MacBook Owners Put Motion Sensor to Creative Use

June 5th, 2006 at 3:00 PM - News by Brad Cook

A variety of utilities that use Appleis laptop motion sensor, from silly to useful, have appeared since the technology first showed up in the PowerBook and iBook lines last year. John Bowman, writing for CBC News, rounded up a variety of them late last month.

The motion sensor, which is also included in the new MacBook and MacBook Pro, was intended to detect sudden movement and lock the hard driveis heads so that the disk isnit damaged during a drop or other jarring action. Itis also been used to create a game, Bubblegym, thatis controlled by tilting the laptop, as well as MacSaber, which creates lightsaber effects from the Star Wars movies when the computer is moved around.

On the practical side, someone created a utility called SmackBook Pro, which allows users to switch between virtual desktops by tapping the laptop on one side or the other. Another program, iAlertU, sounds an alarm if someone picks up the computer.