If Apple has proven anything over the past five years, it’s that there’s no reason that computing needs to remain locked into traditional input schemes. Most people still use keyboards and mice, but Multi-Touch is quickly becoming the preferred method for many, and has been improving for complex tasks. Leap Motion is doing its part to shake up the status quo in a different way with limited pre-orders of its Leap ($70).
The idea here is motion control; think Microsoft’s Kinect, but a whole lot smaller and supposedly more accurate, too.
Leap is a tiny box—between the size of a flash drive and an iPod—that plugs into your Mac via USB. From there, the hardware creates a space of eight cubic feet in which it can track your movements and interpret them with software.
The company claims it can track individual fingers, and monitor movements down to 1/100th of a millimeter, allowing you to control your computer in any way you see fit. An SDK will be going out to developers within the next few months. We’re certainly intrigued to see what the future holds, and whether Leap is part of it.
