4 ms·

I find it interesting that Microsoft had _so much of this_ 9 years go. I developed with the HoloLens 1 around 2016 and I recall: * Fingers together gesture cli

I find it interesting that Microsoft had _so much of this_ 9 years go. I developed with the HoloLens 1 around 2016 and I recall: * Fingers together gesture clicking. * Voice activated menu navigation. It was glitchy/I never used it though. In 2023 these sorts of systems are much better though. * No controllers. It was all gesture based. Opening the start menu required your hand upturned, fingers together then outstretch. Kind of like an "open" gesture. * "Pointing" based on head looking vector, which was annoying. * Spatial anchors and being able to remember past spaces and how you used them. There was a whole set of SDK APIs for the spatial stuff built into Win 10 The Vision Pro iterates on some of these. Eye tracking for pointing and more cameras for tracking hand pose for clicking, to reduce the annoyance/strain. IMO all mandatory for long term usage (I frequently got motion sick with the HoloLens and the 3 months of debugging/developing on it were a challenge). Maybe if Microsoft had switched to more commonplace display technology and continued to iterate on their product instead of let it languish, they could have had a solid competitor to this, if not maybe be first to the market.

askvictor 3y ago
This is classic Apple. They're never the first mover; they let others fail, learn from those mistakes, and make a pretty polished product that everyone thinks they created the genre.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Classic is right. That period ended with the iPad reveal almost 15 years ago.
  - originalvichy 3y ago
    Are we gonna pretend the Apple Watch didn't exist? AirPods, if we want to stretch? Pebbles and other smart watches filled the criteria, but never delivered a cohesive package. I do admit that the first 3 or so generations of Apple Watches are pretty rubbish, but 4th onward with the possibility of all-day battery life, the watch became a clear winner compared to all others by manufacturers. Garmins and other fitness-first watches hold the crown when it comes to the more slimmed down and focused feature set, but for the generic smartwatch the Apple Watch is untouchable.
    - askvictor 3y ago
      The corollary to my original point, is that Apple's first gen product isn't great (but still better than the competition), but after a gen or two is the bomb. OG iPhone? Meh. iPhone 3GS? That's where it became useful. OG iPad? Meh. iPad 2? yep.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Microsoft and other companies ultimately chickened out of taking risk with this. It happens a lot. I worked for Nokia around the time that the rumors about the iphone started swirling in 2006. Exact same thing. At that time, Nokia had multiple touch screen operating systems, a linux based internet tablet running a mozilla based browser with a webcam, Symbian phones running browsers based on khtml (which later evolved into webkit, safari and chrome), lots of nice hardware, lots of investment in hardware, chips, radio technology, etc. A lot of mobile firsts happened long before there were iphones, android phones, ipads, etc. Nokia had a huge technical moat. Six years later Nokia pulled the plug on the whole thing because it got absolutely steam rolled by Apple who had none of those things but started building them around the same time Nokia decided to focus o flip phones instead (sorry, this level of corporate insanity still makes me angry). They were worried about the Motorola Razr more than they were about the iphone. They actually killed multiple touch screen platforms because of that before scrambling to re-build one around the sinking ship that was Symbian. And then they badly botched that. Reason: Nokia management was arrogant, out of touch, clueless, incompetent, complacent and utterly in denial about there even being a problem. Six years later the whole lot got fired and sold off to ... Microsoft. Who of course promptly killed it because Apple had won already and between them and Google, MS saw no path to success. So, they walked away from the whole thing. That's the company we're talking about here. So, sure, MS has stuff that they've been sitting on for ages. But what they've lacked for years is any clue as to what to do with all that stuff. Like with the iphone, Apple has been known to prepare something for years. And people just assumed it would be fine and disappointing. IMHO things are not that hopeless for MS and they could pull a few things together. XBox, holo lens, and some other bits and pieces could make for a half decent experience. Apparently they are talking to magic leap about licensing some of their tech as well. But that's not going to happen overnight and a rush job is not going to be good enough here.
ako 3y ago
It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple has been working on this for more than 9 years. They know not to release until all parts are mature enough to make a successful release. Sometime the hardware just isn’t there yet, and you have to wait a few generation for it to be smaller/faster/have more pixels/use less energy. And even today it seems that hardware is not at a level where they can do a successful consumer release, so they have a pro version for markets that can work around the limitations of todays hardware, like the huge size of the goggles or the BOM cost.

askvictor 3y ago

This is classic Apple. They're never the first mover; they let others fail, learn from those mistakes, and make a pretty polished product that everyone thinks they created the genre.

rchaud 3y ago
Classic is right. That period ended with the iPad reveal almost 15 years ago.
- originalvichy 3y ago
  Are we gonna pretend the Apple Watch didn't exist? AirPods, if we want to stretch? Pebbles and other smart watches filled the criteria, but never delivered a cohesive package. I do admit that the first 3 or so generations of Apple Watches are pretty rubbish, but 4th onward with the possibility of all-day battery life, the watch became a clear winner compared to all others by manufacturers. Garmins and other fitness-first watches hold the crown when it comes to the more slimmed down and focused feature set, but for the generic smartwatch the Apple Watch is untouchable.
  - askvictor 3y ago
    The corollary to my original point, is that Apple's first gen product isn't great (but still better than the competition), but after a gen or two is the bomb. OG iPhone? Meh. iPhone 3GS? That's where it became useful. OG iPad? Meh. iPad 2? yep.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Microsoft and other companies ultimately chickened out of taking risk with this. It happens a lot. I worked for Nokia around the time that the rumors about the iphone started swirling in 2006. Exact same thing. At that time, Nokia had multiple touch screen operating systems, a linux based internet tablet running a mozilla based browser with a webcam, Symbian phones running browsers based on khtml (which later evolved into webkit, safari and chrome), lots of nice hardware, lots of investment in hardware, chips, radio technology, etc. A lot of mobile firsts happened long before there were iphones, android phones, ipads, etc. Nokia had a huge technical moat. Six years later Nokia pulled the plug on the whole thing because it got absolutely steam rolled by Apple who had none of those things but started building them around the same time Nokia decided to focus o flip phones instead (sorry, this level of corporate insanity still makes me angry). They were worried about the Motorola Razr more than they were about the iphone. They actually killed multiple touch screen platforms because of that before scrambling to re-build one around the sinking ship that was Symbian. And then they badly botched that. Reason: Nokia management was arrogant, out of touch, clueless, incompetent, complacent and utterly in denial about there even being a problem. Six years later the whole lot got fired and sold off to ... Microsoft. Who of course promptly killed it because Apple had won already and between them and Google, MS saw no path to success. So, they walked away from the whole thing. That's the company we're talking about here. So, sure, MS has stuff that they've been sitting on for ages. But what they've lacked for years is any clue as to what to do with all that stuff. Like with the iphone, Apple has been known to prepare something for years. And people just assumed it would be fine and disappointing. IMHO things are not that hopeless for MS and they could pull a few things together. XBox, holo lens, and some other bits and pieces could make for a half decent experience. Apparently they are talking to magic leap about licensing some of their tech as well. But that's not going to happen overnight and a rush job is not going to be good enough here.

ako 3y ago

It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple has been working on this for more than 9 years. They know not to release until all parts are mature enough to make a successful release. Sometime the hardware just isn’t there yet, and you have to wait a few generation for it to be smaller/faster/have more pixels/use less energy. And even today it seems that hardware is not at a level where they can do a successful consumer release, so they have a pro version for markets that can work around the limitations of todays hardware, like the huge size of the goggles or the BOM cost.