
Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans - _pius
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/22/magic-leap-announces-layoffs-amid-covid-19-slowdown/
======
npunt
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 processing,
and compelling input methods.

The real question in AR is what use cases can you hit _without_ great
fidelity? What sort of value can you unlock with a low-res postage stamp
overlay and slow processor instead of full FOV? That's where the go-to market
effort needs to be placed.

A similar example of this overreach was in multifunction pen devices of the
90s (General Magic, Newton, EO Personal communicator). A great counter example
is Apple Watch, which didn't chase the 'smartphone on your wrist' everything
device, and instead picked a few key use cases, established a beachhead, and
slowly added capabilities as the technology allowed.

When a category-defining product has yet to emerge on the market, there are
going to be a lot of people making predictable mistakes like this - mistiming
ideas, scoping the wrong set of features, getting too excited about the wrong
technologies, not leveraging their assets.

If you're a product person interested in understanding more about these
factors, I wrote an essay on the subject recently:
[https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-
products/](https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/)

~~~
kmonsen
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.

~~~
npunt
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 was going to be bad.

There are alternative ways to find a good v1 for AR. Take a look at this tweet
storm for more of my thoughts on what that could be:
[https://twitter.com/nickpunt/status/1253087195159654400](https://twitter.com/nickpunt/status/1253087195159654400)

As far as VR goes, it's further along. Quest is a quality stand-alone product,
but VR is young and content is still lacking. Its also completely sold out,
even before coronavirus. They aren't producing them in Sony/MS console numbers
but its not a failure, just a stepping stone to success. Unlike the Rift or
Vive, with cords hanging out of them and an appeal only to hardcore gamers,
Quest is definitely on the path to mainstream, or mainstream-adjacent success.

~~~
wpietri
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.

~~~
disqard
While sounding slightly cynical, I have come to believe that your comment is a
good description of the current state of "the latest buzzword" startups.

------
braythwayt
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](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 state of tech was not up to
their ambition.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton)

They shipped iPod in 2001, six years before iPhone. In conjunction with iMacs
that could rip CDs, they had a massive hit!

[https://www.apple.com/ipod/](https://www.apple.com/ipod/)

Then they shipped iPhone in 2007. The greatest hit in product history.

What made it possible to have so many kicks at the can was, of course, having
a successful(ish) business selling Macs.

With VC funding, you strip all the legacy/cash cow business out of the
equation. In exchange, you get tremendous financial leverage for founders, but
you also have a very limited window in which to ship a hit.

~~~
CharlesW
> _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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Rokr)

~~~
Jerry2
Rokr had nothing to do with Apple. Motorola just licensed iTunes
compatibility. That was not Apple's device.

~~~
pfranz
I always saw it testing a business relationship with the cellular industry
rather than any serious effort. The iPhone wasn't successful in a vacuum;
Apple Stores, relationship to a carrier, deployment of iTunes all contributed
to getting traction. I'm sure Rokr had more influence than Knowledge navigator
did.

~~~
braythwayt
Very insightful!

------
alephnan
> 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.

~~~
save_ferris
Nintendo is a well-established company with a solid platform for its Switch
that sells millions of units. They've been doing this for a little while
longer tbf.

I get the sense that "shifting focus" means that Magic Leap were so focused on
the hardware that they didn't really think concretely about bringing a viable
platform to market, or something like that. I just don't understand how a
company raises that kind of money and gets totally exposed during a financial
crisis like this. Did they really raise that much money without a concrete go-
to-market strategy?

~~~
alephnan
Nintendo's never competed with other gaming platforms on a technology basis,
and they've shown novel experiences can be adapted from less edge bleeding
technology. Thread from earlier this month:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791300)

~~~
majormajor
"Never" is a strong word. This article that popped up here recently is one
counterexample:
[https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/](https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/)

------
trollied
Wow, they burned billions.

Karl Guttag has blogged about them for years, debunking their technology. Hi
blog is a good read for all things in the AR/VR space
[https://www.kguttag.com/](https://www.kguttag.com/)

~~~
tootie
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.

~~~
daeken
> 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 games; it's
nigh unusable.

If I could go back and stop myself from spending the money on an ML1, I
absolutely, without question would do so.

