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Magic Leap made one of the classic mistakes that other before-their-time products make: they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have

by npunt 7y ago

Magic Leap made one of the classic mistakes that other before-their-time products make: they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts. When you're building a product without a focused use case, you are pulled in a ton of different directions. In AR, this means focusing on fidelity, embodied in high resolution, wide field of view visuals, powerful processing, and compelling input methods. The real question in AR is what use cases can you hit without great fidelity? What sort of value can you unlock with a low-res postage stamp overlay and slow processor instead of full FOV? That's where the go-to market effort needs to be placed. A similar example of this overreach was in multifunction pen devices of the 90s (General Magic, Newton, EO Personal communicator). A great counter example is Apple Watch, which didn't chase the 'smartphone on your wrist' everything device, and instead picked a few key use cases, established a beachhead, and slowly added capabilities as the technology allowed. When a category-defining product has yet to emerge on the market, there are going to be a lot of people making predictable mistakes like this - mistiming ideas, scoping the wrong set of features, getting too excited about the wrong technologies, not leveraging their assets. If you're a product person interested in understanding more about these factors, I wrote an essay on the subject recently: https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/ https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/

didibus 7y ago
I agree with you, but I also want to say it's often more complicated then this. Like, the Apple Watch example seems easy, but what happened to FitBit? FitBit went all in on your idea. Picked a single use case with a market, delivered on it. Yet Apple swooped in, took the market from them. Why is that? This is an open question, I don't claim to have the answer. It just seems that in this case, Apple was promising, as opposed to FitBit, that it would bring much more use cases to the user, a smartwatch on your wrist really, that seems like it was the messaging at least.
- sh87 7y ago
  Also curious is the case of Pebble. Great product, priced right, small set of customers who swore by it, did one thing really really well. Now its dead.
  - Judgmentality 7y ago
    Pebble took on enormous debt expecting their market to just keep growing. They had a great product, but they thought they had the next iPhone. They bet big, and they went bankrupt (basically the acquisition cost was just to cover the cost of debt). https://qz.com/857412/pebble-went-from-kickstarter-to-being-worth-740-million-to-being-bought-by-fitbit-fit-for-40-million/ https://qz.com/857412/pebble-went-from-kickstarter-to-being-...
    - sh87 7y ago
      If you bet big, you may lose and eat the dust. If you don't, and play cautiously, your competition will eat your market and starve you. You still eat the dust. I just don't get it.
      - Judgmentality 7y ago
        > I just don't get it. Nobody likes to admit it, but luck is 99% of success.
        npunt 7y ago
        It isn't just luck. It's knowing what markets to enter and what markets to avoid. Pebble entered a market adjacent to iPhone and where Apple was likely to move next. It wasn't Pebble's market to win, it was Apple's to lose.
        kmonsen 7y ago
        It isn't just luck, far from it, but it is also luck. All the skill and determination in the world might not do you any good without some luck to come with it. Of curse getting that skill and determination in the first place is largely luck based so there is that as well.
        kmonsen 7y ago
        This is everywhere in life, luck is incredibly important. Everyone that is successful only see when they worked hard and were smart, not all the luck. Sure you need hard work and talent, but there are lies of people with that and no luck that fail or at least less successful.
- Crespyl 7y ago
  I'm probably oversimplifying, but there is some truth to the notion of Apple being as much a fashion company as they are a tech company, and smart-watches fit perfectly into that niche of fashion-tech. FitBit was a good product, but Apple had more experience and resources available when they decided to enter the space. Even so, I have no doubt there were other factors at play as well.
  - pfraze 7y ago
    I think that's exactly what Pebble' problem was, unfortunately. It wasn't fashionable.
  - npunt 7y ago
    Yeah definitely! Fashion is itself a framing mechanism and a way to convey meaning, and part of any good product launch is having people understand your product the way you want it to be understood. If one of the properties you want your product to have is being fashionable and communicate something about you, you have to both invest effort in making a product that reflects that need (through the design decisions of form & function), and gets people to understanding it through that lens (framing it through product marketing). It's a push and pull to create something fashion-forward, the product adapts to the market's needs, and the market shifts what's fashionable to include the product.
- Sophistifunk 7y ago
