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Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

techcrunch.com

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

#311

Post by alephnan »

robocat wrote: post #289
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.

Supply chain, factory production, and delivery all affect the ability to produce and supply hardware devices. Animal crossing is software, so not a fair comparison.

That suggests there is demand for what they have to sell. Surely if they stood to profit, they would build it. They still have the Magic Leap listed for sale on their website. The real issue is likely consumers don't demand their product

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

#312

Post by alephnan »

dflock wrote: post #306
vernie wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Animal Crossing run on?

The Nintendo Switch - which Nintendo has already shipped millions of units of, giving them a ready market for any software they release, even if they never ship another Switch.

Anecdotally, people procure the Nintendo Switch just to play Animal Crossing.

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

#313

Post by didibus »

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 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 opposed to FitBit, that it would bring much more use cases to the user, a smartwatch on your wrist really, that seems like it was the messaging at least.

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

#314

Post by krustyburger »

rxhernandez wrote: post #265
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go back and see the original launch of the ROKR, though, you can see Steve Jobs barely masking his disgust at what Motorola was able to come up with. IIRC the iPhone was well underway from a product dev perspective when the ROKR shipped, and he knew it was going to kill anything the phone makers could envision.

I had a ROKR. I also had several windows mobile phones. I'd find it hard to believe that Jobs thought the ROKR was what he had to compete with; from a usability perspective, the iPhone didn't come close to windows mobile; it lacked even basic MMS functionality for quite a while.

There were shortcomings, but being able to browse the web and view full sites allowed you to do things with the iPhone in 2007 that were extremely useful. There was no other product like it in terms of usefulness for travel, shopping and general productivity.

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

#315

Post by sh87 »

didibus wrote: post #313
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 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.

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

#316

Post by Judgmentality »

sh87 wrote: post #315
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…

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.

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-...

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

#317

Post by Crespyl »

didibus wrote: post #313
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 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.

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

#318

Post by CharlesW »

Jerry2 wrote: post #227
CharlesW wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple had AT LEAST four kicks at the can with mobile devices. Another interesting Apple mobile device "kick": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Rokr

Rokr had nothing to do with Apple. Motorola just licensed iTunes compatibility. That was not Apple's device.

> Rokr had nothing to do with Apple.

Incorrect. The Rokr E1 was how Apple built the relationship with AT&T, a test which ultimately resulted in the iPhone launch happening on AT&T.

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

#319

Post by Sophistifunk »

didibus wrote: post #313
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 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…

Fitbit should have iterated on their devices, making them more accurate while maintaining "host platform" neutrality. Instead, they thought they were in a position to compete against Apple and Samsung in "tiny wrist computers" and the rest of the story is history.

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

#320

Post by sh87 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #316
sh87 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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