6 ms·

Magic Cap, from the Magic Link to the DataRover and the stuff in-between

bitsavers 4y ago
http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/01/bringing-tls-to-magic-cap-datarover.html http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/01/bringing-tls-to-magic-cap...
- classichasclass 4y ago
  (author) It was a lot of work to get those dev tools running again!
- bitsavers 4y ago
  "It is issued without the permission of Intellectual Ventures Management LLC" Certain GM staffers won the IP bid during the bankruptcy, but I Vultures still managed to acquire it.
bitsavers 4y ago
Like Scott said, pretty awesome data dump on GM. Telescript is a whole story in itself. I remember being in a meeting where Marc was pitching Pocket Crystal to Al Alcorn at Apple. The dark side was the company was peak ex-Apple rock star programmer ego.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  That, most of all, is what comes across in the GM movie — there were no adults in the room, at any point. So they built things that were cool that people didn’t want.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    I did actually briefly use a Magic Cap device back in the mid-90’s. It was neat. But it felt like a crippled version of the internet as imagined by HyperCard stack authors circa 1987.
  - twoodfin 4y ago
    Agree. They needed someone laser-focused on capital-P Product. I wonder if the ex-Apple folks had failed to appreciate that having been an essential part of Jobs’ role.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  This is a great anecdote too. Porat explaining his agent concept to Thomas Dolby (yes, the musician) while Bill Gates listened in and blew a fuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776
  - bitsavers 4y ago
    since the original was from 2018... "Microsoft came out with a competing technology in that timeframe called 'Microsoft Pen Computing' as a direct response to the hype around General Magic." It was actually put out to kill Go/Penpoint, not GM
    - GeekyBear 4y ago
      Penpoint was a case of the software being very far ahead of it's time. Given that it was run by a Xerox PARC alum, that might be expected. The February 1991 issue of Byte had an introduction to Penpoint, and you can find issue scans online. https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm
manv1 4y ago
I still have my two Magic Links, a bunch of SRAM cards, and a bunch of shrink wrapped software. Lost my telebug cable years ago. GM is where Andy Rubin learned how to leverage carrier partnerships. He took that knowledge to Android and the rest is history. Also, Pierre Omidyar of eBay worked in GMDTS. They were a bunch of Really Smart Guys over there. Good Times.
- bitsavers 4y ago
  I worked with a bunch of them at Apple, like Zarko (RIP) and Phil (RIP). Hung out there a little bit, got to meet one of my PARC heroes (Ed Satterthwaite) Andy went from there to Artemis/WebTV, Danger, then Android.
- classichasclass 4y ago
  (author) What software did you have for them?
  - manv1 4y ago
    I have Presto!Links, Presto!Mail, the Magic Bag Game Pack, and MagicXchange in boxes. I was the tech lead on MagicXchange/Mac for a while and worked at Active Paper on the Presto stuff, and was the lead on Presto!Links (which was subsequently bought by GM). Greg Branche and Jim Murphy also worked at GM (the MPW guys). Funny that spies.org is still registered. That's where all those guys used to hang out. Nice to see Josh's website is still around.
    - manv1 4y ago
      Oh, they brought in Waldemar Horwat and he worked on the Rosemary runtime. For those who don't know, he wrote the TMON low-level Mac debugger when he was a teenager and has gone on to do all kinds of stuff.
- joshu 4y ago
  Megan Smith and Tony Fadell too
bane 4y ago
Oh man, the madness of desktop literalism in GUI design in the mid-90s. The more "subtle" metaphors of files and folders blown far past skeumorphism and into immediately literal graphic representations of a "desk" with a "phone" and a "rolodex". These guys went full-in and represented buildings and cities. It was such a transitional time, people who had never had personal access to a computing device suddenly trying to figure out how nested file structures work, saving documents, and running software all were mind-blowing concepts for the average adult moving from a world of paper. The term "paperless office" was tossed around as a far future goal. For those who never worked in an office in the 80s or 90s, the amount of paper and paper handling tools needed to function at even a basic level was absolutely unreal. https://weare.guru/office-life-in-the-1980s-vintage-photos/ https://weare.guru/office-life-in-the-1980s-vintage-photos/ Ignore the computing tech in the pictures and look at the tons of fire-hazard ready paper literally everywhere. It didn't die in the 90s either. I remember getting a demo from a vendor in the early 2000s for a chat system that used a very literal city metaphor to organize chat rooms. Because of course the word "room" was used and that implied they had to reverse out from their into buildings, and city blocks, and cities. So navigating to different rooms involved all kinds of clicking around town. We, habitual corporate IRC users, were not impressed.
joshu 4y ago
i have a magic cap and an eo440. amazing artifacts from another time
gumby 4y ago
I loved the ideas of these kinds of products and always hated the metaphor when using them. They were valuable when the general public was trying to understand what the hell all that computer stuff was, but really they got in the way. It reminds me of those old "mall" or "map" efforts to get people online (eWorld, the Playstation online environment, even, at an extreme, Second Life). The fact is nobody wants to "walk" from shop to shop; they want to be in gap and then be in See's candies. On the web you can click from one to the other; in real life you can't so you walk. Trying to reproduce these meatspace metaphors merely unnecessarily implements meatspace limitations. Even now I prefer to use the command line on my mac because the friction of dragging the mouse around for routine action is annoying...but getting better. Apple got this right with the iphone. They started out with metaphors that reflected experiences skeuomorphically to teach you how to use the touch interface (e.g. scrolling "wheels" to select numbers) then phased them out relatively quickly as everybody internalized them.* Failure to comprehend this is one of the many issues killing VR. They need to exploit the new affordances of the new technology, with a small number of onramps. * Whether they continued this phase out for too long is another question
simne 4y ago
Would be cool, to make simulator, to touch so different interface on modern hardware. I think, 10 years old android phone will run it.

