A little off topic and maybe a dumb question but why does a consumer products company that hasn't shipped a product yet and isn't selling anything have offices in 4 cities around the world? Like what are Magic Leap employees doing in New Zealand when HQ is in Florida?
Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
351–360 of 449 posts
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the Oculus Quest is mainstream. It's relatively cheap. Easy to use. Completely standalone. And most importantly it has at least one game that it's actually worth buying it for (Beatsabre). Nothing on the Hololens made me think "yeah I want to do that again".
Oculus Quest sold something like 200k units... That's small potatoes and I wouldn't classify Quest or VR as 'mainstream'.
Quest has had serious supply chain problems since early November. They were unavailable for the entire month of December.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#353Magic 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 they just never had a great product. Look at VR, even though the products are becoming really good, it is not hitting mainstream and this is even more niche. The startup cost is enormous, it is really hard to create good content and there is close to zero revenue since there are few users. And the users that does exist is the techie crowd that doesn't like to pay for anything.
> I think they just never had a great product
Bingo. If the product works as advertised I could justify the cost just in replacing existing screens, I could have a dozen virtual terminals floating around, I could replace my large TV, etc. All with zero new content required.
The problem is it doesn't seem to work as advertised.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#354Magic 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 want augmented reality for communication and for board gaming please. Someone focus on having cool Augment Reality chat where I can walk with a friend or family member and see them right next to me. I also would like to play board games with my friends who no longer live close. Also if I was playing a game and they could be virtually sitting next to me so that we could communicate better that would also be great.
I play board games using Tabletop Simulator on Steam with my buddies due to the pandemic, one of them uses an Oculus headset and he really likes it. We can't see each other's faces though.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#355Magic 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…
Was the Magic Leap naming intentional? I had always thought that that name carried the message in the clearest possible way. Were people not aware of that???
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they just never had a great product. Look at VR, even though the products are becoming really good, it is not hitting mainstream and this is even more niche. The startup cost is enormous, it is really hard to create good content and there is close to zero revenue since there are few users. And the users that does exist is the techie crowd that doesn't like to pay for anything.
Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware.
> Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware.
Technies will pay for hardware like the iPhone, that gets you laid. Not AR/VR, which makes you look like a dork and makes you seasick.
FTFY.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but I also want to say it's often more complicated then this. Like, the Apple Watch example seems easy, but what happened to FitBit? FitBit went all in on your idea. Picked a single use case with a market, delivered on it. Yet Apple swooped in, took the market from them. Why is that? This is an open question, I don't claim to have the answer. It just seems that in this case, Apple was promising, as…
Also curious is the case of Pebble. Great product, priced right, small set of customers who swore by it, did one thing really really well. Now its dead.
I still use my pebble everyday, I prefer it over new watches. Sad to see them go
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their tech is actually pretty decent. It's as good as anything else on the market. Their biggest mistake has been setting sky high expectations and just not coming close. If you got a cold demo of Magic Leap you'd probably be blown away. If you watch their simulated demo from however many years ago, then try on the headset you'll be sorely disappointed.
> It's as good as anything else on the market. I've owned and extensively tested nearly every AR device that's been on the market in the last 10 years. I can conclusively say: the Magic Leap is garbage for anything more than short-term entertainment. Between the extremely dim visuals, the horrible rainbow effects on every bit of text you display, and the awful resolution, it's not just bad for anything other than gam…
So question : if MLeap had delivered on the whole light field display concept close enough to the original prototype; but the hmd was a motorcycle helmet, then how would you feal about it?
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#359Magic 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…
...because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts
This is easy to assume but a far more common reason companies go broad is that it makes it much easier to sell big vision and big dreams.
Most investors in magicleap probably wouldn’t have invested if the pitch was “right now we are focused 100% on a product that serves $INDUSTRY_X well before moving to $INDUSTRY_Y”
In fact, many investors wouldn’t even have taken the pitch, let alone writing a check
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#360Magic 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…
Or to put it another way: geeks fall in love with capability, but everyone else wants utility.