Gadgetory

today Microsoft had a consumer event for Windows 10 they talked about a lot of stuff most of which we were expecting we saw everything we thought we'd see with Windows 10 we saw Windows 10 running on a phone we saw it running on tablets we also saw some really neat Xbox stuff where you could stream Xbox games too so it was all kind of what we thought it would be but then the huge reveal at the end hololens Microsoft has new technology where they can literally show you holographs in your living room or whatever space you're in using a crazy headset now Microsoft didn't let us film or take pictures of anything that we saw with hololens but we got to try it and it was pretty great it saw a demo of Minecraft and it was wild and you put these things on and you looked down at the table and there's a castle just sitting on the table made out of Minecraft blocks and you can look around it and there's no lag everything reacts to your head movements as though it were real they obviously look like digital objects it's not like photorealistic but it was kind of incredible there was a Skype demo where he would do a Skype call and there would be a little window hanging out with the head that you were talking through the person and he was looking at on a surface and he could literally draw on top of the world that I was looking at him on top of the real world so they did a walkthrough where they helped us like install a new light switch and so there are these wires sticking out of the wall and healed like circle the wire and say take this wire here and connected to this screw here on the thing that I'm actually holding it was a really smart way to use this technology really something I didn't expect they would have thought through that well but what they haven't thought through is all the gestures you can look around to point things and you and tap they call it an air tap and that's kind of about it you can also talk to it to like switch tools but you can't actually grab stuff and manipulate it in space which you really would like to do because you know as good as your head might be your hands are way better at manipulating objects that's what they're designed for right the last demo that we saw was Mars JPL the Jet Propulsion lab is working with Microsoft and they have a system where you put this thing on and it literally transports you to Mars it's not as deeply immersive as an oculus rift so you don't really feel like you're there but what's cool about it is they mix the real world with the Mars virtual world together so there's a full-scale thing of the Mars rover just right there and you can stand in front of a monitor and the mouse on the monitor you can slide it off of the monitor onto the Martian landscape and so your mouse you're using the mouse and you're moving the mouse pointer around on the surface of Mars it was crazy so overall what does all this mean for Microsoft I think the most important thing as cool as hololens was is that Windows 10 is on the right track they've simplified the UI they've made it much easier to understand and there's no longer this insanity of a million different versions of Windows on a million different devices there's just one Windows it's called Windows 10 you're gonna be able to get it on your phone and on your tablet and on your laptop and on your giant huge monitor that you've got in your meeting room there's two cameras on and it's all windows and that's the way it always should have been that's the way it's going to be later this year and that's really exciting the hololens stuff presumably it'll come out that seems like they're pretty far along I'm pretty excited for it but it I think of it the way it same way I think of something like Google glass or self-driving cars or any of these other crazy moon shots that we see other companies do and yeah they'll sell it that'll turn the real product but it shows that Microsoft has got real ambition they're not just going to you know coast on making money off of selling copies of office they really are trying to invent the future here and there a lot further along than we give him credit for you