Slashdot Mirror
MacSaber Turns Your Macbook into a Lightsaber
Petey_Alchemist writes "SomethingAwful.com forum goon isnoop has developed a useless but fun app that takes advantage of the new sudden motion sensor available in Macbooks. The MacSaber 1.0 causes your Macbook or Macbook Pro to whoosh and crash like a lightsaber depending on how you swing it around. The reviews from those who have installed it say it is quite fun--although there is some concern about whether or not 'lightsaber battles' fall under warranty."
They could also use this to play Tennis! No wonder the Wii looks like an Apple product, it uses bluetooth to let you use your Macbook (Pro) as a paddle! Hooray!
I would buy a new macbook just for this feature (well, that and tri-booting osx, xp, and gentoo).
Normality is now: overrated.
Nice little app. Can't say I've tried it myself, but it does give me horrible images of Lucas-ites squealing with glee every time they drop their laptop. Perhaps Mac put this out intentionally to make money off of repair gouging? (And yes, I kid. (Kinda (Maybe)))
Now I can take my $1000 laptop and shake it to hear cool sounds! I can't imagine any downside in that. Oh crap, I just dropped my laptop. I can't wait to see the clip of the starwars laptop kid.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
I don't want lightsaber effects, I just want to be able to use force pull on a Mac laptop. That would be fun. And profitable.
Emerald Astrology
...you can, before George Lucas sues the authors.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...followed by a lawsuit of course.
It would probably a lot more cheaper to build a lightsaber out of Lego blocks and some electronics. Trying to catch a laptop lightsaber in mid-air may result in a fatal (physical) crash that AppleCare won't cover.
Can you make it scream in terror/pain when you drop it?
We are all just people.
The article is /.'d.
I couldn't access the site (see below), but it sounds extremely bad ass. Definitely is a selling point for me to see if I get a Mac this time around or not. It's been so precariously balanced for years...always in favor of NOT getting one, but this year with the Intel changes and lightsaber capability I'd have to say that I may as well get a MacBook for the wifey.
/.?
site dump:
WordPress
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My two year old Toshiba M200 TabletPC has an accellerometer built into it. It can tell which way it is oriented so you just press a single button to go from Tablet to Slate mode. It even came with an app that would either activate an app or play a sound if the tablet was shaken.
Pity I didn't realize if I attached a lightsaber sound to it I could have gotten Slashdotted.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And I love it :) I'm sitting here waving around my spankin' new 17" and smiling like an idiot. Luckily you don't have to wave it too hard to get the cool sounds.
And the SMS data display is just kinda neat anyways. I had no idea it was so detailed... now I know that my desk leans 3 points to the left.
Cheers.
This could be the thing that finally convinces me to get an iPod. I've been resisting, but that would just be too cool. Especially if they used semitransparent casing and made the indiglo spread the whole way 'round. They could call it the iSaber
( I
NetworkMirror since the original site didn't connect for me. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The most famous app to use this feature is probably iAlertU, which has a demo on YouTube.
e gym.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkAtRfA1UXc
http://www.slappingturtle.com/home/
Bubblegym was one of the first games to make use of thos:
http://www.balooba.se/baloobasoftware/texts/bubbl
I understand that this is News For Nerds and all that stuff but MacSaber? Sounds like a good way to advertise to the world that you have never been laid and you never will be.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
How accurate is the Mac's motion detection? Does this mean I should trade in my PC, stick a Mac in my rucksack, and let it work out how many calories I burn cycling to work?
WTF? I thought the sudden motion sensor was added with the new PowerBooks back in January/February 2005.
...and you expect to play current games on your lightsaber, you may be disappointed with this hack. Stick with PCs and consoles for fashioning your lightsabers. Studies show that Jedi's that don't game enough have a 64.5% increased chance of turning to the dark side.
Maybe they can use Rendezvous to tell how close they come to other lightsabers for more realistic crashing noises at the right time.
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia (There is no great genius without a mixture of madness) - Aristotle
I hear they run hotter than a light saber.
What was your username again? -BOFH
I thought this was gonna be about using your overheating Macbook (hey Apple, save some thermal grease for the rest of the world!) to slice off your father's bionic arm.
How well does it work as a Wii controller?
I second that it would be cool to get this to scream when you dropped it.
In short, the kid needed to take responsibility for his own actions.
I can't even see the light saber effects now!!!
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
No, what you're saying is incorrect, and unfortunately, what many people seem to believe.
Apple and IBM sensors are similar.
*BOTH* are on the motherboard. Not sure where this "sensor on the hard drive" myth comes from.
*BOTH* use the same technology (they are MEMS sensors).
*BOTH* are manufactured by non-Apple/non-IBM companies.
*BOTH* are driven by software drivers (what else do you expect?).
*BOTH* have a private interface that is not available to third parties.