  Fitbit should have iterated on their devices, making them more accurate while maintaining "host platform" neutrality. Instead, they thought they were in a position to compete against Apple and Samsung in "tiny wrist computers" and the rest of the story is history.
  - wmeredith 7y ago
    Fit it also had quality issues. My wife owned several and used all of them until they fell apart, which was always less than a year. They were garbage. Counterexample: I have g-shocks that have been abused for decades and are going strong.
- npunt 7y ago
  Good counter-example. The reason is leverage. FitBit had nothing to leverage, whereas Watch had iPhone, Apple's manufacturing prowess, and Apple's entire market presence. There's a part of the essay that covers the leverage piece, but the quote that most applies (and may be most controversial here on HN) is: > "a lack of leverage is one reason why category-defining products are rarely created by brand new startups." This idea of course is distressing to product creators. You can create great products (focused, well-executed, nails the need) that don't succeed. Business can be pretty unfair like that.
- p1necone 7y ago
  > "What happened to FitBit?" I was confused when reading this and googled market share - you're right, apparently Apple has a much larger chunk of that market than FitBit does. Either I live in an odd bubble, or the market is a lot different in New Zealand because I probably know 5 or so people with FitBits, and zero with Apple watches.
kmonsen 7y ago
I think they just never had a great product. Look at VR, even though the products are becoming really good, it is not hitting mainstream and this is even more niche. The startup cost is enormous, it is really hard to create good content and there is close to zero revenue since there are few users. And the users that does exist is the techie crowd that doesn't like to pay for anything.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    > Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware. Technies will pay for hardware like the iPhone, that gets you laid. Not AR/VR, which makes you look like a dork and makes you seasick. FTFY.
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Oculus Quest and its 3 year old mobile chipset would like to disagree. People pay for a good experience.
    - gfxgirl 7y ago
      The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. You can't play Half Life Alex on a Quest, nor No Man's Sky, Boneworks, SkyRim, Lone Echo, etc.... You basically get a 3 or 4 mobile class experiences and then you're done. Yes you can use the link, but then you need an NVidia 1650 RTX or better which means you're a high end gamer already and so were not this supposed "mass market" PSVR is still top selling VR and while cable and setup wise it's arguably the worst it at least has quality content.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. It is, but it compensates by offering good enough experience while being untethered, self-contained and quick to start up. It may not matter for teenagers with expensive gaming rigs, but it matters for working adults with families, who otherwise don't have time and space to justify a VR gaming PC build.
gtm1260 7y ago
I think the biggest mistake that Magic Leap made is that they compromised on their hardware. Like you said, they tried to go general purpose which means low "enough" cost for devs to pick one up and build an app, for enthusiasts to try em out etc. But the thing is, they didn't have best in class hardware. I've tried one and its marginally better than a hololens 2. They could have gone all out with a vision prototype that wowed the world with its capabilities, instead they increased the field of view, slightly and made the form-factor slightly better.
- npunt 7y ago
  Even if they did make the world's greatest AR hardware of 2020, they wouldn't have a great product because they wouldn't have clear use cases to sell it, and it would be too hobbled by resource constraints of the available tech - much like pen computers of the 90s. If it were the scifi-like AR glasses of the future, perhaps that would sell itself due to all the dreamed up ideas in movies and tv, but that's pretty far afield of what's possible today.
egd 7y ago
The basic problem is that without high fidelity & a wide FOV, there's nothing that sets MagicLeap apart from any of the other companies that have been able to create AR headsets for the last ~decade. AR right now is stuck because the display technologies aren't up to the task. The "Waveguide" approach has always fallen short - nobody's ever been able to make the viewing angle wide enough to be worthwhile, and the "passthrough" approach isn't really viable for walking down the street. This is why I'm skeptical about Apple's AR moves - unless they've either got a totally new display technology or they've managed to do something incredibly clever with the waveguide approach, I just don't see consumer goggles working. The only people I've seen doing something unique in this space is Tilt Five: https://www.tiltfive.com/ https://www.tiltfive.com/ - they've basically done what you're suggesting: constrain the use case until you can actually build something for it.
- istorical 7y ago
  One could argue that Google Glass could have worked if the battery life was better, universal google maps / navigation had been better developed and more omnipresent, and pricepoint had been way lower. Perhaps enough time has passed for those sorts of problems to be resolved and Apple will do something similar to Apple Watch but for Glasses.
