[aresant]

"The average Joe barely even comes close to using the internet to its fullest potential. What makes you think something as complex and convoluted as AR (not to mention expensive) will be any different?"

I think that AR will become as ubiquitous as our phones because all of the core functionality on a phone will be better on AR.

Instant alerts in my peripheral vision (again a non-obtrusive display is crucial)?

Call up directions while driving with cortana / siri and have lay over unobtrusively?

Watch TV on a 100" screen anywhere?

All things that I've done / played with in Hololens demos, all amazing, all "no question" will be massively adopted when they get the form factor correct.

Heck just look at a current app like SNAP - already on 50%+ of phones of 18-24 year olds - is a perfect app use case.

Camera, stories, sharing - all better and more accessible in AR.

And they're already demonstrating the desire / utility of AR via "filters" and their new "World Lenses" release today.

Want that bunny rabbit filter on all day as your "look"? Done.

Want it only accessible to your co-workers and not your boss, cool set it and forget it as long as the device knows your social graph.

[stagbeetle]

You've only proven my case.

That's a lot of functionality, and there is a market for this functionality, however this market isn't the mass market.

Like computers, phones are also barely used to their full capacity. There is a quote about how we have the most powerful tools and the largest repository of information all at our fingertips, yet we concede to our whims and spend it on frivolities (see: usage of social media and mobile games vs. non-entertainment apps).

The regular consumer does not give a shit about any of this supposed functionality of AR. You can tell them "oh it'll have this, and instant alerts will be unobtrusive, and the UI, it'll be optiimized to hell and back!" But, these are weightless promises. Consumer phones haven't even gotten to the point of seamlessness and great UX (though Apple is coming close).

Snapchat is simple, AR is most definitely not.

This is an adoption problem. You can't keep throwing features at it and believe the problem will fix itself.

[wlesieutre]

You don't need customers to "use AR to its full capacity" though. You need them to use one or two pieces of it enough to justify the device.

Sure, the early iterations might be more like Blackberry popularizing email-on-the-go for a small segment of the market. Not everybody needed that. But by now pretty much everyone has found at least one aspect of smartphones that they've come to depend on.

Does my mom use her smartphone to its full capacity? Certainly not! There are thousands of apps she's never even seen, some of which can do pretty great stuff! But she checks her email, organizes recipes, and takes pictures of her dog, and that's what she has the phone for.

Heck, I don't either. If anything I'm trying to use my phone for less stuff, but I'm still glad I have it.

[stagbeetle]

Then this goes back to the "what does AR offer that a smartphone doesn't already?"

"Are these features enough to get people to switch to AR?"

From the sound of it, AR is just a mobile OS port.

[wlesieutre]

And mobile OS is just a Linux port. The most fundamental difference is how available the device is. Computers are something you have to sit down and use, smartphones are something you have to take out and look at, and AR could be something that's immediately present whenever you need it.

Beyond being just a more available HUD, the AR aspect should make for more direct interactions with the real world. Lighting controls come to mind since that's the space I work in. What if instead of having light switches built into your house, they became a purely virtual construct that each user places into the world?

Right now, IoT lighting feels clunky because you walk into a room, take out your phone, open an app, pick a light, and move some sliders. What if you could just drop an imaginary button on the wall by the door for each preset, or a virtual knob for dimming? It's the exact same functionality, but putting it into the relevant physical space makes it a lot more useful without requiring additional hardware for every room. And if your guests have AR glasses too, then you have a default "guest layout" for your house that's automatically available to anyone on your wifi. They get access to the light switches, but they can't unlock the front door.

Plus you don't have to worry about replacing switches in every room if you replace the lighting system. Just the one HomeKit hub (or whatever it is) and the switches are completely imaginary.

I haven't spent a lot of time imagining where AR will go, that's just one thought off the top of my head.

[stagbeetle]

It's one idea, but how will it push consumers over the threshold to switch? The answer is it won't, less than 10% of the US population uses the IoT.[0]

I'll restate this again. We can keep going on and on about the cool things AR can do and features it'll have, but none of that matters if there's no consumer adoption. There is absolutely no way people are going to ditch their perfectly fine smartphones for a mildly more utilitarian device.

What is AR's unique selling proposition? How will it push consumers to switch?

Until this question is answered, all speculations on the future scope of AR use are moot.

[0] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21700380-connected-ho...

[larkery]

I have to agree - I think the benefits described for all these AR scenarios really don't sound worth the cost, at least to me.

In exchange for replacing all the plain simple switches in my house with a complex tower of software, hardware, and internet services I gain: the ability to turn the lights on and off without getting up, and in this scenario I lose: the ability to find the lightswitch when my AR glasses are broken / flat battery / in another room / running a firmware update.

This trade really is marginal in comparison to the things which have driven other technology adoptions, like shopping without going to the shops, or sending letters without walking to a postbox, or allowing one person to do the work of several others in the same time.

There may be other AR / VR functions which are more compelling, but so long as they are all "use this complicated and expensive new system to get this marginal benefit over something already honed to its niche" it ain't gonna fly.

[disantlor]

what if light bulbs move to infrared and the VR shifts the light down into the visible range in different intensities per user. that way, everyone walks around in total darkness (in the real world) but with their own lighting preference in AR.

not sure on the physics of that but seems like a funny idea

[Applejinx]

>Call up directions while driving with cortana / siri and have lay over unobtrusively?

It's the future. Why would you be driving? You'll be in a self-driving car, bored. That's AR time. Isn't it?