Tim Harford
speaker
636 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2026
last heard 5d ago
Tim Harford’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · Talent, Time and Money: The Curse of General Magic · 11 Sep 2026
podcast
By the time Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, the price of memory had fallen a thousandfold since 1994.
And there was 500 times the processing power on a typical microprocessor.
There was Wi-Fi.
There were 3G phone networks.
The web had things on it.
Google, Amazon, news websites.
It wasn't General Magic's fault that the world had yet to catch up with Mark Peratt's imagination.
Just as it wasn't Clive Sinclair's fault that when he launched his aerodynamic bathtub in 1985, it didn't perform like an electric sports car does today.
Just because you can imagine the idea, it doesn't mean that you or anyone else can build it.
That's as true for the pocket crystal as it was for the C5.
Some ideas have to wait for their time.
One technology commentator explained on the documentary General Magic that I think there's actually nothing General Magic could have done to succeed because they were at the wrong time.
That sounds plausible, but he's wrong.
General magic could still have triumphed if it hadn't been for one surprising problem.
We'll find out what that problem was after the break.
In his book Inside the Box, David Epstein argues that general magic was operating under a surprising disadvantage.
They simply had no constraints.
Some of the best hardware and software engineers in the world were working there, along with superb designers and marketing experts, all led by the charismatic prophet Mark Peratt.
They had money, lots of money.
Apple had invested from the start.
Showing 481–500 of 636 · page 25 of 32
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