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If Magic Leap wins, which I doubt, it will be because of their deep thinking about what AR means at the OS interactions level. Microsoft and Google completely f

by yodon 9y ago

If Magic Leap wins, which I doubt, it will be because of their deep thinking about what AR means at the OS interactions level. Microsoft and Google completely failed to marshal any deep thinking about post-mouse AR interaction paradigms beyond "give the user a Bluetooth clicker" and "maybe voice?". If Magic Leap fails, which I expect, it will be because they are approaching this deep thinking as a never-ending Xerox Parc style research project, not something that needs to be rapidly racing towards a set of standards and conventions and API's to be used by 3rd party devs in order to deliver the intended consistent user experience to end users across huge numbers of applications. In Apple terms, Magic Leap desperately needs both their Andy Hertzfeld and their Guy Kawasaki, and shows no signs of having either one.

bhouston 9y ago
Deep thinking is beat by a company that ships accessible products. Apple shipped AR that is inferior to Tango but is now the thing to beat. Tango is better but expensive and not accessible. My prediction, Magic Leap eventually fails and is bought for cents on the VC $ by Samsung, Apple, Huawei or similar. Even an acquisition in the $100M means everyone but a few VCs were wiped out completely.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  They won't pass due diligence. I hope Oracle buys them! It would serve them right.
mortenjorck 9y ago
Magic Leap appears to be so focused on "cinematic reality" and the impressive demos that it enables that there is no effort being spent on the kind of practical applications that would actually give a shipping product value beyond a tech demo. Worse, even ML's occasional stabs at something "practical" are all art and no design: Witness their conceptual Gmail interface, which transforms the web UI into a Rube Goldberg-esque mechanical device, giving scroll views a third dimension that adds zero utility while requiring new gestures to do the exact same things everyone already knows how to do in a web browser. Microsoft may still have yet to deliver on any of the content creation and collaboration ideas proposed in the Hololens demos, but at least it was the start of a coherent vision.
- yodon 9y ago
  It's very hard to tell, and ML's UX work certainly could be as intellectually bankrupt as you suggest but my read is they are doing a lot of detailed explorations around specific use cases in hopes of informing a larger/broader interaction design suite that can scale across a very wide range of interaction needs, essentially trying to reanalyze the problem space in much the way that led to the distillation of the Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer schema at Xerox Parc. Microsoft seems to be keeping its sights much smaller and making much more tactical delta off of existing concepts (eg. much of Windows MR interactions really is just floating traditional windows with traditional mouse and keyboard interactions).
DonHopkins 9y ago
At least they've got their P. T. Barnum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY&t=4m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY&t=4m30s

by yodon 9y ago

bhouston 9y ago

Deep thinking is beat by a company that ships accessible products. Apple shipped AR that is inferior to Tango but is now the thing to beat. Tango is better but expensive and not accessible. My prediction, Magic Leap eventually fails and is bought for cents on the VC $ by Samsung, Apple, Huawei or similar. Even an acquisition in the $100M means everyone but a few VCs were wiped out completely.

DonHopkins 9y ago
They won't pass due diligence. I hope Oracle buys them! It would serve them right.

mortenjorck 9y ago

Magic Leap appears to be so focused on "cinematic reality" and the impressive demos that it enables that there is no effort being spent on the kind of practical applications that would actually give a shipping product value beyond a tech demo. Worse, even ML's occasional stabs at something "practical" are all art and no design: Witness their conceptual Gmail interface, which transforms the web UI into a Rube Goldberg-esque mechanical device, giving scroll views a third dimension that adds zero utility while requiring new gestures to do the exact same things everyone already knows how to do in a web browser. Microsoft may still have yet to deliver on any of the content creation and collaboration ideas proposed in the Hololens demos, but at least it was the start of a coherent vision.

yodon 9y ago
It's very hard to tell, and ML's UX work certainly could be as intellectually bankrupt as you suggest but my read is they are doing a lot of detailed explorations around specific use cases in hopes of informing a larger/broader interaction design suite that can scale across a very wide range of interaction needs, essentially trying to reanalyze the problem space in much the way that led to the distillation of the Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer schema at Xerox Parc. Microsoft seems to be keeping its sights much smaller and making much more tactical delta off of existing concepts (eg. much of Windows MR interactions really is just floating traditional windows with traditional mouse and keyboard interactions).

DonHopkins 9y ago

At least they've got their P. T. Barnum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY&t=4m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY&t=4m30s