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Every time there is a post about Magic Leap, someone inevitably asks the question if there has ever been a case of a hyped-up tech actually living up to its cla

by dharmon 10y ago

Every time there is a post about Magic Leap, someone inevitably asks the question if there has ever been a case of a hyped-up tech actually living up to its claims. I've thought about this and I'll be damned if I can't think of a single example. The closest I can come is some of the old steam engine tech, where they would have a huge public competition and one demo engine would be crazy fast, but the hype was never at these levels. Basically, as a student of business history of sorts, just considering the base rates for these situations, I'd be willing to give generous odds that Magic Leap absolutely fails to deliver anything worthwhile. It just doesn't seem to happen. The true breakthroughs are built by those quietly plugging away, scared to death that if they take a breath to talk about it their competitors lurking in the shadows will pull ahead. It really makes me wonder who these investors are that piled on. The first $100M or so I understand; they thought they were getting in on something new and great. But the next $1B? Did they never read a business history book during their MBA program?

wtvanhest 10y ago
My only hope is that they saw something amazing. Really though, 1bn before shipping is insane.
dmix 10y ago
This is a good point, it reminds me of the F-35. Anything over hyped and given too much time and money will always be underwhelming. Great technologies grow organically out of need and real life demands. Greatness isn't created purely out of conference rooms and imagination. Magic Leap should have set the bar lower to get something out of the door sooner and depended less on hype of possibilities but excitement for what they actually created. Then they don't have to hit it out of the park the first time or nothing. Which is basically what they've set up expectations for.
- jmole 10y ago
  There is no "low bar". You either do AR, or you don't. There is no in-between. Just look at Hololens to realize why you can't do this half-way.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > You either do AR, or you don't. Looks like Magic Leap are opting not to do it.
  - eganist 10y ago
    Google Glass is probably a good example of halfway failures. They did well on implementation of some sort of screen in front of the eye among other things, but in the end, they stopped short of AR in favor of just a screen sitting in front of the eyeball. To your point: it'd be impossible to achieve AR without some major breakthroughs in eye-tracking _or_ general 3D image rendering in front of the eyes. This is what hololens had to achieve before AR made sense, and just to be able to ship it in spite of the hardware constraints, they were stuck with a small viewport in Gen 1. The only real compromise with implementing AR is FOV coverage. If you're going to cover the entire FOV, you should either get creative (rendering low-res outside what hits the fovea of the eye, which would be possible only with eye-tracking) or use a small viewport. Hololens did it right. It seems (judging from the hardware) that Magic Leap is trying to avoid compromises of any sort, so they're probably doing it wrong.
nostrademons 10y ago
The Internet. It just took 10-15 years longer than everyone thought it would. Mobile phones & PDAs as well - they were super-hyped right around 1992, it just took 15 years after that before someone produced a device that was actually exciting. Actually, it's generally been a pretty good business strategy to take whatever was hyped up 10-15 years ago but was then written off as unworkable, and then reimagine it with modern technology. Think of Javascript apps (DHTML 1997 -> Angular 2012), streaming video (RealAudio 1996 -> YouTube 2006), e-commerce (everybody 1995 -> everybody 2012), webmail (HotMail 1997 -> GMail 2004), GUI interface builders (NeXTStep 1992 -> XCode 2007), mobile phones (Newton & General Magic 1992 -> iPhone & Android 2007/09), lithium-ion batteries (first prototypes late-80s -> widespread cellphone/laptop use mid-00s), etc. It doesn't do much good for the investors of those early waves of companies, though.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  These are different than what the OP was talking about. He's basically asking about stealth products like segway etc... All your examples were ones where the initial hype around the technology/idea just wasn't ready yet, it wasn't one company playing coy and then coming out with some groundbreaking thing like the iPod/iPhone was.
  - Nursie 10y ago
    Why do people think the iPhone was groundbreaking? It was evolutionary, it was very, very well polished (something apple are good at) and it was advertised massively. But it wasn't streets ahead of the competition.
    - fsloth 10y ago
      "But it wasn't streets ahead of the competition." I think this is a highly controversial opinion, especially with hindsight. Consumer products are never just about the hardware specs, but about how the entire ecosystem around the product functions.. Two competing platforms (Nokia and Windows phone) tanked and the only viable current competitor (Android) came to market afterwards and driving marketshare by imitating the specific innovations the device had (plus with a certain degree of openness).
acchow 10y ago
It's really rare to go quickly from bleeding-edge research paper to consumer product. Google Search was one. Lytro another. Magic Leap's demos were ridiculous because they required monumental leaps in various areas - computer vision, holographic imaging, CPU/GPU energy efficiency (computationally). I don't see how this is related to business history. Having some sort of basic understanding of scientific and technological progress, sure. But an MBA? They had a good, fake demo for vaporware. That's all.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
>The true breakthroughs are built by those quietly plugging away, scared to death that if they take a breath to talk about it their competitors lurking in the shadows will pull ahead. With the exception of Apple, I don't think this is really true. ARPAnet, Transistors, Cellular networks etc... were all discussed and probed and iterated on in the defense/research community then in industry. > The first $100M or so I understand; they thought they were getting in on something new and great. Abovitz is a serial entrepreneur with a previous $1B exit. That alone counts for a shitload, if not everything. If you can show someone even a rudimentary display that gives accommodation and can build a competent team then that gets the hype cycle started. All due credit where deserved, Abovitz knows how to raise money.
- dilemma 10y ago
