Sony Magic Link

Released:	September 1994
Price:	US$999.95
Size:	1.5 x 5.5 x 7.5 inches / 40 x 140 x 200 mm
Weight:	1.2 pounds / 550 grams
CPU:	Motorola "Dragon" 68349 @ 16MHz
Memory:	4MB ROM, 1MB RAM
Display:	480 x 320 "reflective" LCD, 4 grey levels
Comms:	2400-bps data / 9600-bps fax send modem 38.4-kbps Infrared "beam"
Ports:	Magic Port (high-speed serial) TeleCom headset RJ-11 telephone
Storage:	Battery-backed RAM optional PCMCIA SRAM card
Power:	Six AAA batteries, AC charger optional rechargeable lithium-ion battery
OS:	"Magic Cap" by General Magic

The Sony Magic Link (model PIC-1000) was released in Sep 1994 for $999.95. It is a small handheld computer designed for personal communications. Its intended applications were paging, voice calls, faxing, light e-mail, simple financial work, and on-line browsing and shopping.

The "PIC" stands for "Personal Intelligent Communicator". These small devices were eventually referred to as PDAs, or "Personal Digital Assistants", but that term was originally coined by Apple's then-CEO John Sculley, in referrence to their own Newton MessagePad.

The Magic Link feels good in the hand, with a nice form factor, and a rubber-coated body. You interact with Magic Link by writing on its touch-sensitive screen using the included plastic "dumb" stylus, or just your finger, but handwriting recognition is not supported.

The numerous built-in applications include:

Clock - Check the time in any city around the world.

Messages (e-mail) - Send and receive messages to/from anyone in the world.

PenCell Spreadsheet - Compute, organize, analyze, and store data in tabular form.

Notebook - Type, write, or draw short notes - send them via fax or e-mail to other contacts.

Name Cards - Address book with name and contact numbers of people, businesses, and services.

Calendar - Schedule a meeting, and then automatically create a message inviting all the participants

Calculator - Complete with simulated paper tape - balance your checkbook, or compute the tip at the cafe.

Telecard - Send a multimedia message, including graphics, animation, and sound, to other Magic Link users.

Phone - Dial telephone numbers manually or straight from the Address Book. Need optional headset to talk to other party.

Datebook - Dates and appointments of important events - can send notification to other Magic Link users.

Fax (send only) - Transmit text and/or images to a telephone-connected FAX machine or computer.

Pocket Quicken - Keep your personal and business finances organized while on the go.

AV Remote Commander - Control Sony audio-video equipment using built-in IR emitter.

AT&T PersonaLink Services - Dial-up service for e-mail, news, shopping, and more.

America Online mail client - Dial-up service for e-mail only.

The Sony Magic Link is based on the Magic Cap (Communicating Applications Platform) operating system, produced by General Magic - a secretive Silicon Valley startup created in 1990, with the intent of bringing a personal communications operating system to market. It's roster included talented ex-Apple engineers, many of whom had worked on the original Macintosh computer. Marc Porat, the president, previously worked at Apple before spinning General Magic off from the internal Apple "Paradigm" research project.

"There's General Electric, there's General Motors, now there's General Magic. We'll become a household name" they said. After all, Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once stated that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Actually, at the time, General Magic was a big deal, there was even a documentary made about it. If you watch it closely, you'll see "Bowser" the rabbit mascot, who apparently roamed freely about the offices and left "presents" for the employees everywhere he went.

Some of the world's largest electronics corporations, including Sony, Motorola, Matsushita, Philips and AT&T Corporation were partners and investors in General Magic. Eventually, a so-called "General Magic Alliance" included 16 big-name global telecommunications and consumer electronics companies, including Cable & Wireless, France Telecom, NTT, Northern Telecom, Toshiba, Oki, Sanyo, Mitsubishi, and Fujitsu. Each of the so-called "Founding Partners" invested $6 million in the company and named a senior executive to the company's "Founding Partner's Council."

