The Magic Leap Con
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
This is (among other things) what Magic Leap pitched, and comparing the actual product to their press releases is to note a vast discrepancy. Still, hope springs eternal, so while I wasn't impressed, I know how hard AR is and I wasn't inclined to judge too harshly-- maybe it will get better as technology improves.
After having read the article, I find myself rooting for them to fail. This is a company that has taken (and arguably squandered) billions of dollars to release a slightly cheaper HoloLens. Instead of feeling abashed, they continue blithely on, even having the temerity to invite developers to their platform because the rest of the world (and in particular, other platforms) has so much "baggage" and "negativity".
As the article notes, this is a company that is propped up by oligarchs, settles sex discrimination lawsuits, and is pursuing military contracts with repressive regimes. Although to be fair, improving soldiers' lethality is the only use case they've articulated that justifies the price. Now that the missed expectations and general shadiness are starting to catch up with them, they're moving to attract developers. Somehow, despite all the money, they haven't been able to pay for an idea to justify the hype-- what else could you call it but a con?
The prospect of going to trial concentrates the mind wonderfully. A clarity descends. Sometimes you learn things about your own case that you didn't know before. (that it sucks - maybe) Trials can be unpredictable, better to come to an agreement that both parties can live with than to roll the dice.
If you win a case you get will get paid whatever is due to you, a wrong will be righted and people will move on with their lives. I understand that you may be dissatisfied with this arrangement, but we don't have time machines so there is no other recourse.
All lawsuits fall on a spectrum, there are strong and frivolous cases that settle and go to trial. It's impossible to make a judgement call without hearing the details of a case. If you want to risk going to trial on principle, you may find out that principles are very expensive.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>Euen Thompson, an IT Support Lead, on November 16, 2016, gave a tutorial to a group of seven new hires, including two women, how to use Magic Leap’s IT equipment and resources. One woman asked Thompson a question in front of the group and Thompson responded, “Yeah, women always have trouble with computers.” The women in the group, in apparent disbelief, asked Thompson to repeat what he said and Thompson replied, “In IT we have a saying; stay away from the Three Os: Orientals, Old People and Ovaries.”
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>Campbell met September 28, 2016 with Magic Leap CFO Henry and Head of Operations Tina Tuli for a conference call with the CFO and leadership team at R/GA, an award-winning international advertising agency that was Magic Leap’s advertising agency of record. During the call, Henry said of the product under development, “I’m sitting here between two beautiful ladies. They’re not going to want to put a big ugly device over their pretty faces. And I have an office with glass doors, I don’t want people to see me with these beautiful girls with ugly things on their faces.” Later, one of the male R/GA executives on the call asked Campbell if Henry frequently made sexist comments like he had made. A female executive at R/GA also was offended by Henry’s remarks.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>As an example of more egregious comments, Campbell told Abovitz of the “Three Os” incident and Vlietstra’s lack of any meaningful discipline in response. As an example of unconscious bias, she told him of an IT employee who was helping Campbell a new logo into the email system. Cognizant that she was taking up a lot of the employee’s time with minor changes to get the logo “perfect,” Campbell apologized for taking up so much of the employee’s time, to which he responded, “Oh, don’t worry, I get it. You’re a woman and you care that things look pretty. I’m a man. I just get the work done.”
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>Sadly, because Magic Leap seldom hires and does not actively recruit female candidates, the company loses competitive advantage to products like Microsoft’s Hololens. Microsoft, which employs far more females on its team, developed its similar product on a faster time line with more content that appeals to both genders.
Tannen Cambell, who filed the lawsuit, was actually hired for the express purpose of solving Magic Leap's recognized "pink/blue problem", but was rebuffed and ignored. They knew they had a problem, and even gave it a name, but they refused to solve it.