~~~
egd
Have any of them stood out to you? Is there anything you'd consider a
reasonable consumer device right now?

~~~
daeken
The Hololens is still the best I've tested, but admittedly haven't tested the
Hololens 2 yet. None are reasonable consumer devices, though; between the
terrible FOV and the lack of useful software, none justify their price tags
yet.

------
xiaolingxiao
They're exploring a sale valued at $10B, but it's doubtful who would have the
appetite to buy it at this valuation. Google declined a follow on round
recently, Apple has been developing their own tech for years, and Facebook has
quietly stepped away from AR/VR.

Magic Leap is reminiscent of another company with "Magic" in its name: General
Magic
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic)).
They both made a product that evangelize the form factor in the public's (or
some subset of it) eye, but alas is way ahead of its time in terms of tech,
and content.

It's easy to hate on Magic Leap and its self aggrandizing marketing. Although
I personally never bought into the hype of Magic Leap in particular, they did
inspire a whole generation of developers in a way that hasn't been done since
the release of the original iPhone.

~~~
e-_pusher
Not sure why you are claiming that Facebook has stepped away from AR/VR. I
know that Facebook is still hiring quite heavily in the Seattle area for AR/VR
HW roles.

~~~
snovv_crash
Facebook/Oculus is also heavily recruiting in Zurich.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I guess "heavy" is subjective. But they're also recruiting in LA.

------
adam_fallon_
I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but
i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic
Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd
seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the
Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for."

Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

~~~
wpietri
I don't trust Evans at all, but I'm going to partially defend that here.
There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time
you use it and then not mattering at all. E.g., the Segway was going to
revolutionize transport.

The 3D space is particularly prone to this. I count at least 5 waves of 3D
innovation going back to the Great Exhibition in 1851. 3D movies were going to
revolutionize things twice, in the 1950s and a decade ago. Over and over, this
stuff is absolutely amazing for a hot minute and then nobody cares.

Of course, Evans is sold as a brilliant pundit and now VC genius, so if
anybody should understand that novelty doesn't equal a business model, it's
him. But as you suggest, Upton Sinclair's quote applies here: "It is difficult
to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not
understanding it."

~~~
ahupp
To be fair to the Segway, there's a remarkable number of self-balancing one
wheel scooters on the street in SF these days (well, a few months ago). And I
think you can trace all of those back to Segway. Sometimes v1 doesn't quite do
it.

~~~
_jal
Those are toys. Back in the day, Kamen was going on about redesigning cities
around them.

~~~
vikramkr
They're toys that a lot of people use as their primary methods of transport,
along with other micro mobility solutions like electric scooters amd good old
fashioned bikes. In a way, the future took the path of least resistance and
redesigned micromobility around cities instead. And we might still end up
redesigning cities around some of those options

The segways itself doesnt make much sense to me though. I dont remember too
much about the hype when it was released, but like, I'm still unclear about
what it was supposed to be able to do that an electrified scooter or bike
couldn't.

~~~
kd5bjo
> I'm still unclear about what it was supposed to be able to do that an
> electrified scooter or bike couldn't.

Segways have much better low-speed handling characteristics than bicycles,
which makes them safer to intermix with pedestrians: Travelling at a slow
amble speed in a crowded environment is extremely difficult on a bicycle, but
no big deal for a Segway (or similar)

~~~
mumblemumble
The primary fault that causes bikes to mix poorly with pedestrians occurs
between the handlebars and the helmet. Bikes are, in fact, super easy to
operate in close proximity to and at the same speed as people who are on foot.
The trick is to not have it between your legs.

------
zhoujianfu
Two bad signs:

1\. They were founded by a well-connected VC-type, in a hyped new industry.
These companies always raise a lot of money (because of the connections and
the hype) but rarely (never?) work out well. (See also 21.co for
“blockchain”.)

2\. A few years ago they contracted with my friend’s company to make some
swag, it was a chromed 3D paperweight of their logo guy. I saw a prototype of
it, and it was really nice and pretty cool. Then I heard magic leap had
rejected it because they didn’t like some way the chrome plating came together
at the point it was dipped or something? It was insane to me, that thing was
pretty cool and totally professional, and I knew if that was emblematic of how
they did business they were screwed..

------
slg
Does this officially place the Magic Leap's consumer device on the list of the
biggest vaporware products in the history of the tech industry?

I don't know whether there was some tech hurdle they could never get over or
if they were just straight up selling a fantasy from the beginning, but this
result has seemed to be the likely destination for years.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I think it's less of a tale of "vaporware" (I mean, Magic Leap has something
that actually exists, even if it's not successful) than yet another cautionary
tale of startups taking WAAAYYY more money than they need.

There was simply no reason for them to need this much cash before they proved
market fit. I mean, has there _ever_ been a successful company that gorged on
funding before they needed it that eventually became successful? So many of
the Vision Fund companies are in the same boat here.

If Magic Leap couldn't find at least good market fit with a couple hundred
million, I don't see how they were going to get there with a couple billion.

