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How to turn your MacBook or MacBook Pro into a SmackBook

Mac

If you want to really amaze your PC friends, use the motion-sensing feature of your MacBook and the terrific (free) virtual desktop software VirtueDesktops to turn your laptop into a SmackBook.

Start by downloading and installing VirtueDesktops (homepage is here). The installation is very straight forward, just unzip the file and drag VirtueDesktops.app to your Applications folder.

Launch VirtueDesktops, then select it from the menu, and choose Preferences… from the drop-down list.

Select the Application menu item and place a check in the boxes Launch Virtue on Login and Enable motion sensor switching.


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Select the Appearance menu item, place a check in the box labelled Animate transitions and then choose an animation type. I use (and amaze my friends with) the Cube.


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Now select the Layout & Pagers menu item. Here you’ll need to specify the number of virtual desktops you want to use. I prefer having just 2, but that’s just me.


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Finally, select the Triggers menu item. You’ll likely find that you don’t want to actually have motion-sensitive desktop changing enabled all the time (it can be annoying, esp. if you’re working with your laptop on your lap), so choose keyboard combinations (triggers) to change desktops. Apple-key + 1 and Apple-key + 2 works very well for me.


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When you’re done, close the Preferences and start smacking! (not too hard, your Apple Care won’t cover damage done by over-aggressively smacking your MacBook/MB Pro) :)

Posted in Mac.

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By Ross McKillop – October 22, 2006

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5 Responses

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  1. Yong Hwee says

    I tried it with an iBook G4 but it didn’t seem to work. Is this trick only for MacBook/MacBook Pro?

    October 22, 2006, 4:23 pm
  2. Ross says

    Yong,

    I believe it’s possible using a G4, check out the comments on this page:

    http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.html

    Keep in mind that article uses a different virtual desktop manager (not VirtueDesktops). I had to give my iBook back when I quit my last job, so my only mac is a MacBook Pro (otherwise I’d try to get it to work on older models as well). As long as your iBook has motion sensing support, you should be able to get it to work, it just depends on how determined you are :)

    October 22, 2006, 4:34 pm
  3. Jason says

    Just tried running VirtueDesktops (tried both from this site and from it’s actual website), and it seems to error and not load. Any ideas?

    July 24, 2008, 6:17 pm

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Motion Sensitive Computers Get Jiggy With You at Remove The Labels :: gadgets, deals, VoIP, rants and more… linked to this post on May 11, 2007

    [...] MacBooks and MacBook Pros already have a built-in accelerometer: it’s designed to protect the hard drive if the laptop is dropped. Some software allows you to use that sensor to implement simple motion-based commands, as shown in this video from Simplehelp: [...]

  2. My Apple Menu Bar - Simplehelp linked to this post on September 29, 2007

    [...] Until Leopard comes out w/ Spaces, VirtueDesktops terribly helpful if you have a lot of open apps at any given time. How to turn your MacBook or MacBook Pro into a SmackBook [...]



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