It often seems that some of the magic has gone out of Apple in the last few years, what with the new machines offering few innovative features and the managerial musical chairs. Some have blamed John Sculley for this-by ousting Steve Jobs, they feel, he removed Apple's lifeblood. However, Jobs was not the only creative genius at Apple, and several of the others have just formed a new company funded in part by Apple. Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat founded General Magic Inc. with Apple as a minority investor and the new company's largest corporate shareholder. Perhaps in return for the investment, Apple has the first non-exclusive license to manufacture and market General Magic's technologies and products. Another tie to Apple will be Apple CEO John Sculley's presence on General Magic's board of directors.

The company's first order of business will be to design and develop a new class of "Personal Intelligent Communicator" products. The sort of project General Magic will work on is the sort of thing that Apple doesn't wish to concentrate its own resources on, although there will certainly be give and take between the two. We at TidBITS are particularly interested in forms of electronic information exchange and are looking forward to seeing what General Magic will develop. Who knows, perhaps General Magic will come up with some tools for manipulating and archiving text, tools that will be similar to those available in the next version of TidBITS.

Apple Computer Inc. -- 408/974-2202

Information from:
David Fry -- fry@brauer.harvard.edu
Christopher Escher -- Apple Computer