~~~
slg
Do you remember the whale demo[1]? This isn't close to anything they released
and I don't see how that is the result of taking too much money or not being
able to find a market fit. This product simply didn't exist.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpqwUUfMAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpqwUUfMAQ)

~~~
d_silin
And this is what Magic Leap could actually do:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7-F_vWUVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7-F_vWUVE)

~~~
rvnx
It looks like AR project first tutorial

------
the_hoser
Ah, the death step of every failed VR/AR company. "Focus on enterprise
customers" just means "draw out our demise for as long as possible in the
hopes of drumming up some more VC before we file for bankruptcy."

Hopefully someone competent buys them before that happens.

------
TheSoftwareGuy
Jesus Christ. I personally know two people that started working there right
around when the lockdowns were starting to get put in place. They've probably
been there less than a month.

~~~
dragosmocrii
Happened to me to with a company within my trial period. It's amazing how many
things you can learn about a company in times of difficulty, in my case
leaving the company was happening with or without the layoff.. I hope your
friend can find a replacement soon.

------
mlazos
This is the modus operandi of every startup. Consumer products look great and
can really wow people until you realize all of the money is in enterprise.
This is why enterprise is always the largest business segment of large
software companies - corporations have way more money than individuals and
will provide recurring revenue.

------
chadlavi
Magic Leap is like the story of overhyped, over-priced tech vaporware
investments in the 2010s all embodied in one company.

~~~
whoisjuan
The Magic Leap device at least worked and had a wow factor even though it
didn't have a market fit. I prefer Juicero. That's really a prime example of
overhyped and overpriced tech investments.

~~~
chadlavi
Cripes, I forgot about that crazy scam.

Magic Leap is at least a tech product, though. And even though they had some
actual device, the thing they marketed was complete fiction, they never
brought the promise from that whale demo to market.

------
Ididntdothis
This is such a weird company. They created big buzz over years and it seems
they are just fading away quietly with nothing to show for the money they took
in. Reminds me a little of Theranos (although not as criminal). Why do these
investors keep pumping so much money into a company that has nothing to show?
I thought they do due diligence.

~~~
gamegoblin
I assume they must have had a killer demo.

1\. Put the goggles on some investor's head (in a normal looking room, but
with known lighting and spatial properties...).

2\. Show them some flashy demo that has some limitations, but promise that
with their investment, they will be able to remove those limitations.

3\. Investors, who probably lack the deep knowledge of optics to know that
those limitations aren't so trivial, throw money at them. Because if those
limitations (e.g. FOV, opacity) were removed, it _would_ be world-changing
tech.

~~~
DonHopkins
Now with COVID-19, they really DO have a killer demo:

1\. Put the goggles on some investor's head.

2\. Investor catches COVID-19 and dies.

Nobody wants to share VR or AR gear any more. The whole idea of location based
VR / AR entertainment centers is deadly now.

If it's so great you can't believe it without trying it yourself, and nobody
wants to stick their head in a device that anybody else has been drooling and
coughing and vomiting in, it doesn't matter how great it is, nobody's going to
try it.

~~~
core-questions
Don't be such a wuss. None of that is something a little Lysol can't fix, and
these places should have always been using such (though I imagine they don't).

~~~
VRay
You can disinfect your electronics with rubbing alcohol and/or removable
covers, but don't put Lysol or other harsh cleaning agents on them

~~~
catalogia
> _Don 't put lysol [on electronics]_

Why shouldn't I? The exterior surfaces of "electronics" are just glass,
plastic or aluminum and lysol seems to work fine on all three. It's sold in
plastic bottles so it's not like it'd create nerve gas or something.

Not that I generally take marketing claims seriously, but lysol advertises
itself as appropriate for use on electronics: [https://www.lysol.com/cold-
flu/home/how-to-clean-electronics...](https://www.lysol.com/cold-flu/home/how-
to-clean-electronics-in-your-home/) If there were any real danger, I expect
their lawyers might not let them do that.

~~~
vel0city
Exterior surfaces for electronics are usually fine for stuff like Lysol. The
fear is largely that if it gets inside on the electronic components it may
leave behind conductive residues. Straight alcohol will entirely evaporate
soon after application so a bit of ingress with the device powered off
shouldn't cause any lasting effects, but who knows what makes up the
fragrances and other ingredients in many cleaners.

~~~
catalogia
Just use common sense. Wet a paper towel with the cleaner and wipe down the
electronics with that, rather than dunking your phone into a bucket of the
stuff.

