Magic+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic+

#191

Post by jfoutz » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #166

paul wrote: post #106

A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising. I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased) For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The De…

>but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service Call me skeptical, but where exactly is the tech involved? Currently this is just text messages going to people + people doing the things. One possibility would be through AI (a bit of a weasel word most of the time, honestly), but Google and Apple…

People are fairly predictable. Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. Google pizza is a good example, but i doubt google will do pizza, dry cleaning, and travel booking all in one shot. (but they might). It seems like these folks can find a local vendor for service X, have a button on some internal software to send it out, then just leverage that for all customers in that city. presumably the oddball requests get tracked similarly. "i want an elephant" might take a while the first time, but the software should remember contacts and whatnot to make it easy if they ever get the same request.

Re: Magic+

#192

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

Archio wrote: post #162

jcrites wrote: post #71

I use Magic and they provide incredible service. They've been able to accomplish pretty much everything I've asked, including some requests that I thought were borderline outlandish, such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise (friend's favorite restaurant). If you value your time more than your money, then they're…

> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this see…

I do somewhat extravagant things like this for my wife every anniversary divisible by 5 years; I've not used magic to do it, but most nice restaurants can make something like this happen if you call and ask.

It ends up being something a few times more expensive as a night out at the restaurant, so it's not cheap, and you don't get the ambiance, but my wife is very attached to memories, so the touch of "somewhere we visited on a romantic trip" is quite nice, and more appreciated than e.g. jewelry that might be as or more expensive.

Re: Magic+

#193

Post by onethumb » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

paul wrote: post #106

A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising. I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased) For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The De…

Hey Paul, this value proposition resonates with me (especially the comparison with lawyers and accountants) and I'm the target customer... But I enthusiastically tried Magic when they first launched and it was full of fail (big promise from Magic, no delivery on a keg of beer from the East Bay). I certainly would have paid a lot for it. Skeptical that it'd be any different this time around? [Edit: typo]

Re: Magic+

#194

Post by timr » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

dcpdx wrote: post #100

This is like Tesla entering the market with a high end sports car, or Uber entering the market with only black cars. They're targeting a smaller niche of wealthy early adopters to tweak the service and revenue model and will eventually move downmarket to address a broader customer base (if they're successful with this initial niche). This is an ideal niche to start with because a) they have the money for it b) they'r…

The metaphor is faulty. Uber hasn't brought down the cost of limousine service, and it didn't make cars cheaper or more efficient to create UberX -- it just tapped into a larger market of drivers who were willing to do commodity work for less money.

You don't pay people $100 an hour for commodity work. Unless you're so rich that price doesn't matter, I guess.

Re: Magic+

#195

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:35 AM UTC

irascible wrote: post #163

Seeing this makes me feel ashamed to be a part of the tech industry. This is why people despise the 1%. Show some taste/humility/discretion. A "service" like this is so narrowly focused on the ultra rich, that it should be marketing in high end magazines/direct outreach.. not on hacker news.

I'm a developer and I bill as much as $250/hour. I could totally see paying someone $100/hour to make something happen so that I could focus on a paying task.

Problem is that most tasks likely to waste my time are things that would take longer to delegate (due to detailed instructions, needing to answer questions about needs, needing to set them up with the ability to pay bills...) than to just do myself.

Re: Magic+

#196

Post by Archio » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:35 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #188

Archio wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this see…

What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something. To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort…

Yeah, but wouldn't it be a lot more than $200? We're talking Magic's $100, however much the meal cost, plus the cost chilled overnight mail would be insane.

Re: Magic+

#197

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

cdata wrote: post #143

joslin01 wrote: post #34

Looks like the reception isn't doing too well. I remember when Magic launched here on HN and it BLEW up. I was one of the people who tried it out. I live in NYC and actually had a poor experience. The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza deli…

I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried that on two different occasions. The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The fl…

[deleted]

Re: Magic+

#198

Post by nier » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #111

cmikec wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really sorry that your initial experience with Magic last year wasn't ideal. We have come a long way since those initial days. Believe it or not, we actually did not plan that original launch -- rather, we released the website and number to a few people and it went viral practically overnight. We set up a waitlist as quickly as we could, but there definitely were some people in the beginning who did not have a go…

I just noticed something strange in the screenshot. It seems to imply that Magic will work over iMessage. As far as I know, there is no publicly available API for iMessage so I'd be curious to know how this works.

Setting up a Mac to programmatically send iMessages is trivial. I have a custom solution running that receives data over HTTPS and runs an AppleScript to send the specified text to the desired number or address via the Messages app using an iCloud account not tied to any mobile phone number.

Re: Magic+

#199

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #188

Archio wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this see…

What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something. To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort…

> What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner?

Ordering dinner from across the country overnight isn't spending $200 on a Valentine's dinner, though, it's spending $200 on leftovers.

Re: Magic+

#200

Post by mbrameld » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 1:39 AM UTC

Archio wrote: post #162

jcrites wrote: post #71

I use Magic and they provide incredible service. They've been able to accomplish pretty much everything I've asked, including some requests that I thought were borderline outlandish, such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise (friend's favorite restaurant). If you value your time more than your money, then they're…

> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this see…

You wouldn't need an extravagant income to do something like that. I just did a quick check and it costs less than $150 to overnight an 8lb package from NY to SF with 8am delivery. So the markup over just buying the meal at the restaurant is going to be less than $300 once you add refrigerated packaging and pay somebody to order it, pick it up, package it, and ship it. That's pricey if you're doing it every week, but for a special occasion that's not unimaginable for somebody even at the low end of middle class.