Monday, April 20, 2009

Awesome tech you didn't even know was there

You know how countless application developers are inventing apps that make use of the accelerometer in the iPhone? Little do most people know - the accelerometer has been around the Apple universe long before the iPhone came along.

It first debuted in the iBook and PowerBook in 2005 under a different name - the Sudden Motion Sensor. It existed back then to protect the hard drive by automatically locking the disk if the Sudden Motion Sensor detects being bumped, dropped, thrown, etc. Every Mac laptop has this device built in.

Now some enterprising folks have developed anti-theft applications that make use of the little-known feature.

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