Augmented Reality: We haven’t reached the Blackberry Era yet.

John Gruber, in The Billions-Dollar VR/AR Headset Question, comments that while the appeal of all-day Augmented Reality (AR) glasses is clear, “we are obviously very far away from such devices being possible, at any price.”

Alan Kay clearly articulated the laptops we use today for daily work in 1972, but it was not until the late 1990s that laptops were ready for mass adoption. Cellphones had their Blackberry Era before the iPhone changed the game.

Meta, which is the company that is most heavily invested in AR, is not a hardware company. Their latest iteration of the Oculus headset is not only overpriced but bulky. We are not in the Blackberry Era of VR/AR headsets yet.

Mark Zuckerberg is betting Meta’s future on the Metaverse… and it seems daily use of VR/AR is still years away. For AR to work, we need a device that is as light as our current cell phones and killer use cases, and that will take years.

I wonder what Meta will look like 5 years from now.