Read the lawsuit:
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>Campbell, one of whose responsibilities was to help Magic Leap with the “pink/blue problem,” had to endure hostile environment sex discrimination while proposing ways, not only to make Magic Leap’s product more woman friendly, but also to make the workplace more diverse and inclusive. Campbell was terminated after (and because) she, like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who blurted out that the Emperor was naked, challenged Magic Leap’s CEO, Rony Abovitz, to acknowledge the depths of misogyny in Magic Leap’s culture and take steps to correct an gender imbalance that negatively affects the company’s core culture and renders it so dysfunctional it continues to delay the launch of a product that attracted billions of investment dollars. Campbell also raised concerns that what Magic Leap showed the public in marketing material was not what the product actually could do—admonitions ignored in favor of her male colleagues’ assertions that the images and videos presented on Magic Leap’s website and on YouTube were “aspirational,” and not Magic Leap’s version of “alternate facts.”
Did all of that suddenly change after the lawsuit was settled?
Because if it did suddenly tangibly change, then that might be evidence that settling a sex discrimination lawsuit by changing their behavior was a positive signal.
But if they only forked over a big pile of hush money, signed non-disparagement agreements and gag orders, and went their separate ways, and Magic Leap didn't actually change their culture, then I don't think you could consider it positive sign or a constructive settlement for anyone other than the woman who was paid to keep her mouth shut.
For example, it is perfectly fine to criticize someone who works at the same company in a slack channel if they're doing poor work. There are a lot of claims, but not many specifics to back up those claims. She paints Abovitz as a poor leader, being constantly mired in agendaless meetings and struck with a strong case of analysis paralysis. While bad leaders often do illegal things, it is not illegal to be a bad leader. Not every requested product change is ignored without cause. It's not shocking to have to ask for a promotion. Organizing speaking engagements with high profile female executives that command well over six figures per speaking engagement is unrealistic. Magic Leap is certainly not the first company to over hype the capabilities of its product.
I do find it curious that while Ms Campbell was hired to solve this "pink/blue" problem, none of her proposed solutions involved talking to potential female consumers about the product. If your solution to "How are we going to market this product to women when we release in Q1 next year?" is to raise a new generation of female engineers, your company will die. Also, I would like to point out that recognition of a problem does not guarantee that there is a solution to it. I'm certain that the makers of needlepoint kits would love to sell more embroidery materials to men. I'm less certain that there is a way of doing so.
I did like this excerpt from 25:
"A chaotic discussion with people talking over each other followed. The group made no decisions and none of the proposed changes were made to the design."
That accurately describes any large group product meeting I've ever attended.
People think games are easy. People think entertainment is a solution. That is almost always a sign of someone in trouble.
In reality, entertainment is the reddest of red markets. It is incredibly difficult to make a compelling experience. Even more difficult to sell it. Include risk in the calculation and you are literally better off working for minimum wage than writing a game.
It is absolutely no coincidence that this conference mostly showed off games. And - by all reports - very crappy ones, with game play you would expect from a game jam (albeit dressed up in million-dollar graphics). It is no coincidence they haven't got a proven game studio on board: their flagship game is created _under contract_ by a VFX company.
Games are not your Trojan horse use case. Figure out what your product is for. Get it in consumers hands. And you can bet your ass game devs will exploit it (iPhone anyone?). Otherwise you are a novel gaming peripheral. And you are going to have to work _a lot harder_ to show games worth playing. Even VR is struggling (and, I would say, failing) there.
So far, Google glass is still the most compelling AR tool I've seen.
My first reaction was: "What a piece of crap!! This is it?"
And yes... that it was. If you have never tried it, is 100X (and I'm being generous) less impressive than the super fake demo video they posted.
All of which I gather the Magic Leap is better on... by less than 50%. In two years.
AR has unbelievably misleading advertising. To enough of a degree that I think they should be fined rather significantly. Remember the HoloLens Minecraft "demo" videos? Or the full 3D models on the user's desk, nearly the size of the screen or keyboard? You couldn't even cover a coffee mug at that distance.
Issues I had were mostly when it failed and started sliding around while I stood still, or jumped a bit and stayed wrong for a couple seconds.
Of these, only VR seems even remotely close to reaching its original promise
https://www.newarteditions.com/invader-sneakers-speed-balls/
(Sorry, all sold out -- I mean GAME OVER!)
