with the mouse As it enters its fifth decade, perhaps it could be on the brink of retirement, at least if a combination of Apple Computer engineering and the work of entrepreneurial hackers bears fruit.
Introduced with the company’s latest round of PowerBook updates, Apple’s Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to detect any strong vibration or sudden movement (such as dropping the laptop from a desk) and park the drive heads. , reducing the chances of damage to the unit. But the motion sensor does more than just detect sudden movement: it can be used to determine the angle at which the PowerBook is tilted in any direction, along with the speed at which the computer is moving.
Enterprising hackers have discovered that because the new motion sensor returns reasonably accurate measurements to Mac OS hold the laptop. Also, to control what plays in iTunes: move the machine backward to go to the next track and forward to play the previous one.
Motion sensors in laptops aren’t a new concept (several models in IBM’s ThinkPad series have a similar system), but what is new is the ability for programmers to take the sensor’s output and put it to work. . Despite Apple’s lack of coherent documentation for the sensor, a hacker (ironically a researcher at IBM’s Almaden Research Center) managed to produce code samples and a guide on how the motion sensor can be exploited.
Amit Singh, the researcher whose work has sparked a wave of small but useful tilt-sensitive programs, discovered the motion sensor while working on a book about the internals of OS X and was immediately impressed by its potential. “In the book, I have tried to use unconventional and ‘cool’ examples to demonstrate concepts wherever possible; in many cases, these examples could be the starting points for readers’ own projects.” Document and program the motion sensor that fits exactly into this category.
One of the first programs to use Singh’s work was bubble gyma game written by Peter Berglund. Berglund’s reaction to seeing the code Singh had produced was typical of many programmers working on tilt-sensitive projects: “I thought it was amazing; I had the same sense of awe as the first time I saw a color screen and saw it. first time I saw a QuickTime clip,” he said. From this it evolved bubble gymwhich Berglund believes is the first tilt-sensitive game for the computer. Berglund’s work received praise from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who wrote a personal email of congratulations, something Berglund described as “something cooler than any game or technology itself.”
