that the next generation of computing would require a partnership of computer, communications and consumer electronics companies to cooperate. Known as the Paradigm project, the project ran for some time within Apple, but management remained generally uninterested and the team struggled for resources. Eventually they approached Sculley with the idea of spinning off the group as a separate company, which occurred in May 1990 with founders Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson. Apple took a minority stake in the company, with John Sculley joining the General Magic board. Porat, Hertzfeld and Atkinson were soon joined at General Magic by Susan Kare, Joanna Hoffman (vice president of marketing), hardware pioneer Wendell Sander, Walt Broedner and Megan Smith who joined from Apple Japan, and most of Apple's System 7 team, including Phil Goldman and soon after Bruce Leak and Darin Adler.