zlacker

>>gumby+(OP)
The thing that got me about the Magic Leap is I couldn't find a reliable video of what it looked like through the lenses. Everything was clearly a CGI overlay or recreation. Reviewers claimed they were prohibited from showing video through the lenses.[0]

I can understand not wanting their product misrepresented, but all the secrecy and censorship about it makes me believe it is bad, and I'm not going to spend money on something I believe is bad.

0. https://youtu.be/TfzlU7nW23Y?t=34

>>daenz+X3
There was a twitter video that comically showed their marketing demo of the whale and then the real life example of the product (with related music).

It appears to have been scrubbed from the internet though because I was trying to find it a while back to show someone and I searched for a while, but couldn't find anything.

Magic Leap seems like a case study of how not to release a product, but maybe they were more focused on raising money?

Either work on your thing in public, shipping units (Oculus/FB) or work on it entirely in secret (Apple), but don't loudly and continuously talk vaguely about how amazing your thing is with no real public examples for years. This plus all the fake marketing video demos - if you're going to do this you better be as good as you're pretending to be.

Someone that good probably wouldn't need to show marketing videos, they'd just show the product itself.

I finally did get to play with one (friend who personally knows an investor had one) and it was pretty disappointing. AR seems likely to be the next computing platform, but the hardware is not ready yet.

Magic Leap reminds me a lot of the General Magic documentary - crazy hype, right general idea, but too early and bad product.

I'm not sure if they have the same talent General Magic had though.

>>goneho+g7
Yet everyone was so optimistic and believed the hype. And it happens again and again! Whenever some early stage company/product gets some traction on HN that looks like hype-ware, the default reaction always seems to be excitement and optimism, rather than doubt and skepticism. Nobody's learned from Theranos. It's like we all adhere to that X-files poster "I WANT TO BELIEVE" over and over.

>>ryandr+Sa
I don’t think this was ever the case for Magic Leap. All threads were always full of ‘I think this is waaaay too much funding for something we haven’t even seem yet’.

I’m just confused how the press and investors were misled in such a miraculous way.

>>Aeolun+Uf
The most convincing "argument" for them was "well, they fooled Google into giving them a half a billion dollars, so they must have something there."

>>DonHop+Zh
My understanding is that sergey wanted to do it and he can effectively write checks right off the balance sheet. Google Ventures passed, as folks were always eager to tell me.

>>gumby+eF
Sounds like that's the same way Google Glass got funded, too. I wonder what Sergey Brin thought of the nepotism at Magic Leap that he funded, documented in the sexual discrimination lawsuit?

http://valleywag.gawker.com/meet-the-google-founders-mistres...

>Since Google Glass launched to our awe and horror, the company's co-founder, Sergey Brin, hasn't been spotted without a pair. He's placed himself atop the privacy-eroding project, publicly, and inside Google's secret labs. Maybe it's because he's fucking the Glass marketing manager, Amanda Rosenberg.

>According to a startling report by AllThingsD's Liz Gannes and Kara Swisher, Brin and his wife of six years, Anne Wojcicki, are no more, now that he's found himself a PR girlfriend at Google. AllThingsD also reported this girlfriend was recently attached to another (totally coincidentally departing) top Googler, Hugo Barra, to make Brin's relationship with the recent San Francisco transplant behind the backs of his wife and children all that much worse.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...

>"Eric Akerman, vice president of IT, is a high school buddy of Abovitz. He is a loud and outspoken and several misogynistic comments have emanated from his department and from him."

>"Vice president of IT Akerman, on Nov. 8, 2016, told a large group of people who asked why he voted for Trump that it was 'because Melania is hot.'"