Hackers Tilt PowerBook for Tricks

[seraph]

With the mouse entering its fifth decade, it could perhaps be on the verge of retirement -- at least if a combination of Apple Computer engineering and the work of enterprising hackers bears fruit.


Introduced with the company's most recent round of PowerBook updates, Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to detect any strong vibration or sudden motion -- such as the laptop being dropped from a desk -- and park the drive heads, lessening the chances of damage to the drive. But the motion sensor does more than just notice sudden movement: It can be used to determine the angle the PowerBook is tilted at in any direction, along with the velocity at which the computer is being moved.

Enterprising hackers have discovered that because the new motion sensor returns reasonably accurate measurements to Mac OS X, it can be used to do some cool tricks, from realigning an image in a window so it always points up, no matter what angle you hold the laptop at, to controlling what's playing in iTunes -- rock the machine backward to go to the next track, forward to play the previous one.

http://wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66936,00.html

[mosc]

Good to see the word hacker being used in a positive light.

[elektro80]

This is amusing!