Lap lock – leave your MacBook unattended worry free for a short time | Hacker News Reader

Lap lock – leave your MacBook unattended worry free for a short time

beta.vyte.in

17 pointscode_devil22 comments

I'm one of the developers. We created the app and service this weekend at a hackathon so it's still very new.

We know there are limitations (especially: if you close the MacBook, the alarm will not work) but we're working on it. So thanks for all the feedback, it's very useful to know what areas we should address.

If you would like to write to us directly: @laplockapp. Thanks!

1. Wait, what happens if the thief closes the macbook first?

2. Even if it works, wouldn't this be useless since the thief would not know about the app running? Ie most theft prevention mechanisms works because they manifestly inform the potential thief that it's not worth his trouble to bother with this one.

But if this is just an app running in the background - there is no 'warning' shown.

Not like anyone's actually going to do anything when someone walks off with your laptop anyway.

Witness how car alarms are regularly ignored.

Car alarms are ignored because they're mostly false alarms.

1. It also sends you a notification (SMS or Yo notification), so you can do something about it 2. In a cafe or coworking space, when people steal stuff, they just pretend they're theirs. Bit harder to pretend in this case if you can't unlock it

Have to agree with a previous poster; I would imagine it's more likely that people would stare at the thief running out of the venue, rather than get involved and take a risk.

You can pick up a drawstring gymsack for a couple of bucks. It scrunches up to a very small size in your daily carry, and you can ensure any valuables are secure on your back if you have to be away for a short time while the rest of your stuff stays at the table. Low tech, but has been effective for me so far.

Nifty, except in public places I usually have speakers muted (I assume Macs have the same capability). I also always close the lid prior to unplugging - does this require changing power management settings?

Actually the speakers settings are set to loud just before the alarm goes off

This is pretty similar to https://www.virtualock.com who also provide a Windows version.

Wow -- that was fast: "You have OS X 10.9.5. The application requires OS X 10.10 or later."

Even though the icon looks like it was made for OS X < 10.10.

Well OS X 10.10 is about flat design. Could you think of a flatter icon? :-)

It's mostly that it looks very bad in dark mode.

We've made a 10.9 build. If you want to test it, ping us @laplockapp on Twitter

Your first feature request is going to be for it to work without the power cord :)

I think it could actually be done. I know my MBPr has accelerometers in it that can be accessed.

(visit http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google-gravity/ with Chrome on a MBPr)

So the thief should steal slowly? :)

Hehe verrrrrryyy slooowwwwly.

The MacBooks with mechanical hard drives have the motion sensors.

I believe that's why they were originally added, to protect the disk in the event of a drop. My early 2013 13" MBPr definitely has both an SSD and accelerometers, though I don't know if they kept them for later models. Cool app/idea btw!

The more a think about it, the more genius this application is. Well done!

this is really cool, i'm surprised something like this hasn't been implemented years ago

it would be nice if you could text back the PC to turn on it's speakers like a car alarm

An SMS when it's unlocked would also be great to see.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com