
Why do people keep giving Magic Leap money? - rdoherty
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/22/16505430/magic-leap-augmented-reality-temasek-funding-investment-why
======
cm2187
I just can’t convince myself that AR is the next smartphone revolution. Most
of the applications I have heard about feel like the iPhone X demo. Kind of
cool they can do that but will I use that more than once to try it?

In addition to the challenges mentioned in the article, you have to convince
people who are not wearing glasses that they should start to. And people who
are that they should swap their super-light glasses for something heavier,
that may be painful for their nose or neck. And that they need one more high
tech device in their life to budget for, recharge and replace.

Then what are you really going to use it for? Giving you some meta data on
people you see? Name would be nice but how many times in a week do I come
across someone I sort of know but can’t remember the name and I would need it?
Not many. Identities of complete strangers in the street? Outright creepy.
Getting their birthday or the name of their dog? I don’t want my life to look
like my linkedin feed where I am flooded with useless notifications about my
1000 contacts work anniversaries.

I am sure there will be some applications, mostly industrial / professional.
Certainly the sort of thing you will want to hand over to people at a
conference or networking event, where this metadata is super useful to make
the right contacts. Or for shopkeepers to recognise their customers in real
time and having a full history of their previous purchases. But as a
mainstream consumer product, I am still waiting to hear about a convincing use
case.

~~~
pharke
UI killer, never take your phone out of your pocket again. Compatible devices
in your home are inspectable and controllable. Even dumb objects could have a
UI if they can be recognized. Your toothbrush could show usage and expiry
info. Houseplants can remind you when to water them. You could have a large
marker indicate where your keys are. Being able to annotate anything with
dates, reminders, instructions, etc.

There's a lot of information and calculations we carry around in our heads
that could be offloaded or supplemented.

~~~
acorkery
I think these are great examples of technological aids that people really do
not want in their lives. Our brains evolved long ago to a point where we can
do many simple things concurrently, and there is a power/meaning in
interacting directly with your environment - not through some smart aid that
tells you that your plant is dying.

~~~
monk_e_boy
When you share your life with other people who knows when the plants were last
watered, was it me 2 weeks ago or my wife yesterday? Watering plants is a
silly example, meds, health, pupils in a school, patients in a hospital. All
much more interesting to have meta data on.

~~~
acorkery
Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you
can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or
not. So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived.
"What can we do with this amazing technology?".

I agree voice-controlled devices are a great innovation - particularly for
accessibility. But as a mass-market appeal, I've met a lot of people that love
their smartphones, new technologies, but aren't sold on home automation. The
big enduring technology successes in recent decades captured people's
imaginations instantly. They didn't need much convincing beyond the initial
idea.

A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines,
memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think
people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm
and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do
higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that
> you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs
> watering or not._

A recent dicussion on HN about that guy who crowdsourced watering of his plant
generally suggests that a) no, for many, _many_ plants it's not that easy
(especially those not in their natural climate), and b) people do routinely
screw this up.

I for one vote the metadata-on-plants up; that would provide me more value
than 99% of things the startup economy is producing... _combined_.

> _So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What
> can we do with this amazing technology?"._

I agree. But I feel this is because we mostly see the marketed ideas, which
are optimized for selling products, without any regard for whether they're
useful or not.

Some things I'd love technology would help me with, which are _hard_
engineering problems, include:

\- tracking expiration dates of foodstuffs without requiring me to do
additional manual work, and displaying them without requiring me to click much
(or preferably anything)

\- tracking items around the house, so that I can find any misplaced thing by
a simple query

> _A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines,
> memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I
> think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a
> daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees
> you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it 's unlikely._

I don't know. Myself, I can't stick to pretty much any daily routine, so that
part of my brain is already broken (and always has been), and I appreciate any
crutch technology can provide (the best, still, is living with a person whose
"routine" part of brain is working and that will remind me about menial things
to be done).