But yeah the onboard stuff is just soso. But of course you seem to be looking for a polished product,most of these AR solutions are aspirational and designed to help build reference implementations and AR Development capabilities.
I’ll repeat my half-baked idea: the future of VR and AR is digital workplaces for better teleconferencing. Make it truly seamless to talk to colleagues while working remote. Disrupt office work as we know it and fix the externalities of commuting and being tied to a physical workplace. Why escape into fantasy worlds when you can make living in the real world more bearable?
We've seen Oculus and others try to push the idea that 3D will help. The focus is wrong. The bulk of the pain is in understanding, for which the brain relies on two factors: audio and face/mouth position.
Audio requires good microphones, which are too expensive to be commodity. At least, very good and fast STT autocues would help, especially with non-native speakers.
Faces could use dedicated compression algorithms.
Ideally, everyone would have Wacom-style devices on an online whiteboard, but that is only complementary. And it is still 2D.
Huh? MEMS mics cost cents and multiple of them are frequently used in phones to get a pretty acceptable-quality (almost good!) signal.
Hearing is a continuum. What the top 25% of hearing people consider OK quality is often what the lower 50% really struggles with, barely keeping up with the conversation.
Even in same-room audio conditions, most people ask for something to be repeated at least once in half the conversations I witness. Any further degradation rapidly increases this statistic. And I bet there are cases where people don't bother asking.
Each person's mic/setup has much better audio of what was said, and can be configured (eventually) to learn that person's accent. When 2-3 voices talk over each other, I have to ask people to stop/repeat, wasting time, losing momentum, when the computers themselves can likely give me a good indication of what was said via text as well as audio. And if a transcription is bad, the person can 'correct' it on their end, or just verbally - "no, that's not the word I used", etc.
This is in real time - encoded, transmitted, and decoded. I hope it gets out of the lab soon.
Some of us work remotely in order to avoid constant disruption (especially software development). As such the queueing of IM conversations from colleagues is a good thing in this scenario.
The quality of the code that I write grows exponentially the less people ping me on Skype. While in the office code development was tertiary to various meetings, presentations, the occasional interview, even birthdays.
Also, my proposal isn’t meant to benefit engineers exclusively- teleconferencing through virtual workplaces should ideally help anyone who works in an office, not just those who are accorded more responsibilities that don’t involve social interaction.
Making AR even slightly accessible is going to drastically change all of the trade skill industries. Any kind of simple job with something like plumbing, electrician, or car problems, you could call up a remote expert (or knowledgable friend/relative) and have them guide you through the job without forcing them to drive to your house. This would probably lead to training AIs to help with those same simple jobs, and eventually more complicated ones, but probably not for a good many years(?).
Maybe it's a lot easier said than done, but I feel like there are tons of more physical "remote work" opportunities that Magic Leap can open up, and they're not focusing on them nearly enough. Microsoft is pushing hard with using the hololens in industrial environments for training or collaborating, but even for just personal use, I could see myself buying AR goggles if it made learning basic handyman chores around the house easier to get started with, and hopefully feel less like a chore.
But skilled trades are not just knowledge. They rely heavily on experience, skill, and equipment. For example which angle and torque to use with that spark plug, not just highlighting the plug on cylinder #3. A lot of this speaks to why there are apprenticeships instead of study sessions.
Theres also the UI and sensory problems in the hololens and your example. Transmitting fixed position AV misses out on a lot of contextual and situational awareness true presence delivers.
Part of the reason why a plumber or mechanic is so expensive is that you're buying not only the solution to the problem, but also your own time and energy that you would have spent thinking about and implementing that solution.
Many people use youtube for this. My experience is, it works well for almost any kind of repair or trade work you can think of.
You could "remote in" an expert, but now we're talking $10-$100 an hour as opposed to free. If you're doing the work yourself I think it's safe to assume you're not valuing your own time outside work at a high dollar value.
