I like all these "cool" devices, love the idea, even got myself nreal air, but ... these are overpriced gadgets, I mean not worth the money that you have to pay for them as these do nothing well: not a good AR, not a good screen, not a convenient device, expensive.
Same. They're neat tech demos, but aside from turn-by-turn directions I don't really see any of them being particularly helpful aside from being a novelty. I really don't get the demand for weird social overlays on top of people, that seems distracting more than anything.
(Even demand for the turn-by-turn I think is largely driven by people allowing turn-by-turn to erode their natural sense of direction and ability to recall directions, but that's a separate point).
There are some useful cases I can imagine, but they would require so much collaboration by other contributors who aren't traditionally inclined towards good UX and software, and would be so niche that I don't see them driving a successful consumer product. In those cases the hardware isn't really the hard question it's "how do we deliver great experiences that can accomplish this without a hitch and without getting in the way?"
For instance, presenting overlays is very useful for something like an inspector to be able to easily cross reference maps, blueprints, and schematics. Uploading an instruction manual for building flat-pack furniture and have it able to literally tell you what to do. Meal prep services overlaying recipes. A tool for guided tours at museums (in which case you'd rent the AR device instead of owning your own). Maybe as a bike or running computer to overlay your time, speed, splits, or whatever.
But these are all such niche use cases I can't imagine a company like Apple, that generally aims to have product lines that sell in the hundreds of millions of units, would ever be in that market.
Many of those are viable "enterprise" use cases.. which usually means expensive hardware, but we're already seeing several of those deployed. Microsoft seems to have made a very good decision with HoloLens to ignore the consumer market and aim entirely at enabling high-end stuff. Overlays for workers isn't common yet, but it is in use. And the Army isn't giving up on IVAS despite continued teething problems.
