CapMac Forums

[Richard Cardona]

Recently there was a craze around smacking (literally) your MacBook or MacBook Pro to activate its accelerometers and causing the desktop to switch between different apps. This is what SmackBook is about. While novel I wasn't too interested in hitting my new machine.

MacBook Pros also have shadow sensors for activating their backlit keyboards, so naturally someone has hacked into those to create Shadowbook which from the name is the ability to trigger actions based on waving your hand over the shadow sensors (left and right!).

Then, Benjamin Higginbotham combined Shadowbook with a very nice piece of software called VirtueDesktops to create a truly droolworthy feature: switch Desktops by waving your palms over the shadow sensors of the MacBook Pro. A video of this is on the Shadowbook site above.

VirtueDesktop's key app they are demonstrating is Parallels Desktop for Mac, which is virtualization software that lets you run Windows on Mac at nearly full speed.

Putting all these pieces together I can wave my hand and cube-switch my desktop from a Mac to a PC, over and over. There are several transitions available but Windows geeks are just in awe when they see the cube transition for the first time.

A MacBook Pro is not just another laptop that can run Windows. It's truly an awesome work of art from Apple.