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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it may have taken a billion dollars but a billion dollars doesn't guarantee success. The product is impressive, even if Hololens stole their thunder two years ago. The engineers should be proud.

I don't see a market for it though, so it's hard for me to see how the company can survive until the technology matures enough for the mainstream. I think it will be more than 5 years, possibly 10. Timing is so important for a startup and Magic Leap is too early.

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I suspect if the finances get tight they can make back their money on their patent portfolio alone. If this tech is the future of AR then Magic Leap will have the rest of the manufacturers up against the wall when they want to build their own versions.

It sounds like they have spammed the patent office with every speculative claim they can possibly think of. It may take a few years, but as you suggest, everyone else may end up paying them rent because it won't be possible to get anything done otherwise.

Engineers who participate in this sort of activity need to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves if the paycheck is worth it.

If the paycheck is worth slightly inconveniencing other corporations in the same field? It's an augmented reality headset, not exactly a cure for cancer.

At the end of the day, we the consumers are the ones who pay for these shenanigans.

A large consumer market seems unlikely at this stage, however I'll bet they could find some lucrative industrial and military niches. Those customers will be more tolerant of limitations as long as they see operational benefits.

Those niches don't justify their valuation or their marketing. They will not survive without large layoffs and more VC funding, probably a down round.

Proud of what, though? It's basically a 2-piece hololens that doesn't have any software. This stuff won't take off until field of view is fully immersive. In Magic Leap (and hololens) it's not.

If it was $100 it would revolutionize the world. At $1000 we should dust off our Magic Leap obituaries.

I think even if Magic Leap was $100 it would not revolutionize the world. I'm bullish on the potential of AR, I just think the form factor has years of hard technical work ahead to "revolutionary".

I don't like the design. It's really ugly. But in principle, this technology could be discreetly put behind the rim of stylish glasses like you'd expect to find at a department store. The technology hasn't been miniaturized to that degree yet, and you'd still have to drive it with something but for non-AR applications it needn't be complex.

At $100 people would be willing to use this for various new applications. Education comes to mind as a particularly good application. Maybe sports commentary? Maybe pop-up AR booths in malls. That would be enough to jump-start an ecosystem, while the hard technical work is done.

We already have phones in our pockets. Allow me to stick a cable from my HMD into my phone and I’ll be perfectly content to carry the extra weight around. It just has to look decent at the ‘head-mounted’ part.

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-ar-glasses-akonia-hologra...

I'm an AR believer once you get like some nice 1st person Google Maps navigation etc in a small package. Until then it'll be clunky.

while the qty will be low for some time to come, intel spent many many millions trying to prove there was even a market for a $1,000 computer and that it would provide performance acceptable to users...

we dont scoff at $1,000 phones hardly at all these days.

this is the first step, we should be thinking about where tech will be in 20 years at all times.

You are forgetting the utility. A $2500 computer in 1992 without internet, GUI etc would be as hard sell as ML-1. As utility of the product increases, the $2500 price tag starts making sense. The biggest issue with AR is that we haven't found the killer application yet. It's not the form factor or field of view (we have had large computers with pathetic displays), it's the utility to a common consumer beyond few minutes of amusement.

Wouldn't gaming and e-sports be a decent application of AR?

No, those usually go VR. VR headsets are currently much cheaper than these offerings, and even then, we're talking 400,000 units shipped.

Hololens is focusing on industry - live monitoring, architecture planning, 3d modelling and visualization. I don't know how successful they are.

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