  - neuronic 7y ago
    But that is precisely the point the parent is trying to make, no? The tech was in no way ready and able to do these things, so Google Glass had to appeal in a broader, non-focused way which is one of the issues that broke its neck.
  - janekm 7y ago
    I find that very unlikely. Pedestrian navigation isn't exactly a major use case for most people and is pretty well covered by phones and smartwatches already. Could have been useful for food delivery drivers (cyclists), but then we're right back into specialist markets.
    - 7y ago
baldfat 7y ago
I want augmented reality for communication and for board gaming please. Someone focus on having cool Augment Reality chat where I can walk with a friend or family member and see them right next to me. I also would like to play board games with my friends who no longer live close. Also if I was playing a game and they could be virtually sitting next to me so that we could communicate better that would also be great.
- hunta2097 7y ago
  Have you seen the Tilt Five? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-tabletop-gaming https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-ta...
- exhilaration 7y ago
  I play board games using Tabletop Simulator on Steam with my buddies due to the pandemic, one of them uses an Oculus headset and he really likes it. We can't see each other's faces though.
jimmySixDOF 7y ago
I agree with you the problem was loss of focus related but not in the way you frame it. MLeap's original focus was to deliver a transformative visual experience through Dynamic Light Field Display. This worked, was presented to investors, and made smart people's jaws drop. It took a room of equipment to deliver, but they were funded at risk by smart people to develop this experience in a consumer format. Fast Forward so many years and what got delivered in ML1 ? A consumer format device not capable of delivering on that original vision experience. Your comment suggests MLeap should have early on baked in expectations for a substandard visual experience in a first mass market consumer product. I disagree. Instead, they should have planned on miniaturization problems and baked in expectations for first delivery of a ground breaking visual experience product not available in a mass market consumer device footprint or price point. MLeap's killer app should have been their visual experience. That was the day one focus and it got lost along the way, as you say 'pulled in a ton of different directions'. I tell people I would have bought a $10,000 Motorcycle helmet with a backpack from MLeap if that was able to produce just a good part of original Dynamic Light Field AR experience. Is that a fast moving mass market consumer device ? No, but obviously the ML1 was not either. I am reminded of Theranos and their maniacal insistence on using 'one drop of blood' and how it defined the format of every component, when it is possible they would have succeeded with just a little more flexibility on that design principle. As with Theranos setting back the IoT medical space, I fear that the MLeap experience will set back spatial computing in the short to mid term, however I think both these fields are at very early stages of transforming our living environments over the long term.
- npunt 7y ago
  A "transformative visual experience" isn't a product, or a vision. It's a technology in search of a problem. They needed to demonstrate a clear use case, and determine if that was achievable with what they had. If it wasn't, they could always be an R&D lab instead. I don't know what you actually do with a $10k light field thing even if it is cool. If you want to make a category-defining product (which $2.6b in funding strongly suggests), you have to define the category, not just ship a thing.
numpad0 7y ago
Was the Magic Leap naming intentional? I had always thought that that name carried the message in the clearest possible way. Were people not aware of that???
zaidf 7y ago
...because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts This is easy to assume but a far more common reason companies go broad is that it makes it much easier to sell big vision and big dreams. Most investors in magicleap probably wouldn’t have invested if the pitch was “right now we are focused 100% on a product that serves $INDUSTRY_X well before moving to $INDUSTRY_Y” In fact, many investors wouldn’t even have taken the pitch, let alone writing a check
- wastedhours 7y ago
  Completely agree - but for such a well funded company, surely they could have continued to try and sell unicorn tears on the front end, but spent some real time and effort to nail something on the backend. This "pivot" seems like a play they should have been running in parallel regardless, considering they've had actual hardware on the go for a few years so far.
- npunt 7y ago
  Sure, selling a big vision is important to new startups. That's just one of many constraints and risks you have, but like all risks it can be navigated well or poorly. They could sell a big vision but also have a plan to increment there, but they didn't. I don't think that negates the fact that Magic Leap never presented what their groundbreaking idea was for why we needed AR. If you're interested I do cover this among other things in the linked essay.
ethbro 7y ago
Or to put it another way: geeks fall in love with capability, but everyone else wants utility.
