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Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

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Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#91

Post by tmh79 »

dylan604 wrote: post #77
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a twitter video that comically showed their marketing demo of the whale and then the real life example of the product (with related music). It appears to have been scrubbed from the internet though because I was trying to find it a while back to show someone and I searched for a while, but couldn't find anything. Magic Leap seems like a case study of how not to release a product, but maybe they were more fo…

Magic Leap reminds me of Theranos. The companies with vaporware seem to have very similar playbooks that are pretty obvious with how in your face they are while never actually showing the product.

I have some VC friends tangentially related to the deal. Apparently the original demo was wild, like real magic bonkers. Everyone who tried became a believer. The projected light streams onto the user's eyes so instead of seeing an image overlayed in an intermediate layer as in most AR, the image was projected onto your retinas through this very advanced technology and optics. The issue is that the advanced technology demo used an entire room of computers and sensors for a single user, and it didn't allow the user to move around at all, just sit in a chair and have this thing projected onto your eyes. The goal was to scale this working crazy but impractacle thing into a consumer experience but they just weren't able to, so they pivoted to being another "smart glass" maker. Their tech and patents still actually work, they just aren't able to make a product out of it.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#92

Post by bumblebee4 »

Haven't they learned from General Magic [1]?

>“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” [2]

If you call your company magic then the product most likely is not just at the brink of your understanding but so far out that it is impossible to close the gap by hard work alone.

Steve Jobs mentioned in a very early interview somewhere that he wants to build a computer for everybody. He waited years and decades patiently until every duck was in line and he could launch the iPhone.

This thought doesn't lead to a meaningful point. I am just wondering why he and Apple (e.g. the A7[3]) got the timing right several times but many others push too soon or wait too long.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/547452-magic-s-just-science...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704954

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#93

Post by Aeolun »

ryandrake wrote: post #62
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a twitter video that comically showed their marketing demo of the whale and then the real life example of the product (with related music). It appears to have been scrubbed from the internet though because I was trying to find it a while back to show someone and I searched for a while, but couldn't find anything. Magic Leap seems like a case study of how not to release a product, but maybe they were more fo…

Yet everyone was so optimistic and believed the hype. And it happens again and again! Whenever some early stage company/product gets some traction on HN that looks like hype-ware, the default reaction always seems to be excitement and optimism, rather than doubt and skepticism. Nobody's learned from Theranos. It's like we all adhere to that X-files poster "I WANT TO BELIEVE" over and over.

I don’t think this was ever the case for Magic Leap. All threads were always full of ‘I think this is waaaay too much funding for something we haven’t even seem yet’.

I’m just confused how the press and investors were misled in such a miraculous way.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#94

Post by jandrese »

keenmaster wrote: post #72

Magic Leap is proof that first mover advantage is fictional (or at least it's not an iron law that guarantees success). They spent large sums of money to put out the least half-baked AR product on the market. They would be in better shape now if they hadn't grown so fast. That being said, AR truly is the future. In a few years there will be multiple digital universes overlaid onto our world. Magic Leap should be comm…

First mover is an advantage, but it can't overcome the problem of releasing a product before its underlying technology is ready. It's not first mover so much as the company that moves at just the right time.

Magic Leap smells a bit like the Apple Newton. Too far ahead of its time to be a market success, even with so much effort behind it.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#95

Post by munk-a »

soared wrote: post #45
munk-a wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory a lot of this funding should've been spent securing sales so they wouldn't be producing the items on a bespoke scale but instead would've been able to get the cost per unit down. I'm sort of amazed at the funding this has received when it seems to be performing like an underwhelming kickstarter.

Securing sales for an alpha prototype?

Yea honestly - that's the only way to do it when you're going out on a limb like this. That's why business often prefer more conservative incremental changes. These folks took a giant risk making such a drastic tech leap and they just need to reap what they've sown. They're selling units to the public so we're out of alpha, they're trying to pawn off alpha units as a finished product, or they really don't know what they're doing. Either way signs aren't great.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#96

Post by gonehome »

ryandrake wrote: post #62
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a twitter video that comically showed their marketing demo of the whale and then the real life example of the product (with related music). It appears to have been scrubbed from the internet though because I was trying to find it a while back to show someone and I searched for a while, but couldn't find anything. Magic Leap seems like a case study of how not to release a product, but maybe they were more fo…

Yet everyone was so optimistic and believed the hype. And it happens again and again! Whenever some early stage company/product gets some traction on HN that looks like hype-ware, the default reaction always seems to be excitement and optimism, rather than doubt and skepticism. Nobody's learned from Theranos. It's like we all adhere to that X-files poster "I WANT TO BELIEVE" over and over.

I think this is generally a good thing about Silicon Valley culture.

It’s the reason you get successes like Tesla or SpaceX and it’s generally good to bias towards optimism over pessimism - you get more people able to try more things and successes that have exponential returns make up for the failures.

Otherwise you get stagnation which ends poorly for everyone.

That said, optimism still requires a plan that makes sense and shipping a real product.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#97

Post by jandrese »

criddell wrote: post #80
keenmaster wrote: post #72

Magic Leap is proof that first mover advantage is fictional (or at least it's not an iron law that guarantees success). They spent large sums of money to put out the least half-baked AR product on the market. They would be in better shape now if they hadn't grown so fast. That being said, AR truly is the future. In a few years there will be multiple digital universes overlaid onto our world. Magic Leap should be comm…

> In a few years there will be multiple digital universes overlaid onto our world. I think applications like HUD displays on car windshields is an obvious place where it will be big for regular consumers. There are a bunch of interesting applications for commercial use too. Other than that, I have a hard time seeing much interest in regular people until they can eliminate the need for glasses or goggles.

> eliminate the need for glasses or goggles

What is the other option? Implanting projectors in our eyeballs? Having some drone flying in front of your face that projects stuff right onto your eyeballs?

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#99

Post by simias »

daenz wrote: post #12

The thing that got me about the Magic Leap is I couldn't find a reliable video of what it looked like through the lenses. Everything was clearly a CGI overlay or recreation. Reviewers claimed they were prohibited from showing video through the lenses.[0] I can understand not wanting their product misrepresented, but all the secrecy and censorship about it makes me believe it is bad, and I'm not going to spend money o…

I'm torn on this, on one hand it's a bit shady, on the other I get why they're doing it. The only impressive bit about this piece of hardware is to actually experience virtual 3D objects projected onto the real world. If you capture a 2D video of this through the lens you're effectively left with very mediocre 3D models in a darkened environment. There's simply no way it can look good without cheating. It'll look like VR but worse.

Re: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses

#100

Post by chadash »

I was very skeptical about this company, but I actually got to demo the technology a few nights ago, and I have to say my mind was blown. There are definitely a lot of kinks to work out, but I would say that the experience was not too far off from the whale video they used to have on their homepage, probably better. In the demo I saw, you are immersed in a sort of coral reef, but it's all within the confines of your living room. It basically looks like you're living room has turned into a fish tank. It feels real enough that I wanted to reach out and touch the fish swimming around in front of me. Yes, it wasn't perfect at mapping the room, but the technology was much more impressive than I imagined. And the fact that it is augmented reality rather than virtual reality made things much more interesting, because you're interacting with the real world and the virtual world at the same time.
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