------
flyinglizard
The product exists. Their intention was never to do vaporware or deceive
anyone - Rony's a good hearted fellow - but they had too much money, so much
that they thought they'd bend reality. Francis Ford Coppola famously said of
producing Apocalypse Now: "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us,
we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we
went insane". This is really what Magic Leap felt like from the inside. So
much money, so many famous people on board (and on _the_ board), all these
dreams of creating not new means of consuming content but _all-new content_
and all-new use cases. Making this functional and beneficial to your everyday
was not enough, Rony wanted a full on sci-fi universe right here and now.

This company could snub reality for a long time and I'm honestly surprised it
lived for this long.

That said:

1\. There absolutely exists a product and putting it on for the first time is
a pretty exhilarating experience. Unfortunately Magic Leap failed to provide
an convincing reason to put it on for the second and third time.

2\. The company had very good talent. Unfortunately its management turned more
awkward as you climbed the ranks - professional corporate survivors which
needed to bridge reality between Rony's dreams for the next year and what's
possible in the next 10 with their modest skillset.

It was a bit of Hunger Games up top.

3\. AR hardware startups need money, and lots of it. I estimate Magic Leap had
about 50% overhead, meaning that given better management and direction - and a
bit of hindsight no doubt - it could have been done with $1bn. It's _still_
$1bn.

4\. Consumer AR will come in a minimalistic form, such as Intel's deceased
Project Vaunt (ironically enough, many of its Swiss optics team were brought
on to Magic Leap following its termination in Intel). Minimal, stylish, useful
- not something to wow you once over but to provide day in, day out value. An
Apple watch rather than an Oculus.

Source - I was there for few years, running some parts of their engineering. I
don't regret a second of it.

------
gridlockd
Proper move. Consumers care less about AR than even VR. For AR to be
interesting, the reality needs to fit.

That is possible in an amusement park where you can roam in an environment,
but if you want to make a livingroom interesting, might as well cut out
reality completely.

------
angry_octet
What a lost opportunity to pivot from the inachievable (cinematic fully
immersive VR) to the desperately needed (face to face equivalent interactions
and entertainment). Time for the board to find new management.

------
ineedasername
_> 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.

------
lostgame
This is unfortunately not a surprise. Magic Leap is now an example of why
companies should ‘under promise and over deliver’.

I don’t think the product could’ve ever lived up to the hype train.

------
spullara
The problem for AR is that there are no killer apps that aren't deeply privacy
invading. What people want is something that basically googles the world
around you giving you all the relevant information it can find. We are very
quickly going down the path to making that entire use case illegal, especially
for people. Without that use case, I'm really not sure there is much outside
of things like How To instructions.

------
habosa
Has any company ever raised more VC money and then produced so little? This
has to be up there with Theranos, not sure if there are other contenders.

Magic Leap is one of those companies where it seems like everyone (in tech)
was rooting against them. Too confident, too much money, too little to show.
The only people I ever heard defending them were people who were financially
invested in them or in AR as a whole.

------
aaron695
Magic Leap <==> Theranos

But I've said it for years, if I shorted it 2+ years ago I would have lost
money!

Not sure what that means.

They are clearly pivoting off Covid-19 for more VC money, something I wouldn't
have predicted last year. I guess if not Covid-19 it would be something else.

How do you predict when they will fall off the end of the graph I guess is the
question?

------
duxup
The sheer volume of cash and talent thrown into something that hadn't yet
found a market is sort of amazing / seemed like a huge amount of cart before
the horse.

It seems generally like they decided to do X, Y, Z but needed to invent A, B,
C before they could get there, let alone know if anyone wanted X, Y, Z.....

~~~
qppo
I don't want to doxx myself so I'm intentionally leaving out details, and you
can take this comment as rumor and baseless.

But based on the people I know (personally) who work there - there wasn't a
lot of talent being thrown at the product. I think their organization is
incapable of bringing a product to market, even if that market existed.

~~~
duxup
Maybe that was part of the issue. They had a large volume of guys like me,
unremarkable folks... trying to do remarkable things.

Not a good recipie talent wise.

~~~
qppo
To use startup lingo, they were a unicorn turning into a zombie because they
never hired people who knew how to run their organizations as a cockroach. A
lot of the people that I know who went there were basically fresh out of
college or academia, because there was no one else in Florida and ML operated
in stealth for way too long. That's not a bad thing (who among us hasn't been
a fresh, doe eyed engineer at a startup?), but when you throw a couple billion
dollars at them before they've learned how to build anything... might not work
out.

------
nprz
Are there other companies making progress in the augmented reality space? I've
tried the Hololens v1 and was completely underwhelmed. The field of view is
far too small and not impressive or immersive at all. Is the v2 much better?
When will we get what Magic Leap was initially promising?

