Leap Motion
Leap Motion lets you interact with your computer in a completely new way. Natural hand movements, instantly interpreted with an unprecedented accuracy of 1/100 of a millimeter, for just $70. It’s undoubtedly one of the coolest gadgets to be released this year.
The Leap Motion is roughly the same size as a smartphone; it does its magic by creating a 3-Dimensional interaction space of 8 cubic feet to precisely interact with and control software on your laptop or desktop computer – it can even sense individual hand and finger movements independently, as well as small items such as a pen.
The Leap hardware is actually quite unassuming, considering its capabilities. It's just over three inches long, an inch wide and less than a half-inch thick (79 x 30 x 11mm), with a glossy black panel on top, behind which resides the infrared sensors. On the bottom, you'll find a black rubber panel embossed with the Leap Motion logo. The edge, meanwhile, is ringed with a seamless aluminum band, save for a USB 3.0 Micro-B port on the left side (though the device runs at USB 2.0 speeds). There's also a slim LED power / status indicator on the front edge. Alas, as of this writing, the company wasn't able to reveal more specifics about the internals themselves, thanks to pending patent considerations. Along with the controller itself, users get a pair of USB 3.0 cables in the box -- a 5-foot and a 2-foot cord.
As of this writing, there are 54 applications built to run on Windows 7 and 8 machines and 58 apps for Macs running OS X 10.7 or higher. Nine of those apps are Windows exclusives, and 14 applications are Mac-only, with one app, called Touch less, having separate, but functionally identical versions for each (more on that later). Naturally, with such a large library of software at launch, we were unable to test every app in the Airspace Store. However, we did spend time with quite a few apps for both Windows and OS X.
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