*BOTH* have been reverse engineered by third parties.
There's already support for using the IBM's sensor in Linux. The first reverse engineering was that of the PowerBook's sensor (the kernelthread.com link that you mentioned) -- way back in early 2004.
Most importantly, please don't say "Apple sensor has an API" etc. Apple certainly never made anything public about how to "use" the PowerBook/iBook/MacBook/MacBook Pro sensors. kernelthread first reverse engineered it, and then the whole idea became popular all over the net in no time.
And while we are at it, IBM started including such a sensor in ThinkPads a long time before Apple. Like Apple, they didn't make their "API" public either.
Dorks. They look like Dorks, Mr. Wolfe.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I just installed this and started playing around with it.
My daughter saw me and wanted to try. So I let her.
This lead to a saber duel and the lopping off of her imaginary friends toe.
Now, I am at the imaginary emergency room.
MacSaber 1.0 causes your Macbook to whoosh and crash like a lightsaber
;-)
"Crash"? Then it should be called WindowsSaber
Table-ized A.I.
With the ambient light detector, sudden motion sensor, infrared port, isight, airport, bluetooth and microphone a macbook pro should be able to pry more information out of its surroundings than a tricorder. How about putting that into a game in stead of starting dangerous new fads.
Or get a sense of humor, and appreciate the fans donating stuff to him. Kid gets an instant ticket to (in)fame, and he cries about it, because he's fat and awkward, and looks goofy. Ridiculous.
The sounds now complete the MacBook as a lightsaber. It was already hot enough to sever limbs and cauterize the wound at the same time.
Doing this will increase the chance of damage to the hard drives to do torque while the platters are spinning.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xcffXvJ7TnY&search=macs aber
What the onomatopoeia is for the sound of a Light Sabre igniting...?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'd say it's not news at all; at least not worthy for the front page.
I just can't wait for the a post about someone gluing some LEDs to their iPod.
Mass redistribution of something you don't own the copyright to nor have distribution priveleges for... harrassment... conspiracy to cause harm... significant and intentional interference with another's ability to pursue life/liberty/happiness...
;-)
/ etc, though.
I realize not all of these are "crimes" per se (and a lot of them are only considered needing punishment in special circumstances), but, uhhh, yeah, just ignore the law and look at the ethics of it, for crying out loud.
Next time you drop your credit card on the ground and I find it, I'll assume I have your permission to use it freely, right?
If you left your car door unlocked and the keys in the ignition, does that mean it's okay if I take it for a spin?
There are laws about things you can do with abandoned property... maybe if they had blurred out his face? STill not ethical to capitalize on another's accident/mistake/misfortune/foolishness/ignorance
Ironic that you speak of taking responsibility for actions... because I think the actions of the kids who distributed the movie are much more deserving of needing to take responsibility for.
If iAlertU uses the bluetoothed Front Row remote, surely someone can come up with a way to use a bluetooth mobile instead... Sryn
I tried this on a 12" PowerBook, and it doesn't quite work. At idle, the registers say the following:
Roll: Left 1835
Tilt: -2070
Force: 0 0
Motion of any kind doesn't really affect it (obviously, I didn't try too hard, because I don't feel like having sector errors all over the place). The sensor registers seem to spike at quasi-random intervals, and adjusting the brightness control seems to move the registers to opposite corners. The version of Sudden Motion Sensor in the 12" PowerBook is 1.0; perhaps the newer SMS versions in the MacIntelToshes have better magnitude-sensitivity.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I contributed to the slashdotting of a comrades' website :(
Oh well.
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Don't have a copy of the original page, sorry--but it was pretty much just a link to this file anyway.
Unless you reapply the thermal paste in sane amounts, the MacBooks will also melt anything they touch, just like a real lightsaber!
how long till a hack to use your mac as a Wii controller? pinball game tilt meter? jostle the mac and little annoying voice comes out screaming" Dont shake the baby! " just need a lil blue tooth controld rc car to strap the laptop to and let it drive itself around exploring the house. (make it an rc truck and have it tow the duster)
- Gronk!
My MacBookPro's sensor appears to be miscalibrated, so that even when level it thinks it's tilted to the left.
I suppose that a correct reading isn't strictly necessary for Apple's application of the sensor - it just needs to notice rapid relative changes, not the static orientation.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I suggested the use of an accelerometer on an Internet messageboard, when another user had asked for advice for building a high-end lightsaber toy. I directly got snotty remarks that it would be infringing on this guy's patent. He was then selling circuits with an accelerometer that were connected via radio-link to a PC that played sounds.
