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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 sayi

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.

cmelbye 6y ago
Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.
- vernie 6y ago
  Not with its playing-card-sized FOV it isn't
  - sqs 6y ago
    Counterpoint: I thought it was really, really cool when I tried it for a couple hours. I have no affiliation with Magic Leap. The Magic Leap unit I tried was a friend's (so it wasn't as though Magic Leap sent me a free unit to try out and therefore could have biased me).
  - _bxg1 6y ago
    I tried out a HoloLens at a rich friend's house and had a similar experience, despite it also having a small FOV. It blew my mind and instantly registered as a really big deal. But as another commenter here pointed out, the hardware isn't there yet, and when it arrives it will require a vibrant software ecosystem. The difference is that Microsoft seems to understand that.
  - cpitman 6y ago
    I tried it a couple years ago at PAX Unplugged, and that was exactly my reaction. I felt like I was putting a lot of attention into shifting around my direction to frame the AR, and searching for content, because I was looking through a pipe.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  It seems a bit like the home console version of the Neo Geo to me. Once upon a time, I'd gladly shove large numbers of quarters into Neo Geo arcade cabinets. But when they stuck the hardware into a consumer model, with its huge price tag, my thought was, "If a rich friend bought one, I would enjoy playing with it at their house." I suspect that the big difference here is, this being 1990, SNK didn't have nearly as much access to investment money from rich people who don't understand the what entertainment budgets look like for the other 99.99% of people. So it was never hyped as anything but a luxury product.
  - jkestner 6y ago
    I had that rich friend with the Neo Geo. Yeah, I wonder if Magic Leap had started small and luxury, installing that Beast contraption with the undiluted experience to rich people, it could've grown more like Tesla. Of course, the Roadster ran on all the same roads, while whole new experiences have to be created for AR, but make a few great ones and it'll be like having a bowling lane in your house—you don't play with it except to show off to visitors. (Oh, League Bowling was the one game I remember playing on my friend's Neo Geo. He wasn't bowling-lane rich.) Or Magic Leap could've licensed some Virtual Boy games.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      Have you seen pictures of The Beast? The ergonomics and range of motion you get are about the same as what you have when using a phoropter. IIRC, it even has some of the same "positioning your head in the right place" hardware as is used by some piece of optometrist's equipment or other.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  It's the segway solution. Cool tech that solves a problem which doesn't really exist.
  - adamc 6y ago
    Kind of like VR for games? Which I have yet to meet anyone who uses...
    - BillinghamJ 6y ago
      Apparently HL Alyx is exceptionally good, maybe will Mark a bit of a turning point
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      Maybe. VR is more chicken-egg, like the Windows phone with apps. The more people with VR headsets, the more VR games get developed, but more people won't get VR headsets until there are more games developed.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        I think "vicious circle" might be closer here. Just to check things out, I rented a Quest over the winter holidays. There was very little content that was a) VR-specific, and b) so much better on VR that it was worth the hassle. After we sent it back, the kids never even mentioned it again; they're happy with their Switches and the PS4. Game designer Jesse Schell said "If Oculus Quest can’t succeed we should just hang it up" [1] and I think he's right. The obvious technical problems have been fixed. It's technically very impressive, and it has a strong novelty rush at first. But if the current market isn't enough to drive the creation of must-have games, I expect it's a descending spiral from here. [1] https://uploadvr.com/jesse-schell-oculus-quest/ https://uploadvr.com/jesse-schell-oculus-quest/
    - Kiro 6y ago
      I don't recognize that at all. I know too many to count that have an Oculus Quest and quite many had regular VR headsets before that. Personally I play Beat Saber on a daily basis and pretty often other games as well.
fossuser 6y ago
Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful? Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hardware and not a great product. Their constant advertising with no details for years really bothered me though so I probably have an unfairly negative perception of them. Either build what you’re doing in public like Facebook/Oculus or do it in secret like Apple, but don’t loudly advertise in public when you don’t have anything to show for it. ### (I played with the magic leap hardware that shipped for an hour or so and found it disappointing, a lot less interesting than when I had played with VR hardware for the first time. I think AR as the next computing platform has huge potential, but the hardware isn’t there yet and it needs a strong platform/ecosystem behind it. I think Apple has been preparing this for years.)
- leeoniya 6y ago
  > Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. i think that technology was CGI: https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-augmented-reality-demo-faked https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    That's not even a demo of the actual physical product though, that was just a video that was posted online that purported to show what the experience would look like (but actually was not). It's not like you would've seen that had you actually been looking through the glasses.
  - michaelbuckbee 6y ago
    That was the concept video which was different from the demo, but you are correct and they did a horrible job conveying that that was a concept and not the actual product.
tomcam 6y ago
Hey, Florida is a pretty interesting place!
- notJim 6y ago
  Yeah, Florida is nice! Good weather, nice beaches. They even have bioluminescent organisms there!
godzillabrennus 6y ago
Might turn out to be about as silly as believing in and investing in General Magic. They may have failed but their impact is felt everywhere.
wpietri 6y ago
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."
- catalogia 6y ago
  The segway at least found a niche with cops and tourists.
  - michaelbuckbee 6y ago
    And in a slightly different form factor / price point presaged the mass usage of Lime, etc.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Presaged in the sense that there was also a lot of VC-driven hype that didn't work out, sure. I'll admit there's a slightly higher chance that scooter rental still might turn into a real business. But it's definitely not a given.
    - rosywoozlechan 6y ago
      A little bit early to portray Lime and the like as anything other than VC throwing tons of money at an idea
  - adamc 6y ago
    Right, but it was a niche, not a revolution.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it. It's not silly to try some promising technology that ultimately doesn't work out for business. It's easy to be nasty in hindsight, from the comfort of your home, isn't it? Not so easy to try making it work in the first place.
- adam_fallon_ 6y ago
  What a vacuous comment. Granted in the early days you could give the benefit of the doubt that sure Magic Leap are trying to build some revolutionary AR - you could construe my comment as ill-natured. But go to Magic Leaps website now. Look at the promotional video that is being shown there. Now go and look at actual footage of the Magic Leap unit in action. The company are being entirely misrepresentative of what their product actually is. They are using that amazing video footage to sell a product TODAY that is nothing close to the quality shown there. Look at what the unit is capable of and compare it to that. Now sure, you can be given creative freedom to express the ideas of things that the Magic Leap lets you do. But then you remember the Whale video. They've been misrepresenting their product and trying to sell it using that misrepresentation for years at this point. When TechCrunch first released video of the little floating robot game I remember people being astounded at how asinine it was. This is what VCs have been raving about and pouring money into? So what are they trying to make work? Their promotional videos, ability to dupe VCs and probably their rock solid sales team - how long can should you give that benefit of the doubt for? They are 9 years old at this point!
Reedx 6y ago
I don't know, those could be genuine feelings. Like the first time using VR. Now their TEDx talk on the other hand... speaking of silly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY To me that was the moment both Magic Leap and TED (sadly) jumped the shark.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  What the hell did I just watch...
- dbmikus 6y ago
  It is worth saying that TedX is a collaboration and the actual talks are not as directly tied to the TED organization. But I do think TED Talks have jumped the shark, probably before that talk.
baxtr 6y ago
His newsletter has “.. 135,000 subscribers, with a wide and senior audience in technology, media and finance.”
benedictevans 6y ago
Sometimes frontier technology doesn't turn out as planned. Welcome to the tech industry - you will encounter more of this as your career continues ;) So: Magic Leap built a technology demonstrator, on a rig that was bolted to a table (as everyone has said). That demo was great. It was also, yes, bolted to a table. They have not turned that into a shipping mass-market consumer product. Somehow, a bunch of people on the internets decided that because they, personally, hadn't seen the demo, anyone who had must be lying (or on acid?). This was, well, 'a bit silly', for lots of reasons, and it also missed the real challenges. The question was never 'does the tech demo exist?' Rather: Can they turn the optics on the table into something you can wear (that also has even better optics, with acceptable FOV, occlusion etc)? Can they go from a display technology to an actual platform? Presume for the sake of argument that they solved all the optics etc questions - then they would be in the position of a company that had invented multitouch. That doesn't give you an iPhone. You still have to make an actual smartphone, work out the software and the UI, build an ecosystem, create an app store, get to scaled mass production, and that's really expensive. Or, someone had to - you could licence it out in some way (which is what Qualcomm did with CDMA - Qualcomm doesn't make phones or build cellular networks) So: imagine back in 2006, you'd seen Jeff Han's multitouch demo. It was three feet across, came in several packing cases, and it was very very cool. But it wasn't an iPhone.

