Microsoft Has Cancelled the Second-Gen HoloLens, Working on Third-Gen For 2019 Launch (thurrott.com) 113
Citing several unnamed sources, long-time blogger Brad Sams is reporting that Microsoft has canceled the second iteration of the HoloLens in an attempt to focus on even more advanced HoloLens. The company, he says, now plans to launch that third iteration of HoloLens in 2019. From the report: Back when the first version of HoloLens came out, Microsoft created a roadmap that highlighted several release points for the product. This isn't unusual, you start with the first device, second generation devices are typically smaller and more affordable and then with version three you introduce new technology that upgrades the experience; this is a standard process path in the technology sector. Microsoft, based on my sources, is sidelining what was going to be version two of HoloLens and is going straight to version three. By skipping what was version two on their roadmap, the company can accelerate version three which will be closer to a generational leap and help keep Microsoft ahead of the competition. My sources are telling me that this version of HoloLens will not arrive until 2019.
Why not go to 10? (Score:1)
So the Windows 10 naming strategy?
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I'm still a big fan of Word 3. Sadly, 3 got a bit out of date so these days I'm using Word 5 on Windows 9.
I heard one guy made a deal with the Robot Devil (Score:5, Funny)
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well to be fair, the hololens is such a difficult instrument, only a few people in the whole universe can master it.
Well, unless you can score a pair of hands from the Robot Devil - then you'll be able to write great operas and all sorts of stuff!
If Apple built a Hololens we'd never hear about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Until it was ready for release. It's just bad product management to tease products that aren't ready for release yet, solve the main problems behind locked doors first.
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Like the iPhone that was only for right-handed users?
I don't know if MS ever published any numbers, but it looks like the first version was targeted mostly at developers, which makes sense. You pay for the hardware and you get a jump start in producing a software product for it, without waiting for a general release. That's not at all unusual and is actually a good thing. It sounds like they were doing parallel development with version two and version three at different points in the development life cyc
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AR vs VR. Apples vs oranges.
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Regardless, it was stillborn because it was prohibitively expensve. And not very good for all the tech either.
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I don't think it's the price so much as the narrowed field of view. They cut some corners there presumably to save on costs. I would have bought into it if not for that, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
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I would be pretty pissed off as a developer if I poured money into a dev kit thinking this thing might actually hit the market anytime soon.
Re:If Apple built a Hololens we'd never hear about (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yep, agreed. But consider what the first cell phones looked like both in form factor and feature set when compared to modern smartphones, and you can see some pretty amazing potential. At some point in the future, it's likely they'll be able to shrink the form factor down to a lightweight set of glasses, which will be a pretty amazing experience. That's probably the point at which this will stop being a niche product. There are a ton of really cool potential uses for ubiquitous AR glasses you can wear a
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Actually, if I had to speculate, I'd wager MS has realized that the tech needs to take a pretty significant leap before it can be considered remotely usable, and so this announcement reflects that consideration. It's likely that version 2 was only a moderate improvement, but had many of the same limitations of version 1. I haven't worn the headset myself, but the near-universal feedback seems to be that while the tech itself is impressive, the experience is like looking through a mail slot, and the headse
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It's not a VR headset, it's an AR headset. Confusing them is like calling a cellphone "yet another telephone" and comparing it to a century-long history of landline telephones.
That doesn't mean there's no other AR headset out there, but it's really not a crowded field at this time.
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But they want developers on board of it already.
Despite the developers not having a market or users to sell to!
2019 is just as good as saying "in the future! with memristors!".
the development suite for hololens 1 is THREE THOUSAND BUCKS. THREE FUCKING THOUSAND BUCKS.
or 5000 bucks if you want warranty and basic mdm that you would get for free on a 99 bucks android phone.
2019 is just as same as saying they're just waiting for some prices to come down. but it makes it almost totally utterly pointless to buy th
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THREE THOUSAND BUCKS. THREE FUCKING THOUSAND BUCKS.
