How Microsoft Helped Me To Love FaceTime

I could think of no better title for this post than, "How Microsoft Helped Me To Love FaceTime." I use some Apple products on a regular basis, I'm not part of their cult and until recently didn't use Apple's FaceTime app at all. That has changed and it's all thanks to Microsoft. Allow me to explain.

I'd attended a Microsoft event where they spoke about the real world uses for their HoloLens product. My initial thought was, "Good for Microsoft, they've finally found a use for it." Of particular interest to me that day was an example for doing service in the field. They had a video of a junior technician visiting a site and troubleshooting some industrial equipment. The junior tech ran into an issue so he contacted a senior engineer who then donned a HoloLens headset so he could see what the junior tech was seeing from his service glasses (which were streaming a video feed). The senior engineer told the junior tech to check this pressure gauge, look for that indicator light and then things would be fixed. It actually made a lot of sense to me but didn't give it much thought after I left the event.

So its some time later, I'm thinking about an issue going on in one of my branch offices (specifically in another time zone) while looking at my iPad. For some reason that Microsoft event came to mind while I'm staring at the screen and the green FaceTime icon catches my attention. Why not FaceTime with the branch manager (after all, they all have iPhones), have her flip to the front facing camera so I can see what's going on? It took about 30 seconds to "see" what was happening, walk her through resetting the device and everything came back online.

So I'd like to thank Microsoft for helping me to love FaceTime as a low cost alternative remote support tool to their very expensive HoloLens product.👍