rburhum 7y ago
Not having a specific well-defined use case... Under no circumstances would I call that a “product”. I would call it “really cool tech” at best, but I can’t fathom how a “multi-billion company” can’t figure that out. Yes, this gives me obvious schadenfreude...
TriNetra 7y ago
Last month I read an interesting use-case of AR which helped in setting up air handling systems for newly setup hospitals in China Wuhan by a German technician using AR technology of an Indian start-up here https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/here-s-how-indian-tech-firm-blinkin-helped-china-fight-coronavirus-120031801752_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/here-s-... So yes, I do agree that such specific purpose apps definitely validates and advances a new technology like AR.
gfodor 7y ago
Would be curious on your take on my essay here wrt choosing the optimal features/scope: https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-plan-2c1364033bec https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-pl... tl;dr, avatar based communication will require basic voice/body language, mixed media, globally addressable spaces on the web. no fancy scripting, crypto, etc etc.
deleted 7y ago
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sek 7y ago
I absolutely agree with the killer application part, even for business applications they still don't have any idea. On their website you have a video that displays several use cases that don't make sense if you really think about them. Just to dissect the first example where doctors look at a low resolution brain over a surgery table. I don't know why there is a woman without a device who thinks: "why are those three people looking over me here?". But I think the association is some kind of neurosurgery. * Neurosurgeons know how a brain looks like inside, that's anatomy. * If this depicts the CT or MRT of the woman, those are evaluated on high resolutions displays by radiologists. * It's difficult to keep those devices sterile in a hospital environment. Let's extend this into surgery. "Hey cool you can look inside the brain in real time". Why would a display not be enough in any other case? * Doctors don't wear a heavy device with a limited field of view during a 5h surgery. * There are devices with a high resolution display, that can show you in real time where you are inside the brain. I tried this device once with a melon, I could make the mental transition within a minute. Now imagine a neurosurgeon with all his skill. * What if there is a problem with the image. Right now the doctor can look from the display inside the real brain and check if something is off. You can't take the unobstructed view from a doctor here. The other two examples in the video are not much more convincing. The second one is solved by a warehouse navigation device. Maybe the last one, but a car showroom usually has a real car you can drive.... Even without it a VR Headset would solve the same issue. Why do they have to see their surroundings? After so many years and that much money, that's the best they came up with? I used the one from Microsoft in a museum, that could in theory be interesting. Make it more interactive. You had to stand at an exact position, it couldn't interact with its surroundings and my nose hurt because it was so heavy. I think the battery was empty after 15 minutes. Just the complexity building a fully interactive museum, all the 3D artists and programmers that would take. What else you could improve with those resources to enhance the experience?
- npunt 7y ago
  Yep, the videos are basically scifi shorts devoid of actual product thinking. It's like asking concept artists to draw a hospital of the future, knowing nothing about how hospitals operate. I saw this a lot in edtech, lots of wishful thinking put in products by people who didn't know how schools worked.
kats 7y ago
I think that Magic Leap went on for years with just promises and marketing, and they never produced a demo or product. I guess they actually did release hardware a while ago, I didn't know. But for a long time it was just news about "Magic leap promises X" or "Magic leap raises money". But they didn't release a demo or product.
FrojoS 7y ago
> they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts. Couldn't you have said the same of the Apple II or IBM PC?
- bsanr2 7y ago
  Those were years after PCs had made a foothold in (well-off) US households because they allowed you to do digital word-processing and spreadsheets at home.
simonkafan 7y ago
To underline this statement, take a look at this "Spotify for AR" concept: https://mixed.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/spotify_magic_leap.jpg https://mixed.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/spotify_magic_le... Did someone at Magic Leap seriously think, people will buy an expensive AR device and wear it just to see virtual album covers placed on their table?
Peaches4Rent 7y ago
If you want to pick a usecase for any new idea the best usecase you can think of is pornography.
bsanr2 7y ago
I don't know if the Apple Watch is a great example of product strategy, specifically, driving success. Pebble and other companies established those use cases first, but failed to get traction.
AbrahamParangi 7y ago
The flip side is that sometimes a product within the scope of your tech does not exist yet. Sometimes, for some products, you have to build.

