HoloLens - the true augmented reality milestone

Build 2016 is over. We have seen a true kickoff of HoloLens, now everybody can buy a developer edition to build and test own apps. Of course they need to have....3000 USD. That is a lot, but the cost is not the main topic on which I want to focus today. After the presentation we can read a lot of comments that say that this is still a clumsy technology, that this is not so exciting as everybody thinks. So what is all about ?

HoloLens is not a everyday technology

Let us start from this statement. HoloLens is not something you would call an everyday augmented reality headset. Of course, you can have at your home and play with it, you can take it to your work and use it for that. So there is a way to use it everyday in your life BUT you won't wear it during your trip to work, you won't go with it to the shop. To be honest, you won't wear it anywhere outside your home or office.

First of all they are simply too big. Yes, the current version is much better than the prototype that was shown year ago, it is much easier to wear it, use it, adjust to the user, they are more comfortable but still they are just too big. It is hard to say that nobody will notice that you are wearing them.

Secondly we have the main problem of every mobile device, battery. According to Microsoft we`re talking here about 2-3 hours of constant work. It's not even a half of standard work day, that means you always need to be close of something that will be able to charge your HoloLens. Hard to say that this is a comfortable situation.

And last but not least...the cost. We can assume that user edition will be cheaper than current developer version but let us be real, there is no chance that the difference will be significant, and 3000 USD is a lot of money. There won't be many people that will be able to afford it just to wear it around and use it for Cortana`s reminders. 

It is not important !

Should we care about above problems ? No, not now. HoloLens is a big step forward for augmented reality. I think that it is even more than one step. It is a milestone. Microsoft made something fantastic for propagation AR. Thanks to that device we can get a bit closer to understanding of true potential of augmented reality in our lifes.

This device is something similar to first laptop, pda or tablet. It is something big, expensive, without well defined usage. It sounds horrible but it something fantastic. It allows to understand the technology, to experiment with it, to show something great, cool and fantastic to people, to move forward, to look further. HoloLens is like a key that will open augmented reality on masses. I can't tell will the device built by Microsoft will be the best one, but I know that this is the one of biggest and most important moment for augmented reality at our time. Now we need to wait for ideas, for prototypes and different approaches. This will show us in which way augmented reality will go in near future.