“Microsoft last week surprised the tech masses when the company unveiled a futuristic holographic headset called a HoloLens,” Yoni Heisler writes for TUAW. “The device is a prototype for the time being, but nonetheless got many folks in the tech world excited.”
“Engadget was compelled to ask why Apple isn’t delivering in the excitement department the way they used to,” Heisler writes. “Cutting to the chase, the Engadget editorial bluntly asks, ‘When did Apple become the boring one?'”
“Has Apple, in fact, become boring? Is Apple on its way towards becoming a modern day IBM, a trustworthy behemoth far removed from the epicenter of consumer innovation and excitement?” Heisler writes. “Not quite.”
“I submit that Apple today is as ‘boring’ as it’s ever been,” Heisler writes. “If anything, Apple’s position as a ‘boring’ company is the result of adhering to a business philosophy rarely prized in Silicon Valley, a philosophy which values finished products that ship by the millions over unfinished futuristic prototypes which are more likely to take up space in tech blog headlines than on store shelves.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft’s “HoloLens” is a ruse; a transparent attempt to distract the media from the non-news yawner that is Windows 10ista; a sham. Microsoft’s “HoloLens” is a self-driving car strapped to your head. Anyone who says otherwise is a gullible fool.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Darren” for the heads up.]
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This is the REAl Microsoft:
I watched the video – well I watched most… err… some…
I watched a few seconds here and there.
And then it it hit me… this isn’t a spoof. It’s real! WTF!
Jobs was right. Microsoft has no taste. Zero, Nada, None!
Got to 1 minute 48 seconds and had to hit pause. I think my ears started to bleed a little…
I like the puking one. You can loop and puke it all day long with MS.
digital bulimia®…ONLY from Microsoft.
👍👍👍 best definition of Microsoft ever !!!!
I just threw up into my mouth a little bit, then I missed the pause button. Make it stop, make it stop, arrrggggg!!! Talk about no class. Good Golly Miss Molly! I wish I could forget it. 45 seconds was all I could handle.
I projectile vomited all over my Dell Inspiron work laptop. No point in cleaning it up especially now since the aesthetics and usability have improved hugely.
Don’t forget the Windows 7 launch party instructional video. Same production team, I’m guessing
*cringe* Vaio laptop on the counter next to several drinks ready to tip over and short out the computer. F-ing brilliant ad Microsoft.
Whoever created and approved this ad is incredibly delusional. I’ve seen old Duck-And-Cover ads that make more sense. Horrifying script. Desperate actors. Reputations ruined for life.
I think the guy on the right knew it. He kept trying to hide behind the balloons 🙂
Did the fact that the main guy is using a Mac Book Pro not enough to keep you enthralled?
Mama, make it stop!
I occasionally criticize apple ads and marketing…
I just slapped myself.
——
seriously:
Msft real customers are the OEMS who buy their software to load into PCs, they don’t really care about the end user…
likewise ads like this aren’t designed to please PC user but to please and be understandable by the no-taste-no imagination bureaucrats bean counters who run microsoft. Some idiot Dilbert just got promoted for that ‘brilliant’ ad…
Oh no, I have those songs stuck in my head!!!!! 😳
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
OMG… they’re using a Macbook Pro…
This is what it WANTS to be:
Daniel Eran Dilger with a peg reflect skewering:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/24/i-bet-my-life-microsoft-hololens-perfectly-targets-its-core-competency
That’s “perfect” not peg reflect.
Microsoft should start manufacturing e-cigarettes.
They’ve got vaping down to a science.
Do you remember M$ Courier tablet?
Sure do. There’s a drawing of it in the dictionary alongside the word “vaporware”.
As I remember, Courier was an audacious, exciting concept and the dev team actually had most of it working, though not quite good enough to run live for the slick video they juked up. Courier coulda been a contender but because it ran a gutted, modified version of Windows, MS “leadership” nuked it and reassigned the team members. MS has been shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, and this was one of the big toes.
they’re about outta toes.
Sadly, yes. I was one who had thought and hoped Satya Nadella represented a rational departure from the delusional, self-absorbed Steve Ballmer mystique. But apparently the corporate brainwashing was complete, and the new CEO continues to push the Windows religion, unaware that it was nothing more than a primitive cargo cult, popular in the nineties but now passé.
