Back in late June, I shared with you the first teardown I'd come across of Leap Motion's $80 gesture interface controller. It appears, as was discussed in a recent Alliance-authored technical article, to be a stereoscopic vision implementation, with infrared active illumination to supplement conventional passive ambient lighting. After announcing a two-plus month production delay in late April, initial units recently began shipping to pre-order customers and retail outlets (I saw it advertised in Sundays' Best Buy newspaper ad, for example).
At the time, company officials indicated that although the hardware was solid, the delay was due to an insufficiently mature software situation. Judging from the initial round of product reviews, perhaps the company should have waited a bit longer. I encourage you to peruse the links below for the full story, but the titles alone do a pretty good job of summarizing the situation:
- Review: Leap Motion is a Fascinating, Yet Flawed Look Into the Future of Computing (9to5 Mac)
- Hands-On With the Leap Motion Controller: Cool, but Frustrating as Hell (Ars Technica)
- Leap Motion Controller Review (Engadget)
- Leap Motion Review: Is It Time to Replace the Mouse? (ExtremeTech)
- Leap Motion: As Far as Controllers Go It’s Not a Big Leap Forward… Yet (GigaOM)
- Leap Motion Controller Review: Waiting For the Future to Catch Up (Gizmodo)
- Look Before You Leap Motion (MIT Technology Review)
- Leap Motion Controller: Hands Up For PC Air Gestures. That's the Spirit (The Register)
- Leap Motion Launches With Limited Appeal, But It Could Be A Ticking Time Bomb Of Innovation (TechCrunch)
- Review: Leap Motion’s Touchless Input Is a Fun, Futuristic Work in Progress (Time Magazine)
- Leap Motion Controller is a Great Toy, but Not Yet the Future of Interaction (The Verge)
