In 2015, I saw the best demo that you’ll probably never see: the press-only demo of the Microsoft HoloLens.
This week, Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 4, 2025, and at PCWorld we’ll be spending some time looking back on how it got here. But PCWorld also celebrated something else even more important: the life of our colleague, Gordon Mah Ung.
Gordon passed away from cancer last December, and over the weekend PCWorld staff both past and present gathered together to talk about what made Gordon special. For me, it was a time to reflect. My own career began about 30 years ago, about the same time that Gordon moved over from newspapering into technology journalism.
Now that he’s gone, it’s made me realize something our society struggles with; asking Gordon about his life would be a tacit acknowledgement that it was ending. It’s a shame. I wish I asked him what PCs, products, and demos made the biggest impact on him over his decades of covering technology in magazines and on the web. What stood the out strongest to a person who saw almost everything tech had to offer this century?
In honor of Gordon, and just in time for Microsoft’s 50th, I want to share the coolest tech demo I’ve ever seen: the closed-doors HoloLens hands-on that Microsoft showed off on Jan. 21, 2015.
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The mother of all (Microsoft) demos
Microsoft doesn’t often invite journalists to its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and for me this was my first time stepping foot on its campus.
In 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave what’s known as the “mother of all demos,” showing off what became the computer mouse, hyperlinking, and more. For Microsoft, that day was pretty close! Microsoft showed off Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, the HoloLens, and related apps and services, such as the Windows Xbox app. I was there for the news, but most importantly for the demos: how everything looked, felt and worked. And at the end of the presentation, there was the HoloLens.
Thurrott.com’s YouTube channel shows off what the journalists in the room saw:
Microsoft made a number of computers, tablets and phones available for us to try out Windows 10 and the new Windows Phone OS, and I remember being pretty impressed with Windows 10 and especially Cortana, a cheery, responsive “AI” who could answer questions and perform a number of tasks. Microsoft’s operating systems usually swung back and forth between a professional business focus (Windows 2000, for example) and excessively consumer-y, such as Windows 8. Windows 10 felt like it took some of the best elements of both worlds.
While my memory of that day is a little fuzzy, what I do recall is that the HoloLens wasn’t just available to try on. It was a curated experience, and required signing up for one of several groups. At a certain time, a small cohort of reporters was escorted downstairs into the basement to try out the HoloLens in a series of one-on-one demonstrations.
The most important thing for a HoloLens viewer was getting the inter-pupillary distance correctly measured. Looking the HoloLens was a bit like looking through a porthole, as the field of view was limited. Naturally, it was important to get that aligned correctly with our eyes. The demo HoloLens that the world saw that day was the slick, Daft Punk-inspired headset that eventually shipped, but we were strapped into a two-piece visor and NUC-like device, tethered by a cord.
This was it: Minecraft magic
I chose to highlight a virtual walk on Mars as the highlight of the HoloLens launch event, but what still sticks with me, years later, is the Minecraft (“Holo Builder”) demo.
We all know Minecraft. It’s a first-person game, where you walk about and, well, mine and craft weapons and tools and building materials. While the game is randomized, the interface isn’t. You’re just a blocky person with a sword or pickaxe, wandering about.
The HoloLens changed all that. I walked into a standard living room: sofa, coffee table, a couple of chairs, maybe a plant or two. The HoloLens turned them into the game.
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That blew my mind. I’d never thought of actual physical surfaces as a game board, even for someone who had thought that the “battle chess” holographic setup in Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon was pretty cool. The HoloLens allowed me a godlike view, walking around Minecraft plateaus on the couch — even allowing me to peer through “holes” in the coffee table into the fiery Underworld of the game. Of course, there was TNT — and that blew up, too. Could you flick Creepers into the abyss?
I don’t really recall if “I” as a player was represented, meaning that I’m not sure if the perspective allowed by the HoloLens really allowed a “game,” per se. It was a fantastic demo, certainly, but that’s all it ever was.
But that was part of what made the HoloLens (for the time) so cool; its ability to “scan” your surroundings and apply virtual reality to it. Microsoft did this with several HoloLens apps you likely never saw: a murder mystery that put “clues” in your vision, and a surprisingly fun version of the Conker platforming franchise that allowed you to basically send your character bouncing off desks and stairs.
When I had my own HoloLens I literally snuck into an office building and tried playing Conker in an empty room with a staircase and other furniture. Then some lady came out and threatened to call the cops on me, ending that little adventure. Little did she know how close she was to a piece of computing history.
The HoloLens would have been a great assistant
What sticks with me as the second best demo was the integration of Skype into the HoloLens. Microsoft asked us to rewire a light switch — a real one, with live current flowing through it. As someone who had almost spot-welded a socket wrench while changing a car battery, I had and still have a healthy respect for electricity.
What Microsoft had us do was connect to someone who knew what they were doing via Skype, allowing me to share what I was seeing. The remote person then visually highlighted what I needed to do and how to do it. Sure, it was child’s play for someone who knew what they were doing, but it validated all of the “remote assistance” business cases that Microsoft would promote throughout the life of the HoloLens and beyond.
Today, how-to YouTube videos have basically replaced this idea, unfortunately, and if you still don’t understand, a handyman or plumber is always on call for a substantial fee. But a decade ago, it seemed like if I could call a call center for assistance, why shouldn’t they be able to remotely help me via the HoloLens?
Objects in space may be cooler than they appear
One of the people I saw this past weekend was former PCWorld games guru Hayden Dingman, who wrote a superlative series of articles on gaming and the emerging VR space. He and I both loved Tilt Brush, the “painting in space” application that both Hayden and I originally saw in 2015.
Microsoft had its own take on Tilt Brush, known as Holo Studio, which allowed you to create 3D objects on the fly, basically allowing you to create them and then pin them various places in virtual space, if I remember correctly. Again, it lacked the emotional resonance that characterized Tilt Brush, and served more as an introduction to showing how the HoloLens could preserve objects in 3D space, even when you weren’t looking at them.
Looking back, I’m not really sure why I loved the final demo so much, a HoloLens excursions across the surface of Mars. To be fair, the HoloLens “painted” the ground, preserving the illusion that you were walking on another planet. But peering at virtual rocks and landmarks seems less momentous now than it did at the time.
(I still say — as I do every time I think about the HoloLens — that there’s still a fantastic opportunity to recreate Dream Park, the 2017 novel by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes where players LARP an augmented-reality game overlaid over real actors and objects.)
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair
A year later, I was in a hotel room in San Francisco, getting an exclusive look at the HoloLens days before Microsoft allowed other reporters to test it out. In 2019, I couldn’t help but bring it out again for a night of playing with it in a darkened office and a retro review.
What strikes me, of course, is that the HoloLens ultimately failed, probably doomed by the same lack of applications that ultimately led to the Windows Phone’s demise. Microsoft did produce a HoloLens 2, only to get rid of it, too. Windows Mixed Reality, the offshoot marketed at PC makers, bombed even harder. So did the metaverse. Alex Kipman, the creator of HoloLens, departed Microsoft after allegations of harassment. Ultimately, the HoloLens is the iconic product representing an entire generation of VR failure.
I’ve seen early versions of smartphones and computers and consumer electronics, and even prototypes that I agreed not to talk about. One of the only other products that left me dumbfounded was the ability to “pause” live TV during the launch of TiVo and ReplayTV. But really, that was simply because of the instant, transformative effect on culture. The iPhone? No, not even that.
For me, the single most mind-blowing tech demo I’ve ever experienced was the ability to peer into a coffee table, light a fuse, and launch skeletons into the air via a virtual block of TNT. I’d love to see something as cool as that yet again.