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PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device

Posted by Hemos on Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:42 AM
from the interesting-applications dept.
Portables (Apple) Businesses Hardware Apple
An anonymous reader writes "As covered earlier on Slashdot, Amit Singh had shown how to access and use the motion sensor feature in the late model PowerBooks for innovative things, which created quite a buzz in the Mac community. In an ingenius new article, Singh has taken the idea all the way and released software which lets you use a PowerBook with a motion sensor as a general purpose input device which works with existing apps. IMHO the coolest use of this is for playing games: be sure to check out the video footage in the article. For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards! You can also scroll in apps. Google Map scrolling with my PowerBook feels like flying in an aiprlane over the terrain. I must say you have to try this in real life to appreciate the experience ... go to the Apple store or something if you don't have the hardware ;-) Before this my girlfriend (who uses a Dell notebook) has never called anything computer related "jawdropping"! Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"
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[+] Apple: Experimenting With Light on Apple Laptops 120 comments
venkatg writes "Soon after Apple introduced sudden motion sensors in their PowerBooks in early 2005, Amit Singh had shown how these sensors can be used for creative purposes (covered by Slashdot earlier as Having Fun With PowerBook Motion Sensors and PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device). This time around Singh discusses 'Experimenting With Light' in a new article whereby by light he means the ambient light sensors and the illuminated backlight keyboard sensors in Apple's laptops. The article shows (source code is included) how one can measure ambient light and do things with it. It also shows things like how to get/set illuminated keyboard brightness and display brightness or do fade transitions of the keyboard lighting. So now that we have all these motion and light sensors under control, is there a MacBook discotheque in the works?"
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PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device 25 Comments More /

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  • More from Amit Singh (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder (516195) * on Monday March 21 2005, @10:43AM (#11999306)
    What's even cooler about Amit Singh is that he's a he's a researcher [slashdot.org] at IBM Alamaden Research Center [ibm.com], working on, among other things, secure communications and Linux on the desktop.

    And be sure to check out his other articles [kernelthread.com], particularly What is Mac OS X? [kernelthread.com] . They're all well written, comprehensive on their respective topics, and generally excellent.

    • Re:More from Amit Singh (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheGuano (851573) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:47AM (#11999364)
      The same motion sensor (with real-time 3d display of the notebook's orientation) has been on the IBM Thinkpad for a while now. Since he's an IBM researcher, maybe he'll take the time to port it over to the PC as well! I've always wanted to play Labyrinth or Marble Madness (or Super Monkey Ball) by actually tilting the machine.

    • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by nganju (821034) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:52AM (#11999444)

      daveschroeder discovered to be the username for Amit Singh at Slashdot.org

  • Fake Article (Score:4, Funny)

    by clinko (232501) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:45AM (#11999337) Homepage Journal
    This article is fake. Note the following lie in bold:

    "Before this my girlfriend (who uses a Dell notebook) has never called anything computer related "jawdropping"! "

  • New Interaction (Score:5, Funny)

    by LittleGuernica (736577) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:46AM (#11999339) Homepage
    This Porn Site is Powerbook Enabled ..yes, I can see a lot of new ways of interaction

    and Apples new Powerbook tagline:
    "Shake it Like A Polaroid Picture"
    or
    "Do the Powerbook Shuffle"

  • I've really gotta wonder.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UnixRevolution (597440) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:46AM (#11999354) Homepage Journal
    How much good all this tilting and stuff does the hard drive. I'd think it caused some undue wear and tear, if not a head crash. Plus, to be picking up the whole laptop for use as an interface device seems a bit risky. Especially a Powerbook (you're talking around 2 grand there, Slim.)

    • Many times HD asleep anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall (25149) * on Monday March 21 2005, @10:52AM (#11999439)
      Depending on how you have your power settings, the HD is probably going to be asleep most of the time anyway. And the gentle motion you're talking about here is hardly going to be enough to phase a laptop drive - I've got a portable storage device that uses a laptop drive and had it sucessfully write a whole GB of data while I was walking quickly and had it in a pocket in my shorts.

      In short, don't worry about the HD... slippery fingers might be a bit more of a concern but just be careful to do this above your lap, not held high in the air like a trophy.

  • Jawdropping? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mypalmike (454265) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:49AM (#11999386) Homepage
    Before this my girlfriend (who uses a Dell notebook) has never called anything computer related "jawdropping"!

    Umm, actually, she was just yawning.

