Exactly. One of the big concerns for me is the extent to which their work-in-isolation approach has baked in untested market and design hypotheses. By the time they test them in the real world, it could be too late to recover.
I think one of the superpowers a startup has is that early on nobody gives a fuck what you're doing, so you're free to iterate quickly and boldly. You find out which of your brilliant ideas are brilliant and which are big mistakes.
Magic Leap's hype/secrecy combo really cuts against that. Apple gets away with that because a) they have more money than God, and b) they mostly enter markets after other people have broken trail for them (e.g., iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch).
It's perfectly plausible that Magic Leap will come out with an interesting but fatally flawed product, like the Amazon Fire Phone or Google Glass. Amazon and Google can shrug and move on, but Magic Leap may not have the cash to recover.
Or, possibly worse, they come out with something like the Segway: really interesting tech that everybody is excited about, but with little practical use once we get past the gee-whiz phase. For a company that has already raised $2.3 billion, that could be fatal.
> like the Segway: really interesting tech that everybody is excited about, but with little practical use once we get past the gee-whiz phase.
I've never heard the Segway described like that. I'd describe it as "incredible hype over something enigmatic that completely evaporated the moment it was revealed".
Dean Kamen is a very sharp inventor, and the origin of the Segway was in a radical wheelchair improvement that he designed. (It was a four-wheel design that would "stand up" on its two back wheels to give the user similar height to a standing person. It could even climb stairs! [1])
A lot of the hype came from luminaries who had seen or tried the Segway and were opining on it themselves. The technology was really neat, and is cool to use. At the time, it was plausible that it might change a lot. In practice, though, it turned out to be mainly a niche product, because we already had pretty good solutions for getting people from place to place.
And that last bit is important. It didn't completely evaporate. I often still see a flock of Segways for guided tours when I'm in Golden Gate Park. Segway still exists, and is still producing a variety of models.
But you're right that the hype got out of control, and the vast difference between expectation and reality harmed Segway's brand. That could definitely happen here.
ps. It makes perfect sense nowadays. With the vast majority of all wealth concentrated in the investment portfolios/hedge funds etc. of a very small elite. If you can build enough hype to convince them to invest even a minuscule fraction, you are set.
...as long as you are paying yourself a hefty salary. Your equity dilutes quickly when you raise a lot of money, and liquidation preferences can leave you with nothing unless you actually make a wildly profitable company.
That's always the case nowadays, huh? I think the days of startups CEO earning engineer level salaries and flying coach are long gone - at least for VC funded companies.
Founders are no longer forced to wait for IPO before selling shares. And after you get an X0 million dollar check who cares if you own 1% of what's left.
Further, it's often encouraged as founders that take out enough money not to have significant financial concerns are more willing to aim for the fences.
The ICO era has pretty much passed in the US. Once everyone started limiting it to accredited investors it lost any advantage over traditional fundraising.
Given how incredibly intuitive Apple products are, I find it hard to believe that they develop products without market testing. It might be a secret to the public but I am almost certain you can't nail UI so perfectly without undergoing some user testing. All the users/testers/vendors have all probably signed an NDA and value the partnership with Apple enough to not disclose anything.
You're confusing two different things. They do a ton of prototyping and user testing, which allows them to make a very polished product. But they don't just throw things out into the market and see what happens.
User testing has clear limits. The context of a user test is usually something like, "Assume that you have bought one of these, and assume that you're trying to do X. See if you can do X with this." If you're assuming those things, you can't test them.
This is in contrast with what startups do, which is just launching something to see if the market gives a shit. Apple is a good example of that, too. Look at their first product:
This computer didn't have a keyboard, a monitor, a case, or a power supply. But it was a clear minimum viable product: people bought it and used it, while making it clear they wanted more. A year later, they launched the Apple II:
These days Apple would never launch something so rough and experimental as the Apple I. Instead, as with MP3 players, smartphones, and smart watches, they were content to let other people pioneer the space and then swoop in once the market was proven.
Magic Leap is trying to be as slick as 2010s Apple, but that cuts them off from acting like 1970s Apple. That could work if they're correct on all their key design and market hypotheses. But it's a giant gamble, and unlike 2010s Apple, a failure could kill them.
Apples UI is only 'intuitive' if you're used to it. People have the same problems when first using Apple products they have with every other product. It's a myth that Apple products are better in that regard that Apple loves to tell, nothing more.
> Given how incredibly intuitive Apple products are
This used to be the case and might still be compared to most other products, but that value keeps diminishing more and more.
I would certainly welcome an increased focus on "it just works" again as opposed to "it looks flashy". I enjoy using Apple products a lot for various reasons but it became hard to overlook some issues, especially when it comes to software.
As a sibling comment pointed out, Apple UIs being 'intuitive' is pretty subjective. As an android user whenever I do something on an iOS phone I have trouble going 'back' because there's no consistent back button.
I'd say Segways are practical, although I've never had the opportunity to try one. They still are produced. They are likely the best way I've seen to increase a human's range of travel in human-scale environments, both indoor and outdoor. I have seen them used by park rangers and tourists, mostly. The main barrier to adoption seems to be the high price.
It's still a niche market. Tourists use them because they are rare (so Segways are marketed as a tourist experience). This puts them in the realm of donkey rides and pedal boats as far as the tourist market is concerned.
Their practical use is limited to places where cheaper, simpler alternatives can't be used — this basically means places you wouldn't use a bicycle or electric scooter because of the collision risk or space constraints, like shopping malls. Even in large data centres and huge warehouses people would choose bicycles over Segways — a dedicated indoor bicycle is cheap and quite low maintenance.
In a way, Segways are really common nowadays – since the chinese "hoverboards" (which are basically just slight modifications of the segway concept) made them affordable, I’m seeing them everywhere
Yes, that's why I said "little practical use", rather than "no practical use".
I'm suspicious of your thesis that Segway price is the main problem. Electric bikes and Vespa scooters cost about the same, and I see far more of those around San Francisco than Segways. The only Segways I see outdoors in SF are people on a group Segway tour, which suggests that they are more valued for novelty than practical benefits.
I think one of the superpowers a startup has is that early on nobody gives a fuck what you're doing, so you're free to iterate quickly and boldly. You find out which of your brilliant ideas are brilliant and which are big mistakes.
Magic Leap's hype/secrecy combo really cuts against that. Apple gets away with that because a) they have more money than God, and b) they mostly enter markets after other people have broken trail for them (e.g., iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch).
It's perfectly plausible that Magic Leap will come out with an interesting but fatally flawed product, like the Amazon Fire Phone or Google Glass. Amazon and Google can shrug and move on, but Magic Leap may not have the cash to recover.
Or, possibly worse, they come out with something like the Segway: really interesting tech that everybody is excited about, but with little practical use once we get past the gee-whiz phase. For a company that has already raised $2.3 billion, that could be fatal.