Magic Leap’s elephant in the room

Their PR exec basically said, “Yeah, good luck with that... ”

This week, several news sources published articles questioning the viability of Magic Leap’s technology, and their PR team isn’t exactly taking it in stride.

Magic Leap’s elephant in the room

Chief PR exec Andy Fouche will be headed for greener pastures to work under Andy Rubin (of Google Alphabet’s Android project), leaving the company to deal with the scandal themselves. Because, according to insiders…

Magic Leap’s technology is a bit of a stretch…

Or to put it another way, their AR “magic” seems like more of a leap than a reality.

Since Magic Leap debuted their famous “elephant in the palm of your hand” teaser video, we have yet to see anything close to a viable consumer product.

And thanks to recent exposés, we now know that the original prototype technology was essentially a fancy projector the size of a refrigerator. Not exactly accessible to the masses.

That means the their actual product (revealed to be a pair of glasses) is not only behind schedule, but it won’t use the same technology promised in their hype videos.

On top of all that, the only answer that founder Rony Abovitz has given on a timeline for Magic Leap’s product release is, “soon.” So, we’re thinking it might be time for us all to lower our expectations.

Wow, what a buzzkill…

Yeah, that’s what happens when you let a marketing team run wild with promo videos for half-baked technology. It’s also what happens when you straight up mislead people.

We meant One of the company’s viral videos “Just Another Day in the Office at Magic Leap,” showed employees fighting robots using Magic Leap headsets with the caption, “This is a game we’re playing around the office.”

Except the game didn’t exist and the video wasn’t filmed with Magic Leap technology. According to employees, it was an “aspirational conceptual” video, not meant to depict the actual technology. “Aspiring” a little too hard right now, Magic Leap…

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