So I use YouTube A Lot, and boy would I like to be able to pay someone to walk me through things. And I suspect there a a fair number of people in spots like me (if not so extreme). And I suspect there are a lot of Urban DIYers that occasionally get in over their heads and would use this service.
But quantifying this market would be hard.
I do think the ability to recreate the 3d environment, from the sensors on a device in the house would be pretty critical to this working. And the ability to show the customers in AR exactly what needs doing could be a difference that matters.
Still I'm not quitting my day job.
you'd be a remote pair of hands.
Primarily because I think a lot of teleconferences end up being a waste of productive time but also why would I want to see AR repsentations of people also with their faces covered with a HMD? The solution is a digital avatar of them which is equally daft.
/grumble
Now I hope one day we'll get AR contact lenses or some other form of inconspicuous AR. I'd love to have the ability to switch it on and do some compute at a whim, without fumbling with special glasses, and having to mind the social situation in which I'm in.
As for Magic Leap - I get that AR is hard, but this level of hype is inexcusable. They're burning through general interest in the field and trust towards everyone working in it for sake of some quick buck. The sooner they get forced to realign with reality, the better.
As a developer, I tend to look at things and wonder about the future: "what can I build with this?"
I'm getting the realization that the equivalent for journalists is something like: "what controversies can I write about this?"
One can hope that if MagicLeap fails at least someone will pick up the IP and continue to develop it.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmen...
>Magic Leap's futuristic patent art was copied from other artists' designs
>When Google-backed augmented reality company Magic Leap quietly applied for a patent, it did so with dozens of pages of futuristic (and slightly creepy) scenarios: a social media charm bracelet, a gargoyle bursting out of a box in a store, gamified cucumber chopping...
>Wait a second. That last one sounds familiar. Maybe that's because it's a line drawing of a shot from "Sight," a Black Mirror-esque short film about an augmented, sinister future. As it turns out, Magic Leap's patent art isn't so much its vision of the future as one created by various students and designers. Former Verge-r and current Gizmodo writer Sean Hollister was tipped off to a set of side-by-side comparisons that leave no doubt we're looking at copies.
>If patents are about originality, does this mean Magic Leap is hurting its claims? Not really. A great deal of patent art just shows potential designs or uses for something, in order to make the actual, more abstract claims clearer. In this case, Magic Leap is patenting an optical system that has nothing to do with the interfaces displayed here. Even bringing a copyright claim would be hard and arguably pointless. "Images such as these are setting consumer expectations of VR and AR today," the company told Gizmodo. "We wanted to use the same images to demonstrate what our technology will enable."
>The designers themselves seem ambivalent of their images' rebirth as patent art. Magic Leap appears to have neither contacted them nor credited them, but at the same time, it's showing the world how this futuristic design fiction could work. It's one thing to have someone rip off your art. It's another to have them actually make it real — if Magic Leap can actually deliver on its ambitious promises.
https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-c...
>Magic Leap Ripped Off Those Awesome UI Concepts
>Magic Leap is secretly building a headset that could blend computer graphics with the real world. Recently, we lucked into a treasure trove of illustrations from Magic Leap about what that future might hold. There's just one problem: Magic Leap didn't actually create all those awesome UI concepts. It copied them.
>The images speak for themselves. On the left of each of these comparision shots, you'll see an illustration plucked directly from this Magic Leap patent application. On the right, you'll find a screengrab from an awesome UI concept invented by someone else.
>Remember Sight, the incredible student film where a man with bionic eyes plays Fruit Ninja with a real cucumber that becomes part of his meal? Same cucumber. Same everything:
>Or how about the Ringo Holographic Interface dreamt up by then-UI-design-student Ivan Tihienko in 2008?
>Here's a augmented reality concept from interaction designer Joesph Juhnke called "The Future of Firefighting":
>And below, one from designer Michaël Harboun and his team called The Aeon Project. "What if you could travel to exotic, far-away destinations while being stuck in traffic?"
>Lastly, two images from "Meditating Mediums - The Digital 3D," which was the graduating thesis for Greg Tran at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He now designs for Samsung.