I then told him that I was building such a circuit myself and knew of other people who also had designed similiar circuits independently from eachother, because it was quite straightforward design if you know your way around electronics. I pointed out that I thought that such straight-forward patents were stealing from the community, especially if this was a software patent but that it wouldn't apply to me anyway because he was in the US and I was in Europe. For this I was banned from the msgboard, for "software piracy" (!) .. apparently the admins did not distinguish between different types of intellectual property, or they were friends with this guy. I don't know.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Yes, the fat people always have to play the clowns for the skinnies right? Dance for us fat boy, dance. Your awkward movements amuse us. Maybe he didn't feel comfortable with people laughing AT him and not with him.
As the AC that replied to your post already said, the sensor in Thinkpads is mounted on the motherboard, and the shock protection is software controlled. The laptop ships with a control panel applet that gives you a realtime 3D view of the computer: it pitches and yaws as you physically move the machine.
Here's a mirror for you all! http://www.networkmirror.com/0hVbKVHBUZJfLz6G/isno op.net/blog/2006/05/20/macsaber-turn-your-mac-into -a-jedi-weapon/index.html
As a thinkpad owner, it's kind of annoying to see apple getting so much credit for something that IBM has been doing for three years. Actually, this seems to be a recurring theme: mac fans (and apple marketing) smugly claim that apple went and showed all the PC-manufacturing scum how to build a proper intel-based laptop. These people have obviously never held a thinkpad.
... if my first thought after reading the summary was, "I wonder how long before George Lucas, Apple, and the RIAA sue the writer."
I'd prefer the sabre sound effect for mouse movement. And the sabre clashing sound when a mouse button is clicked.
would be so cool on this unit.
Once they write a program to allow you to turn around in video games with this, I'm definitely getting a Mac!
I thought that the word "nerd" should appear somewhere in this article. Now it does.
More pentenance:i book.mp4
http://kisco.free.fr/download/stable_window_demo_
Bert
(Couldn't find it on Google at first. Gasp).
Quite honestly, I'm looking forward to the introduction of the "light flail", where you swing it around by power the cord and it makes wonderful whooshing and crashing sounds when it smacks into things. Lovely bits of hardware those flails are.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
shhh.. apple invented it.
Strange thing is, it did, and had actually applied for a patent before IBM began shipping it.
Stranger thing is, Apple so far hasn't tried to enforce the patent against IBM or anyone else. Probably because they realize that IBM isn't likely to roll over, when it had similar technology at about the same time.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
"This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments."
--Neal Stephenson
can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcffXvJ7TnY&search= macsaber
But is it compatible with my flux capacitor?
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
It's here... it kind of behaves like a car alarm...
http://www.slappingturtle.com/home/
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Makes sense in a way I suppose. Output heat and that means loss of energy wich would put a greater drain on the power cells.
Ah, star wars tech. Love it or have a love a life.
You mean, people really buy these overpriced "pretty" laptops at 1500-2000? Man, I just slickdeal.net 'ed myself a Dell e1505 for $599 just a few weeks ago. It's drives me crazy to see people pay so much for such a "plain" amount of horsepower!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
I've had TWO laptop hard drives exhibit wild and wonky lightsaber sounds all on their own when I moved the 'book.
In both cases, it was the drive bearing that failed catastrophically within a few weeks.
.. *yawn* .. wake me up when it can be used to control a dildo^H^H^H^H^Hsynthesizer ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
And when you drop it, it's as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Plus, this way when I'm impressing people with my mad sabre skills, I can also drop the Macbook on a couch or something and hear R2D2's scream. :)
Hit a nerve, huh?
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Shaking and waving a laptop can hurt it? Well, yeah. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
I am surprised nobody mentioned it, but the perfect device for a MacSaber-like application will be the Wiimote because the Wii controller will have sensors of course, but also a built-in speaker. Which means as you move the Wiimote, it could emit laser saber sounds ;-)
Many people criticize the Wiimote sensors as being a gimmick, but the popularity of MacSaber just proved quite the contratry. It proved that people like physical interactions with games !
I'd set it up with R2-D2 sounds. Imagine, as your powerbook hurtles to the floor, it lets fly with the R2-D2 "scream". Or it has that R2-D2 question-like beeping and chirping when it asks you a question.
This space for rent
Description is here.
Movie is here.
Looks like the apple NYC store story went squish
/ 2051243
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/19
Sniff - we hardly knew ye. And there's no direct email form for mentioning this either - unless I want to create ANOTHER account on ANOTHER submission site that reads about as conceise as the flight-deck of a Boeing 757. Nice interface - looks like a drunk UI designer barfed his PRD all over the place.
Ew.
The sudden motion sensor is not new to macbooks. It has been in the powerbook line since early 2005.
or else!
I actually had a lot of respect for that kid for putting himself out there and making that video. Only when I discovered that he was a whiny pussy that likes to sue people did I think less of him.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
What the hell would the Recording Industry Association of America care about this? For that matter, the Motion Picture Association of America wouldn't give a rat's ass either. LucasFilm is independent of them, you know?
Dumb fucking moron.