Im still trying to work out how Courier, even in its over hyped promised form would have competed in the Tablet market. Not even the overt copiers have tried to copy that concept and thats for a reason. On that one the MS henchmen got it right methinks. Fact is Microsofts best ideas never make the light of day simply because they can never be proved to be rubbish.
Who remembers MS’s fanfare when Gates announced the gimmicky Surface table in 2007 to try and take the limelight from the iPhone announcement? Instructive to compare the trajectory of iPhone and Surface…
Holo-lens has the same whiff of irrelevant desperation about it. Even if it ever makes it into any shipping product, who cares? It’s as immaterial to real life as every other super-flop MS gimmick.
but it clicks.
I tried to watch the Windows 10 update video and it was really painful. What really struck me was the interface was “flatter” looking (interesting idea. Samsung isn’t the only slavish ripper.) Notifications pane comes from the Right side of the screen and you can interact with them (Hm… where have I seen THAT?) The only thing that I was mildly impressed with was Cortana, but I’m sure that it was scripted and it won’t work as well in the real world.
When I watched the introduction of Cortana by Joe Belfore, I was initially very impressed. But then I noticed he would talk to Cortana, then talk to the audience, then resume talking to Cortana. He made the mistake of not first saying ‘Hey Cortana’. Somehow Cortana had magically distinguished when he was talking to ‘her’ and when he was talking to the audience. Therefore the whole Cortana intro was scripted and faked. When he did a computer demo, he had to say ‘hey Cortana’ for each query.
I was also initially impressed with Hololens. But the more I have read about it the more I realised that the whole reveal was a complete smoke and mirrors show, that the tech press has bought hook line and sinker.
There was no way in hell that parts for the drone were printed from that very basic model built with Hololens.
Some reporters were allowed to try out Hololens, however it was a tethered more bulky prototype. Why couldn’t they use the one that was used on stage? Was that demo faked as well? We were just told we were seeing what the woman was seeing.
The reporters all had the same scenarios demonstrated with very tightly controlled environments. It will be years before it is ready for release.
All we know is that it will be ready sometime during the timeframe of Windows 10, but what is that 5, 7 or 10 years?
Here is the funniest summary of Hololens that I have seen so far:
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/low-latency-117-pie-in-the-sky/?
The Engadget piece also really made my blood boil, especially the crap about Google project Loon being real innovative.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/project-loon-balloon-crash-2014-6
Google glass is dead, but the the author somehow thinks it will become awesome now it is in the hands of Nest.
Other crap like Amazon drones and Google clown cars that travel at 25mph are just laughable.
I’m sure Google driverless cars will save countless lives when it comes to 25mph fatal accidents.
These things are ‘always going to happen sometime in the the future’ but real innovation is shipping the product.
Having said that, I think what Microsoft showed with Cortana advanced them ahead of Siri and Hololens is ahead of what has been shown by others so far.
Apple hasn’t advanced Siri a great deal since it was released. But there has always been a definite trend with Apple products. When apple products seem stale with little improvement for years, it usually means they have been secretly working on a major leap forward.
I am sure Apple is going announce some major improvements to Siri soon and I am confident Apple has projects in the Labs that will blow our minds as well.
“Apple hasn’t advanced Siri a great deal since it was released.”
Actually, Siri has improved quite a bit. It’s just that Apple doesn’t promote it that way. I have noticed that dictation is much more accurate. My and her parents have noticed that Siri understands Japanese much better than it did at first.
The flaw is that it requires a suitable environment (clean, flat and white wall) to the device. As much as Google glass requires you to WEAR the glass.
Here was when Microsoft was “Exciting” –
http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet
Sill Waiting…
http://www.redmondpie.com/the-end-of-microsoft-courier-tablet-project/
Oh drat!!!
Apple is not the company that does it FIRST; Apple is the first company that does it RIGHT (assuming “it” is worth doing).
Big Ass Glass
Dear Engadget:
apple is in the business of doing the best Products in the world..
Microsoft is in the making illusions business..
Don’t mix apples and crap.
When did engaget get into the circus review business?
I consider myself rather technically savvy and I think this sort of tech is too much for most consumers to handle based on the typical users I meet on a daily basis. I have neighbors that have trouble setting up a Roku to their TVs. I know it sounds crazy but that’s how it is. Not everyone is able to handle changing tech after a certain age. I’ve been interested in tech practically my whole life and am used to change but even I’m getting to the stage of seeing that a constant push for change is getting a little ahead of the general population.
