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Smacking Around Your Mac…

By Brian | June 7, 2006 | Share on Facebook

There have been lots of stories floating around the web about that guy that made his Macbook change desktops by smacking it on its side. CNET just published video instructions on how to do it, including links to all the relevant sites.

Question 1: How long you think until Apple puts out the press release asking people to stop this, because their support lines are being overrun with people who’s hard drives have crashed from excessive smacking around?

Question 2: How long until Apple puts out laptops that switch desktops this way as part of the OS, using a separate sensor, rather than relying on the hard drive protection sensor that folks are using now?

Question 3: How long until people start making the Mac do other things when you smack it (like play a sound file telling you to cut it out)?

Topics: Tech Talk | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Smacking Around Your Mac…”

  1. Michael Weinmayr says at June 8th, 2006 at 9:36 am :
    3. Did you miss the earlier “MacSaber: Turn Your Mac Into A Jedi Weapon” (http://isnoop.net/blog/2006/05/20/macsaber-turn-your-mac-into-a-jedi-weapon)?

  2. Brian says at June 8th, 2006 at 10:52 pm :
    Amazingly, this important technological development did not make it past my news filters.

    Thanks for the heads up…

  3. Jeff Porten says at June 10th, 2006 at 10:03 pm :
    I’m reasonably certain that there aren’t ramifications to this along the lines of crashing your hard drive; the Sudden Motion Sensor just picks up on motion in general, so AFAIK you’re not really dinging the HD when you’re smacking the screen. I’d be more concerned over the long run about the stress that might be applied to the wires connecting the bezel to the motherboard.

    I’m definitely going to play with this myself, but probably not for screen switching; I already have a keystroke for that, and it’s easier to hit control-arrow than to smack my monitor. But I’m curious to see what else could be done here — i.e., a triple-tap to the palmrest causes it to lock the UI and ask for a password to continue? Be nice to have that.

  4. Brian says at June 10th, 2006 at 11:10 pm :
    My understanding is that the sensor involved is the sensor that shuts down the hard drive when it detects sudden movement. So it only responds when the hard drive feels a nudge. Obviously, laptop hard drives are built to handle small nudges, but hundreds or thousands a day? I don’t know…

    As for you, I’d think the first application would be obvious: left tap for fold, right tap for call, palmrest tap for raise.

    Then, for the big games, you can literally throw the machine around the room…

  5. Jeff Porten says at June 12th, 2006 at 7:07 pm :
    The hard drive receives tens of thousands of small nudges a day. They’re generally called keystrokes. And yeah, they’re not generally transmitted directly to the hard drive, but any force against the case is going to cause vibrations. My guess is that the normal wear-and-tear forces against a laptop in transit are going to outstrip the force of a tap to the screen.

    Considering my tendency to drumbeat nervously on the palmrest in a big hand, a motion sensor for poker is a stunningly bad idea. I have given some thought to setting up voice recognition, which would be really useful for multitabling. “Table four, fold. Table three, fold. Table two, raise.” It would also solve the problem where I can’t use my Bluetooth remote control to play NL games efficiently enough; I can set it up to enter a raise amount, but it’s far slower than using the keyboard.

    I’ve put this off so far because I can’t get voice recognition to go better than 90%, and I don’t want my Mac to say, “Fold rockets? Okey-dokey.” Besides, I think the Bluetooth remote establishes my poker geek cred well enough for now.

    Then, for the big games, you can literally throw the machine around the room…

    Oh, man, have I been tempted….