魔术飞跃2is coming. Expect less hype this time

Like many people, Peggy Johnson was dazzled by Magic Leap’s technology when she visited the company’s Florida headquarters. Seeing the way its AR headset fused the real world and digital imagery into a single experience, she was “blown away by the technology—I couldn’t believe it,” she recalls. And then, when she learned in the spring of 2020 that founder Rony Abovitz was stepping down as CEO, she acted on her long-held ambition to run a company and “just intentionally raised my hand.”

At the time, Johnson was Microsoft’s executive VP of business development, after spending a quarter century at Qualcomm. But when she was named as Abovitz’s successor as Magic Leap CEO in July 2020, the bloom was distinctly off the company’s rose. Much of the早期的兴奋头戴式耳机已脱颖而出skepticism甚至cynicism。公司有放弃了消费市场并解雇了1000名员工，还有谣言试图卖掉。她的挑战包括为魔术飞跃绘制新的未来，并克服了与运输有用产品相比，它在Hoopla更好。

上周，在里斯本举行的网络峰会会议上，我赶上了约翰逊，他对我的计划更新了魔术飞跃2，该公司的第二代耳机将于明年发行。她似乎小心不要过分宣传。她告诉我：“我们根本不是要夸大其词。”“ [我们]只是试图展示它可以做什么。”

更具体地说，Magic Leap决定专注于其技术在三个特定市场中可以做什么：医疗保健，制造和防御。约翰逊说：“他们最感兴趣的原因是他们已经习惯了他们的眼睛上。”该公司所考虑的特定应用程序包括从培训工厂地板工人到外科医生在操作过程中咨询遥远专家的所有内容。

就像第一个魔术Leap耳机一样，Magic Leap 2不是独立的：它通过电缆连接到为其提供计算肌肉和电池功率的外部吊舱。但是，新版本“较小，更轻，更快，而且计算的三倍”。“内部的芯片是AMD，这是我们与它们合作的半定期芯片 - 这是全天可穿戴的产品。”

Magic Leap 2还具有与现实用户通过耳机看到的数字图像的更高视野，从而使增强显示屏的覆盖范围是第一代耳机的两倍。约翰逊说：“视野越大，越好，这是一个相当大的视野。”

Even if Magic Leap’s days of being the tech industry’s mosttantalizing, talked-about startup长期以来，它仍然引起了一个重要选区的关注：投资者。10月，该公司宣布了5亿美元的新资金, almost matching the $542 million round that helped to put it on the map in the first place back in 2014. “It’s a comforting feeling to have that done now, and focusing on the product and growing the ecosystem, which are the next things we really have to lean in on,” says Johnson.

元词的问题

我不能让约翰逊不问她关于元信的问题 - 嗡嗡作响，略微无定形一个虚拟世界的概念，即人们相互互动为人类化身，而不是通过中介界面（例如网页）。Facebook-I mean Meta-是betting its future on the metaverse并促进密集研究it has underway tocreate AR glasses。微软，谁HoloLens 2耳机约翰逊称Magic Leap的唯一直接竞争对手已经在嘲笑其对以工作为中心的元。Given that the AR technologies Magic Leap has been working on for years have obvious metaverse potential, is Johnson eager to glom onto the trend?

Instead of talking the metaverse up, Johnson argues that the company’s tech isn’t yet ready, at least from a mainstream perspective. Magic Leap 2 remains a headset with a tethered computing appendage—a long way from the slim, all-in-one AR glasses which she says are critical for the metaverse to take off: “When we can get it into that form, we’ll be back [in the consumer market].”

约翰逊可能很快就不会渴望透射到元verse，但她强调，这是一个足够大的想法，可以涵盖多种情况和技术：“有一个VR方面。有一个AR方面。有一个消费者方面。有一个企业方面。”听起来好像应该有魔术飞跃的空间。即使该公司最紧迫的目标是为下一款耳机提出的期望（这次毫无疑问）。