Um, that's pocket change for a company wanting to do some early prototyping or experimental work. Do you really think a company is going to balk at a device that costs less than a week's salary for one of their programmers? These kinds of things take years to develop anyhow. The display tech will change, but it's definitely not too early to start establishing early designs and best practices, and getting familiar with the APIs and dev environment. Those are not likely to change all that much.
BTW, in the
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The tiny viewing area is what ruins it for me as well. Big and bulky I can understand, but a total lack of peripheral vision input is just killing the experience. You're looking around inside a sphere with a window that maybe covers 3% of it (think about it: 45x45 degrees is 1/8 of the horizontal and 1/4 of the vertical, or 1/32 of the whole.) It's a cool toy for looking at specific stuff, but it's far from an immersive experience.
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It's just bad product management to tease products that aren't ready for release yet
No it's not. It is nothing more than a business strategy. It has upsides and downsides. For example by teasing a product you can build hype for your version thus diminishing the first mover advantage a competitor may have to the market place. By not announcing until release day you can catch a market by surprise which gives you a huge first mover advantage, however you need to rely on inspired fandom to provide you initial interest.
Both are sound business strategies that are highly dependent on the product
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I agree with you there is a business strategy reason for pre-announcing, but it doesn't make your product better, it's just an attempt to freeze sales of competitors, and I don't think it works except in very special circumstances. For the market to care, you have to announce something that is going to be better/cheaper, and you have to have a track record in that space of delivering quality products.
Microsoft has no VR/AR track record, there isn't a VR/AR market to speak of, it has a track history of annou
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but it doesn't make your product better
Never said it did.
and I don't think it works except in very special circumstances. For the market to care, you have to announce something that is going to be better/cheaper, and you have to have a track record in that space of delivering quality products.
Yes, yes, and no. There are plenty of studies that have shown you don't need a good track record of delivery to still sway a market off your competitor. Sometimes it's not even a strategy to sell your product but simply to delay sales of a competitor's product. It's why it is still a viable and very widely used textbook strategy.
No one needed to be teased about the iPod
And there was a strategic reason for that too. Being teased about the iPod gave up an advantage Apple had: a) surprise, and b) unique design. Strategy is also not
Re:If Apple built a Hololens we'd never hear about (Score:4, Insightful)
Release? Who wants to release? We're just announcing something forever so nobody else bothers to build one or if they do, nobody buys it because they're waiting for the Microsoft one.
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The other thing is it won't be a half baked product. I guarantee that it will be a 5K per eye display rolling at not less than 120fps. In other words, Apple will ensure that any VR or AR headset they release shall have a retina display. A retina VR headset is what Oculus should have been. When Apple makes a their VR headset or glasses, do you honestly think it will have the ultra-annoying screen door effect or puke inducing 90fps? The soul of Steve Jobs will emerge from the grave and smack Tim Cook in the f
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You said it better than I did.
I'm building my own startup and I think about Jobs' demanding attention to detail every day, especially when I think about half-assing how a feature works. I always realize that the customer isn't going to know or care about my need to get to market ASAP, if I half-ass it they are just going to say "this doesn't work right" or worse "this doesn't work at all", so I go the extra mile to polish and make it work intuitively and well.
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It's the same process that produced the iPod, iPhone and iPad. And ironically Apple is know for how frugal and efficient it's R&D spending is. Or how underfunded it's R&D is, from the perspective of analysts focused on comparing that line item in their income statements to other public companies.
The truth is Apple has proven it knows how to build quality consumer products at the right price points. Even post jobs, the Apple Watch, priced at surprisingly high price points, had higher revenues than pr
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If Apple built a Hololens we'd never hear about it
Until it was ready for release. It's just bad product management to tease products that aren't ready for release yet, solve the main problems behind locked doors first.
What if that very "keep everything secret" strategy prevents Apple from building highly experimental products like a HoloLens in the first place.
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Look at my other comment about the nearly 10 year development time line Jobs had for the iPad, and how he canceled it at least once and had the team start over. You can do lots of highly experimental products without releasing them, and keep going back to redo them and make them better.
