The HoloLens is an exceptional design, according to the Red Dot jury, who will award it the Product Design award for 2016 this July. Criteria considered include degree of innovation, formal quality, functionality and ecological compatibility. The award means Microsoft’s vision for augmented reality is noteworthy among design experts.
The Red Dot award is seen as a seal of quality in the product design world. It goes beyond tech: furniture, fashion, and interior design are all included in the award’s scope. This year 41 experts from around the world got together to recognize the designs they thought excelled, submitting around 5,200 products, the most ever, in hopes of recognition. The HoloLens was one of the winners, WinBeta is reporting.
Microsoft will be presented the Red Dot Product Design award on July 4 in Essen, Germany. Winning, to be clear, does not necessarily mean the HoloLens is “better” than the competition: this is not a hierarchical award. Instead, it means the Red Dot jury thought the design was excellent enough to bear the Red Dot seal, and also to appear in the prestigious Red Dot Design yearbook. Scroll through last year’s winners if you want an idea of the sorts of products that win.
The HoloLens is an augmented reality device, which means it projects holograms and computer interfaces over your real-world environment. Its not currently available to consumers, and even developers might have a hard time getting their hands on a dev kit at this point. But it’s the best known augmented reality headset at this point, and has a lot of people imagining possibilities.
The Red Dot Product Design award might not mean much to consumers, but at this point its arguably designers that Microsoft needs to win over, particularly if the HoloLens is going to become a go-to tool among artists and architects. So this little bit of recognition is probably very appreciated.
Other winners include the Bluesmart suitcase, luggage that includes USB chargers for your devices and a GPS tracker so you can always find out where your suitcase is, and Automist Smartscan, a directional fire sprinkler.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.