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

#361

Post by TwoBit » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

abacadaba wrote: post #346

npunt wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I'm asking is why they don't have a great product. Why is it bulky, weird looking, expensive, etc? Why does their marketing fail to explain the product's value? There are tons of ways to implement AR. They chose 'general AR', the kind of thing you see on Westworld or Black Mirror. That was a bad choice, because the tech isn't there and won't be for a long time, and it only follows that the implementation…

I've only used the quest for a short demo, but I have a hard time seeing what full AR gets you that a quest in camera augmented setup mode can't. What's the point of crappy half dim see-through display when you can just pipe the camera output to a normal VR screen?

Currently the cameras are low fidelity, but perhaps that will improve enough in the future.

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

#362

Post by hinkley » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

didibus wrote: post #322

hinkley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble thinking of times when I felt more demoralized as a developer than when the sales team has made promises that simply defied the laws of information theory, and then wondered why we couldn't just work harder to fix the problem. I mean, technically, capital I Innovation often comes in finding a way to do something without violating the laws of physics, but that's how company origin stories are writte…

I know that feeling, but at the same time, if Marketing makes the sales, and the customers are happy, the plan is working. And I have definitely seen cases where constraints bred creativity, and the ridiculous promises of marketing actually did force the devs to be more creative and sometimes spark some miracle, aka, some really creative and innovative approach to the problem. It also often falls flat, but that's the…

That is management's job, not Marketing. For one, there is no trust relationship that can support that sort of act, but what's the point of project management if the marketing people get to decide the roadmap not only by themselves but individually?

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

#363

Post by TwoBit » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:36 AM UTC

ajoy wrote: post #305

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…

Most people don't know this, but Nokia had hit upon a lot of these ideas before the iPhone, but didn't act on it : https://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/nokia-had-iphone-like-pro... They were an innovative company, till internal culture or complacency killed it (conjecture).

Same thing happened with Microsoft. Theirs got killed supposedly because it didn't run Windows (which of course is a bad idea for a handheld device).

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

#364

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:53 AM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #328

kmonsen wrote: post #324

Earlier 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.

Oculus Quest and its 3 year old mobile chipset would like to disagree.

People pay for a good experience.

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

#365

Post by wpietri » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:01 AM UTC

npunt wrote: post #342

kmonsen wrote: post #324

Earlier 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.

The question I'm asking is why they don't have a great product. Why is it bulky, weird looking, expensive, etc? Why does their marketing fail to explain the product's value? There are tons of ways to implement AR. They chose 'general AR', the kind of thing you see on Westworld or Black Mirror. That was a bad choice, because the tech isn't there and won't be for a long time, and it only follows that the implementation…

It was a bad choice if they wanted a successful consumer product. But I think the simplest explanation here is that the company's real product was fancy demos for investors. $2.6 billion in revenue! In operation since 2011! Thousands of jobs created!

I'd call it great choice. They wouldn't have been able to make nearly as much money on a purposeful, targeted device, because nobody's put in that much money for a narrow market. Worse, it would have been much easier for investors to figure that the more modest product would fail. Much better to sell moonbeams, to sell the glorious possibility of AR just like they saw on Westworld and Black Mirror.

I mean sure, the wheels had to come off eventually. After a while, you run out of fools. But most startups fail eventually, and you have to admit that 9 years is a great run for something that never worked, and probably never could have worked.

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

#366

Post by rburhum » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:14 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…

Not having a specific well-defined use case... Under no circumstances would I call that a “product”. I would call it “really cool tech” at best, but I can’t fathom how a “multi-billion company” can’t figure that out. Yes, this gives me obvious schadenfreude...

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

#367

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

> Citing COVID-19

That disease is going to get a whole lot of bad news laid at its feet. Basically if any company has anything bad they want to get off their chest, now is the time to do it.

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

#368

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

TwoBit wrote: post #363

ajoy wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't know this, but Nokia had hit upon a lot of these ideas before the iPhone, but didn't act on it : https://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/nokia-had-iphone-like-pro... They were an innovative company, till internal culture or complacency killed it (conjecture).

Same thing happened with Microsoft. Theirs got killed supposedly because it didn't run Windows (which of course is a bad idea for a handheld device).

I had (I think 2 different) windows phones-- something like the XV6600 [0] that actually ran some flavor of Windows Mobile OS.

I liked it. It was the first phone I had that could actually browse real websites. Badly, but it worked.

Apple succeeded not because they had features never before seen (though the capacitive touch screen was critical) but a far superior UI. The windows phone worked, but it was a pain to use.

[0] http://pocketpccentral.net/audv_xv6600.htm

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

#369

Post by kmonsen » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

npunt wrote: post #332

Judgmentality wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It isn't just luck, far from it, but it is also luck. All the skill and determination in the world might not do you any good without some luck to come with it.

Of curse getting that skill and determination in the first place is largely luck based so there is that as well.

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

#370

Post by gfxgirl » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #364

huffmsa wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware.

Oculus Quest and its 3 year old mobile chipset would like to disagree. People pay for a good experience.

The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. You can't play Half Life Alex on a Quest, nor No Man's Sky, Boneworks, SkyRim, Lone Echo, etc.... You basically get a 3 or 4 mobile class experiences and then you're done.

Yes you can use the link, but then you need an NVidia 1650 RTX or better which means you're a high end gamer already and so were not this supposed "mass market"

PSVR is still top selling VR and while cable and setup wise it's arguably the worst it at least has quality content.