

Shake to Undo (for Mac OS X) - jparise
http://www.natestedman.com/post/shake-to-undo-for-mac-os-x/

======
natesm
Oh my. The internet is a strange place. Digging up things weeks after they
were made in an hour, sent jokingly to a few close friends, and mostly
forgotten, and throwing them all over Twitter and the Apple blagoblag.

~~~
natesm
My only disappointment is that they didn't report on Shell of Disapproval
instead, which is a program that I actually use daily.

<http://i.imgur.com/qjPSR.png>

<https://github.com/NateStedman/shell-of-disapproval>

~~~
tlrobinson
I like it, but my tastes prefer something a little more subtle:
<https://gist.github.com/1199925>

~~~
danvideo
my favorite part is the "optional confirmation overlay"

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tommorris
Is it just me or is Shake to Undo one of the worst features of iOS on the
iPad? You are happily typing an email on the train and then you screw up and
delete a bunch of text. To undo it, you have to pick the iPad up off your lap
or off the table and shake it pretty damn hard.

You end up looking like an absolute maniac.

~~~
jannes
Few people know this, but you don't have to pick it up off your lap to trigger
the redo action. There's a redo key on the #+= page of the iPad's keyboard.

I know that this isn't particularly great design on Apple's part because it's
not intuitive or easily discoverable, but once you know it it's quite handy
and better than nothing.

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5hoom
Funny joke and all, but it got me thinking. Why not some sort of gesture for
undo like a multi finger scribble (similar to 'rubbing something out' with an
eraser)?

Then I tried a bit harder & thought why not just use cmd-Z ;)

~~~
joshuamerrill
Hmm. Shake to undo, drop to delete? :-)

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nfm
Hi five to save :P

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hopeless
Throw to share ;-)

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hopeless
Does anyone know if this will work with my 27" iMac? ;-)

Joking aside, the shake-to-undo gesture in iOS is one of the worst things
about the platform. It's either not sensitive enough or too sensitive, and
either way makes you look a bit odd

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moe
_It's either not sensitive enough or too sensitive, and either way makes you
look a bit odd_

Plus it makes you lose eye- and finger-contact with the screen.

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kuroir
I just hope this doesn't inspire people to really shake the macbooks so hard
to cause a disk problem or any other hardware issue.

I advise you add a disclaimer for this? ;)

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michaelfairley
That's actually why the sensor is in there in the first place: to let the hard
disk shut off if it detects that the laptop is falling.

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lloeki
It actually makes the HD parks the heads out of the platters in a really mean
way. It's better than having heads collide with the platters but it's a wear
sensitive operation designed as an emergency countermeasure. Doing it
repeatedly on purpose is certainly a bad idea.

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mickdarling
I am guessing this is a nice little joke, BUT...

If the sensitivity was just right, and it only measured a shake like smacking
the monitor on the side, it might actually make a nice UX.

Think of typing away at this message and then deciding, "never-mind", and
reaching up with your right hand and smacking the screen on the edge. Could be
a very natural feeling undo.

~~~
callahad
I'm pretty sure there was a virtual desktop manager for OS X around 10.3 or
10.4 that, in one fork, supported smacking each side of the laptop to cycle
left or right. I also recall being able to use the ambient light sensors under
the speaker grills for the same thing: Cover one with your hand, and the
desktops move that way.

It was pretty fantastic.

~~~
leoh
Yep! Here's some instructions on how it was done. The underlying app,
ScreenKnock, still works on Lion.

Instructions: [http://maketecheasier.com/smack-your-mac-to-switch-
spaces/20...](http://maketecheasier.com/smack-your-mac-to-switch-
spaces/2009/04/05)

ScreenKnock: <http://welcometochrisworld.com/2008/10/02/screen-knock/>

~~~
watmough
Thanks for linking that, really neat. I just ran it, and after configuring to
use command-arrows to switch spaces, it works really well on my MacBook.

In fact, rather than hitting the side of the screen, just a gentle tilt to the
left or right is enough to switch spaces. The dynamic feels really good.

~~~
mickdarling
Ah ha! Yes, I knew it must have been a residual memory and not my own idea.

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LeafStorm
While the idea is interesting, this is probably not something I would use on a
laptop. Picking up and shaking a laptop while it's open and running goes
against all my "protect fragile and expensive equipment" instincts. Tablets
and phones are normally held in one's hands anyway, and weigh much less and
are better balanced.

~~~
mitchty
Agreed, with pure solid state though its not as big of a deal. But I remember
having to manually park hard drive heads before moving desktops. Shaking
anything that spins activates my spidey sense that I will cause head crashes.

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glimcat
Now you can spill your coffee and erase your work at the same time!

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joshuamerrill
My issue is that the two have always been connected. :-(

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MaxGabriel
While a pretty funny article, I disagree with the underlying message that
Apple is making Lion too similar to iOS in ways that decrease its
functionality.

