Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

Post by gfxgirl » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

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…

Post by chipperyman573 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

kmonsen wrote: post #341

adventured wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily one of the most successful consumer products in history. Nearly half a billion iPads have been sold since 2010, with around $300 billion in sales in those ten years. In electronics & tech, the good scale comparisons are few, things like the iPhone, Mac, Windows, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox. To put that $300b into better context, that's equivalent to the total sales of Windows throughout its entire 30 year hist…

For me what makes the iPad such a hit is that it can’t be copied apparently. There are phones that are in some ways more successful than iPhone but for tablets there is more or less just the iPad.

Post by gfodor » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:19 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…

Post by istorical » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

egd wrote: post #343

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…

The basic problem is that without high fidelity & a wide FOV, there's nothing that sets MagicLeap apart from any of the other companies that have been able to create AR headsets for the last ~decade. AR right now is stuck because the display technologies aren't up to the task. The "Waveguide" approach has always fallen short - nobody's ever been able to make the viewing angle wide enough to be worthwhile, and the "pa…

Post by pfraze » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

Crespyl wrote: post #317

didibus wrote: post #313

Earlier 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…

I'm probably oversimplifying, but there is some truth to the notion of Apple being as much a fashion company as they are a tech company, and smart-watches fit perfectly into that niche of fashion-tech. FitBit was a good product, but Apple had more experience and resources available when they decided to enter the space. Even so, I have no doubt there were other factors at play as well.