  >With the exception of Apple, I don't think this is really true. It's true of Microsoft, Google, Amazon and even airbnb because while the latter eventually got vc, they didn't have that same hype. They all spent years doing unglamorous work before becoming a name like Magic Leap is today.
- dharmon 10y ago
  I should have clarified that I didn't mean general tech, but specific tech products that are hyped. You're right about the serial entrepreneur aspect. But we're still talking about staggering sums.
- jpm_sd 10y ago
  Having worked in the robot-assisted surgery field, I can tell you that Mako (Abovitz's previous "success") was similarly hyped and was acquired for an enormous sum despite the facts that (1) surgeons hate using it and (2) patient outcomes are no better [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574012]
muglug 10y ago
> But the next $1B? Did they never read a business history book during their MBA program? It’s clear that a bunch of senior Google people believe that we will all own an augmented reality device in the near future, and they don't want to cede that market to Microsoft (having killed Glass).
- jsemrau 10y ago
  I believe that, too. However the intermediary step will be audio not video (similar to the movie 'her') because of the less obtrusive user interface.
lefstathiou 10y ago
I remember being in school playing with Google Earth. Hype back then was a bit different but I recall everyone who laid eyes on it was blown away. Another great google product that I think is actually under hyped is Google translate. I was in Kiev and ordered off a menu by looking st it through my smartphone. Sitting at a table with 6 engineers and everyone was floored. If you haven't tried it I highly recommend it.
- jmole 10y ago
  Google translate has been seriously under the radar lately. I tried it recently and was pretty blown away. Using it almost daily now.
  - Vinkekatten 10y ago
    Google Translate has been improved immensely just in the past six months or so, through neural networking and machine learning [0]. It's become MUCH better at translating full sentences and coherent text - in some cases it's hard to differentiate from a competent human translation. They have made great improvements to both speech recognition [1] and text-to-speech[2] as well. It feels so damn sci-fi to just pull up a phone, talk into it and have it repeat what you said in japanese or spanish. Siri is still mostly useful as a kitchen timer though. [0] https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-more-accurate-fluent-sentences-google-translate/ https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-mor... [1] https://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html https://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html [2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wavenet-ai-text-to-speech-synthesis http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wa...
- r00fus 10y ago
  Didn't Word Lens do it before Google Translate? I mean I was demo-ing that shit in 2010 (Google probably does it much better now).
  - sanitybit 10y ago
    Google bought Word Lens and then integrated the tech into Translate.
r00fus 10y ago
The iPhone. (aka Jesus Phone, aka "they're not just going to walk in") was probably one of the biggest hyped things in recent history, and it absolutely did live up to it's claims.
- dharmon 10y ago
  Where was Apple hyping the iPhone before it came out? There were rumors for sure, but from what I remember, Apple was secretly plugging away during this time. (Please correct me if I am wrong)
  - r00fus 10y ago
    I guess I was referring to the 6 months between unveiling and release in 2007 and the several months of speculation beforehand in 2006. It was pretty frothy, and I was amazed at what they did produce. Edit: does hype have to be first-party? Apple is king of the rumors-as-marketing hype machine.
    - mustacheemperor 10y ago
      This situation seems very different to me. Apple didn't publicly raise a billion and a half dollars of funding on the promise of the phone during the time you mention, and it's been nearly 3 years since the hype started around the Google investments with almost nothing to show. Apple had already made the iPod and was well established. Smartphones already existed, just not as well executed. Magic Leap is promising a vast advancement of the state of the art in multiple fields.
      - moomin 10y ago
        I'd say the big difference is that Apple weren't "inventing" the whole thing. It would have been perfectly possible for Nokia to have built something similar, but they didn't for what seemed to them solid commercial reasons. Apple's big contribution was smashing into a broken market that didn't serve its consumers.
    - 10y ago
throwaway5752 10y ago
SDN?
hxta98596 10y ago
I don't disagree. I enjoy reading business history as well. But there is definitely a large number of people who either believe in or are open giving a chance to a new "West Coast business" approach. I think "West Coast business" originally comes from a football term, but idea that a new silicon valley-style business approach has overtaken the old "M7 MBA" thinking has evidence. Like journalism is experiencing now...things may have changed. Don't most businesses fail regardless of how much money they raise? What is a true breakthrough anyway? Has it gotten harder to keep secrets from competitors in the shadows? Can you an ambitious company raise money and hire the best people still without a PR-hype-machine going full speed ahead? What does success even mean these days, are founders and VCs trying to IPO big businesses or sell expensive secondary shares and cash out a bit? I agree, most of these business will fail. While I don't participate in the hype, I can understand the thinking behind pushing for a super-funded startup strategy that attracts talent, strategic investors and that can hang with competitors since I.P./courts cannot be relied on.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sixQuarks 10y ago
The closest in recent times is Elon Musk claiming he would create a highly-desirable electric vehicle AND a rocket that can land itself. But I wouldn't say he was hyping it, he always said there was a large chance of failure.
- sprafa 10y ago
  This is key. Because Musk always says "There's a very good chance might not happen" very talented people perk up because what they hear is a guy dreaming with pragmatism. When very smart people see that, they want to help make it happen.
  - sixQuarks 10y ago
    I always liked the newspaper ad that Shackleton posted for his expedition to the South Pole: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success Supposedly, 5,000 men applied after reading the ad. - Note: historians can't find the ad, it might be a myth, but I still like it
maverick_iceman 10y ago
There was a lot of hype for electric light which was absolutely justified.

