Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
You can see the whole film here. youtu.be/uiFV6BXTr98
I made this launch video back in 1993 to launch the incredible vision and technology developed by General Magic and supported by 6 of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Oddly, although the company failed, as the vision video, it is still superb.
Speaking at the front of this video is Jan Timmer, who was the President and CEO of Philips Electronics from 1990 to 1996. He was legendary in business history as the blunt, hard-charging executive who saved Philips from the brink of total financial collapse and bankruptcy.
By 1992, Philips was a global giant with over 250,000 employees, renowned for incredible R&D and world-changing inventions (like the compact cassette and the CD).
However, the company was heavily bureaucratic, bleeding money, and entirely unable to translate its technological brilliant ideas into robust financial profits. Timmer became famous for his direct, emotional, and uncompromising communication style. He famously declared that "the bleeding" had to stop, breaking the traditional, comfortable "family culture" of Philips to force accountability.
The time I interviewed him for General Magic, Timmer, recognizing that Philips could not compete with emerging Silicon Valley and Asian tech giants, invested in a startup company with a visionary technology that became the iPhone.
The woman speaking is Joanna Hoffman is a legendary figure in Silicon Valley history, most famous for being one of the original, pioneering members of both the Apple Macintosh team in the early 1980s and later, the visionary startup General Magic in the 1990s.
She is known for her fierce intellect, data-driven pragmatism, and formidable personality, she was often the only person who could successfully stand up to Steve Jobs and ground his intense "reality distortion field" with hard facts.I worked with her during my time working at General Magic where she was Vice President of Marketing
General Magic was an incredibly ambitious Apple spin-off founded by Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson. In the early 1990s, they were attempting to build the "Magic Link" technology—which was essentially the conceptual blueprint for the modern smartphone, mobile apps, and e-commerce, decades before the technology infrastructure was ready to support it.
Just as she had at Apple, she brought crucial discipline to a team composed of brilliant, eccentric engineers who wanted to pack endless features into the device. She focused intensely on trying to make this radically futuristic concept understandable and marketable to the public. She helped secure massive partnerships and investments from global tech and telecom giants (including Sony, Motorola, AT&T, and Philips) to back General Magic's vision.
You can see the whole film here. youtu.be/uiFV6BXTr98
I made this launch video back in 1993 to launch the incredible vision and technology developed by General Magic and supported by 6 of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Oddly, although the company failed, as the vision video, it is still superb.
Speaking at the front of this video is Jan Timmer, who was the President and CEO of Philips Electronics from 1990 to 1996. He was legendary in business history as the blunt, hard-charging executive who saved Philips from the brink of total financial collapse and bankruptcy.
By 1992, Philips was a global giant with over 250,000 employees, renowned for incredible R&D and world-changing inventions (like the compact cassette and the CD).
However, the company was heavily bureaucratic, bleeding money, and entirely unable to translate its technological brilliant ideas into robust financial profits. Timmer became famous for his direct, emotional, and uncompromising communication style. He famously declared that "the bleeding" had to stop, breaking the traditional, comfortable "family culture" of Philips to force accountability.
The time I interviewed him for General Magic, Timmer, recognizing that Philips could not compete with emerging Silicon Valley and Asian tech giants, invested in a startup company with a visionary technology that became the iPhone.
The woman speaking is Joanna Hoffman is a legendary figure in Silicon Valley history, most famous for being one of the original, pioneering members of both the Apple Macintosh team in the early 1980s and later, the visionary startup General Magic in the 1990s.
She is known for her fierce intellect, data-driven pragmatism, and formidable personality, she was often the only person who could successfully stand up to Steve Jobs and ground his intense "reality distortion field" with hard facts.I worked with her during my time working at General Magic where she was Vice President of Marketing
General Magic was an incredibly ambitious Apple spin-off founded by Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson. In the early 1990s, they were attempting to build the "Magic Link" technology—which was essentially the conceptual blueprint for the modern smartphone, mobile apps, and e-commerce, decades before the technology infrastructure was ready to support it.
Just as she had at Apple, she brought crucial discipline to a team composed of brilliant, eccentric engineers who wanted to pack endless features into the device. She focused intensely on trying to make this radically futuristic concept understandable and marketable to the public. She helped secure massive partnerships and investments from global tech and telecom giants (including Sony, Motorola, AT&T, and Philips) to back General Magic's vision.