And - maybe that's because of my broken routine-brain - I find "daily rhythm"
to be a soul-destroying concept. If you want to put your life on autopilot,
instead of outsourcing repetitive tasks somewhere, why live at all?

~~~
acorkery
Good points there. The autopilot thing - I don't see it like that at all. You
can be doing a repetitive task and thinking at the same time. It can help you
focus and relax. Also when you finish the menial task, you get a little smug
satisfaction. "I've earned that beer". Autopilot for me is sitting on the
couch asking your electronic friend if the fridge has cleaned itself yet.

Many favorite hobbies are repetitive and in theory could be outsourced. Some
people enjoy knitting, raking the yard, organizing their record collection,
finding Waldo etc..

Hey, it's all down to personal preference and where you get your kicks. I
won't labour the point as I've gone on too much. Just putting forward another
perspective.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough :). I do find myself oddly relaxed when doing some of the menial
stuff, especially when that stuff can't be easily automated away (if it can
be, then tend to think about how to automate it instead).

I suppose I blended two distinct topics too much in my response. The whole
dislike for going on autopilot through life came from various attempts at
enforcing a structure on my day. At some point I always start to feel a strong
discomfort for such routines. These days, when I plan days out, I treat those
plans as kind of sane defaults, things to do if I don't have anything more
important, and not as absolute commitments.

------
mrsmee89
"It’s producing a regular stream of patent applications for augmented reality
glasses technology, which everyone seems to agree is going to be important at
some point".

If they own the patents that ar companies must use and ar is "the next big
thing", maybe that's why people keep giving them money. They don't really have
to produce anything more.

~~~
octaveguin
If true, that's incredibly depressing.

Magic Leap would become the complete rent seeking lead weight to the next
platform revolution.

------
karmakaze
I haven't been keeping up with Magic Leap (ML) or recent Mixed Reality
developments, but skimming the currently available information, my best guess
is that Magic Leap is making a completely new system from hardware, to
software and even content. Sort of like back in the Apple Lisa days, pre-1984
when the Macintosh was unveiled.

I've only heard of Microsoft and Avegant (that I just googled) working on
Mixed Reality. The problem with these two and anyone other than Magic Leap is
that they're only working on making the tech. They're not making a complete
platform. Of course they could leverage existing platforms (PCs or Consoles)
but then the interfaces would mostly be translations of them. Not that ML has
shown anything better, but I get the sense that what's in development is that
better platform. From history we can see how a platform arises. Imagine
planning the iPhone/AppStore and building iOS and starter content for it. It's
going to replace current movies, video games, and computer systems.

Oculus is making a complete platform but their bet is on VR not MR. It could
likely be adapted to MR if that gets better traction, but without blatent
copying of the human interface it would be a sub-par experience.

Anyone know if Microsoft or anyone else is actively developing an MR
environment for market?

~~~
imron
> Anyone know if Microsoft or anyone else is actively developing an MR
> environment for market?

You mean like the Hololens?

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/hololens)

~~~
karmakaze
Yes, but I was asking specifically about things other than the hardware and
individual apps, like is there a flavour of Windows specifically for the
HoloLens and how significanly different is that UI?

~~~
WillPostForFood
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mixed_Reality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mixed_Reality)

------
Pica_soO
What is still missing is a good interface. Not this sticks with buttons,
something that allows comfortable control and feels like a keyboard without
requiring constant tension to hold.

It should be like a glove, with the fingertips as selector and the other
fingersegments as keys. Thumb to tip is a-e, thumb to indexfinger segments up
is systemkeys (sorted by need to avoid difficult to reach segments as being
quertyfied. Thumb to third indexfinger segment (with indexfinger pointed) is
click at a object.

The Palm could work as a sort of gesture-touchpad, for more complicated
(cross-hand) keycombos.

How to implement? Well as a prototype- take a latex glove, glue short range
rfid chips to the segments and rfid readers to the fingertips.

The rest is history as they say.

~~~
Pica_soO
Thought about it- the select (leftclick on the mouse) should be the most
natural point to something gesture, so its indexfinger pointing and thumb-tip
touching the midfinger-tip. Also RFID is not bad for precise measurements.
Problem is haptics, selection safety (visual display in AR, and user-comfort.
Any glovelike device (even if its just a fishing net of cables and sensor)
will feel uncomfortable after a while)..

The good thing is there are really a lot of comfortable combos possible with
just the fingertips touching one another.

------
gadders
I previously posted a link to a guy's blog post where he did an examination of
the patent filings and what the technology was likely to be able to do:

Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13653537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13653537)

Blog Post: [http://www.kguttag.com/2016/12/06/magic-leap-when-reality-
hi...](http://www.kguttag.com/2016/12/06/magic-leap-when-reality-hits-the-
fan/)

------
srrge
Sunk cost fallacy

------
mynewtb
Same like bitcoin. Even though it has no realworld use in its current form, it
_might_ have in the future so people speculate on that.

~~~
amrrs
Not sure if it's a right analogy. Eventually bitcoin could be traded as an
instrument but Magic Leap's case could be never be like that since if they're
bankrupt no one would come forward to buy their bonds. People bet on bitcoin
just like they bet on Gold or any other entity. People bet on Magic Leap with
the hope that Magic Leap could be provide some magic - that eventually could
be galloped by AR-hungry companies like Snap, Google, Apple - since all of
them always want to beat FB - which already got Oculus.

