The History of Sony's Magic Link

The Revolutionary Precursor to Our Always-On World

Once again, in the early 1990s, Sony ventured into uncharted territory. Before smartphones and Wi-Fi, long before we had the world in our pockets, there was the Sony Magic Link. This device was the result of a partnership between Sony and top Silicon Valley talent, rooted in Apple, aiming to build a window into the connected future—far ahead of the infrastructure or culture ready to support it.

The relationship between Apple and Sony goes back to the early '80s when Akio Morita, Sony’s co-founder, and Steve Jobs formed a friendship over their shared admiration for innovation and design. During this time, Jobs and Apple’s CEO John Sculley visited Sony several times to explore potential collaborations and to gain insights into Sony's approach to consumer electronics. These visits created mutual respect between the two companies and fueled discussions about future partnerships.

But it wasn’t until the early 1990s, several years after Jobs' highly publicized departure from Apple, that Sony …