~~~
filoleg
Hololens V2 is still not average-consumer-ready, but it is leaps and bounds
closer to it than v1.

I tried both myself, and the biggest improvements in v2, in my opinion, are:

* Field of view. That’s the biggest one, as it felt like just a staring into a small rectangle with v1. With v2, I was actually able to read a NYT article in a web browser rather comfortably, moving the web browser around the room and such, with no significant field of view limitations felt. The limitations are still there, but you rarely ever hit them, while with v1 it was more like “almost the whole time you are using the device”. And it felt really annoying.

* UI/UX. Everything is much more intuitive and smooth to operate. After the initial 5-10 mins, i didnt feel any jankiness and was able to perform all operations with no struggle. Also, v2 works without that annoying clicker/pointer device (that was pretty much a must for v1) rather well, just by tracking hands. And i would say it is even more precise without that device than v1 was WITH the device.

* Ergonomics. The headset is lighter, feels more comfortable, doesn’t require as much fiddling around to get it sit well on your head. The flip up/down visor is such a great quality of life improvement, I am baffled that current consumer VR devices like Oculus or Vive haven’t implemented it. Especially since it would provide way more utility for VR than AR, because VR completely blocks out the real world.

------
dopamean
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?

------
tempsy
So many startups seem to be blowing up right now. Amazing how fragile the
whole ecosystem was.

~~~
Analemma_
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."

------
j2bax
Makes me think of the Theranos funding scam, but more money and less health
risks.

------
danhhieu910
couple of years ago when I first saw the Magic Leap, it's kind of magical to
me, their tech is great and they advertised it to do big things to help the
world (aquarium or 3d painting, I don't remember exactly what it was) Last
year when re-visited their website and see their showcase with Spotify and NBA
sport, I was very letdown. Why do I need VR app for Spotify? Why do they think
it's importance to do something like that instead of make a bold product. So
disappointed.

------
xenospn
Will VR/AR join 3D TV in the consumer tech hall of shame?

~~~
modeless
VR is doing fine in gaming. The headsets are sold out everywhere and there are
a lot of great games available. It won't overtake 2D gaming anytime soon but
there's a healthy market.

~~~
monkeydust
Think VR has business applications. Training for example for manual, complex
work. Data analysis possibly (exploring this at work).

------
blhack
It was too expensive. That's why it failed. This doesn't seem that
complicated.

It was a really cool product. If it was $300 instead of $2300 I would have
bought one.

------
drewbeck
Imo enterprise and military were always going to be the first successful
applications for this tech. Smart money will stay in those lanes until the
tech is mature.

------
fnord77
To me the styling of their product looks like it is out of the 1990s (even
though nothing like this existed in the 90s). I don't know what it is about it

------
nogabebop23
"Because COVID" is a new generation's "Because 9-11" rationalization for
otherwise indefensible behaviour.

------
blackrock
Why not just have a VR, with a pair of cameras on it?

Ensure that the frame rate is capable of 120 frames/second, or whatever value
will make it comfortable for humans to see in real time.

Then, overlay the digital artifacts on top of it. And skip frames, if you
can’t compute the objects fast enough to match the frame rate.

This way, you can put on the VR goggles, and still be able to walk around in
the real world, without tripping and falling down.

The AR stuff seemed way too complicated.

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adamc
For the ignorant amongst us (by which I mean me), what _are_ the enterprise
applications of Magic Leap?

~~~
coder543
Applications of Magic Leap would likely be similar to the industrial
applications of HoloLens 2.

Some examples:

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8c3pDKdHEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8c3pDKdHEc)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTuKcm8s4QQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTuKcm8s4QQ)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loGxO3L7rFE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loGxO3L7rFE)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pyiiO72ZwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pyiiO72ZwM)

If you search on youtube for "hololens industrial", you can find other demos.
When HoloLens 2 was announced, I think Microsoft showed a number of demos of
why companies would buy it for their employees to use on the job.

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xwdv
What a cowardly way to lay off a bunch of people. Waiting for a crisis that
requires you to push people to work from home, then quietly fire them with a
curt email and cite difficulties from COVID-19.

The respectable way is to get them in person, look them dead in the eye and
admit to the failures of the company and product vision, and then let them go,
apologizing profusely for your incompetence.

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eagsalazar2
This is approaching Theranos levels of sham and has already passed Juicero a
long time ago.

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peter303
Niantic Pokeman Go is one of the few hits so far in AR.

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gregjw
Doubling down on corporate uses of AR.

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albertTJames
Shame on them.

