impressive, amazing, but not practical..keeping your arm up will be very uncomfortable after few minutes of use
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Former iAd Chief Andy Miller Joins 3D Motion Control Company Leap Motion
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Pretty much the vibe I'm getting. A nice gimmick, but not much else. A Wacom tablet is better for drawing, a keyboard better for text input and a trackpad better for gestures. Sure this can do all 3, but in an awkward way. "Jack of all trades..." comes to mind.
So...people will now shift their complaints from Carpal Tunnel to....SAS (Strained Arm Syndrome) 
I don't understand why many people in this thread think that this technology is suppose to replace a mouse and a keyboard and that it's suppose to be used for literally everything...
The problem I think is that the keyboard/mouse/trackpad/tablet input devices are all complementary to each other. They all have a specific purpose and do their task well in conjunction with the other input devices you have. This thing however, doesn't seem to have a specific purpose, a niche which only it can fill.
That is why I think people think this stuff would replace keyboards/mice/trackpads/tablets, and frankly, that seems rather far fetched to me.
Precisely.
Sadly, like flying cars, the future will be more mundane than the movies. This looks great and may have a few applications, but you can't beat lying the ol' iMac down and using it like a giant iPad.
No, I don't think iOS is suitable for a touch Mac. iOS is simplified because phones and iPads have limited power and screen real estate. A decent display and decent grunt, means you don't need full screen apps and you can have files and overlapping windows
but an iMac, flat on the table, maybe slightly raised at the back, to help with viewing angle and to fit stuff inside, you can't get more tactile or more ergonomic just not as spectacular a demo video, that's all.
This technology will be instrumental in how GUI are constructed moving forward. No need for a touch screen iMac any longer. I am excited to test it!
Or gave seed funding...
No. Apple had nothing to do with Leap Motion.
https://live.leapmotion.com/investors.html
And no, Microsoft, Apple nor anyone will buy them out. It will be licensed out so Apple has to suck it up or put up a notice to users that if they want motion control, then go to Leap as an alternative.
It's so remarkable that the first time I saw the demo video, I thought it was a hoax. Now, it could be something eventually integrated into a future Macbook Pro.
This thing poops in kinects moutH, don't even mention them
This thing is accurate up to 1/100th of a millimeter
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Notsureifsrs... Leap motion can detect objects like a stick, wich you can use as a pen
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This pretty much kills the mouse and keyboard btw, with leap motion you can turn your display into a touch panel
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Notsureifsrs.... You don't really use your arms just your hands and fingers this thing is Very accurate and sensitive
This thing is accurate up to 1/100th of a millimeter
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Notsureifsrs... Leap motion can detect objects like a stick, wich you can use as a pen
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This pretty much kills the mouse and keyboard btw, with leap motion you can turn your display into a touch panel
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Notsureifsrs.... You don't really use your arms just your hands and fingers this thing is Very accurate and sensitive
Great points! Plus, if one likes the tactility of a keyboard, keep the keyboard, but it wouldn't have to be an actual functioning keyboard. The Leap Motion device would interpret your motions instead of the keyboard itself sending the keystrokes. There would have to be a mapping of the keyboard's keys involved.
Even more to my liking, I can imagine sitting cross legged or otherwise on a chair, with each of my palms resting comfortably near each knee, and the fingers of each hand tapping quickly and gently on each thigh. I'm typing. A faint but large outline of a keyboard is superimposed upon the screen where the text is appearing, showing my finger strikes on the screen's keyboard. I never have to look down, always at the screen. Then my right index finger (only) rises two inches above my right thigh and moves about. The cursor moves over the text area.
No more going back and forth between the mouse and keyboard, or feeling that my upper arms are fixed in an artificial and somewhat zombie-like position as I type away on a desk that is really too high.
So yeah I like it.
I See this with the next Apple TV black box. Inside of it. As Apple always do limit their gestures to basic and making the greatest product ever invented. To Hell with kinect and their science, lets enjoy tv with gestures the basic way and rule the entertainment world.
I agree that touch based interfaces work best in a horizontal aspect rather than vertical... but I find this a funny argument against gesture-based interfaces... those of us who work on computers all day seem to forget that many people spend their careers doing actual physical labor.
Compare this to swinging a hammer all day, or working overhead underneath a car... or raking lawns...
I am thinking that a bit more movement will probably do us good. I have been working on computers long enough that my wrists are starting to hurt/go numb... I am also realizing I spend too much of the day sitting down... Like many, I have been pondering one of those standing desks that are so popular now. I can see a technology like the Leap augmenting my current workflow.
The human body is just is not adapted for a career comprising the types of small, repetitive movements current interfaces require...