For me, launchpad has been perfect for organizing my apps because just
clicking the applications folder presents me with too many unrelated options.
For example, my second launchpad window is only apps I've downloaded, so it's
obvious to me how I would launch Starcraft or Braid as opposed to TextEdit.

~~~
wtallis
Launchpad may be useful (though between Stacks and Quicksilver, I don't need
it), but there are other areas where Apple made changes that they shouldn't
have, even by their own standards. For example, the new full-screen mode nice
on a small screen, but is detrimental to anyone who has multiple monitors, and
Apple didn't even ensure that the transition animates smoothly with their own
apps. Mission Control is at least an understandable attempt to integrate
Spaces and Expose, but the new layout mode for Expose that lets windows
overlap by more than 80% is a pretty big sacrifice that doesn't seem entirely
necessary. They also removed several features that were mostly harmless or
completely harmless to noobs, but useful for power users (eg. the mode-switch
button on Finder windows, or the ability to browse a PDF in two-page mode with
continuous scrolling on.) Simplification is good, but there's no reason to
remove features that don't get in the way or make things cluttered.

I don't mind Apple experimenting and iterating with their UI, but it feels
like with 10.7 they took things too far and were too single-minded about it.
On the other hand, I've only been using OS X since 10.3, so I missed out on
all the early roughness, and almost all of their changes from 10.4-10.6 turned
out to be for the better.

~~~
aiscott
I'm actually a big fan of the full screen mode. I spend about half my time on
a 13" screen, and the other half on 22.

I actually like the auto sort mode for fullscreen/desktops as well, which
surprised even me. But I like being a swipe or two away from my browser or
email or vm.

That said, I am frustrated that I can't bend the rules a little and bring a
terminal up on another app's fullscreen. Many times I'm following an example
and have to take whatever browser I'm using out of fullscreen. Dterm helps a
little.

I like launchpad, but I don't use it much. It does a good job of staying out
of the way.

I do miss the old expose, and mission control's reduced expose is not adequate
to replace the old. I almost never need the single app expose, if anything I
wish they had dropped that and kept the 10.6 expose as well as mission
control.

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atomicdog
Didn't the old iMacs have a "shake to shutdown" feature? Or was that just some
weird configuration I had at the place I worked?

I can't recall the number of times I adjusted the position of the monitor only
to find the computer shutting down...

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Brajeshwar
Nice one. :-) Very soon, I'll be playing games that needs me to shake my Mac
violently, twist, turn and sometimes requiring me to flap the screen
repeatedly to ward off the lazer guns of attacking Stormtroopers.

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zengr
Windows should have a similar feature. "Throw on the ground to fix BSOD"

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Apocryphon
Linux's would be "Toss machine at nearest dev for assistance."

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phamilton
It doesn't seem to work on my 2010 MBA... perhaps due to the SSD?

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workergnome
Yeah—the new Airs don't have Sudden Motion Sensors. Which makes sense, since
there's no hard drive to stop, but it breaks all the clever hacks that used
the accelerometer.

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conradev
It's not really a clever hack, just an undocumented IOKit device.

`ioreg | grep Motion`

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JTxt
The twisting motion illustrated is more dangerous to hard drives than a simple
up and down or side to side shake; the heads are being pushed into the
gyroscopic platters. [citation needed]

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kennywinker
Finally! My least favourite feature on iOS, available on the Mac!

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atomicdog
Bringing features from a cut down mobile OS released in 2008 to a full blown
desktop OS with 20+ years of UX development behind it was the best idea we've
ever had!

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patrickk
_"Mission Control removes the confusing grid that previously plagued Spaces.
Where a user with four spaces could previously end up on any of the other
three with a single keystroke, he or she is now presented with a much less
confusing choice between one or two."_

I _liked_ the ability to traverse a 2x2 grid of Spaces with a single keyboard
stroke. Now, if I set up four screens with the new Mission Control in Lion, I
have to press the right arrow four times to move from screen one --> four. The
result is I only use two screens at most, meaning they get quite cluttered.

~~~
snprbob86
You can still jump directly to a numbered space by pressing "control" and any
number key. This is default behavior as far as I know, but I might have
switched a setting for it.

For consistent behavior, disable "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most
recent use" in the mission control system preferences.

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joejohnson
Ugh, it's not sensitive enough. I don't know how sensitive the HD shock sensor
needs to be though... but I wish I could just tap the edge of my monitor.

~~~
innes
That would be a fun feature for passing colleagues to make use of.

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alexeiz
Meh. Punch to Undo!

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uptown
AppleCare should sponsor this product.

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Tichy
What if you have a SSD installed?

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JGuo
it's like an etch a sketch :)

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drivebyacct2
Is this a joke? I'm really, really confused.

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swlkr
I'm pretty sure it's a joke

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jabo
There's another library called smslib which does a totally unrelated thing -
send sms. <http://smslib.org/>