by dharmon 10y ago

wtvanhest 10y ago

My only hope is that they saw something amazing. Really though, 1bn before shipping is insane.

dmix 10y ago

This is a good point, it reminds me of the F-35. Anything over hyped and given too much time and money will always be underwhelming. Great technologies grow organically out of need and real life demands. Greatness isn't created purely out of conference rooms and imagination. Magic Leap should have set the bar lower to get something out of the door sooner and depended less on hype of possibilities but excitement for what they actually created. Then they don't have to hit it out of the park the first time or nothing. Which is basically what they've set up expectations for.

jmole 10y ago
There is no "low bar". You either do AR, or you don't. There is no in-between. Just look at Hololens to realize why you can't do this half-way.
- flukus 10y ago
  > You either do AR, or you don't. Looks like Magic Leap are opting not to do it.
- eganist 10y ago
  Google Glass is probably a good example of halfway failures. They did well on implementation of some sort of screen in front of the eye among other things, but in the end, they stopped short of AR in favor of just a screen sitting in front of the eyeball. To your point: it'd be impossible to achieve AR without some major breakthroughs in eye-tracking _or_ general 3D image rendering in front of the eyes. This is what hololens had to achieve before AR made sense, and just to be able to ship it in spite of the hardware constraints, they were stuck with a small viewport in Gen 1. The only real compromise with implementing AR is FOV coverage. If you're going to cover the entire FOV, you should either get creative (rendering low-res outside what hits the fovea of the eye, which would be possible only with eye-tracking) or use a small viewport. Hololens did it right. It seems (judging from the hardware) that Magic Leap is trying to avoid compromises of any sort, so they're probably doing it wrong.

