The iPhone That Never Was

Just think about the technology the company’s vision that can take and an idea all people. “The IPO idea,” they called it.

Imagine three founders, all ex-Apple employees, two of whom – programmers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson – were already Silicon Valley legends for their work in creating the Apple Macintosh. Atkinson’s creation included double-clicking and a drop-down menu. The third founder, Marc Porat, had a gift for foresight.

For his PhD dissertation at Stanford in 1976, Porat analyzed (in detail) a century of American labor reform and predicted a sea change in the workplace. An economy based primarily on the transformation of materials and energy—through agriculture and industry—was entering a system based on the transformation of knowledge. Computers and telephones, he observed, were reshaping all industries. Porat wrote: “We are entering a new phase of finance. On the first page of the first chapter of his article, Porat used a term that would become famous: “knowledge money.”

Porat followed this up by starring in the original PBS documentary, The Information Societyin 1980. In it, he placed the art of knowledge as disruptive on the same scale as the plow and the steam engine. He delved into the power of new technology, as well as the problems that come with privacy, excess, lies, and increasing inequality, and he showed that many Americans were unaware that the ground was shifting beneath them.

In 1988, Porat joined Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, where he used his intuitive skills in the group’s work to figure out what might be next for computers. One day, Porat took the Sharp Wizard – a new gadget that includes a calendar and phone book – and took a picture of a Motorola cell phone. He had his own idea. Soon he began to make plaster models of the phone and digital assistant. In 1989, in a big red book, he drew a visionary object that would correspond to the future he had predicted with great accuracy. They called it the Pocket Crystal. You don’t have to have seen the painting before to recognize it right away.

The Pocket Crystal display features a small glass bezel with no pop-out buttons – a touch screen. It can be a computer that combines a phone and a fax machine; you can use it to send text messages, watch movies, play video games, buy plane tickets, and download new apps. It would fit in your pocket, and it would be beautiful. Following this image, Porat wrote in his red notebook: “This should give a personal satisfaction that one can enjoy as a fine piece of jewelry.” It will have a known value even when it is not being used.

Only in 1989 15 percent of American households owned a computer, not everyone’s pocket; zero percent were browsing the internet, because it didn’t exist. And yet, there was Marc Porat, actually filming the iPhone.

The project was green, but with a warning: it was too big, even for Apple.

Early adopters talk on their phones like bricks. The Pocket Crystal would require not only unprecedented hardware and software but a network that would connect the world with new forms of digital communication.

In 1990, Porat and Apple CEO John Sculley agreed that Apple would sell the money and stay on the board, but the project would emerge as a separate company and start dating. For this new business, the founders chose a name that evoked the most respected companies in the country and the saying of the science writer, Arthur C. Clarke that “every sufficiently advanced technology is the opposite of magic.” Thus, General Magic was born.

Sculley founded three of Sony’s founders. They built their voice, and within days Sony was on board, with a price and a license. Then came Motorola, then AT&T. In no time, global telecom companies and consumer electronics giants were confirmed to join the so-called “Alliance”. Philips was next, then Sony’s rival Panasonic (then known as Matsushita). Then NTT (Japan’s largest telecom), then Toshiba, then France Telecom, and so on, each investing millions of dollars. General Magic’s partners controlled so much of the world’s business that Alliance meetings began with an antitrust lawyer listing all the topics they were prohibited from discussing. It was, as General Magic’s general counsel put it, the largest international corporate deal ever in American business.