“I love the Power Glove … it’s so bad.”
So said the evil villain Lucas in the 1989 video game movie The Wizard. The new Nintendo peripheral was prominently featured in the film, but it may have been a few decades ahead of its time. The 8-bit processors of the early consoles were ill-equipped to handle the rigors of virtual reality (VR), and the Power Glove never caught on because it was clumsy, difficult to use, and worked with very few games.
Now the wizards at Teague Labs have breathed new life into this arcane bit of video game trivia by designing a true Power Glove VR controller. With Power Gloves readily available on the secondhand market, the team set about realizing the dream of this often-mocked accessory.
They mounted an Arduino Due and a Vive tracker on the glove where the buttons would normally go, added a custom shield, and interfaced it with the tracker to make it compatible with the HTC Vive VR system. It created a more natural interaction than the conventional controller. “Holding virtual objects, touching mock-up screens, and pointing at things just feels a lot better when using the dexterity of one’s fingers instead of trying to use a fixed wand,” the engineers explained on their site.
They also got better results with the Power Glove than the Vive controller for on-screen touch interactions. “With the Power Glove and a second tracker mounted to the backside of an acrylic iPad, we were able to simulate more natural interactions with an iPad in VR,” they noted. “The overall experience improves dramatically when using the glove. The acrylic iPad even provides the same haptic feedback as a tablet would.”
If you’re interested in a more technical explanation (or you’d like to build one of your own), all of their files are available for download at GitHub.
In the first application Teague created for their do-it-yourself peripheral, you can shoot lightning by making a fist. Then they made a prototype “game” where you fought off incoming waves of rocks, paper, and scissors. “The game is still in an early stage, but it’s already a lot of fun to play!” they said.
As the advertising tagline for the Power Glove put it, “Everything else is child’s play.”
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.