General Magic had two main products - the Magic Cap operating system, and the Telescript programming language.

The Magic Cap user interface (UI) is the king of skeuomorphic design - a familiar "desktop" metaphor, using icons such as card files, datebooks, telephones, notepads, fIle cabinets and in/out boxes. "Hallways" with different rooms and "downtown" areas provide access to a variety of additional functions, features and services.

For example, to log into AOL:
1. From the Desk, Tap Hallway.
2. In the Hallway, Tap Downtown.
3. Tap the right arrow to move down the street to the America Online building.
4. Tap the AOL building to enter.

Easter Egg: To start a parade, Go downtown, make a coupon with the text "parade" (option-kbd) and drop it on downtown.

Gerenal Magic's other main product, Telescript, was a very ambitious programming language which would allow mobile devices to interact with services on a network. Telescript programs, or "agents", are small bits of code that travel across a network and execute themselves on remote computers, automatically performing tasks such as making a purchase, or filtering news feeds on behalf of the user - they will pick and choose information and negotiate on the users behalf.

Your device wouldn't just send data, but would send an entire program up to a server that could then run it and perform different tasks. Companies would run groups of servers that could do this, and they referred to it as "the cloud". This all started before the internet existed, of course.

For connectivity, the Magic Link only supported the AT&T PersonaLink and America Online (AOL) e-mail, both of which are telephone land-line dial-up, subscription-based services. The idea was to connected your Magic Link to the telephone line, dial-up the to AT&T PersonaLink service to automatically upload and download your email messages, weather alerts, stock quotes, etc. AT&T PersonaLink was designed around intelligent mobile agents, especially for the Magic Link. It cost $10/month for unlimited use, with faxes 50 cents per page. Remember, there was no internet or Wifi at this point in time.

Utilizing the built-in PCMCIA slot, an additional 1MB of data storage can be added using the Sony SRAM memory card.

Unfortunately the tech just wasn't there in the 1990s to realize the full vision of General Magic. Complaints about the Magic Link included that it is somewhat under-powered, making the multitasking operating system sluggish, the 2400-bps modem is too slow, and the non-backlit LCD screen can be hard to read. Out of the box, it connects only to PersonaLink and America Online.

General Magic's Andy Hertzfeld said "We were hoping to sell a hundred thousand of the first Sony devices, but they only sold like fifteen thousand."

=========== Magic Link PIC-2000 ===========
Sony released an improved version of the Magic Link, the model PIC-2000, in January 1996, for $899. The original PIC-1000 was now just $399.

The new PIC-2000 improvements include a back-lit screen, allowing Magic Link use in poor lighting, an additional PCMCIA slot, twice as much internal RAM memory, and a faster internal telephone modem. The PIC-2000 is a little thicker, and gone is the rubber-coating - the body is now hard plastic.

Available options include:

optional keyboard - $130

telephone headset - $80

PICP-P1 pager PCMCIA card - $250, with Skytel subscription additional cost

NP-F530 rechargeable lithium ion battery - $70

1MB "Crucial" PCMCIA SRAM card - $220

PC connect cable/software - $100

printer cable - $150

Instead of plugging into the slow and finicky phone line, you could purchase the optional $250 PCMCIA "pager card" to wirelessly receive (but not send) SkyTel numeric and alphanumeric wireless messages and forwarded PersonaLink E-mail.

Even better, Sony advertised on their website the $350 "Wireless Modem Link Bundle" software, modem card, and cable to connect the Magic Link PIC-2000 to your personal cellphone for truly remote, wireless two-way data communications.

That same year, AT&T shutdown the PersonaLink network in August 1996, transitioning their (only 10,000) subscribers to the internet instead. This was also the end of the Telescript "intelligent agents", as PersonaLink was the only service that supported them, and then just barely at that.

