General Magic

2018
TV-PG
1h 33m

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

1.3K

YOUR RATING

A documentary about a business that Forbes described as the "greatest dead company in Silicon Valley." It is a tale of how great vision and epic failure changed the world as we know it.

Play trailer2:26

1 Video

11 Photos

Documentary

The ideas that dominate the tech industry and our day to day lives were born at a secretive Silicon Valley start-up named 'General Magic', which spun out of Apple in 1990 to create the first... Read allThe ideas that dominate the tech industry and our day to day lives were born at a secretive Silicon Valley start-up named 'General Magic', which spun out of Apple in 1990 to create the first handheld personal communicator (or "smartphone").The ideas that dominate the tech industry and our day to day lives were born at a secretive Silicon Valley start-up named 'General Magic', which spun out of Apple in 1990 to create the first handheld personal communicator (or "smartphone").

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

1.3K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 2 wins & 3 nominations total

Videos1

Trailer 2:26

Official Trailer

Photos10

+ 5

User reviews65

7.41.3K

Featured reviews

9chaosmacleod

Great Documentary

I really enjoyed learning about General Magic. I wasn't aware of the vision this company had, it's seems like they were right about so many things. Very interesting and I would very much recommend this film.

5socaldar

Horrible sound mixing.

Was interested in subject matter, but background music was almost always playing over the voices.

10agggma

Silicon Valley history; sound issues fixed

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.

4jeremy1967

Remix the audio and I'll try watching again.

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.

7jefff-02374

Great look at General Magic

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.

Quotes
Marc Porat: No questioning of "Could I be wrong ?". None. Because that's what you need to break out of Earth's gravity. You need and enormous amount of momentum. And that momentum comes from suppressing introspection about the possibility of failure.