The Magic Leap Con
“Today, our world feels divided.” Rony Abovitz, CEO of the infamous mixed reality startup Magic Leap stood awkwardly on a circular stage, surrounded by hundreds of attendees of his company’s first developer conference, and first major public-facing event, eyeing a teleprompter, arms behind his back. “It feels broken,” he said. “Our new medium of spatial computing feels fresh. It doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that are dominating the news today.”
That, of course, is debatable. Few companies can attract titanic levels of investment, spawn years of breathless, myth-making press coverage, slowly frustrate its own fan base, get slapped with workplace-related lawsuits, and drift perilously towards becoming an industry-wide punchline without releasing a single product—all while retaining a $6 billion valuation. Magic Leap somehow managed to pull it off.
. . .
After years of intense secrecy and relative silence, in August, Magic Leap finally launched its flagship product, a mixed reality rig featuring goggles, a control wand, and clip-on computer pack, to developers, who could purchase it for $2,295. This week, the company held its inaugural developer conference, to try to entice third-party creators, and to introduce the gear to a wider audience. In many ways, this is the final stage of the product’s public debut. In 2015, Abovitz told Wired, “When we launch it, it is going to be huge.” After spending two days at LEAPcon, I feel it is my duty—in the name of instilling a modicum of sanity into an age where a company that has never actually sold a product to a consumer can be worth a billion dollars more than the entire GDP of Fiji—to inform you that it is not.
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