>This might also look familiar: [...]
Yeah, Stanislaw Lem wrote a book about that, which Ari Folman made into a movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc
>An EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014)
>A short but entirely mesmerizing drug come-down, reality dissolving scene from the film "The Congress" (2014) based on the 1971 novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem. All rights to the makers.
Such a great movie. Quite different than the book, but they both stand on their own and deal with fascinating issues, and it's well worth reading and watching both, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner.
>The Congress Official US Release Trailer (2014) - Robin Wright Fantasy Movie HD
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/3d-bo...
Caraeff says that 50,000 user accounts have been created there. He wouldn’t tell me the number of times the software developer kit has actually been downloaded, though he said it was fewer than that, or the number of Leap headsets shipped, which was fewer still.
For example, it sported a capacitive touchscreen (touchscreens were mostly resistive back in 2007), it featured multitouch (you need a capacitive touchscreen for that), yet it didn't have 3G (it had EDGE), lacked copy/paste, lacked a repository ("app store"), lacked applications, and required a contract.
Add to that that Apple already existed, had a solid fanbase, and already released their first product for mass market (iPod), and well... Steve Jobs reality distortion field. Who knows what would've happened if Apple was a very new company with no such fanbase, history, or CEO.
Build up expectations too high and you’re going to leave everyone disappointed.
I suspect it's to do with the fact that innovation is slowing down across the globe, yet the public expects it to continue at the same pace it's been running for the past 50 years. The market wants the next computer, the next internet, the next iPhone. What happens when it doesn't show up?
Lone Echo on Oculus, Farpoint on PSVR, and others. So blown away that certain geners of non-VR games are not completely non-compelling to me. Those 2 games, while not the best games ever, gave me the feeling of "being there".
The difference between playing games on a monitor and games in VR, the good ones, is like the difference between a picture of the grand canyon and being and the grand canyon. The picture does no justice. Sure it might be pretty but it gives no sense of the scale and presence. You don't feel that there's a mile deep canyon that's 20 miles to the other side. You just see a pretty picture. In VR though you do get that sense of scale. That volcano in the distance in Farpoint actually feels 3 miles high with a 20 mile high plum of ash. Hiding behind a piece of rock actually feels like hiding and not "pressing the hide button".
There were at least 10 startups that failed to produce LCD projector displays, which are now ubiquitous and cheap.
There were at least 20 startups that failed at non-piercing blood glucose measurement, which is now accessible and not outrageously expensive.
So something will come of this. But Magic Leap is going down.
Why do you need monitors if you have AR contact lens. Project as many monitors as you want where ever you want them. Sit in cafe and make it appear as if you have a 60 inch monitor on the table in front of you and a few tablets on the table.
In a conference room show a 3D model of building, bridge, or physical project and discuss it with the team pointing directly at parts of the model that appear simulated in the shared projection. Basically imagine any hologram scene in a Sci-fi movie like say showing the 2nd Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Those scenes assume some kind of magic 3D projector. Maybe that will be possible someday but it's nearly possible today if everyone is wearing AR glasses or contacts
Project data about people at a conference next to each person. Just like people at a conference wear badges except with AR badges they can be much larger with more info.
Have the AR point out the person you're looking for by putting a marker over their head or draw navigation prompts as you walk around.
Show virtual drawing surfaces allowing you to draw or annotate anything.
just a few ideas
Here's something you should be able to do with AR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYhDu59UmSs#t=15m52s
And here's some actual work on it
Yeah, no copy/paste and no app store on V 1.0 but it was a game changer from the beginning.
Yes, it was the one that got everything right and it did bring about a revolution but it was evolutional step. It shipped with cellular data (all previous PDAs it was optional). It had an interface designed for a finger rather than a stylus. But, if you were a geek and had PDA from 1995 though 2007 you had already had a PDA in your pocket, where already sending emails from your pocket, browsing the internet, downloading apps, etc...
