The product exists. Their intention was never to do vaporware or deceive anyone - Rony's a good hearted fellow - but they had too much money, so much that they thought they'd bend reality. Francis Ford Coppola famously said of producing Apocalypse Now: "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane".
This is really what Magic Leap felt like from the inside. So much money, so many famous people on board (and on the board), all these dreams of creating not new means of consuming content but all-new content and all-new use cases. Making this functional and beneficial to your everyday was not enough, Rony wanted a full on sci-fi universe right here and now.
This company could snub reality for a long time and I'm honestly surprised it lived for this long.
That said:
1. There absolutely exists a product and putting it on for the first time is a pretty exhilarating experience. Unfortunately Magic Leap failed to provide an convincing reason to put it on for the second and third time.
2. The company had very good talent. Unfortunately its management turned more awkward as you climbed the ranks - professional corporate survivors which needed to bridge reality between Rony's dreams for the next year and what's possible in the next 10 with their modest skillset.
It was a bit of Hunger Games up top.
3. AR hardware startups need money, and lots of it. I estimate Magic Leap had about 50% overhead, meaning that given better management and direction - and a bit of hindsight no doubt - it could have been done with $1bn. It's still $1bn.
4. Consumer AR will come in a minimalistic form, such as Intel's deceased Project Vaunt (ironically enough, many of its Swiss optics team were brought on to Magic Leap following its termination in Intel). Minimal, stylish, useful - not something to wow you once over but to provide day in, day out value. An Apple watch rather than an Oculus.
Source - I was there for few years, running some parts of their engineering. I don't regret a second of it.
This company could snub reality for a long time and I'm honestly surprised it lived for this long.
That said:
1. There absolutely exists a product and putting it on for the first time is a pretty exhilarating experience. Unfortunately Magic Leap failed to provide an convincing reason to put it on for the second and third time.
2. The company had very good talent. Unfortunately its management turned more awkward as you climbed the ranks - professional corporate survivors which needed to bridge reality between Rony's dreams for the next year and what's possible in the next 10 with their modest skillset.
It was a bit of Hunger Games up top.
3. AR hardware startups need money, and lots of it. I estimate Magic Leap had about 50% overhead, meaning that given better management and direction - and a bit of hindsight no doubt - it could have been done with $1bn. It's still $1bn.
4. Consumer AR will come in a minimalistic form, such as Intel's deceased Project Vaunt (ironically enough, many of its Swiss optics team were brought on to Magic Leap following its termination in Intel). Minimal, stylish, useful - not something to wow you once over but to provide day in, day out value. An Apple watch rather than an Oculus.
Source - I was there for few years, running some parts of their engineering. I don't regret a second of it.