Jobs was also paranoid about any innovations they came up with not being leaked to competitors, which I think is a reasonable fear. The iPhone was the first touchscreen phone to actually work well because of a lot of little i
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Explains the articles that's come out about Apple doing AR stuff internally.
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Yea, but no product release thats the point. Both companies have pressure from the outside to show they are doing something in VR/AR, but Apple has always (since Jobs return) had the discipline to not ship products until they were ready. A couple articles with minor leaks doesn't change that, Apple has done no public demos. So either those leaks were corporate blessed to calm down analysis's, or just random employee leaks.
The best example is the iPad. It was actually ready for production but canceled by Job
Marketing (Score:3)
But come on... it's not like they made a 2.0 already. They are experimenting, that is what 1.xx is for. Next release should be 2.0, IMHO.
Anyway. Not uncommon, and there are a few other issues with higher priorities on earth today
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There has been no marketing applied at this stage. There is no HoloLens 2.0 or 3.0. These are just internal milestones.
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The whole "we are going straight for version 3"
Re: Marketing (Score:2)
No. This isn't an advertisement. For that matter, I would not even consider this official.
One day it might be marketing. But today, it is a blogger who likes the scoop on the future directions of Microsoft products asking a guy who would know.
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Nobody at Microsoft talks to a blogger and reveals information unless it signed off by a manager.
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So "marketing" is any conversation "signed off by a manager"? Sure, let's redefine the meaning of words.
I have lots of conversations that are approved by my manager. I really should be charging for the extra marketing I provide our company.
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Releasing information about new products and products in development is the responsibility of the marketing department. They usually have a plan, and everything that is released is usually pl
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I'm not talking about the release of information. Call that marketing if you wish.
You asserted that skipping over version "2.0" and going with version "3.0" is a marketing ploy, inflating the numbers. That assertion is wrong. There is no such thing as "HoloLens 3.0", and until there is, the only conclusion that we are left with is what the article stated (that it is an internal milestone and strategy change).
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Yes, indeed. No marketing whatsoever. [microsoft.com]
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There has been no marketing for a version 2.0 or version 3.0 applied at this stage.
Context matters. Keep up.
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It's awfully hard to keep up, given how fast you're moving those goalposts.
Innovation (Score:5, Funny)
Ya gotta admit, it's pretty fucking innovative to cancel the product before it's even launched.
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Ya gotta admit, it's pretty fucking innovative to cancel the product before it's even launched.
they must have picked up the tip from crowd-funding sites :P_
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Doing such a thing takes courage.
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Hey, I use LInux, where's my big, black cock?
Typical for open source, I bet I get some hodgepodge instructions and have to make my own and find out how to use it properly, only to end up stuffing it into your ass instead.
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Well yeah, waiting until it becomes popular is so passé (here's lookin' atcha Google)
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Ya gotta admit, it's pretty fucking innovative to cancel the product before it's even launched.
Well, one has to remember that Microsoft is an innovation champion, in that respect. As usual, Microsoft, consider yourself middle-fingered.
Re: Innovation (Score:2)
MS is being quite brave here. Here's hoping they're brave enough to cancel all future products.
Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how good v3 is going to be in 2 years, v4, in 4 years will be much, much better. With this logic, there's really no reason to release. Ever.
Unless, of course, the team really has just been surfing the internet and going to to lunch and then straight to the bar afterwards for the past 2 years instead of working on product.
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You've never worked on a large project where the decision was made to skip a release and put everyone on the next one?
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Like the coward said, this isn't a traditional software product. This is hardware, API, and a bunch of other things in an area (AR) that doesn't have much groundwork laid. Most orgs wouldn't even take the risk of being that cutting edge.
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It's called the Osborne Effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The concept here is minimum viable product. Microsoft apparently doesn't think Holo lense is there yet. Once it is it will be released and future innovations will be updates to the product. The thing is, if the product doesn't actually do anything marketing can make people want than there's no point releasing it.
Considering where augmented reality in general is on the cost/usefulness scale it's probably the right call as AR is mostly a solution in search of a problem.