I completely agree that the people who do work on their computers all day have it really good.
But, that won't mean they'll go out and buy something that's harder to use.
this is aaawesome!!
I love this stuff
"oh my arms will hurt" haha guys seriously?
This thing integrated into laptops, keyboards, tablets and phones will be powerful stuff. Off-screen gestures (different signs) to activate different tools while using the other hand either on the mouse or on the screen itself....
The possibilities for this are endless - as an add-on with other input devices or in other scenarios the only input.
But when this will be coded into Rhino3D/MODO/3DMax + a giant 3D screen (with glasses for now)- 3D modelling will never be the same!!!
I guess the accuracy of this thing makes it a really great 3D scanner as well, now I only need a 3D printer.
(can't wait for some developers to link it with a smartphone's gyro so one can accurately scan one's entire home)
And then of course it will be interesting to see what the Porn industry does with this.
I love this stuff
"oh my arms will hurt" haha guys seriously?
This thing integrated into laptops, keyboards, tablets and phones will be powerful stuff. Off-screen gestures (different signs) to activate different tools while using the other hand either on the mouse or on the screen itself....
The possibilities for this are endless - as an add-on with other input devices or in other scenarios the only input.
But when this will be coded into Rhino3D/MODO/3DMax + a giant 3D screen (with glasses for now)- 3D modelling will never be the same!!!
I guess the accuracy of this thing makes it a really great 3D scanner as well, now I only need a 3D printer.
(can't wait for some developers to link it with a smartphone's gyro so one can accurately scan one's entire home)
And then of course it will be interesting to see what the Porn industry does with this.
You missed my point. The light pen is an ancient input device that taught the lesson people still seem to not be getting. Your hands want to rest on the table, not be held above it for extended periods of time, gesturing in the air.
Technology has changed but human physiology has not.
In my experience it is the elbows that wants to rest on the table. So long as I do this I never really feel strained to keep my hands in the air. Think about like when you eat. Most people don't rest their hands on the dinner table.
I See this with the next Apple TV black box. Inside of it. As Apple always do limit their gestures to basic and making the greatest product ever invented. To Hell with kinect and their science, lets enjoy tv with gestures the basic way and rule the entertainment world.
I'm not too sure how this device performs long distance wise. I can see a 3rd generation leap being built into television sets but to have this version built into your Apple TV would kind of be silly.
From the looks of things, this generation Leap will be for near motion detection and limited to objects like your hand/fingers and things of similar size when developers start to link objects onto it's database.
This is the way I imagine how the Leap works:
There are specific wavelengths of IR light being emitted from multiple sources inside the device, each source with a similar but slightly different wavelength.
There are a minimum of 3 IR detectors or cameras inside the device that receive the IR light that is reflected off of the objects, and depending on the source wavelength, the data from the cameras is mapped to create the 3d objects. Even though 3d mapping only needs 2 cameras, I say minimum 3 cameras because of how precise this thing is; 1/100 mm is CRAZY!
And finally the cover on the device is a specifically shaded/polarized piece of glass that only lets the specific wavelengths of light through. This dramatically reduces interference light from entering and messing with the sensors.
So with short distances, the light doesn't need to travel very far and it will be strong for the device to pick up. But the further you go, the less accurate the device will become and eventually it will not recognize what objects the IR light is reflecting off of and it will stop working. But this is all just speculation and the way that it makes sense to me. For all I know, they could have genius little gremlins inside that thing that manually record the points in 3d space where the objects are located.
I'm not too sure how this device performs long distance wise. I can see a 3rd generation leap being built into television sets but to have this version built into your Apple TV would kind of be silly.
Then I can imagine the 3rd generation being multiple units linked together in a room for motion capture for video games and the film industry, no more need for the awkward ping-pong ball suits.
To be fair its purpose didn't exist when the mouse was first invented. It took many years for it to become an essential tool for computer users.
Uh ? the mouse's purpose was always there : to interact with WIMP based UIs, which is doable with a keyboard, but hardly as easy as it is with a mouse. The fact that the mouse was invented at the same time as the WIMP concept should be a big clue to this. It took many years for it to become an essential tool for computer users because it took many years for WIMP to become the defacto standard in PC computing UIs. Both are tied together.
The question is now : What does this bring to the table as far as new UI paradigms ? It just seems to me to be a new way of interacting with existing UIs. Something a keyboard/mouse/drawing tablet presently do much better with much less arm fatigue than this thing. Unlike the mouse and keyboard and drawing tablets, this thing is simply hardware. It's not bringing anything new as far as UIs go, which is a definate requirement for new input paradigms.