by npunt 7y ago

didibus 7y ago

I agree with you, but I also want to say it's often more complicated then this. Like, the Apple Watch example seems easy, but what happened to FitBit? FitBit went all in on your idea. Picked a single use case with a market, delivered on it. Yet Apple swooped in, took the market from them. Why is that? This is an open question, I don't claim to have the answer. It just seems that in this case, Apple was promising, as opposed to FitBit, that it would bring much more use cases to the user, a smartwatch on your wrist really, that seems like it was the messaging at least.

sh87 7y ago
Also curious is the case of Pebble. Great product, priced right, small set of customers who swore by it, did one thing really really well. Now its dead.
- Judgmentality 7y ago
  Pebble took on enormous debt expecting their market to just keep growing. They had a great product, but they thought they had the next iPhone. They bet big, and they went bankrupt (basically the acquisition cost was just to cover the cost of debt). https://qz.com/857412/pebble-went-from-kickstarter-to-being-worth-740-million-to-being-bought-by-fitbit-fit-for-40-million/ https://qz.com/857412/pebble-went-from-kickstarter-to-being-...
  - sh87 7y ago
    If you bet big, you may lose and eat the dust. If you don't, and play cautiously, your competition will eat your market and starve you. You still eat the dust. I just don't get it.
    - Judgmentality 7y ago
      > I just don't get it. Nobody likes to admit it, but luck is 99% of success.
      - npunt 7y ago
        It isn't just luck. It's knowing what markets to enter and what markets to avoid. Pebble entered a market adjacent to iPhone and where Apple was likely to move next. It wasn't Pebble's market to win, it was Apple's to lose.
        kmonsen 7y ago
        It isn't just luck, far from it, but it is also luck. All the skill and determination in the world might not do you any good without some luck to come with it. Of curse getting that skill and determination in the first place is largely luck based so there is that as well.
      - kmonsen 7y ago
        This is everywhere in life, luck is incredibly important. Everyone that is successful only see when they worked hard and were smart, not all the luck. Sure you need hard work and talent, but there are lies of people with that and no luck that fail or at least less successful.
Crespyl 7y ago
I'm probably oversimplifying, but there is some truth to the notion of Apple being as much a fashion company as they are a tech company, and smart-watches fit perfectly into that niche of fashion-tech. FitBit was a good product, but Apple had more experience and resources available when they decided to enter the space. Even so, I have no doubt there were other factors at play as well.
- pfraze 7y ago
  I think that's exactly what Pebble' problem was, unfortunately. It wasn't fashionable.
- npunt 7y ago
  Yeah definitely! Fashion is itself a framing mechanism and a way to convey meaning, and part of any good product launch is having people understand your product the way you want it to be understood. If one of the properties you want your product to have is being fashionable and communicate something about you, you have to both invest effort in making a product that reflects that need (through the design decisions of form & function), and gets people to understanding it through that lens (framing it through product marketing). It's a push and pull to create something fashion-forward, the product adapts to the market's needs, and the market shifts what's fashionable to include the product.
Sophistifunk 7y ago
Fitbit should have iterated on their devices, making them more accurate while maintaining "host platform" neutrality. Instead, they thought they were in a position to compete against Apple and Samsung in "tiny wrist computers" and the rest of the story is history.
- wmeredith 7y ago
  Fit it also had quality issues. My wife owned several and used all of them until they fell apart, which was always less than a year. They were garbage. Counterexample: I have g-shocks that have been abused for decades and are going strong.
npunt 7y ago
Good counter-example. The reason is leverage. FitBit had nothing to leverage, whereas Watch had iPhone, Apple's manufacturing prowess, and Apple's entire market presence. There's a part of the essay that covers the leverage piece, but the quote that most applies (and may be most controversial here on HN) is: > "a lack of leverage is one reason why category-defining products are rarely created by brand new startups." This idea of course is distressing to product creators. You can create great products (focused, well-executed, nails the need) that don't succeed. Business can be pretty unfair like that.
p1necone 7y ago
> "What happened to FitBit?" I was confused when reading this and googled market share - you're right, apparently Apple has a much larger chunk of that market than FitBit does. Either I live in an odd bubble, or the market is a lot different in New Zealand because I probably know 5 or so people with FitBits, and zero with Apple watches.