“A self-driving car strapped to your head” That may be the best MDN take of all time!!! Bravo!!!
Holo lens is a useless gimmick.
A. You need a fancy headset to use it.
B. You will use it for what?
Nothing!
C. Microsoft will charge you an arm a leg and other parts to buy that fancy headgear if it even exists.
Apple works on software that people need, not gimmicks.
Looks like Microsoft keeps trying to imply that you will get a big screen TV as big as you want and wherever you want.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4451
apple make things for consumers now.
MAJOR bullshit from Microscum. In addition to being vaporware, this has NOTHING to do with holograms. It’s no more a hologram than any 3-D movie is. Yoni Heisler is a moron, “futuristic holographic” indeed! Sheesh!
Cortana(tm) is a morphism of “Cortina” or Curtains, which is what covers Windows(tm). Curtains for Microsoft indeed. A real coverup.
Hololens is more like Hollow-Lens – as in empty , nothing there, nada. Nothing to be seen.
Just as Surface(tm) was Sh..-in-your-face.
I can’ t make this stuff up. It is way too obvious.
Remember the Dinosaurs who advertized Microsoft? Nobody thought of the folks who bought the product as being extinct already?
Remember the MCSES who considers ALL folks who used the Microsoft Operating System as “Luzers”?
Say you read it here first.
I totally agree with the take. Microsoft just puts all its secrets out there, lol.
Sent from my iPhone
>
This whole article is bogus!
Hololens is not a boring idea.. ( bogus name though)
It may not be for the masses .. MS may not deliver ? Dont know….But wh at they showed was definitly exciting technology.. And no it has nothing to do with holograms.. It augmented reality with good old 3d graphics and modeling overlay!
Is Apple any less than what it has ever been? absolutely not !!!.. It is runing on all cylinders ..deliverig great products ( software needs some attention! ) ..
Apple has never teased the market with futuristic vaporware or products.
Its just that they have been on such a run with blowing people away that most people have grown jaded …Nothing less than a time machine will excite the market i guess.
At the end it is what it is.
And maybe Apple needs to adjust their PR and buzz creating machine to the market dynamics today !
My 2 cents
Holo-lens is to M$ what Glass is to Google.
A concept made real -but crucially no part of a strategic plan aimed at selling millions of units. It looks like yet another XBox add-on controller thingy. It’s on a ‘roadmap’ to nowhere.
Apple links design and feature acquisition to its ecosphere – as SJ said, it’s not what you make as much as what you decide not to make. Apple do that internally and quietly because you never know when a project that you don’t take forward can be resurrected and made to work with new tech capabilities.
The Apple fans have come to expect that when an announcement
Is made, it comes after the decision to mass produce not before.
Am I too late to this party?
Apple boring?
How quickly the press has forgotten the Apple Watch. Far more interesting that the stereographic headset (*not* holograms) that MS is producing.
I still can’t get over the ‘It’s Microsoft right, so it’s easy to use’. where is Advertising Standards when you need them.
unveiled a futuristic holographic headset called a HoloLens
NO, it’s NOT holography at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost
vs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography
yup. very boring. Considering how apple has yet to invent anything and is almost the defintion of a patent troll. Apple STIFLES innovation.
For instance, my chargeing port snaps off when theres too much pressure and magnetically attaches again. why arnt ALL computers like this? right because apple is holding it so close to the chest, because they know they have nothing and someone else can do it better and cheaper.
Thunderport is great, a single port that does it all, super super fast. USB is dumb, and the world of tech would be much better off with a single universal port that simply does everything, audio, video, data transfer. Rather than releasing to to better tech all around, they hold it close to the chest until it becomes to proprietary, no one supports it.
Apple puts patent on a figmentive concept that may or may not even work, and then ride it out until someone puts the effort and makes it work, only for apple to jump in and demand royalties.
go on, bring on the 1 stars. but please dont respond with something about how they “need” to hold on to their ideas because its “theirs”. yes its theirs but they lock it down so no one else gets a peep. This isnt the mark of an innovative comapny, its the mark of a company that stumbles accross a fairly good idea and have enough capital to make it a reality. An innovative company would welcome anyone and everyone to use their design because they would innovate something else thats better