Since things are generally pretty quiet right about now, we thought we'd take a minute to square up an account or two-- you know, just to keep the karma straight. Regular viewers (well, as regular as possible given our erratic broadcast frequency of late) may recall that we recently purchased a new 15-inch PowerBook, but the last thing we mentioned about it was that the new scrolling trackpads are terrific at scrolling, and infuriating at pretty much everything else. And we're the lucky ones; all we have to contend with is the stiff-yet-mushy hardware button, a very hit-and-miss tap-to-click function, the inexplicable loss of triple-tap-drag to select contiguous words, and an occasional total lack of trackpad response for about four or five seconds at a time. Some others are seeing lots more trackpad dropouts, and even getting shocked by the thing every so often.

So all that might lead you to believe that we're unhappy with our purchase, when nothing could be further from the truth; on the contrary, the latest addition to our stable of portables is a sleek-'n'-snappy DVD-burning dynamo that's handled pretty much every task we've tossed at it with aplomb. Not a sliver of buyer's remorse creeps into our hearts, even when staring directly at the $2,299 credit card charge that acquiring this slab of solid cool heaped on top of our own personal Mound o' Debt. And so, lest you get the wrong idea about Apple's latest PowerBooks, allow us to point out one of the single coolest unpublicized features ever to grace any computer ever made by anyone ever ever ever: the Sudden Motion Sensor.

Okay, yes, Apple does publicize that every new PowerBook has a sensor capable of detecting when the unit is falling, in which case it parks the hard drive heads so they're less likely to dig into the surface of the disk and turn your data into Tossed Bit Salad. What the company doesn't tell you is that, as faithful viewer Kurt Gharbi reminds us, applications can read data from the sensors and determine how far the PowerBook is being tilted in any direction, which has led to the release of some pretty funky little demo apps, such as AMS Visualizer and Stable Window, literally the first two applications we downloaded after getting our PowerBook online. AMS Visualizer shows a window with a 3D rendering of a PowerBook; tilt your real PowerBook, and the virtual one tilts the same way. Stable Window is-- surprise!-- a window, but one that automatically rotates to remain level with the ground even as you tilt your PowerBook back and forth.

Those just scratch the surface, of course; there's also a tilt-controlled game called Bubblegym, and a quick hack that lets you skip iTunes tracks by nudging your PowerBook. And more will surely come-- maybe even software for which a tilt-controlled interface is useful instead of just wacky. After all, it's only a matter of time before someone writes a shareware app that tells you how sober you are based on how steadily you can hold your PowerBook. Right?

Which brings us full-circle to the ideal solution to the new PowerBook's trackpad woes: someone just needs to write a mouse driver that's actually tied directly to the Sudden Motion Sensor. Why drag your fingers across a boring little rectangle when you could be controlling your cursor the intuitive way, simply by tilting your PowerBook in the direction you want it to travel? To click, just smack the PowerBook sharply against a nearby wall. Need to scroll? Tie the driver to the PowerBook's microphone, too, so all you need to do is tilt while yelling "SCROOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!" Nothing could be more natural. Oh, sure, cases of carpal tunnel syndrome would explode (possibly literally), but just think of the Popeye-like forearms you'd develop while performing even the simplest everyday tasks. You'll never need spinach again.