kmonsen 7y ago

I think they just never had a great product. Look at VR, even though the products are becoming really good, it is not hitting mainstream and this is even more niche. The startup cost is enormous, it is really hard to create good content and there is close to zero revenue since there are few users. And the users that does exist is the techie crowd that doesn't like to pay for anything.

huffmsa 7y ago
Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  > Techies will pay for hardware though. But it's got to be good hardware. Technies will pay for hardware like the iPhone, that gets you laid. Not AR/VR, which makes you look like a dork and makes you seasick. FTFY.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Oculus Quest and its 3 year old mobile chipset would like to disagree. People pay for a good experience.
  - gfxgirl 7y ago
    The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. You can't play Half Life Alex on a Quest, nor No Man's Sky, Boneworks, SkyRim, Lone Echo, etc.... You basically get a 3 or 4 mobile class experiences and then you're done. Yes you can use the link, but then you need an NVidia 1650 RTX or better which means you're a high end gamer already and so were not this supposed "mass market" PSVR is still top selling VR and while cable and setup wise it's arguably the worst it at least has quality content.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. It is, but it compensates by offering good enough experience while being untethered, self-contained and quick to start up. It may not matter for teenagers with expensive gaming rigs, but it matters for working adults with families, who otherwise don't have time and space to justify a VR gaming PC build.

gtm1260 7y ago

I think the biggest mistake that Magic Leap made is that they compromised on their hardware. Like you said, they tried to go general purpose which means low "enough" cost for devs to pick one up and build an app, for enthusiasts to try em out etc. But the thing is, they didn't have best in class hardware. I've tried one and its marginally better than a hololens 2. They could have gone all out with a vision prototype that wowed the world with its capabilities, instead they increased the field of view, slightly and made the form-factor slightly better.

npunt 7y ago
Even if they did make the world's greatest AR hardware of 2020, they wouldn't have a great product because they wouldn't have clear use cases to sell it, and it would be too hobbled by resource constraints of the available tech - much like pen computers of the 90s. If it were the scifi-like AR glasses of the future, perhaps that would sell itself due to all the dreamed up ideas in movies and tv, but that's pretty far afield of what's possible today.

egd 7y ago

The basic problem is that without high fidelity & a wide FOV, there's nothing that sets MagicLeap apart from any of the other companies that have been able to create AR headsets for the last ~decade. AR right now is stuck because the display technologies aren't up to the task. The "Waveguide" approach has always fallen short - nobody's ever been able to make the viewing angle wide enough to be worthwhile, and the "passthrough" approach isn't really viable for walking down the street. This is why I'm skeptical about Apple's AR moves - unless they've either got a totally new display technology or they've managed to do something incredibly clever with the waveguide approach, I just don't see consumer goggles working. The only people I've seen doing something unique in this space is Tilt Five: https://www.tiltfive.com/ https://www.tiltfive.com/ - they've basically done what you're suggesting: constrain the use case until you can actually build something for it.

