Computers are the windows allowing us to transcend between physical and digital. For years, our laptops and phones have dominated this realm.
Let’s not forget tablets – the prodigal son that showed so much promise, but never truly delivered. The iPad launched in 2010 with hopes it would become the new work device for everyone. Keyboards, big screens – it had the tools. Yet 15 (!) years later, tablets remain stuck in a weird niche: bedside readers, flight entertainment screens, and coworking second monitors. Somehow, we don’t really need a device that sits between a phone and a laptop, excelling at being neither.
I had big hopes.
So where are we with VR and XR? Quest 2 outsold Xbox during Christmas 2021, but VR sales have been trending down ever since. I do hope AndroidXR brings new life here – uniting headsets from Lynx, Samsung, and others under one streamlined OS. Lighter and more practical hardware will also mean a lot for adoption.
A few years back, we embraced the passthrough. AR optics weren’t ready, so we settled for looking at the world through a camera. Surprisingly, it worked – and I’d argue Quest 3’s passthrough is more usable than Hololens 2’s real AR. The new wave of headsets will double down on this.
But here’s an unexpected twist: Meta Ray-Ban glasses have become the top-selling product in many Ray-Ban stores, outselling the traditional eyewear. With 2M units sold and sales tripling over last year, they now outperform the declining Quest device line. Glasses with mic, camera, speakers, and AI integration – not full-blown Orion stuff yet, but close enough to hint at the future. Meta is sidelining Quest 4 in favor of AR glasses, and – surprise – the AR glasses are reported to come out already in 2025. Meanwhile, Google just demoed its own concept of a glasses AR product at I/O 2025.
I have big hopes.