Magic Leap is going up against Microsoft and Google with its AR headset for businesses
The streaming wars are upon is but the AR wars are still to come.
Having raised $2.6 billion since 2014, Magic Leap is a much-hyped company in the AR world, but the consumer market for this technology is still very nascent, and adoption has been slow. While it waits for the consumer market to grow, Magic Leap will focus on selling to enterprises and brands who want to collaborate in virtual spaces. Given the rise in remote working this is a potentially lucrative direction and a great use case for this technology.
To the dismay of its audience, Magic Leap livestream dodges key questions
It seems like the past few years of hype around Magic Leap is being somewhat dulled, at what should be the most exciting part of all: the product reveal.
Getting developers on board is vital to the success of any new platform, no matter the marketing budget, and it raises some flags that Magic Leap is still dangling the carrot.
Fans and potential developers were promised they'd get to finally meet the headset during a livestream session which took place earlier this week, but were left disappointed and frustrated. Details on the headset were kept surface-level, and the hosts deliberately avoided questions relating to how the Magic Leap experience actually worked. There's a lesson here for all of us in managing expectations and handling a live audience.
Magic Leap One Creator Edition preview: a flawed glimpse of mixed reality’s amazing potential
Over the past few years we've been keeping a close on eye on Magic Leap here at Rerun.
Magic Leap is a "spatial computing" company that build mixed reality glasses for everyday computing. There's been a lot of talk and quite a lot of money poured into Magic Leap but this week they finally shipped the "Magic Leap Creator Edition", a headset designed to compete with Microsoft's HoloLens.
At $2,295 it's probably not the kind of experimental electronic gadget most of us are going to pull the trigger on but the Verge have a great hands-on preview that goes deep into the strengths and unsettling weaknesses of the project.
I genuinely believe Magic Leap has given me a glimpse of the future of computing, but it might take a long time to reach that future, and I’m not sure Magic Leap will be the company that gets there first.
Magic Leap One’s first big game is another Angry Birds; here’s what it’s like
After years of secrecy surrounding the Magic Leap One, we're finally starting to see what it's actually capable of. Many have been underwhelmed by the release of the goggles. But perhaps it's a good omen that its first big release is from the Angry Birds franchise. A game that garnered incredible success as smart phones arrived to the market, all those years ago.
CNN on Magic Leap One brings news out of the screen and into your world
Using the Magic Leap Screens framework, you can spawn screens of any size, anywhere to create the perfect viewing experience for your space. Interactive data layers and live feeds from around the planet give you the power to dig deeper into topics you care about.
Very exciting to see this collaboration between CNN and Magic Leap. Spawning screens of any size, anywhere, certainly sounds like a lot of fun!
Why AT&T launched a DirecTV streaming app on Magic Leap’s mixed-reality headset
AT&T is building an experimental DirecTV Now app for Magic Leap. A beta version of the DirecTV Now app lets users watch up to four live streams simultaneously. The Virtual displays are resizable and can hover in the air in front of you or be fixed on a flat surface.
The potential applications of AR in this space are undeniable and AT&T's investment has once again focused industry eyes on the technology.
Last week The Information published an exclusive, very unflattering report on Magic Leap's technology after seeing a product demo there. They claimed it was nothing like what's been promised and that Microsoft's Hololens is much further along.
The company has also had trouble miniaturizing its AR technology from a bulky helmet-sized device into a pair of everyday glasses, as Abovitz has repeatedly claimed the finished product will accomplish.
Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz took to Twitter to defend the technology, claiming that The Information only had access to an earlier prototype. He also announced on the Magic Leap website that the promised small, sleek device is currently in supply chain testing.
Either way it looks like we'll finally be getting a glimpse at the first product from the world's most secretive startup in 2017.
Magic Leap's patent application in pictures
For a company that has been backed by hundreds of millions of dollars, the elusive team at Magic Leap has remained very quiet. Ben Gilbert looks into the technology behind the mysterious cinematic reality headset, sharing the company’s patent application, which is rife with ridiculous, but amazing illustrations of what the magic headset might look like, including a hat/helmet with an attached display and our favourite - The Robert Scoble shower model!