istorical 7y ago
One could argue that Google Glass could have worked if the battery life was better, universal google maps / navigation had been better developed and more omnipresent, and pricepoint had been way lower. Perhaps enough time has passed for those sorts of problems to be resolved and Apple will do something similar to Apple Watch but for Glasses.
- neuronic 7y ago
  But that is precisely the point the parent is trying to make, no? The tech was in no way ready and able to do these things, so Google Glass had to appeal in a broader, non-focused way which is one of the issues that broke its neck.
- janekm 7y ago
  I find that very unlikely. Pedestrian navigation isn't exactly a major use case for most people and is pretty well covered by phones and smartwatches already. Could have been useful for food delivery drivers (cyclists), but then we're right back into specialist markets.
  - 7y ago

baldfat 7y ago

I want augmented reality for communication and for board gaming please. Someone focus on having cool Augment Reality chat where I can walk with a friend or family member and see them right next to me. I also would like to play board games with my friends who no longer live close. Also if I was playing a game and they could be virtually sitting next to me so that we could communicate better that would also be great.

hunta2097 7y ago
Have you seen the Tilt Five? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-tabletop-gaming https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiltfive/holographic-ta...
exhilaration 7y ago
I play board games using Tabletop Simulator on Steam with my buddies due to the pandemic, one of them uses an Oculus headset and he really likes it. We can't see each other's faces though.

jimmySixDOF 7y ago

I agree with you the problem was loss of focus related but not in the way you frame it. MLeap's original focus was to deliver a transformative visual experience through Dynamic Light Field Display. This worked, was presented to investors, and made smart people's jaws drop. It took a room of equipment to deliver, but they were funded at risk by smart people to develop this experience in a consumer format. Fast Forward so many years and what got delivered in ML1 ? A consumer format device not capable of delivering on that original vision experience. Your comment suggests MLeap should have early on baked in expectations for a substandard visual experience in a first mass market consumer product. I disagree. Instead, they should have planned on miniaturization problems and baked in expectations for first delivery of a ground breaking visual experience product not available in a mass market consumer device footprint or price point. MLeap's killer app should have been their visual experience. That was the day one focus and it got lost along the way, as you say 'pulled in a ton of different directions'. I tell people I would have bought a $10,000 Motorcycle helmet with a backpack from MLeap if that was able to produce just a good part of original Dynamic Light Field AR experience. Is that a fast moving mass market consumer device ? No, but obviously the ML1 was not either. I am reminded of Theranos and their maniacal insistence on using 'one drop of blood' and how it defined the format of every component, when it is possible they would have succeeded with just a little more flexibility on that design principle. As with Theranos setting back the IoT medical space, I fear that the MLeap experience will set back spatial computing in the short to mid term, however I think both these fields are at very early stages of transforming our living environments over the long term.

npunt 7y ago
A "transformative visual experience" isn't a product, or a vision. It's a technology in search of a problem. They needed to demonstrate a clear use case, and determine if that was achievable with what they had. If it wasn't, they could always be an R&D lab instead. I don't know what you actually do with a $10k light field thing even if it is cool. If you want to make a category-defining product (which $2.6b in funding strongly suggests), you have to define the category, not just ship a thing.

numpad0 7y ago

Was the Magic Leap naming intentional? I had always thought that that name carried the message in the clearest possible way. Were people not aware of that???

zaidf 7y ago

...because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts This is easy to assume but a far more common reason companies go broad is that it makes it much easier to sell big vision and big dreams. Most investors in magicleap probably wouldn’t have invested if the pitch was “right now we are focused 100% on a product that serves $INDUSTRY_X well before moving to $INDUSTRY_Y” In fact, many investors wouldn’t even have taken the pitch, let alone writing a check

wastedhours 7y ago
Completely agree - but for such a well funded company, surely they could have continued to try and sell unicorn tears on the front end, but spent some real time and effort to nail something on the backend. This "pivot" seems like a play they should have been running in parallel regardless, considering they've had actual hardware on the go for a few years so far.
npunt 7y ago
Sure, selling a big vision is important to new startups. That's just one of many constraints and risks you have, but like all risks it can be navigated well or poorly. They could sell a big vision but also have a plan to increment there, but they didn't. I don't think that negates the fact that Magic Leap never presented what their groundbreaking idea was for why we needed AR. If you're interested I do cover this among other things in the linked essay.

ethbro 7y ago

Or to put it another way: geeks fall in love with capability, but everyone else wants utility.

rburhum 7y ago

Not having a specific well-defined use case... Under no circumstances would I call that a “product”. I would call it “really cool tech” at best, but I can’t fathom how a “multi-billion company” can’t figure that out. Yes, this gives me obvious schadenfreude...

