Boy, do I love a shiny new gadget! That feeling, right? The unboxing, the admiration of the curves/chamfers/color/finish/glossy screen, the fumbling for the power button, the futzing and the tinkering, the showing-off to chums. It's a rush. When it comes to the neato new devices that power the WIRED world, my affections know few bounds: rangefinder cameras, sleek smartphones, wireless headphones, robotic vacuums, 4K displays, fitness trackers, smart watches, wafer-thin laptops. I'm a guy who gets hot and bothered about well-designed gear.
If his office is any indication, Satya Nadella knows what I'm talking about. The first time I met the Microsoft CEO, late last fall, I recognized telltale signs: the stack of phones charging near his desk, the rat's nest of cables peeking from behind the corner Xbox/TV setup, the near-constant chime of push notifications (on his iPhone, no less) paired with his fitness tracker—a Microsoft Band. Ding! Ding! Ding! But it wasn't just the gadgets; it was the way he talked about Microsoft's latest piece of hardware, Project HoloLens. “Just wait till you see it,” he said.
An hour later, Alex Kipman (who invented the Kinect for Xbox) helped me don a space-age-looking smoke-tinted visor a bit bigger than a pair of ski goggles. This was Project HoloLens. Kipman told me I was one of the first people who didn't work for Microsoft to wear the device. It was a revelation. As my eyes resolved the images in front of me, I could still see the same room—except that now, in the middle distance between me and Kipman, a circular platform floated like a hologram from Admiral Ackbar's war room. To my left I could now see an array of virtual tools—icons, skeuomorphic buttons, and toggles—that could be used to make stuff. Over the next 30 minutes, I designed and assembled a couple of crude holographic models, each ready to be 3-D-printed, using nothing more than gestures and voice commands. Mind. Blown. I'll leave the details of this technology for Jessi Hempel's cover story —suffice it to say it was a thrilling afternoon of discovery.
