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Being Too Early is Being Wrong | Tareq is typing...

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I stumbled upon the documentary General Magic expecting another Silicon Valley success story. The story tells the exact opposite. General Magic spun out of Apple in 1990 with an impressive roster: Marc Porat as founder, Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson from the original Macintosh team, plus future tech leaders like Tony Fadell (iPod/iPhone creator), Megan Smith (future Google VP and White House CTO), and Kevin Lynch (Apple Watch architect). The documentary follows the team on their mission to create a “personal communicator”—essentially a smartphone with email, games, and emoji. In 1992. “There will be smart phones, smart pagers, and maybe even things like intelligent watches, for all we know,” Porat states in 1994, predicting both iPhone and Apple Watch decades early. Archival footage shows concept drawings that look remarkably like today’s smartphones. In the end, their device sells fewer than 3,000 units at $800 each, mostly to family and friends. The product was simply too early. T

Timing is everything. I stumbled upon the documentary General Magic expecting another Silicon Valley success story. The story tells the exact opposite. General Magic spun out of Apple in 1990 with an impressive roster: Marc Porat as founder, Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson from the original Macintosh team, plus future tech leaders like Tony Fadell (iPod/iPhone creator), Megan Smith (future Google VP and White House CTO), and Kevin Lynch (Apple Watch architect). The documentary follows the team on their mission to create a "personal communicator"—essentially a smartphone with email, games, and

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