Sudden Motion Sensor -- useful after all?

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Recent Apple PowerBooks and MacBooks feature a 'sudden motion sensor,' that's designed to detect when the laptop is in freefall and park the hard drive heads. It turns out that the thing is a pretty nifty accelerometer, and there are several unexpected uses for it. One is the Carpenter's Level dashboard widget, which... er... turns your extremely expensive laptop into a duff spirit level. Huh.

Another use is MacSaber, which plays lightsabre sounds as you swing your MacBook around (video here).

Unexpectedly, there may be a practical use for all this nonsense: desktop switching. Huh? SmackBook Pro, a patch for a Mac multiple desktop manager doohickie, allows you to switch views by... er... slapping the side of your laptop. Watch the video and tell me that doesn't look cool.

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://quernstone.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/938

Leave a comment

Categories

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 4.32-en

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jonathan published on May 25, 2006 10:44 AM.

Email troubles was the previous entry in this blog.

Non-broadcast pilot is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.