  • What the hell is the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xtal (49134) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:53AM (#11999452) Homepage
    It's an accellerometer! There have been inertial mice based off these guys for as long as the sensors have been available.

    There's some projects out there to hack one of these into some earlier palmpilots directly onto the bus, a nifty hack. Oh, wait, starting to get that feeling..

    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/30/1546247.sh tm l

    Sigh. I have a powerbook and like it, but new kind of HID? Please.

    Call me when they have a camera in there like the Sony vaio picturebook used to, and you can wave your arms at it and such. Then it might be a new interface device.
  • Well, no.

    Don't get me wrong, this is a cool hack, but a 17" powerbook weighs over 3 kilograms.

    You know how your Xbox controller was a bit big? Well, it wasn't that big.

  • My favorite application for this would be (Score:5, Funny)

    by Psykechan (255694) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:54AM (#11999475)
    After (of course) parking the disk heads, I think that turning the laptop upside-down and giving it a good shaking should clear the screen.

    I mean, wouldn't that just be common sense?

  • Laptops are big...Mice are small (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amichalo (132545) on Monday March 21 2005, @10:59AM (#11999537)
    "Laptops are big...Mice are small...add a motion sensor to a blue-tooth mouse and you will drop my jaw."

  • It really works! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tgrigsby (164308) on Monday March 21 2005, @11:06AM (#11999606) Homepage Journal
    For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards! ...Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"

    I tried it with John Madden's NFL Football. I threw a Hail Mary pass; a perfect, aim-for-the-end-zone spiral. My Powerbook sailed out the window of my 10th floor San Francisco apartment and I haven't seen it since.

    I wonder if the pass was complete?

  • Also See: (Score:5, Informative)

    by jeffehobbs (419930) on Monday March 21 2005, @11:14AM (#11999713) Homepage

    This is really cool from a UI perspective, but not entirely new. A couple years ago people were doing interesting things with tilt sensors for Palm devices [harbaum.org]. Also see: Nintendo's new WarioWare game [gamespot.com] for GameBoy advance, which has a rotational sensor built-in to the cartridge. Also, Sony has done research in this area [sony.co.jp] as well.

    ~jeff

  • music applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by akuzi (583164) on Monday March 21 2005, @11:18AM (#11999774)
    I can see the powerbook/ibook sensors becoming popular amoungst laptop music geeks as a controller for interactive performances. (making the computer more and more like an instrument that can be played live)

  • Nokia 3220 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BarryNorton (778694) on Monday March 21 2005, @11:24AM (#11999878)
    Hate to sound like a phone geek, but my new Nokia 3220 [nokia.co.uk] with this standard mod [nokia.com] has this feature, supported by 'Java motion' for programming, and ships games that use it...

      • Why discredit an innovative idea? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall (25149) * on Monday March 21 2005, @10:56AM (#11999502)
        Other laptops may have had this for years...

        So where are the Windows apps that make use of this sensor?

        Apple doesn't even deserve credit for this one as they include the sensor for the same reason everyone else does. Apple does deserve a little credit for making the output of this sesnor accessible to the programmer, and then the guy that developed the initial software to make use of it deserves the lions share of the credit for saying "hey, what if I did this!".

        In your rush to discredit Apple, you were a bit too hasty in dismissing the accomplishments of the programmer as well.

    • Re:YAWN (Score:5, Funny)

      by tgrigsby (164308) on Monday March 21 2005, @11:13AM (#11999694) Homepage Journal
      Consider tilting your laptop all over the place on an airplane. I''m sure it would annoy your neighbors to no end.

      Actually, tilting the laptop didn't annoy my neighbors nearly as much as the airplane sounds I made, or when I'd headbutt the guy sitting next to me when I'd tilt my head along with the laptop.

      The stewardess took my laptop away half way through the trip. Something about homeland security...

    • Re:Complete Crap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by l4m3z0r (799504) <kevin AT uberstyle DOT net> on Monday March 21 2005, @11:34AM (#12000039)
      So in otherwords your post is: stages of development and innovation are pointless. Why don't we just make the best thing first and not waste our time on intermediate inventions and trials?

      Wow this is perhaps the most genius post ever, why didn't we think of just doing it properly first instead of spending decades improving technology step by step???

      Surely your revelation will usher in a new era of computing. Hell before this we hadn't even been thinking thanks fsterman, thanks.

      WARNING: Comment may include sarcasm in reply to a horribly naive and foolish post.

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