PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device

An anonymous reader writes "As covered earlier on Slashdot, Amit Singh had shown how to access and use the motion sensor feature in the late model PowerBooks for innovative things, which created quite a buzz in the Mac community. In an ingenius new article, Singh has taken the idea all the way and released software which lets you use a PowerBook with a motion sensor as a general purpose input device which works with existing apps. IMHO the coolest use of this is for playing games: be sure to check out the video footage in the article. For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards! You can also scroll in apps. Google Map scrolling with my PowerBook feels like flying in an aiprlane over the terrain. I must say you have to try this in real life to appreciate the experience ... go to the Apple store or something if you don't have the hardware ;-) Before this my girlfriend (who uses a Dell notebook) has never called anything computer related "jawdropping"! Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"

Comments

got to hand it to microsoft

[AtariAmarok]

Whatever the big problems with swiss-cheese OS's and borglike office packages, they rightfully rule when it comes to controllers. Their optical mouse is the best I've seen, and after looking a long time for a good keyboard, the one I bought last year was theirs.

Re:got to hand it to microsoft

[timster]

My parents got a Mac Mini after years on the PC. They needed a new keyboard and mouse because they had PS/2 stuff, so I got them a Microsoft keyboard and a Microsoft optical mouse. The irony is delicious.

Re:Complete Crap

[fsterman]

Alls I am saying is this is not much of a "jump." The real WOW is what we can do when we understand what is going on. We can make a motorcycle now, sure, go ahead. But we could be a shitload better of one if we understand the basic underlying concepts of what is going on between computer and human.

Right now we have a Model-T. All we do is copy that design and end up with crappy results. I am a mac user, only becuase it is the _least_ annoying interface. I was a died in the wool blead green, yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue IN THAT ORDER blood!

The humane interface is a real wow. This is merely a toy in comarison to what can be done. When one sets out to create a new server or OS they know what they are doing. The design has been thought out and been done. As Linus has said the real challenge is the "desktop." What he means to say is the interface. What he, KDE, Gnome, Apple, MS, or most others don't seem to understand is that it isn't a feature rush, it's understanding how it works.

Until interface designers turn into interface engineers we will continue to think that basic force input is exiting. The really exiting this isn't the newest sudo 3d paradim or new input method, it's understanding and expanding how we interact with those things.