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Apple Just Poached a HoloLens Engineer from Microsoft

AR could become the next great computing platform.

An engineer who previously worked on Microsoft's HoloLens augmented reality project is now working for Apple. Hmm!

Nick Thompson joined Apple in July, but news of his move to Cupertino was first published this morning by Apple analyst Gene Munster. (Yes, that's the same Gene Munster who has sworn up and down for several years that Apple was developing a television.) According to Munster, Thompson was a "key" engineer on the HoloLens project, which Microsoft publicly revealed in January and that projects holograms onto nearby objects. Microsoft has so far positioned HoloLens as new kind of computing platform that has the potential to make games like Minecraft more immersive and make PowerPoint presentations less boring.

Apple's interest in augmented reality isn't new, but the hiring of Thompson suggests the company's interest in the topic is growing and not fading. Apple made headlines in late 2013 when it purchased PrimeSense, the Israeli company that developed the original Kinect sensor for Microsoft in 2010. More recently, Apple earlier this year purchased Metaio, a company that specializes in augmented reality software.

Of course, Apple, Microsoft, and the entire cottage industry of augmented reality startups are chasing the $150 billion that the combined augmented reality and virtual reality markets are expected to be worth by 2020—assuming the whole thing doesn't crash and burn like Google Glass.