cmelbye 6y ago

Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.

vernie 6y ago
Not with its playing-card-sized FOV it isn't
- sqs 6y ago
  Counterpoint: I thought it was really, really cool when I tried it for a couple hours. I have no affiliation with Magic Leap. The Magic Leap unit I tried was a friend's (so it wasn't as though Magic Leap sent me a free unit to try out and therefore could have biased me).
- _bxg1 6y ago
  I tried out a HoloLens at a rich friend's house and had a similar experience, despite it also having a small FOV. It blew my mind and instantly registered as a really big deal. But as another commenter here pointed out, the hardware isn't there yet, and when it arrives it will require a vibrant software ecosystem. The difference is that Microsoft seems to understand that.
- cpitman 6y ago
  I tried it a couple years ago at PAX Unplugged, and that was exactly my reaction. I felt like I was putting a lot of attention into shifting around my direction to frame the AR, and searching for content, because I was looking through a pipe.
mumblemumble 6y ago
It seems a bit like the home console version of the Neo Geo to me. Once upon a time, I'd gladly shove large numbers of quarters into Neo Geo arcade cabinets. But when they stuck the hardware into a consumer model, with its huge price tag, my thought was, "If a rich friend bought one, I would enjoy playing with it at their house." I suspect that the big difference here is, this being 1990, SNK didn't have nearly as much access to investment money from rich people who don't understand the what entertainment budgets look like for the other 99.99% of people. So it was never hyped as anything but a luxury product.
- jkestner 6y ago
  I had that rich friend with the Neo Geo. Yeah, I wonder if Magic Leap had started small and luxury, installing that Beast contraption with the undiluted experience to rich people, it could've grown more like Tesla. Of course, the Roadster ran on all the same roads, while whole new experiences have to be created for AR, but make a few great ones and it'll be like having a bowling lane in your house—you don't play with it except to show off to visitors. (Oh, League Bowling was the one game I remember playing on my friend's Neo Geo. He wasn't bowling-lane rich.) Or Magic Leap could've licensed some Virtual Boy games.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    Have you seen pictures of The Beast? The ergonomics and range of motion you get are about the same as what you have when using a phoropter. IIRC, it even has some of the same "positioning your head in the right place" hardware as is used by some piece of optometrist's equipment or other.
three_seagrass 6y ago
It's the segway solution. Cool tech that solves a problem which doesn't really exist.
- adamc 6y ago
  Kind of like VR for games? Which I have yet to meet anyone who uses...
  - BillinghamJ 6y ago
    Apparently HL Alyx is exceptionally good, maybe will Mark a bit of a turning point
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Maybe. VR is more chicken-egg, like the Windows phone with apps. The more people with VR headsets, the more VR games get developed, but more people won't get VR headsets until there are more games developed.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      I think "vicious circle" might be closer here. Just to check things out, I rented a Quest over the winter holidays. There was very little content that was a) VR-specific, and b) so much better on VR that it was worth the hassle. After we sent it back, the kids never even mentioned it again; they're happy with their Switches and the PS4. Game designer Jesse Schell said "If Oculus Quest can’t succeed we should just hang it up" [1] and I think he's right. The obvious technical problems have been fixed. It's technically very impressive, and it has a strong novelty rush at first. But if the current market isn't enough to drive the creation of must-have games, I expect it's a descending spiral from here. [1] https://uploadvr.com/jesse-schell-oculus-quest/ https://uploadvr.com/jesse-schell-oculus-quest/
  - Kiro 6y ago
    I don't recognize that at all. I know too many to count that have an Oculus Quest and quite many had regular VR headsets before that. Personally I play Beat Saber on a daily basis and pretty often other games as well.

fossuser 6y ago

Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful? Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hardware and not a great product. Their constant advertising with no details for years really bothered me though so I probably have an unfairly negative perception of them. Either build what you’re doing in public like Facebook/Oculus or do it in secret like Apple, but don’t loudly advertise in public when you don’t have anything to show for it. ### (I played with the magic leap hardware that shipped for an hour or so and found it disappointing, a lot less interesting than when I had played with VR hardware for the first time. I think AR as the next computing platform has huge potential, but the hardware isn’t there yet and it needs a strong platform/ecosystem behind it. I think Apple has been preparing this for years.)

