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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?"
What's even cooler about Amit Singh is that he's a he's a researcher at IBM Alamaden Research Center, working on, among other things, secure communications and Linux on the desktop.
And be sure to check out his other articles, particularly What is Mac OS X? . They're all well written, comprehensive on their respective topics, and generally excellent.
This Porn Site is Powerbook Enabled ..yes, I can see a lot of new ways of interaction
and Apples new Powerbook tagline:
"Shake it Like A Polaroid Picture"
or
"Do the Powerbook Shuffle"
Umm, actually, she was just yawning.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Depending on how you have your power settings, the HD is probably going to be asleep most of the time anyway. And the gentle motion you're talking about here is hardly going to be enough to phase a laptop drive - I've got a portable storage device that uses a laptop drive and had it sucessfully write a whole GB of data while I was walking quickly and had it in a pocket in my shorts.
In short, don't worry about the HD... slippery fingers might be a bit more of a concern but just be careful to do this above your lap, not held high in the air like a trophy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
daveschroeder discovered to be the username for Amit Singh at Slashdot.org
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Well, no.
Don't get me wrong, this is a cool hack, but a 17" powerbook weighs over 3 kilograms.
You know how your Xbox controller was a bit big? Well, it wasn't that big.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
After (of course) parking the disk heads, I think that turning the laptop upside-down and giving it a good shaking should clear the screen.
I mean, wouldn't that just be common sense?
Other laptops may have had this for years...
So where are the Windows apps that make use of this sensor?
Apple doesn't even deserve credit for this one as they include the sensor for the same reason everyone else does. Apple does deserve a little credit for making the output of this sesnor accessible to the programmer, and then the guy that developed the initial software to make use of it deserves the lions share of the credit for saying "hey, what if I did this!".
In your rush to discredit Apple, you were a bit too hasty in dismissing the accomplishments of the programmer as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
is that most geeks would then have equal size arms.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Zapp Brannigan: Kif, clear my schedule.
Kif turns the Etch-a-Sketch upside-down and shakes it.
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! ...Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"
I tried it with John Madden's NFL Football. I threw a Hail Mary pass; a perfect, aim-for-the-end-zone spiral. My Powerbook sailed out the window of my 10th floor San Francisco apartment and I haven't seen it since.
I wonder if the pass was complete?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Consider tilting your laptop all over the place on an airplane. I''m sure it would annoy your neighbors to no end.
Actually, tilting the laptop didn't annoy my neighbors nearly as much as the airplane sounds I made, or when I'd headbutt the guy sitting next to me when I'd tilt my head along with the laptop.
The stewardess took my laptop away half way through the trip. Something about homeland security...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Do you really want to be tilting a PowerBook around when you've only got one hand free?