Comment by dylan604
6 years ago
Magic Leap reminds me of Theranos. The companies with vaporware seem to have very similar playbooks that are pretty obvious with how in your face they are while never actually showing the product.
6 years ago
Magic Leap reminds me of Theranos. The companies with vaporware seem to have very similar playbooks that are pretty obvious with how in your face they are while never actually showing the product.
I have some VC friends tangentially related to the deal. Apparently the original demo was wild, like real magic bonkers. Everyone who tried became a believer. The projected light streams onto the user's eyes so instead of seeing an image overlayed in an intermediate layer as in most AR, the image was projected onto your retinas through this very advanced technology and optics. The issue is that the advanced technology demo used an entire room of computers and sensors for a single user, and it didn't allow the user to move around at all, just sit in a chair and have this thing projected onto your eyes. The goal was to scale this working crazy but impractacle thing into a consumer experience but they just weren't able to, so they pivoted to being another "smart glass" maker. Their tech and patents still actually work, they just aren't able to make a product out of it.
That makes sense. Because I heard on a podcast, this week in tech, I think, from a VC on the panel that was an investor and the rest of the panel was comparing it to Microsoft's ar product and he was adamant that he had seen things that he couldn't talk specifics about but that it was a total game changer.
What podcast & episode was that?
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If I could get something like that as a desktop monitor replacement, I would be ecstatic. (Assuming appropriately high resolution and refresh rates - but if it's doing eye tracking that'd have to be the case)
I know that "light going into your eyeball" is how your eyes work, and that conventional monitors are not suspected to be great for your eyes, but "shoot light directly at your retinas" always makes me nervous.
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Miniaturization of multifocal projection-based technology seems inevitable. What's the best way to keep track of progress in that field, and do you know when it might hit the mass market?
I've had a similar demo a few years ago from some under-the-radar Israeli company, projecting image straight to the retina. It took only a single table, and they talked about how their tech was actually better than Magic Leap – but as most of Israeli high tech, they were looking to get silently acquired by some tech giant instead of developing a product themselves. Never heard of what happened to them later.
> Magic Leap reminds me of Theranos.
Even if Magic Leap dies on the vine, I don't think they're anything like Theranos except for both being unsuccessful VC-funded companies. Theranos tried to sell fraudulent health care services. Magic Leap is trying (and failing) to build a real product. You can buy one and see what it does, and nobody's health is impacted if their experience just sucks.
Theranos failed to sell automatic blood testing machines to the military so they pivoted to providing services of questionable repute.