John Gruber on Humane’s recent demo at TED:
“So far, it feels like Humane’s entire premise is founded on that same mistake: building a new device intended to replace our phones, without that new device being able to do any of the dozens of things we love to do on our phones that require a display.”
As I tooted over the weekend, Humane is starting to smell a lot like Magic Leap. They are building hype with their promotional videos and product demos – that, do seem impressive in some ways – only to raise hundreds of millions of dollars rather than shipping products.
In 2018 I wrote how Magic Leap was actually hurting themselves by building hype they couldn’t possibly deliver on.
“While this release is for developers to get their hands on the devices, I believe the hype this company has built around itself has hurt them. No matter what they showed in this first version it would have been disappointing to many.”
And that turned out to be true. We all read quotes from various people that saw the Magic Leap technology and they all proclaimed it was world changing stuff. As a result Magic Leap raised billions of dollars. That is billions, with a B. But the actual devices turned out to be lackluster and, in fact, never really shipped to the consumer.
Have you ever seen a Magic Leap device? Will you ever see a Humane device?
See also: Magic Leap of faith.