Most of the things AR would be useful fo
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Before you can claim that you need to define "good". You're making a big assumption, and given that a company like Microsoft has chosen to skip a product release there's nothing in this company's history to suggest that they are aiming for perfection rather than simply trying to not release a steaming turd for a change.
Re:Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the engineering improvement curve for stuff like this is really steep. What's practically impossible today, is practical but outrageously expensive in 9 months and commodity priced in 18 months.
IMHO, all of the VR stuff is so bleeding edge that it's going to make the smartphone cycle look slow and methodical in 5 years. Meanwhile, do you rush out products that are expensive, quickly obsolete and don't grab many buyers in the name of "getting to market first"? Or do you iterate it internally and among select developers until your actual concept is practical and at prices that will gain a high volume of sales?
I don't think they're out of line here, the technology in this stuff is advancing faster than they can integrate it into a coherent product and get it to manufacturing.
Good Is the enemy of the Crappy (Score:2)
No matter how good v3 is going to be in 2 years, v4, in 4 years will be much, much better.
Here's the problem though - if v2 ended up just being an incremental upgrade of the dev units, that just was not anywhere good enough compared to shipping VR units, or potentially shipping VR units...
It makes a ton more sense to keep refining not until something is perfect, but until basically it is "good" as in good enough to release for consumers. I can defiantly see why v2 might not have been close enough to good t
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Off topic about the Ad (Score:5, Informative)
Looks likes something from early dot-com. It makes the page behave oddly and annoyingly (on all my devices, but more so on iphone).
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Better still, if a new story is added at the top the banner which covers the ad down over the story. That is forgivable. But the rest of the slashdot homepage breaks too with all links to stories just linking back to the Slashdot homepage until the page is refreshed.
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Hallelujah (Score:2)
huh. (Score:2)
Maybe this is a sign of confidence in the product from MS.
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Makes sense (Score:1)
I mean, like, where did Windows 2.0 ever go?
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They need to read history a bit more carefully, especially the VHS versus Betamax parts. It's not how good the technology is, it's all about the availability of porn.
Not unheard of... (Score:2)
A strategy that Gaben never heard of. xD
Anyways, I'm not sure if this is the right move. I can understand why it happens, but the thing is that the first reveal of the Hololens happened in what feels like ages ago, and with no updates in between, people might just forget about it.
But more importantly, it's quite likely that the competition will step up their game and come up with something before 2019.
Then again, I'm not entirely sure how the state of key components are these days, so perhaps it's just a be
Which company will arrive first? (Score:3)
The first company to give me an A.I. in A.R. in the shape of bunny-girl cassette girl [pinimg.com] wins.
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Did you see this? Gatebox Azuma Hikari https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yes I did, and that doesn't look like a real hologram to me. It seems to be a transparent LCD display that might be able to rotate to face the viewer.
Lipstick on a pig (Score:3)
I think this is bullshit. This isn't "We're skipping 2 and going straight for 3", this is "2 sucks, and we need to work on it more, so we're going to keep working on it and what we were going to call v2 is now called v3 since it conveniently slots into v3 release cycle"
horse shit lies, lol
Makes sense (Score:2)
Except we are talking about Microsoft so the 2019 version will have 2016 technology (i.e., it will be low resolution with an annoying screen door effect, nauseous low frame rate).
For VR to be usable beyond 5 minutes of gimicky showing off, the per eye resolution needs to be at 5K and the frame rate at least 120 fps with under 50 millisecond responsiveness.
I doubt we would have those technologies by 2019, we can't get 4K working how are we going to have dual 5K displays rolling at 120 fps by 2019?
The Third (Score:2)
Someone within Microsoft finally got the memo that you should never, ever, buy anything from Microsoft until version three...
Someone call Richard Gabriel! (Score:2)
Microsoft has apparently invented such a stinker of a product that better is actually worse.
In almost every case, as Gabriel's classic observation [dreamsongs.com] holds, it is better to get something out on the market fast rather than try to make it technically superior. The only obvious reason to cancel the second-generation Hololens is that it is fundamentally not ready for prime time, and would make the Microsoft and Hololens brands look worse if people saw them.