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by catalogia 2251 days ago
The segway at least found a niche with cops and tourists.
4 comments

Yes, and there are also plenty of solid niche applications of 3d displays. The point is that both the Segway and the MagicLeap were pitched as being the next mobile phone or automobile (something everyone has at all times).

Of course personal electric vehicles seem to be having a renaissance at the moment (scooters) but the buzz:use ratio of modern scooters is much-much lower than the original segway era from 20 years back.

Right, but it was a niche, not a revolution.
The first airplanes were a niche, and so were the first cellphones. Facebook was this social network for ivies.

Just because a technology is currently in a niche position doesn't mean that in the long term it won't be a revolution or won't become mainstream.

As far as I've seen, Magic Leap doesn't even have a niche. I can think of plausible niches for some hypothetical future AR tech, but none for what Magic Leap has managed to create.
Oh, sure! But those who didn't live through the hype may not know that it was expected to revolutionize transportation. "Venture capitalist John Doerr predicted it would reach $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history, and that it could be bigger than the Internet." [1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...

I remember the hype being so strong that people were (seriously) theorizing some kind of gravity-defying device.
And in a slightly different form factor / price point presaged the mass usage of Lime, etc.
Presaged in the sense that there was also a lot of VC-driven hype that didn't work out, sure. I'll admit there's a slightly higher chance that scooter rental still might turn into a real business. But it's definitely not a given.
A little bit early to portray Lime and the like as anything other than VC throwing tons of money at an idea