Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 449 posts

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#221

Post by jkestner »

mumblemumble wrote: post #96
cmelbye wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.

It seems a bit like the home console version of the Neo Geo to me. Once upon a time, I'd gladly shove large numbers of quarters into Neo Geo arcade cabinets. But when they stuck the hardware into a consumer model, with its huge price tag, my thought was, "If a rich friend bought one, I would enjoy playing with it at their house." I suspect that the big difference here is, this being 1990, SNK didn't have nearly as mu…

I had that rich friend with the Neo Geo.

Yeah, I wonder if Magic Leap had started small and luxury, installing that Beast contraption with the undiluted experience to rich people, it could've grown more like Tesla. Of course, the Roadster ran on all the same roads, while whole new experiences have to be created for AR, but make a few great ones and it'll be like having a bowling lane in your house—you don't play with it except to show off to visitors. (Oh, League Bowling was the one game I remember playing on my friend's Neo Geo. He wasn't bowling-lane rich.)

Or Magic Leap could've licensed some Virtual Boy games.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#223

Post by chris_wot »

nsxwolf wrote: post #167
vikramkr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're toys that a lot of people use as their primary methods of transport, along with other micro mobility solutions like electric scooters amd good old fashioned bikes. In a way, the future took the path of least resistance and redesigned micromobility around cities instead. And we might still end up redesigning cities around some of those options The segways itself doesnt make much sense to me though. I dont reme…

It let you stand up, and it wouldn't fall over.

Unless your last name is Bush.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#224

Post by jkestner »

jjeaff wrote: post #196
wpietri wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust Evans at all, but I'm going to partially defend that here. There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time you use it and then not mattering at all. E.g., the Segway was going to revolutionize transport. The 3D space is particularly prone to this. I count at least 5 waves of 3D innovation going back to the Great Exhibition in 1851. 3D movies were going to revolutionize thing…

While I agree with your point, did anyone except the inventor and the marketing team think Segway was going to revolutionize anything? I seem to remember all the revolution talk coming from Segway people before they had even unveiled the thing. It was just a big hyped secret that would "revolutionize" the world. I remember being extremely underwhelmed when they unveiled it. It seemed like one of those things that had…

Definitely not Jobs and Bezos. Jobs said what you say from a different angle—if this thing is revolutionary, why does it look so banal? Bezos pointed out the basic flaw that bedevils personal transportation to this day—will you be allowed to ride it? Guess that's what they mean by 'revolutionary'—you'd have to throw a bunch of established systems out the window to take over.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/steve-jobs-and-jeff-bezos-meet...

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#225

Post by gonehome »

edmundsauto wrote: post #219
dtnewman wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to demo their consumer product and it really is pretty cool. Perfect? Far from it. But it's good enough that you put it on and say "wow" for the next 15 minutes. In the demo I saw, you get immersed into a coral reef and walk around. It's very cool, but I'm not gonna buy a unit just for that. So you need lots of content before it makes sense to buy one of these things, and then you have a chicken and egg problem…

Have you tried one of the other VR systems? If so, could you comment on how the experience compared?

I'm not the person you're asking, but imagine looking through dark sunglasses through a little window at a faded image sitting on the table in front of you.

For me the illusion of it sitting on the table didn't even feel like it was really on the table because of how dark the glasses were and how faded the image was.

VR was like being in a different place with a real sense of perspective and your hands in VR felt like a part of you. Sure it was low resolution, moving was strange, and the sides were letter boxed a bit but it was an impressive thing.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#226

Post by mikestew »

braythwayt wrote: post #178
CharlesW wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple had AT LEAST four kicks at the can with mobile devices. Another interesting Apple mobile device "kick": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Rokr

Oh Gawd, I remember that. I believe that Apple never had any intention of making that successful, and were planning on backstabbing Motorola no matter how the Rokr turned out.

"Planning"? Apple released the iPod Nano the same day the Rockr was announced. Mid-level candy bar phone with not much capacity to store said "tunes", or a cute little music player with 2-4 times what the Rockr would hold? The Rockr seemed to me to be one of those products that was only released because of inertia. Or released because Apple blind-sided Motorola with that announcement and, "well, the ad spend is already spent, so..."

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#227

Post by Jerry2 »

CharlesW wrote: post #176
braythwayt wrote: post #165

A little perpendicular to the subject, but this kind of thing always brings my mind back to iPhone. Apple had AT LEAST four kicks at the can with mobile devices. They had the "Knowledge Navigator" vaporware in 1987, twenty years before iPhone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_navigator They started working on realizing the KN concept in 1987, and shipped Newton in 1993, fourteen years before iPhone. Alas, the…

> Apple had AT LEAST four kicks at the can with mobile devices. Another interesting Apple mobile device "kick": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Rokr

Rokr had nothing to do with Apple. Motorola just licensed iTunes compatibility. That was not Apple's device.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#228

Post by whoisjuan »

chadlavi wrote: post #78

Magic Leap is like the story of overhyped, over-priced tech vaporware investments in the 2010s all embodied in one company.

The Magic Leap device at least worked and had a wow factor even though it didn't have a market fit. I prefer Juicero. That's really a prime example of overhyped and overpriced tech investments.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#229

Post by SSchick »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #7

Jesus Christ. I personally know two people that started working there right around when the lockdowns were starting to get put in place. They've probably been there less than a month.

Yup, friend of mine started working there about 2 months ago. He was meant to move to work at their offices but then corona happened, now he has to deal with half his team being purged while working remotely and let's not talk about his morale right now.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#230

Post by moron4hire »

gonehome wrote: post #210
moron4hire wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really crazy about that video--while it's technically possible to make something mostly like that with current hardware[0]-- is that, if you have any experience with AR at all, you know that most of those UIs would be terrible to use. [0] The FOV is accurate, given we're looking through a narrow camera lens, but gives the wrong impression that it fills what the user could see because it fills the video frame.…

Yeah - even the fake demo use case isn't that compelling to me. This is the kind of thing that I think the real AR value will be from: https://twitter.com/st8rmi/status/1249950879807045633?s=21 Basically a meta-layer for the real world that you can interact with outside of a screen. This would let you do things like interact with a lightswitch from across the room by looking at it, get metadata about most object stat…

The hardware can do this, it's just that you can't get any funding for anything interesting. You're basically stuck with hobby apps and marketing demos developed via consultoware. The hobbiests can't afford the tech or the lack of reach and the consultoware shops have exactly zero imagination (I know, I worked at one).

I personally define VR vs AR as "who provides the context in which we are working? The app (VR), or the user (AR)". A lot of extant "AR" apps don't do anything particularly interesting with your surrounding environment.

If your AR app needs me to clear out a space in my livingroom to give you room to drop some 3D models that maybe bounce off my walls, you've not actually made an AR app, you've just made a crappy VR app instead. Facebook could release an update to the Quest any day now that auto-scans your room to set the boundary and then you'd have exactly the same experience in an occluded headset, but with twice the FOV and better input.

Post reply on HN