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8 ways to get better use out of your Apple laptop’s sudden motion sensor
The sudden motion sensor in an Apple laptop is nominally designed to protect the hard disk from damage in the event that you drop your laptop. It detects sudden acceleration and disengages the drive heads. The output from the motion sensor is however usable information for other more amusing purposes:
1. Play games
Tilt Mania is simple but sweet. Clutching your laptop in two hands, tilt it from side to side to steer a falling marble through an endless maze. Not a patch on Wii WarioWare, but it’s a start.
2. Read comics in a orientation of your choice
ComicBookLover is a very well designed reader for digital comics. Flip the laptop, and the screen flips from landscape to portrait, like an iPod touch or an iPhone.
3. Move the cursor
AMS2HID lets you tilt the laptop to steer the cursor around the screen, although there’s no mouse click. More filler than killer then, but perhaps I’m missing out on an essential use for this function.
4. Stop crime
TheftSensor lets you set an alarm using the Apple Remote, and then sets off said alarm if someone tries to move the laptop. Not as secure as a locking cable, but maybe handy when you are away from your desk for a few minutes.
5. Stare at the pretty moving pictures
LiquidMac and Splash both generate a screen-savery display of bouncing balls / flowing water that can be jostled and poured around the screen by tilting the laptop.
6. Be a jedi
MacSaber was made famous by Matt Haughey’s star wars kid impression. It generates very credible lightsaber sounds in time to the gyrations of your Mac.
7. Detect earthquakes
SeisMac makes beautiful chart recorder traces of the slightest vibrations in all 3 axes, as detected by the SMS.
8. Do anything (so long as it’s triggerable by an AppleScript)
Lilt lets you fine tune motions in different axes and in different angles, so that you can trigger a wide range of AppleScripts. It comes with scripts for controlling lots of apps including iTunes, Powerpoint, and DVD player, as well as various keyboard commands.
that's how it happened
9 years, check it, of haphazard links to stuff on the internet.