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/01/bringing-tls-to-magic-cap-datarover.html http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/01/bringing-tls-to-magic-cap...

classichasclass 4y ago
(author) It was a lot of work to get those dev tools running again!
bitsavers 4y ago
"It is issued without the permission of Intellectual Ventures Management LLC" Certain GM staffers won the IP bid during the bankruptcy, but I Vultures still managed to acquire it.

bitsavers 4y ago

Like Scott said, pretty awesome data dump on GM. Telescript is a whole story in itself. I remember being in a meeting where Marc was pitching Pocket Crystal to Al Alcorn at Apple. The dark side was the company was peak ex-Apple rock star programmer ego.

KerrAvon 4y ago
That, most of all, is what comes across in the GM movie — there were no adults in the room, at any point. So they built things that were cool that people didn’t want.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  I did actually briefly use a Magic Cap device back in the mid-90’s. It was neat. But it felt like a crippled version of the internet as imagined by HyperCard stack authors circa 1987.
- twoodfin 4y ago
  Agree. They needed someone laser-focused on capital-P Product. I wonder if the ex-Apple folks had failed to appreciate that having been an essential part of Jobs’ role.
joezydeco 4y ago
This is a great anecdote too. Porat explaining his agent concept to Thomas Dolby (yes, the musician) while Bill Gates listened in and blew a fuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776
- bitsavers 4y ago
  since the original was from 2018... "Microsoft came out with a competing technology in that timeframe called 'Microsoft Pen Computing' as a direct response to the hype around General Magic." It was actually put out to kill Go/Penpoint, not GM
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    Penpoint was a case of the software being very far ahead of it's time. Given that it was run by a Xerox PARC alum, that might be expected. The February 1991 issue of Byte had an introduction to Penpoint, and you can find issue scans online. https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm

manv1 4y ago

I still have my two Magic Links, a bunch of SRAM cards, and a bunch of shrink wrapped software. Lost my telebug cable years ago. GM is where Andy Rubin learned how to leverage carrier partnerships. He took that knowledge to Android and the rest is history. Also, Pierre Omidyar of eBay worked in GMDTS. They were a bunch of Really Smart Guys over there. Good Times.

bitsavers 4y ago
I worked with a bunch of them at Apple, like Zarko (RIP) and Phil (RIP). Hung out there a little bit, got to meet one of my PARC heroes (Ed Satterthwaite) Andy went from there to Artemis/WebTV, Danger, then Android.
classichasclass 4y ago
(author) What software did you have for them?
- manv1 4y ago
  I have Presto!Links, Presto!Mail, the Magic Bag Game Pack, and MagicXchange in boxes. I was the tech lead on MagicXchange/Mac for a while and worked at Active Paper on the Presto stuff, and was the lead on Presto!Links (which was subsequently bought by GM). Greg Branche and Jim Murphy also worked at GM (the MPW guys). Funny that spies.org is still registered. That's where all those guys used to hang out. Nice to see Josh's website is still around.
  - manv1 4y ago
    Oh, they brought in Waldemar Horwat and he worked on the Rosemary runtime. For those who don't know, he wrote the TMON low-level Mac debugger when he was a teenager and has gone on to do all kinds of stuff.
joshu 4y ago
Megan Smith and Tony Fadell too

bane 4y ago

Oh man, the madness of desktop literalism in GUI design in the mid-90s. The more "subtle" metaphors of files and folders blown far past skeumorphism and into immediately literal graphic representations of a "desk" with a "phone" and a "rolodex". These guys went full-in and represented buildings and cities. It was such a transitional time, people who had never had personal access to a computing device suddenly trying to figure out how nested file structures work, saving documents, and running software all were mind-blowing concepts for the average adult moving from a world of paper. The term "paperless office" was tossed around as a far future goal. For those who never worked in an office in the 80s or 90s, the amount of paper and paper handling tools needed to function at even a basic level was absolutely unreal. https://weare.guru/office-life-in-the-1980s-vintage-photos/ https://weare.guru/office-life-in-the-1980s-vintage-photos/ Ignore the computing tech in the pictures and look at the tons of fire-hazard ready paper literally everywhere. It didn't die in the 90s either. I remember getting a demo from a vendor in the early 2000s for a chat system that used a very literal city metaphor to organize chat rooms. Because of course the word "room" was used and that implied they had to reverse out from their into buildings, and city blocks, and cities. So navigating to different rooms involved all kinds of clicking around town. We, habitual corporate IRC users, were not impressed.

joshu 4y ago

i have a magic cap and an eo440. amazing artifacts from another time

gumby 4y ago

I loved the ideas of these kinds of products and always hated the metaphor when using them. They were valuable when the general public was trying to understand what the hell all that computer stuff was, but really they got in the way. It reminds me of those old "mall" or "map" efforts to get people online (eWorld, the Playstation online environment, even, at an extreme, Second Life). The fact is nobody wants to "walk" from shop to shop; they want to be in gap and then be in See's candies. On the web you can click from one to the other; in real life you can't so you walk. Trying to reproduce these meatspace metaphors merely unnecessarily implements meatspace limitations. Even now I prefer to use the command line on my mac because the friction of dragging the mouse around for routine action is annoying...but getting better. Apple got this right with the iphone. They started out with metaphors that reflected experiences skeuomorphically to teach you how to use the touch interface (e.g. scrolling "wheels" to select numbers) then phased them out relatively quickly as everybody internalized them.* Failure to comprehend this is one of the many issues killing VR. They need to exploit the new affordances of the new technology, with a small number of onramps. * Whether they continued this phase out for too long is another question

simne 4y ago

Would be cool, to make simulator, to touch so different interface on modern hardware. I think, 10 years old android phone will run it.