Actually, while the Telescript "agents" sound intriguing, a Sony engineer from GoodOldBits who was familiar with the project stated "The situation where the network itself is dynamically programmable and you don't know what scripts will come was unacceptable for AT&T, and Telescipt wasn't installed on the actual Smart Messaging Service "AT&T PersonaLink" server. When I implemented the Telescript interpreter on the server experimentally, it was said that the server resources were exhausted just by starting 500 Telescript agent scripts that did nothing."

Similar to the Sony Magic Link models PIC-1000 and PIC-2000, there is also the Motorola Envoy models 100 and 150, similar products which also ran the Magic Cap UI, but with a built-in 4800 bps wireless send/receive two-way packet modem, to communicate using the existing ARDIS nationwide wireless data communications network.

=========== Data Rover 840 ===========
Sony never released an improved version past the PIC-2000, but General Magic, who developed the Magic Cap operating system, wasn't finished, so in December 1997, they released their own hardware system - the Data Rover 840. The new "840" costs $1,095, and is specifically directed at vertical markets such as healthcare, utilities, and transportation.

Although it has a slightly smaller screen, the new DataRover 840 hardware improvements are noteworthy, including a smaller form factor, a faster central processor (MIPS R3000), twice as much memory, and a faster 19.2kbs data modem with 9600 baud FAX send and receive capability (earler models could send a FAX, but not receive).

The 840 also now includes the lastest version 3.1 of their Magic Cap operating system, which is much faster and more refined than the original, now including a "web browser" to access the newly available internet. It has more options to send and receive e-mail and faxes, as well as access the Internet and intranets, via Cellular Digital Packet Data, Ricochet, Ardis, analog cellular, and wireless ethernet connections.

	Magic Link PIC-1000	Magic Link PIC-2000	DataRover 840
Operating System	Magic Cap 1.0	Magic Cap 1.5	Magic Cap 3.1
Internal memory	4MB ROM, 1 MB RAM	4MB ROM, 2 MB RAM	8MB ROM, 4MB RAM
Internal modem	2400 kbps data, 9600 fax	14.4 kbps data, 14.4 kbps fax	19.2 kbps data, 9600 kbps fax
PCMCIA slots	One type II slot	Two type II slots

In October 29, 1998, General Magic decided to refocus on network services, and spins off its handheld computer division as an independent company called DataRover Mobile Systems.

In late 1998, DataRover Mobile Systems announced to the press that the

Norfolk, Va. Parking Service had begun using 13 DataRover 840s to automate parking ticket writing,

and

Fitne in Athens, Ohio, had deployed 200 systems for 25 nursing schools to let student nurses document treatment for homebound patients and communicate with their teachers.

-That's a total of 213 units - not exactly what I would call exciting news.

Like its predecessor the Sony Magic Link, the DataRover 840 was not a success. A handheld computer in this format was just not something that people thought that they wanted. These early PDAs were always too limited, with poor displays, no matter what the price.

General Magic themselves went under in 2002.

In 1995, "Home Office Computing" magazine wrote "No computer product category has been more ridiculed than the PDA".


Related Links
PIC-1000 User's Guide (pdf) Magic Cap Discussion List Archives Magic Cap LISTSERV Archives from listserv.brown.edu BYTE December 1994 (page 27) PIC-2000 User's Guide (pdf) Steve and his Sony Magic Link! from www.geeksrus.com archive Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II from www.wired.com DataRover 840 User's Guide (pdf) from Buxton Collection DataRover 840 review from pencomputing.com archive Magic Cap resources from joshcarter.com "General Magic" from www.fastcompany.com How a Startup failed to dominate the PDA Market from Rare & Old Computers General Magic tried to invent a smartphone in the 1990s. This is why it failed. from www.vox.com What Happened to General Magic? from slidebean.com What Happened to General Magic? from nymag.com "Diary of a Disaster" from fadell.com archive

Return to the Obsolete Technology Homepage

Related Links