nostrademons 10y ago

The Internet. It just took 10-15 years longer than everyone thought it would. Mobile phones & PDAs as well - they were super-hyped right around 1992, it just took 15 years after that before someone produced a device that was actually exciting. Actually, it's generally been a pretty good business strategy to take whatever was hyped up 10-15 years ago but was then written off as unworkable, and then reimagine it with modern technology. Think of Javascript apps (DHTML 1997 -> Angular 2012), streaming video (RealAudio 1996 -> YouTube 2006), e-commerce (everybody 1995 -> everybody 2012), webmail (HotMail 1997 -> GMail 2004), GUI interface builders (NeXTStep 1992 -> XCode 2007), mobile phones (Newton & General Magic 1992 -> iPhone & Android 2007/09), lithium-ion batteries (first prototypes late-80s -> widespread cellphone/laptop use mid-00s), etc. It doesn't do much good for the investors of those early waves of companies, though.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
These are different than what the OP was talking about. He's basically asking about stealth products like segway etc... All your examples were ones where the initial hype around the technology/idea just wasn't ready yet, it wasn't one company playing coy and then coming out with some groundbreaking thing like the iPod/iPhone was.
- Nursie 10y ago
  Why do people think the iPhone was groundbreaking? It was evolutionary, it was very, very well polished (something apple are good at) and it was advertised massively. But it wasn't streets ahead of the competition.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    "But it wasn't streets ahead of the competition." I think this is a highly controversial opinion, especially with hindsight. Consumer products are never just about the hardware specs, but about how the entire ecosystem around the product functions.. Two competing platforms (Nokia and Windows phone) tanked and the only viable current competitor (Android) came to market afterwards and driving marketshare by imitating the specific innovations the device had (plus with a certain degree of openness).

acchow 10y ago

It's really rare to go quickly from bleeding-edge research paper to consumer product. Google Search was one. Lytro another. Magic Leap's demos were ridiculous because they required monumental leaps in various areas - computer vision, holographic imaging, CPU/GPU energy efficiency (computationally). I don't see how this is related to business history. Having some sort of basic understanding of scientific and technological progress, sure. But an MBA? They had a good, fake demo for vaporware. That's all.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

>The true breakthroughs are built by those quietly plugging away, scared to death that if they take a breath to talk about it their competitors lurking in the shadows will pull ahead. With the exception of Apple, I don't think this is really true. ARPAnet, Transistors, Cellular networks etc... were all discussed and probed and iterated on in the defense/research community then in industry. > The first $100M or so I understand; they thought they were getting in on something new and great. Abovitz is a serial entrepreneur with a previous $1B exit. That alone counts for a shitload, if not everything. If you can show someone even a rudimentary display that gives accommodation and can build a competent team then that gets the hype cycle started. All due credit where deserved, Abovitz knows how to raise money.

dilemma 10y ago
>With the exception of Apple, I don't think this is really true. It's true of Microsoft, Google, Amazon and even airbnb because while the latter eventually got vc, they didn't have that same hype. They all spent years doing unglamorous work before becoming a name like Magic Leap is today.
dharmon 10y ago
I should have clarified that I didn't mean general tech, but specific tech products that are hyped. You're right about the serial entrepreneur aspect. But we're still talking about staggering sums.
jpm_sd 10y ago
Having worked in the robot-assisted surgery field, I can tell you that Mako (Abovitz's previous "success") was similarly hyped and was acquired for an enormous sum despite the facts that (1) surgeons hate using it and (2) patient outcomes are no better [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574012]

muglug 10y ago

> But the next $1B? Did they never read a business history book during their MBA program? It’s clear that a bunch of senior Google people believe that we will all own an augmented reality device in the near future, and they don't want to cede that market to Microsoft (having killed Glass).

jsemrau 10y ago
I believe that, too. However the intermediary step will be audio not video (similar to the movie 'her') because of the less obtrusive user interface.

lefstathiou 10y ago

I remember being in school playing with Google Earth. Hype back then was a bit different but I recall everyone who laid eyes on it was blown away. Another great google product that I think is actually under hyped is Google translate. I was in Kiev and ordered off a menu by looking st it through my smartphone. Sitting at a table with 6 engineers and everyone was floored. If you haven't tried it I highly recommend it.

