It is a fact that what ML started out saying they were going to do is not what they are currently doing. And what they are currently doing is incredibly similar now to the Hololens.
> I don't know whether Magic Leap actually will produce anything of merit, but this blog won't help anyone find out.
I think the author of this blog post isn't wrong.
But ML has pivoted away from nearly all of their major technology advances at this point, so they are much more likely to deliver now what is likely to be an underwhelming product that is little differentiated from Hololens.
I thought they were always going to be a Hololens-like AR product?
Either they engaged in highly illegal false advertising about their current product or their old product was too magic and futuristic so they cancelled it. Not sure which.
But they pivoted from a non-goggles technology to a googles-technology somewhere along the road.
The first time I heard of ML was the Wired piece, and I think that one was already referring to glasses.
edit: Like the other comment here says, I just went back and checked a few places (Wikipedia and other articles) and it seems they've always been about glasses..
The hardware is yet to be revealed (but it'll presumably use a headset)
they waved away the fact that reducing it down to a wearable pair of glasses and an affordable computer was far from inevitable.
The truth is that Magic Leap cannot get its huge prototype working in a much, much smaller version.
Nobody who knows anything about AR ever thought it was anything but some form of glasses.
Edit: Given the seeming impossibility of an FSD like the one they’re still selling to investors, it may be ML’s investors are not part of the “know much about...” side.
That someone would make an assumption about something that they have no knowledge about, that isn't even available to them, means what exactly?
You guys are shouting at clouds.
No official marketing, patent or legal documents or anyone familiar with the space said anything about a form factor that was anything other than glasses ever.
Here is one of their investor documents from late-2013:
http://www.kguttag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2013-07-12...
On page 37, it states "Enabled by Proprietary Scanning Fiber Projector"
Page 148 "Enabled by Proprietary Ultralightweight protection and true lightfield technology."
Also look at how light the googles are in the fundraising documents, and compare to the huge v1 release they have just released pictures of. Night and day difference.
Nothing in interviews, talks etc... have they said anything about what they would deliver, on what timeline or in what form factor. Not in the wired interview the Information article, anywhere. Their patents have a wide range of designs and cover a lot of territory, which means basically nothing aside from optionality.
The "promises" about a ML product come from many "technical" people speculating based on no first hand knowledge. It's really astonishing and possibly really impressive depending on the outcome, how ML has really let the technoverse drive the narrative about them as a company and their product. It's like fan-fiction almost.
Actually all of their official marketing promised this in the earliest years. Here is an example, I remember there are more as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/3q5bxc/magic_leap...