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This week we talk about the HoloLens, the Apple Vision Pro, and the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses.We also discuss augmented reality, virtual reality, and Orion.Recommended Book: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray NaylerTranscriptOriginally released as a development device in 2016—so aimed at folks who make software, primarily, not at the general public—the HoloLens, made by Microsoft, was a fairly innovative device that looked like virtual reality headgear, but which allowed folks to interact with graphical elements overlayed on a transparent surface so that they seemed to be positioned within the real world; so-called augmented reality.This functionality relied upon some of the tech Microsoft had developed for its earlier Kinect accessory, which allowed Xbox owners to play games using their bodies instead of more conventional controllers—it used a camera to figure out where people, and their arms, legs, and so on, were in space, and that helped this new team figure out how to map a person’s living room, for instance, in order to place graphical elements throughout that room when viewed through the HoloLens’ lenses; so stuff could appear behind your couch, pop out of a wall, or seem to be perched atop a table.The HoloLens was not the only option in this space, as several other companies, including other tech titans, but also startups like Magic Leap, were making similar devices, but it was arguably the most successful in the sense that it both developed this augmented reality technology fairly rapidly, and in the sense that it was able to negotiate collaborations and business relationships with entities like NASA, the US Military, and Autodesk—in some cases ensuring their hardware and software would play well with the hardware and software most commonly used in offices around the world, and in some cases showcasing the device’s capabilities for potential scientific, defense, and next-step exploratory purposes.Like many new devices, Microsoft positioned the HoloLens, early on, as a potential hub for entertainment, launching it with a bunch of games and movie-like experiences that took advantage of its ability to adapt those entertainments to the spaces in which the end-user would consumer them: having enemies pop out of a wall in the user’s kitchen, for instance, or projecting a movie screen on their ceiling.It was also pitched as a training tool, though, giving would-be astronauts the ability to practice working with tools in space, or helping doctors-in-training go through digital surgeries with realistic-looking patients before they ever got their hands dirty in real life. And the company leaned into that market with the second edition of the headset, which was announced and made available for pre-order in early-2019, optimizing it even further for enterprise purposes with a slew of upgrades, and pricing it accordingly, at $3,500.Among those upgrades was better overall hardware with higher-end specs, but it also did away with controllers and instead reoriented entirely toward eye- and hand-tracking options, combined with voice controls, allowing the user to speak their commands and use hand-gestures to interact with the digital things projected over the real-world spaces they inhabited.The original model also had basic hand-tracking functionality, but the new model expanded those capabilities substantially, while also expanding upon the first edition’s fairly meager 30 degrees of augmented view: a relatively small portion of the user’s line of sight could be filled with graphics, in other words, and the new version upgraded that to 52 degrees; so still not wall to wall interact-with-able graphics, but a significant upgrade.Unfortunately for fans of the HoloLens, Microsoft recently confirmed that they have ended production of their second generation device, and that while they will continue to issue security updates and support for their existing customers, like the US Department of Defense, they haven’t announced a replacement for it—which could mean they’re getting out of this space entirely.Which is interesting in the sense that this is a space, the world of augmented reality, which some newer entrants are rebranding as mixed reality, that seems to be blowing up right now: two of Microsoft’s main competitors are throwing a lot of money and credibility into their own offerings, and pitching this type of hardware as the next-step in personal devices.Some analysts have posited, though, that Microsoft maybe just got into this now-burgeoning arena just a little too early, investing in some truly compelling innovations, but doing so at a moment in which the cost was too high to justify the eventual output, and now they might be ceding the space to their competition rather than doubling-down on something they don’t think will pay off for them, or they may be approaching it from another angle entirely, going back to the drawing board and focusing on new innovations that will bypass ...