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Theranos' tech plain didn't work. If you're looking for a historical analogy that fits better, I'd suggest Segway. There's a number of parallels with Magic Lea

Theranos' tech plain didn't work. If you're looking for a historical analogy that fits better, I'd suggest Segway. There's a number of parallels with Magic Leap. Both have engineering founders. Both founders made their first big money in medical tech (Kamen with stents and Abovitz with Mako Surgical). Where things got away from Segway was on the PR + Hype front and that seems where Magic Leap is at as well. Magic Leap is going to ship something this year, it will likely be "ok" but not brilliant and then after a few iterations and a half dozen years it may well be a device on a similar trajectory to how we use mobile phones. That's why all the money is going to these companies, the thought is that the patents and expertise is going to lay the foundation for what replaces mobile phones and what's a $500 million dollar bet against a 5 Trillion a year industry.

cinquemb 9y ago
>…going to lay the foundation for what replaces mobile phones I having a hard time seeing how this technology (and AR glasses/devices in general, at least what we hear of it) is going to be more of utility in the future than the billions of people with cheap smartphones are today. I think brain(neural) computer interfaces (transmitters/sensors) have a better chance of leaping over the smartphone than anything coming from this, and currently have utility to some of the most physically marginalized people on the planet, which is a lot more than magic can say for its product.
- walrus01 9y ago
  I have to agree with you. Getting people to wear any sort of AR glasses, no matter how small and light they are, is going to be a lot higher barrier than convincing people to keep 6" screen sized high-end phablet/phones in their pockets and purses. Advancements in flash memory density, low power CPU and I/O are continuing to come rapidly for mobile phones. The near future will have phones with 8 or 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, 802.11ac wave2/802.11ax wifi, LTE radios that can sustain 500 Mbps with MU-MIMO, and so on.
- bduerst 9y ago
  The difference between those two is 10 years to mass market and 20 years to mass market. Considering that smart phones really came to mass market 10 years ago, that's still a window to make a lot of money.

cinquemb 9y ago

>…going to lay the foundation for what replaces mobile phones I having a hard time seeing how this technology (and AR glasses/devices in general, at least what we hear of it) is going to be more of utility in the future than the billions of people with cheap smartphones are today. I think brain(neural) computer interfaces (transmitters/sensors) have a better chance of leaping over the smartphone than anything coming from this, and currently have utility to some of the most physically marginalized people on the planet, which is a lot more than magic can say for its product.

walrus01 9y ago
I have to agree with you. Getting people to wear any sort of AR glasses, no matter how small and light they are, is going to be a lot higher barrier than convincing people to keep 6" screen sized high-end phablet/phones in their pockets and purses. Advancements in flash memory density, low power CPU and I/O are continuing to come rapidly for mobile phones. The near future will have phones with 8 or 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, 802.11ac wave2/802.11ax wifi, LTE radios that can sustain 500 Mbps with MU-MIMO, and so on.
bduerst 9y ago
The difference between those two is 10 years to mass market and 20 years to mass market. Considering that smart phones really came to mass market 10 years ago, that's still a window to make a lot of money.