leeoniya 6y ago
> Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. i think that technology was CGI: https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-augmented-reality-demo-faked https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  That's not even a demo of the actual physical product though, that was just a video that was posted online that purported to show what the experience would look like (but actually was not). It's not like you would've seen that had you actually been looking through the glasses.
- michaelbuckbee 6y ago
  That was the concept video which was different from the demo, but you are correct and they did a horrible job conveying that that was a concept and not the actual product.

tomcam 6y ago

Hey, Florida is a pretty interesting place!

notJim 6y ago
Yeah, Florida is nice! Good weather, nice beaches. They even have bioluminescent organisms there!

godzillabrennus 6y ago

Might turn out to be about as silly as believing in and investing in General Magic. They may have failed but their impact is felt everywhere.

wpietri 6y ago

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."

catalogia 6y ago
The segway at least found a niche with cops and tourists.
- michaelbuckbee 6y ago
  And in a slightly different form factor / price point presaged the mass usage of Lime, etc.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Presaged in the sense that there was also a lot of VC-driven hype that didn't work out, sure. I'll admit there's a slightly higher chance that scooter rental still might turn into a real business. But it's definitely not a given.
  - rosywoozlechan 6y ago
    A little bit early to portray Lime and the like as anything other than VC throwing tons of money at an idea
- adamc 6y ago
  Right, but it was a niche, not a revolution.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it. It's not silly to try some promising technology that ultimately doesn't work out for business. It's easy to be nasty in hindsight, from the comfort of your home, isn't it? Not so easy to try making it work in the first place.

adam_fallon_ 6y ago
What a vacuous comment. Granted in the early days you could give the benefit of the doubt that sure Magic Leap are trying to build some revolutionary AR - you could construe my comment as ill-natured. But go to Magic Leaps website now. Look at the promotional video that is being shown there. Now go and look at actual footage of the Magic Leap unit in action. The company are being entirely misrepresentative of what their product actually is. They are using that amazing video footage to sell a product TODAY that is nothing close to the quality shown there. Look at what the unit is capable of and compare it to that. Now sure, you can be given creative freedom to express the ideas of things that the Magic Leap lets you do. But then you remember the Whale video. They've been misrepresenting their product and trying to sell it using that misrepresentation for years at this point. When TechCrunch first released video of the little floating robot game I remember people being astounded at how asinine it was. This is what VCs have been raving about and pouring money into? So what are they trying to make work? Their promotional videos, ability to dupe VCs and probably their rock solid sales team - how long can should you give that benefit of the doubt for? They are 9 years old at this point!

Reedx 6y ago

I don't know, those could be genuine feelings. Like the first time using VR. Now their TEDx talk on the other hand... speaking of silly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY To me that was the moment both Magic Leap and TED (sadly) jumped the shark.

BossingAround 6y ago
What the hell did I just watch...
dbmikus 6y ago
It is worth saying that TedX is a collaboration and the actual talks are not as directly tied to the TED organization. But I do think TED Talks have jumped the shark, probably before that talk.

baxtr 6y ago

His newsletter has “.. 135,000 subscribers, with a wide and senior audience in technology, media and finance.”

benedictevans 6y ago

Sometimes frontier technology doesn't turn out as planned. Welcome to the tech industry - you will encounter more of this as your career continues ;) So: Magic Leap built a technology demonstrator, on a rig that was bolted to a table (as everyone has said). That demo was great. It was also, yes, bolted to a table. They have not turned that into a shipping mass-market consumer product. Somehow, a bunch of people on the internets decided that because they, personally, hadn't seen the demo, anyone who had must be lying (or on acid?). This was, well, 'a bit silly', for lots of reasons, and it also missed the real challenges. The question was never 'does the tech demo exist?' Rather: Can they turn the optics on the table into something you can wear (that also has even better optics, with acceptable FOV, occlusion etc)? Can they go from a display technology to an actual platform? Presume for the sake of argument that they solved all the optics etc questions - then they would be in the position of a company that had invented multitouch. That doesn't give you an iPhone. You still have to make an actual smartphone, work out the software and the UI, build an ecosystem, create an app store, get to scaled mass production, and that's really expensive. Or, someone had to - you could licence it out in some way (which is what Qualcomm did with CDMA - Qualcomm doesn't make phones or build cellular networks) So: imagine back in 2006, you'd seen Jeff Han's multitouch demo. It was three feet across, came in several packing cases, and it was very very cool. But it wasn't an iPhone.