Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by birdyrooster » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

sh87 wrote: post #320

Judgmentality wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pebble took on enormous debt expecting their market to just keep growing. They had a great product, but they thought they had the next iPhone. They bet big, and they went bankrupt (basically the acquisition cost was just to cover the cost of debt). https://qz.com/857412/pebble-went-from-kickstarter-to-being-...

If you bet big, you may lose and eat the dust. If you don't, and play cautiously, your competition will eat your market and starve you. You still eat the dust. I just don't get it.

You can only punch so far above your weight before reality comes crashing in. On the flip-side, if you are a huge company, this new market might not be worth the distraction (amongst your existing priorities). But if you are just the right size, with the correct competencies, gaining traction in the market will not only be attractive but will be something the company is actually capable of achieving. Of course companies grow and shrink in their capacity, so that is the luck of the timing.

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

#332

Post by npunt » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #323

sh87 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bet big, you may lose and eat the dust. If you don't, and play cautiously, your competition will eat your market and starve you. You still eat the dust. I just don't get it.

> I just don't get it. Nobody likes to admit it, but luck is 99% of success.

It isn't just luck. It's knowing what markets to enter and what markets to avoid. Pebble entered a market adjacent to iPhone and where Apple was likely to move next. It wasn't Pebble's market to win, it was Apple's to lose.

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

#333

Post by blhack » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

It was too expensive. That's why it failed. This doesn't seem that complicated.

It was a really cool product. If it was $300 instead of $2300 I would have bought one.

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

#334

Post by Dork1234 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

yabatopia wrote: post #327

save_ferris wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo is a well-established company with a solid platform for its Switch that sells millions of units. They've been doing this for a little while longer tbf. I get the sense that "shifting focus" means that Magic Leap were so focused on the hardware that they didn't really think concretely about bringing a viable platform to market, or something like that. I just don't understand how a company raises that kind of…

Expanding on the Nintendo analogy: Magic Leap was/is building a killer gaming console, but with no games to play on.

Ironically enough the Switch and the ML1 use the same Nvidia processor.

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

#335

Post by fastball » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

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.

Not Theranos?

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

#336

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

alephnan wrote: post #67

> Citing COVID-19, CEO Rony Abovitz wrote in a blog post that the company needed to shift focus Right... because of Covid-19. As a counter example, Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch is doing phenomenal right now, in part due to Covid-19.

[deleted]

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

#337

Post by danhhieu910 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

couple of years ago when I first saw the Magic Leap, it's kind of magical to me, their tech is great and they advertised it to do big things to help the world (aquarium or 3d painting, I don't remember exactly what it was) Last year when re-visited their website and see their showcase with Spotify and NBA sport, I was very letdown. Why do I need VR app for Spotify? Why do they think it's importance to do something like that instead of make a bold product. So disappointed.

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

#338

Post by gtm1260 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

npunt wrote: post #261

Magic Leap made one of the classic mistakes that other before-their-time products make: they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts. When you're building a product without a focused use case, you are pulled in a ton of different directions. In AR, this means focusing on fidelity , embodied in high resolution, wide field of view visuals, powerful…

I think the biggest mistake that Magic Leap made is that they compromised on their hardware. Like you said, they tried to go general purpose which means low "enough" cost for devs to pick one up and build an app, for enthusiasts to try em out etc. But the thing is, they didn't have best in class hardware. I've tried one and its marginally better than a hololens 2. They could have gone all out with a vision prototype that wowed the world with its capabilities, instead they increased the field of view, slightly and made the form-factor slightly better.

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

#339

Post by kmonsen » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #323

sh87 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bet big, you may lose and eat the dust. If you don't, and play cautiously, your competition will eat your market and starve you. You still eat the dust. I just don't get it.

> I just don't get it. Nobody likes to admit it, but luck is 99% of success.

This is everywhere in life, luck is incredibly important. Everyone that is successful only see when they worked hard and were smart, not all the luck. Sure you need hard work and talent, but there are lies of people with that and no luck that fail or at least less successful.

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

#340

Post by simonh » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #279

simonh wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting link, thanks. It looks like all their acquisitions and hires, at least the ones linked there, are on the capture, interface and authoring tools side. The only actual mention of a headset were of glasses with a camera, presumably for environment scanning, but using a phone as the display. I really could be wrong, but every time I start writing something where I hedge my bets it just doesn’t feel right. My…

They are absolutely building a headset. They acquired Akonia Holographics in 2018 who specialise in holographics for an AR headset. And they already have many patents: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/11/apple-w...

The link up thread shows patents going back 10 years on headset ideas but still no product, they could work on it another 10 years and it still go nowhere. They look at all sorts of things and patented all sorts of crazy ideas for much longer that but also went absolutely nowhere.

The only real indication is Akonia, that is interesting, but they have 200 patents on display technology. Any of that stuff could be useful in other applications. So I’ll stick to my guns.