General Magic

Seriously, who signed off on the audio mix for this? I couldn't watch for more than 10 minutes due to the obnoxiously loud music. Half of the time I could not understand what was being said. Even when I could understand, the loud music was just too much to take and made me want to turn it off. I can only guess that something went wrong when this was handed off for broadcast, because I find it hard to believe it went out the door like this.

This video is a great look at General Magic, a company the employed a lot of top talent from Apple (who was a major investor). They created the concept of a smartphone and tablet, but failed ultimately because the market wasn't ready. Their pioneering work made today's smartphones and tablets a reality.

Note: There were audio problems with this video when it was first released making it almost impossible to hear the voice over. That appears to be fixed now.

First off, I watched this on Showtime and the sound was perfect.

If you care about Silicon Valley history or are just an Apple fan, this is a must see.

An excellent film that tells the rare story of the most consequential company to fail... but which was not really a failure, because the people and ideas, fueled technologies and devices that changed the world.

I watched this at home on DVD from my public library. I see that a number of reviews here complain about the sound mix, I want to state that there is absolutely NO sound problem with the version that is on DVD. This is an excellent documentary, a glimpse into Silicon Valley innovation and what can determine if a company succeeds.

I am a technical guy and worked in a technical career. As I watched this story unfold it brought to mind the first two rules of a group technique called 'brainstorming.' First you generate lots and lots of ideas without regard for whether they are practical or implementable. That unbridled synergism of ideas can be very creative. Second, at some point you switch to the evaluation mode, selecting the subset of really good ideas that can be implemented given time, technology available, budget, and market factors.

The early 1990s Silicon Valley company called General Magic, an Apple spinoff, was really good at the first but mostly neglected the second. They forged ahead with what they envisioned, ignored the advent of the worldwide web, and didn't verify that consumers really wanted what they were inventing, a personal device that replaced a computer, a fax machine, a telephone, and who knows what else.

So they ultimately failed and went bankrupt , partly because their parent Apple used their ideas to forge ahead and create something that came online sooner. But more so because their product was not properly targeted. Yet the ideas they generated, the projects that former General Magic technologists undertook, have changed our world in 25 short years in ways we could not have imagine. Had it not been for General Magic our ways of communication and social media, for good or bad, would not be as it is today and we would not have had devices like Iphones and Ipods.

So, while they failed as a company, their ideas have gone on to big successes.

Showtime screwed up the audio when they first broadcast this, which led to dozens of permanent bad reviews here, because the music was louder than the dialog. The problem has been fixed, I have watched the stream in the Showtime app and it now sounds fine.

It's a fascinating tale for people interested in technology and even though I was working in the business at the time and know some of the people in the movie, I had never heard the whole story before.