The macbook and macbook pro have a built-in tilt/motion sensors. It seems that Apple intended the sensor to be used for boring things like theft alarms and the like.
The following video demonstrates a much more useful use of the built-in sensors:
Slapping your laptop on a regular basis seems fun to me!
(Couldn’t find the actual software, so the above is a hoax… but still… techniqually feasible!)
Cool!
Remimds me of one of those Window Managers for X I used about ten years ago… it allowed you to move to another virtual desktop by knocking (twice!) on the edge of the screen… It worked really smooth, I wonder if it is still in use.
BTW: there is something that looks a lot like code on this web site: http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.html
So maybe not a hoax after all!
Smart, looks like the good old typewriter that you had slap after every line of text.
By the way, I wonder what happened to the touch screen. Why did this technology not enter main stream?
Why do we still have to move the mouse down to get the text up?
Where is the creative user interface designer who takes us to the next level of computer usability?
After using the latest interface hype in linux-land for I while I tend to agree…
Wobbly windows and rotating cubes shurely seemed nice…. but in effect didn’t increase usability AT ALL.
The problem with ‘creative/good user interfaces’ might be the lack of decent input devices, couldn’t really operate the XGL stuff without resorting to my mouse…. which is something I like to avoid whenever possible.
Ah… OS interface design… Surprisingly little seems to have improved in the last, erm, ten years? For me the best improvement was anti-aliased text… And web browsers of course — but that’s a bit hors concours talking about OSes.
I remember an interesting article from indeed a couple of years ago complaining about all the unnecessary “framing” that occurs in modern desktop-like os’es (the article was actually a rant against Apple’s System 7, so even before Windows became so widespread).
Since all windows have frames (borders) and because they may overlap, there is a huge unused space outside the space you are working on. Even when you full-screen applications, you’re typically using 50% or less of the screen area. The rest is border, clutter, menus, palettes, wifi indicators, mail notifiers, popups, icons, bookmarks and the like. I still hope for a design that would get rid of have of that pile…
[BTW Can I post screenshots here?]
No upload functionality, but you can inline images if you switch to edit mode (click the pencil).
Bit busy now, but will provide a cunning response later!
Here is a screenshot of an unfortunate typical case: editing a Java file in Eclipse in VMWare under Windows… I felt less claustrophobic doing VI on a VT100 terminal! I am using about 20% of the screen’s real estate.
Mwuhaha,
the evilness of modern software: window border & toolbars…. you do know it’s possible to run VMWare in fullscreen mode?
By the way, you seem to have a fairly ‘clean’ way of using eclipse, a typical case of me editing a Java file in eclipse looks like this:
Luckely I have two screens at my disposal..!
Haha — so you are using 25% of your screen’s real estate for the task at hand! Good optimization…
And I do run VMWare in fullscreen mode from time to time… but it is a bit annoying if you switch rapidly between your desktop and the VM. (every time you switch the display is blank for a couple of seconds).