Small USB dongle for your Mac makes Microsoft’s Kinect look like a drunk, stumbling uncle (with video)

“Imagine that you could buy a tiny USB-powered box that detected your motion like Microsoft’s Kinect, only instead of watching you jump around a room, it watched your hands and fingers. Imagine that the box was sensitive enough to track the tip of a pencil tracing out letters in a 1cm square of space, and to turn that into accurate handwriting on the screen,” Charlie Sorrel reports for Cult of Mac.

“Amazingly, that box is available for preorder right now. It’s called the Leap, and it works with your Mac,” Sorrel reports. “If it works as well as promised, this $70 box could be quite revolutionary. Sure, you can use it to play Angry Birds with a pair of chopsticks, but it could also deliver iOS-accurate touch control to desktop machines, without the expense of a touch screen (or even a new computer).”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dominic P.” for the heads up.]

41 Comments

      1. That someone could make a system where you fate was determined by the writing on a pool ball? I would have thought a note tucked into a Fortune Cookie would have been more ironic.

    1. Far from it. “Gorilla arm” results from keeping one’s arm extended constantly to work a touch screen. This looks like you could just sit in a relaxed position and move your fingers normally, without having to reach forward. It all depends on where you position that box.

      ——RM

  1. Nice, far more granular in its sensitivity than the Kinect. Clearly it is projecting its sensor field straight up from your desk, thru the top part of the device so you can adjust how far forward you have to reach by placing the device closer to you.

  2. Hey, I have two nephews and a niece, I like a bottle of beautiful red wine or a pint or two of dark ale, and okay, I admit sometimes my footwork is not the best, but don’t compare me to some filthy microsoft product.

  3. Just pre-ordered one. Although demo is on iMac, they’re calling it a Windows device and won’t have Mac support until Winter. I asked them on Twitter why this “sleazy” demo. We’ll see.

    1. They answered on Twitter as follows:

      “We’re still working on OS X support, it’s a priority. We hope to launch with both Win and OS X support, and Linux as well”

      This would be the Winter timeframe they mentioned in other places. They didn’t say why they’re using an iMac to show a Windows device (as of today).

  4. Just pre ordered mine. In 2 years all Macs will have such a
    “reality distortion field” built in. The right hardware for a 4 D
    Theremin( bend the time signatures while you’re at it!).
    The possibilities are limitless. 70 bucks! Really??

  5. I wonder how they deal with unintended gestures. Imagine you’re typing out a document on your dining room table (no keyboard, you’re actually just tapping the table!). Then you reach out to grab your drink and … virtual ink gets sloshed over your document. Or you reach up to scratch your ear and suddenly you’re flipped to another part of your document.

  6. I’m a little suspicious. We are now seeing several of these pay now get latter products online. Seems to me they could produce these video demos and after a few practice sessions add the hand jesters afterwards. With such a dramatic device I am sure preorders would amount to 1M after a few months.
    After 8 months with no product, a internet forensics investigation team finds out a Russian mafia team engineered the deal grifting subscribers out of millions.

  7. Anyone who has ordered this device has proven that they have no self control and even less objectivity. It would have been better to know with which apps this device works with and to have read at least one independent review before spending a dime.

  8. Something is fishy about the angle of the hands, when the wireframe hand-clones appear: Why is the ‘mirror’ not on the same plane as the monitor? Seems like a detail that would suggest it was acted.

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