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Comment by Centigonal | Hacker News Reader

I just found out this capability is also available on Macbooks!

This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...

It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.

I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.

> I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected

Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.

Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.

Younger me used to "explore" the OS or any software by clicking all the things. It was part of growing and learning. I was never afraid to click the wrong thing. It's similar to those that take things apart just to see what's inside. I had no idea that I was the edge case of personality types.

Things that are "hidden" are just discoveries waiting to happen for those that look. For those that need their hands held and guided through the world, those things might stay "hidden". Just as you feel irked that things are hidden, I feel irked by people that don't go looking. Push all the buttons. Turn all the knobs. Click all the things.

I disagree. Things that are hidden are not meant to be discovered and utilized by everyday users. When I write software or apps and there is a feature that I want users to utilize I do not gate it behind the rare chance that a user will activate it by shaking their device or rotating it 360 degrees or something else obtuse that nobody ever does.

I grew up with custom android ROMs with all the customization I could want and now live in an age where I can take just about any software and use an LLM to customize it to meet my needs, I use Tasker and have scripts out the woohaa on my Linux desktop. I hate it when companies add "hidden" features and don't tell you anywhere.

It's somewhat intentional. Apple always pushes to prioritize the "Happy path" flow, including making it better and "Just works", and part of the way you do that often ends up making it harder, or take more work, to step off the happy path.

It's also Apple, so it's a marketing thing. There's a reason Snapchat sorta developed this feature style, and Apple targets the same demographic, or at least did for a while.

Unfortunately, this has heavily leaked into Android and Windows, and I hate it.

> I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet.

You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.

Yep - it's a game changer on the Pendolino trains I get to work as they tilt going around corners. Most people seem to be fine, but for me, it was impossible to get some work done on my commute until vehicle motion cues were a thing and I got > M2 MBP for work.

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been saying to my wife for about a year now that I wish MacBooks had the motion cues feature… turns out I just needed to search for it!

Very cool that apple made it

I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows

this helped me tremendously when I had to work in the backseat of a moving car. Felt sick pretty quick when I started using the laptop until I remembered about this feature because someone on HN recently posted / commented about it

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