Stealthy mixed reality startup Magic Leap has been having a bit of a tough time on the publicity front of late. Its head of PR departed last month , following a report by The Information suggesting it had inflated claims about its tech, and that a commercial product remained far further out than its marketing messages had suggested. And that despite investors ploughing some $1.4BN into the three year old, still productless startup.
All of which perhaps explains why CEO Rony Abovitz felt the need to leapt into 2017 by penning a blog post aimed at putting some positive puff back into Magic Leap\u2019s image.
The problem is, you can\u2019t fight cynicism with hot air. And Abovitz\u2019s post has Zeppelin\u2019s worth of the stuff.
First a few sample reviews from some nameless grumpy mouse tech bloggers : \u201cthis is the dumbest thing I have ever read\u201d\u2026 \u201cit sounds like an \u2018essay on creativity\u2019 assignment written by an 8th grader\u201d\u2026 \u201cwow\u201d.
And now a few sample lines from Abovitz\u2019s post itself:
You get the idea. (You can read the blog in full here .)
The whale-sized problem in the room here is that penning some trippy PR is not going to go very far towards correcting a growing suspicion that all might not quite be as it seems at this highly financed, heavily hyped mixed reality startup.
And as my colleague Lucas Matney wrote last month: \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the time has arrived for a shift in the way the company communicates its ambitions.
\u201cWhile the process of miniaturization has advanced more slowly than the company may have expected, where the clearest failures have lied is in the cult of mystery and high expectations that Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz seems to have chased in order to inflate his company and his own premature illusions of grandeur, all of this before the company has anything to back that visionary status up with.\u201d
Yet instead of a shift in PR strategy, Magic Leap\u2019s New Year\u2019s Resolution appears to be to lay on the mystique even more thickly \u2014 rainbow powered unicorns and all\u2026
So what, if anything, can we takeaway from Abovitz\u2019s post? And I don\u2019t mean idle considerations about what all those dreamers might be smoking inside their \u201creally big space\u201d. What concrete things can we learn?
In truth not very much \u2014 but here\u2019s what, to my eye, looks like a few creeping realities intruding on this fantastical dreamscape.
1 \u2013 Magic Leap does not have a coherent product roadmap or unified vision for the company yet
\u201cI see our journey at Magic Leap extending out over many decades, over many products and technologies.\u201d
2 \u2013 Magic Leap has not yet identified a clear use-case for its technology
\u201cCreative and practical.\u201d
3 \u2013 Its first product still does not have a release date (despite talk of it debuting \u201chopefully soon-ish\u201d way back in July )
\u201cOur first product is coming.\u201d
4 \u2013 Their first product might not be quite so reality-bending as people have been led to believe
\u201cOur first system will be the first step towards a really cool dream\u2026 We are not going for perfect, but for a feeling , a flow , a moment to high-five our inner child.\u201d
5 \u2013 The first product might launch this year. But \u2014 equally \u2014 it might not
\u201c2017 will be a big year for Magic Leap\u2026 We are not about building cool prototypes. We are scaling up so we can manufacture hundreds of thousands of systems, and then millions. That requires a level of perfection, testing, and attention to detail by determined professionals.\u201d
6 \u2013 Magic Leap does have a smallish prototype. But it might not be up to \u201crainbow unicorn levels\u201d of reality mixing (hence, no doubt, the delays)
\u201cWe have made something that is small, mobile, powerful, and we think pretty cool.\u201d
Abovitz does also tell us about a personal concern of his \u2014 relating to the rise of AI and how information systems might edit out the intangible things that are really important in life.
On this he writes:
This is a rather interesting thought. It\u2019s just a shame it\u2019s drowned out by all those banal rainbow powered unicorns.<\/p>\n