jmole 10y ago
Google translate has been seriously under the radar lately. I tried it recently and was pretty blown away. Using it almost daily now.
- Vinkekatten 10y ago
  Google Translate has been improved immensely just in the past six months or so, through neural networking and machine learning [0]. It's become MUCH better at translating full sentences and coherent text - in some cases it's hard to differentiate from a competent human translation. They have made great improvements to both speech recognition [1] and text-to-speech[2] as well. It feels so damn sci-fi to just pull up a phone, talk into it and have it repeat what you said in japanese or spanish. Siri is still mostly useful as a kitchen timer though. [0] https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-more-accurate-fluent-sentences-google-translate/ https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-mor... [1] https://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html https://research.google.com/pubs/SpeechProcessing.html [2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wavenet-ai-text-to-speech-synthesis http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wa...
r00fus 10y ago
Didn't Word Lens do it before Google Translate? I mean I was demo-ing that shit in 2010 (Google probably does it much better now).
- sanitybit 10y ago
  Google bought Word Lens and then integrated the tech into Translate.

r00fus 10y ago

The iPhone. (aka Jesus Phone, aka "they're not just going to walk in") was probably one of the biggest hyped things in recent history, and it absolutely did live up to it's claims.

dharmon 10y ago
Where was Apple hyping the iPhone before it came out? There were rumors for sure, but from what I remember, Apple was secretly plugging away during this time. (Please correct me if I am wrong)
- r00fus 10y ago
  I guess I was referring to the 6 months between unveiling and release in 2007 and the several months of speculation beforehand in 2006. It was pretty frothy, and I was amazed at what they did produce. Edit: does hype have to be first-party? Apple is king of the rumors-as-marketing hype machine.
  - mustacheemperor 10y ago
    This situation seems very different to me. Apple didn't publicly raise a billion and a half dollars of funding on the promise of the phone during the time you mention, and it's been nearly 3 years since the hype started around the Google investments with almost nothing to show. Apple had already made the iPod and was well established. Smartphones already existed, just not as well executed. Magic Leap is promising a vast advancement of the state of the art in multiple fields.
    - moomin 10y ago
      I'd say the big difference is that Apple weren't "inventing" the whole thing. It would have been perfectly possible for Nokia to have built something similar, but they didn't for what seemed to them solid commercial reasons. Apple's big contribution was smashing into a broken market that didn't serve its consumers.
  - 10y ago

throwaway5752 10y ago

SDN?

hxta98596 10y ago

I don't disagree. I enjoy reading business history as well. But there is definitely a large number of people who either believe in or are open giving a chance to a new "West Coast business" approach. I think "West Coast business" originally comes from a football term, but idea that a new silicon valley-style business approach has overtaken the old "M7 MBA" thinking has evidence. Like journalism is experiencing now...things may have changed. Don't most businesses fail regardless of how much money they raise? What is a true breakthrough anyway? Has it gotten harder to keep secrets from competitors in the shadows? Can you an ambitious company raise money and hire the best people still without a PR-hype-machine going full speed ahead? What does success even mean these days, are founders and VCs trying to IPO big businesses or sell expensive secondary shares and cash out a bit? I agree, most of these business will fail. While I don't participate in the hype, I can understand the thinking behind pushing for a super-funded startup strategy that attracts talent, strategic investors and that can hang with competitors since I.P./courts cannot be relied on.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sixQuarks 10y ago

The closest in recent times is Elon Musk claiming he would create a highly-desirable electric vehicle AND a rocket that can land itself. But I wouldn't say he was hyping it, he always said there was a large chance of failure.

sprafa 10y ago
This is key. Because Musk always says "There's a very good chance might not happen" very talented people perk up because what they hear is a guy dreaming with pragmatism. When very smart people see that, they want to help make it happen.
- sixQuarks 10y ago
  I always liked the newspaper ad that Shackleton posted for his expedition to the South Pole: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success Supposedly, 5,000 men applied after reading the ad. - Note: historians can't find the ad, it might be a myth, but I still like it

maverick_iceman 10y ago

There was a lot of hype for electric light which was absolutely justified.