Ep. 4 | One of Tech’s OGs on Why AI Feels Like Magic | Andy Hertzfeld

General Magic & The Soul of Tech · Jul 28, 2026 · 46m · transcript

Andy Hertzfeld wrote much of the original Macintosh operating system, co-founded General Magic, later worked at Google, and created Folklore.org, the definitive oral history of early Apple. In this 46-minute audio edit, he opens up more candidly than ever about why using AI coding tools and AI music generation feels, in his words, “thrilling” and “like magic” — the same joy he felt writing code as a teenager — while also delivering a clear-eyed reckoning with what went wrong at General Magic, how Apple’s Newton team secretly raced to beat them to market, why he thinks the AI industry “is…