I ordered my new Macbook yesterday, and, with any luck, it will arrived early next week. (I’m dreaming that it might arrive this week. Some hopes!)
In any case, the Macbooks, like the Macbook Pros and the last iterations of the Powerbooks and iBooks have a motion sensor used to lock the hard drive in the event of sudden movement. It’s a great idea, nothing too earthshaking, but there have been some amusing side effects. For example, on my iBook I have a widget that allows me to use it as a level. (The level would work better if it was actually level, but as a proof-of-concept it’s interesting.)
In the last couple days I’ve been seeing people who have converted the motion sensor to act as a joystick, a lightsaber (the macbook makes authentic lightsaber noises when you swish the laptop around) and this user interface hack:
Technology Wrap Block => Macbook Motion Sensor Hack
While I don’t think I’d use this type of interface, I do think it would be immensely gratifying if someone could adopt it for Windows PCs. Perhaps that could be the Next Big Thing for Windows Vista?