Tomorrow you’ll undeniably see a ton of dunks on Apple’s new XR headset for being too expensive and not having many concrete use cases. People will use it as an opportunity to write off VR/AR/XR altogether. That’s a mistake.

Some thoughts, with concrete predictions in parentheses:

My prediction: the headset being announced tomorrow is the first step on the road to augmented reality smart glasses. 10 to 15 years from now we’ll all be wearing such glasses (I predict with 70% confidence over 100m annual sales), and Apple will probably be the market leader (60%). They’ll have a deal with one or more major eyewear manufacturer to create different styles of the smart glasses (40%).

The rise of smart glasses as a new platform will lead to new methods of computing interaction (80%) and a new wave of tech companies (80%). Just like we wouldn’t have necessarily predicted that the iPhone would lead to Uber/Instagram, some of the most popular new use cases will be surprising (90%).

TL;DR: I think you will be able to chart the history of computing as mainframes > PCs > smartphones > smart glasses. We’re on the cusp of a new platform shift, and if you work in tech (or media!) you ignore that at your peril.