TriNetra 7y ago

Last month I read an interesting use-case of AR which helped in setting up air handling systems for newly setup hospitals in China Wuhan by a German technician using AR technology of an Indian start-up here https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/here-s-how-indian-tech-firm-blinkin-helped-china-fight-coronavirus-120031801752_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/here-s-... So yes, I do agree that such specific purpose apps definitely validates and advances a new technology like AR.

gfodor 7y ago

Would be curious on your take on my essay here wrt choosing the optimal features/scope: https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-plan-2c1364033bec https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-pl... tl;dr, avatar based communication will require basic voice/body language, mixed media, globally addressable spaces on the web. no fancy scripting, crypto, etc etc.

deleted 7y ago

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sek 7y ago

I absolutely agree with the killer application part, even for business applications they still don't have any idea. On their website you have a video that displays several use cases that don't make sense if you really think about them. Just to dissect the first example where doctors look at a low resolution brain over a surgery table. I don't know why there is a woman without a device who thinks: "why are those three people looking over me here?". But I think the association is some kind of neurosurgery. * Neurosurgeons know how a brain looks like inside, that's anatomy. * If this depicts the CT or MRT of the woman, those are evaluated on high resolutions displays by radiologists. * It's difficult to keep those devices sterile in a hospital environment. Let's extend this into surgery. "Hey cool you can look inside the brain in real time". Why would a display not be enough in any other case? * Doctors don't wear a heavy device with a limited field of view during a 5h surgery. * There are devices with a high resolution display, that can show you in real time where you are inside the brain. I tried this device once with a melon, I could make the mental transition within a minute. Now imagine a neurosurgeon with all his skill. * What if there is a problem with the image. Right now the doctor can look from the display inside the real brain and check if something is off. You can't take the unobstructed view from a doctor here. The other two examples in the video are not much more convincing. The second one is solved by a warehouse navigation device. Maybe the last one, but a car showroom usually has a real car you can drive.... Even without it a VR Headset would solve the same issue. Why do they have to see their surroundings? After so many years and that much money, that's the best they came up with? I used the one from Microsoft in a museum, that could in theory be interesting. Make it more interactive. You had to stand at an exact position, it couldn't interact with its surroundings and my nose hurt because it was so heavy. I think the battery was empty after 15 minutes. Just the complexity building a fully interactive museum, all the 3D artists and programmers that would take. What else you could improve with those resources to enhance the experience?

npunt 7y ago
Yep, the videos are basically scifi shorts devoid of actual product thinking. It's like asking concept artists to draw a hospital of the future, knowing nothing about how hospitals operate. I saw this a lot in edtech, lots of wishful thinking put in products by people who didn't know how schools worked.

kats 7y ago

I think that Magic Leap went on for years with just promises and marketing, and they never produced a demo or product. I guess they actually did release hardware a while ago, I didn't know. But for a long time it was just news about "Magic leap promises X" or "Magic leap raises money". But they didn't release a demo or product.

FrojoS 7y ago

> they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts. Couldn't you have said the same of the Apple II or IBM PC?

bsanr2 7y ago
Those were years after PCs had made a foothold in (well-off) US households because they allowed you to do digital word-processing and spreadsheets at home.

simonkafan 7y ago

To underline this statement, take a look at this "Spotify for AR" concept: https://mixed.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/spotify_magic_leap.jpg https://mixed.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/spotify_magic_le... Did someone at Magic Leap seriously think, people will buy an expensive AR device and wear it just to see virtual album covers placed on their table?

Peaches4Rent 7y ago

If you want to pick a usecase for any new idea the best usecase you can think of is pornography.

bsanr2 7y ago

I don't know if the Apple Watch is a great example of product strategy, specifically, driving success. Pebble and other companies established those use cases first, but failed to get traction.

AbrahamParangi 7y ago

The flip side is that sometimes a product within the scope of your tech does not exist yet. Sometimes, for some products, you have to build.