AR will follow some similar progression. Today's AR is too large (same as Newton), with a bad display (same as Newton), too expensive (same as Newton), crappy OS (same as Newton). But someone will get it right eventually and bring about an AR revolution.
Impossible to disagree with you. But, using your own words: " it was the one that got everything right"... That for me is what made the magic.
Care to make your prediction interesting? I'd be willing to take the opposite side of that bet.
Google Glass was a different (but related) product and I remember going to one of their "come try Glass" events and feeling the same way.
Magic Leap L.E.A.P. Conference Keynote | Live from Los Angeles, October 10
Unrelated, this weird aside is my least favorite part of the article:
> Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds ...
> It is telling that the most compelling glimpse of a possible future with Magic Leap was relayed to me by nonwhite, non-male product manager
There's this implication that the white male leadership is only interested in the frilly escapist aspect of the product, and it's those in minority groups who are actually going to be pushing the boundaries of tech. Why include this in the article? Does the author honestly believe that's true? Do jabs at white men get clicks and heads nodding.now?
A company this big needs to address most, if not all, people. The need for escapist leisure activity is something only relatively privileged people have. You only have to look at Google Glass to see what that limited appeal does to a product. It's a valid commercial consideration.
Yeah but the language used here makes it seem like white male product managers can't relay compelling visions for Magic Leap's future which isn't necessarily a correct statement.
The implication is that the PM in question was trying to advance their career on meritocracy grounds, while the other PMs get by on connections. I'm reminded of Theranos' extremely well-connected board.
I don't think there would be anything wrong with trying to market Leap as a gaming peripheral, but that implies a much smaller valuation, so ...
It seems like a cheap grab for article attention, piggy backing on the current political climate, and not a genuine analysis on why ML is failing to come up with inventive AR usecases. It cheapens the point the article could have made, but fails to explore at all: Diversity is needed to develop a product that appeals to everyone.
Instead of indulging the sense of alarm you get from this sort of (very mild) scrutiny, try to get outside of your ego and consider that this feeling you have is others' normal state of existence. You'll adapt better as demographics change and the wheel turns, and introspection is good for you.
Smile more, and stop being so emotional. /s
I'd call this article out just the same if it was calling out black women or lesbian Latinos.
How about instead, let's ask journalists to meet a bar of treating all classes of people equally, and not making pointless comments about someone's race and gender.
people are more complicated than race and gender
"White male culture" is a thing, but it's easy to be white and not aware of that if you take it for granted and/or think of it as "the default". (As an analogy, you might think you don't have "an accent" because you think of yours as the "normal" one.)
There are certainly groups that lament "black male culture", with varying political views. On the left, you might find that criticism in views like intersectional black feminism against "misogynoir" - macho behaviour and chauvinism especially by black men.
On the the political right, criticism of "black male culture" hardly needs naming.
I really don't know what "white male culture" you are referring to.
Google Glass did not fail because it lacked a diverse perspective. It failed because it was a garbage product, way too expensive, early, and with no compelling functionality. (I feel the same way about HoloLens at it's current stage. I have not tried Magic Leap.)
Also, the diverse take was: "who spoke to me convincingly about a world freed from the tyranny of browser tabs, where you could ‘leave’ web pages in physical spaces where you’d need them; recipes in the kitchen, research articles in the office". That seems to me to be a far more 'privileged' use case than escapist entertainment.
Are you kidding? Escapist leisure activities is one of the most broadly consumed forms of entertainment. Have you ever heard of TV or movies?
The fragility of white men who lose their shit at the slightest mention of their race and gender is fucking baffling, especially when compared to the routine dehumanisation that black people or women have to put up with every day.
Of course there's a them and us and it's fucking pathetic that people like parent poster only care when their demographic receives most mild criticism and do fuck all about real injustice.
Tldr stop being such fucking snowflakes.
Do we even have mods here?
Why does every thread have to turn into this same fucking discussion, instead of the actual topic of the post.
Can’t we unhook these subthreads and just push them into some ‘discuss white man stuff’ bin where people who care can go and yell at each other?
first sentence. holy negativity batman.