Everything worked by magic, nothing made any sense whatsoever.
Of course, Hollywood movies often have plots that don't make any sense, but at least they usually compensate for that by having neat action scenes or interesting and witty characters or... something else that this movie didn't have.
You say magic, I say they didn't waste limited minutes making up a technical back story. The things that worked by "magic" were all well within bounds of what an AI with access to computing power, solar power, and swarms of nanobots would accomplish, sure seems to me.
Nick Bostrom takes on the facts, the fictions and the speculations in the movie Transcendence:
Could you upload Johnny Depp's brain? Oxford Professor on Transcendence
How soon until machine intelligence? Oxford professor on Transcendence
Would you have warning before artificial superintelligence? Oxford professor on Transcendence
Oxford professor on Transcendence: how could you get a machine intelligence?