Microsoft puts out some interesting videos, but I've always had the impression that Apple was more about just 'hacking something up', hence the Steve Jobs quote, "we could do a phone with this", on playing with an early mockup of how an iPad type device would work.

An exception to this seems to have been the Courier fold out touch screen computer. It did look way complicated though.

I often think the same thing. Microsoft predicted growth in tablet computing, but borked the timing and technology.

It's not particularly useful anticipating a brilliant piece of technology if you can't capitalise on it.

Well not useful to you monetarily, but you can still enjoy the product that other people got right.

Augmented reality concepts have been around for a long time, and whoever gets it right will become insanely rich. The rest of us will get to enjoy it :)

A lot of those "Visions of the Future" videos are nothing but brand building. They are often meant to make us think more highly of the company's current product by association.