Depending on the resolution, it could replace your monitors at work (assuming the headset is light, comfortable, etc). Using a wireless keyboard and mouse, you'd have your computer with you anywhere in the home or office.
As a developer, having a wall of holographic desktop screen space in front of me would be amazing. My home office would look much better too!
I have no idea how far away this version of HoloLens is from that reality though.
I think the 'depending on the resolution' is key. Its not really a matter of software to me, its whether or not the hardware can deliver the necessary resolution to replace a monitor that's typically 1.5ft from your face. If you can break the dam by executing on the hardware the software will flow. (I wonder how Hololens compares to Magic Leap's technology.)
I think it would be very cool to just have 3 tripods on your desk (a ball on a stick) that represent 3 screen spaces. You could reach out and move them around, telescope them up and down in the physical world and the headset could use them for triangulation to render an accurate monitor on each. You'd still have a keyboard and mouse in the first iteration and then slowly overtime give way to other forms of input.
Thinking about how our eyes really work - you don't need the same resolution. You only need proper eye tracking and the right amount of resolution in the center of your vision (or wherever). You only need it to render what you are looking at - I'm sitting about 2 feet away from a 27 inch screen.... I'm never looking at the entire thing in such a way that I need all that detail at every point. Sure, I need it to be there when my eyes dart around... but as long as that's done, it will look just as real.
Given something more adaptive, there's no reason you couldn't have a ginormous holographic wraparound workspace... or whatever your imagination can come up with.
Very much this, being able to have 6 or 8 virtual displays projected on a wall would be great.
I know that this tech could do so much more (one giant display the size of the wall) but the different displays is nice bec it allows me to silo things into different categories.
Many years ago (close to 20) I saw a cool demo of a palm-able chording keyboard, and looking around it seems that a few brave souls have actually attempted to bring the idea into production.
A good keyboard only UI (I don't trust small scale pointer input), and you could move the entire traditional PC interface over into a very discreet package.
The web would be the one place where changing UI paradigms would be hard, the web pretty much insists on fine motor skills clicking one of hundreds of visible links on a page.
It's what I first thought of when I tried the Youtube app on Google Cardboard. The app has you in a theater with a main viewing screen, but then littered 360 degrees around you are other videos you can watch or cycle through.
All I could think was how awesome it would be to have half a dozen virtual screens (that I could manipulate) for programming. It would well justify the cost of a good device because six monitors would be probably just as expensive.
As a developer, having a wall of holographic desktop screen space in front of me would be amazing. My home office would look much better too!
I have no idea how far away this version of HoloLens is from that reality though.