Innovations & technilogies

After Trying the Desktop of the Future, I’m Sticking with the Past

For the past few days I’ve augmented my reality at work, adding virtual displays to my office so that, while wearing a special headset, I can do things like type e-mails and read news and tweets without taking up real estate on my small laptop. I’ve brought virtual objects to my desk, too, like a little pile of logs burning in a charming, heat-free fire.

I did all this with the Meta 2 headset, a $1,495 device from Meta, a Silicon Valley startup that is one of a handful of companies trying to bring augmented reality to the mass market (its founder, Meron Gribetz, was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2016). The Meta 2, which is intended for developers, needs to be connected to a beefy computer in order to work, but it’s about half the price of Microsoft’s HoloLens device (also still aimed just at developers), has a larger field of view, and also produces very good-looking 3-D images in real environments.