You may have of heard of Lilt from one of the many esteemed places in the Mac-flavored blogosphere. You may have wondered if it was all it's been cracked up to be. I'm here to tell you, dear reader, that it is certainly not.
If a device is not meant for a certain function, then asking it to do so tends to not work out so well (see Wii vs. PS3). Macs like to be controlled with keyboards and mice, not acrobatics and strobe lights.
On top of the fact that Lilt performs a relatively worthless function, it performs it in a rather hideous manner. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines are painfully eschewed in favor of an interface that looks like a cutout of a Macbook Pro poster. The window itself doesn't behave how you think it should, which makes it no surprise that the app doesn't really work the way it says it should.
Maybe I'm just a grump, but I downloaded the app, gave it a fair shot, and came away thoroughly unimpressed. However, you readers have proven yourselves to be quite an adept bunch, so let's play a game. The first three people who can give me a real, practical example of Lilt's usefulness will earn themselves a MacHeist invite.
I don't use Lilt but if I did I might consider creating an action to mute my MacBook when I pick it up to move it. Most of the time this could be useful for me (but I won't be installing Lilt to make it happen).
I would use it if I could get my hands on an apple script of some sorts that initiates front row. I'm a big fan of watching movies/TV shows when I go to bed and it would be sweet to just flip the lights off, and bam, front row opens.
If, like me, you can't think of any practical examples (beyond conspiracy theories of Apple selling more hardware because people are shaking the life out of their laptops) but still want a MacHeist invite, email me. I've got seven and will send them out on a first-come-first-serve basis. stephen at stephenhargrove dot com.
Oh, I've got a great idea for it. When the lights go out it could decrease the brightness of the screen and increase the brightness of the keyboard. That'd be awesome!
Also, when you move you Mac suddenly it could do something clever to stop the harddrive from damaging itself.
Those are genius ideas!
Actually extrapolating from VirtueDesktops, which offered desktop switching based on light readings from the speakers, I'd like to use a system which detects when both speakers on the laptops are briefly covered; it then pauses iTunes and mutes the system volume.
That way when I take an important call during work I can just "hush" the laptop in one gesture without digging for a remote and hitting a key sequence.
Actually, Lilt will come in handy for a museum temporary installation I'm working on - because we control the light around the display, we can start a specific presentation when that light is partially occluded - which is to say, when someone is standing in front of the thing. I won't say that it's the only way to do it, but this way we can just get the thing running (with one of the museum's laptops behind a frosted plastic sheet) without worrying about how to build it.
As the developer, I thought I might take a few moments to respond.
Lilt is in the early stages of development and the idea of the early preview release was to get feedback to make it a better product. While I appreciate your testing the application and giving it a fair shot, it would be more helpful if you actually enumerated the ways in which the "window itself doesn't behave how you think it should" or elucidating the statement "the app doesn't really work the way it says it should". If it doesn't work as described, please give concrete examples.
As to the interface, yes, it completely ignores the HIG. The thought process behind this was that since this is dealing with a brand new type of interface (motion and light), then a new onscreen interface would be appropriate. There has been a lot of discussion about the HIG lately. I don't know of any applications that conform to it 100%, including products from Apple itself. The current thinking seems to be that small violations are actually worse than simply obliterating them entirely and creating your own interface with gusto. That's what was done with Lilt. Also, the interface for Lilt is meant to be light-hearted and fun. That said, you are correct that my graphic skills are suspect and that the MBP-themed interface could be improved. Any takers?
Still, usability is important and if the onscreen interface doesn't work or is confusing, then there is a problem. However, again, you don't quite state what that problem may be. In the last two days, there have been over 7,000 downloads of Lilt. Pretty darned good for an app like this which leads me to believe people are interested in it. I've received overwhelmingly positive reviews of the interface and the application in general.
As to looking for ways to put it to good use, the possibilities are nearly infinite because of its AppleScript support. Launchers such as LaunchBar, Butler, or QuickSilver are popular because they give you a new way of opening files, apps, or URLs, inserting text, looking up contacts, and more. Still, with these applications you have to remember new keyboard shortcuts. Lilt works the same way except that it allows you to access these features simply by (gently) tilting your machine or hovering your hand over the speaker grill.
Further, because these actions are analog and not digital, they have degrees of variation (tilt a little, tilt a lot) which can be passed to the action. So, for instance, if you tilt your machine to the right a little bit (though not so little that it is triggered too easily), it could, for instance, fast forward a few seconds through the current iTunes track. Tilt it further to the right and it goes to the next track. Tilt it even further and it stops iTunes entirely. All of this with a single action but varying degrees for the trigger.
In addition to the excellent example above for pausing iTunes AND muting the system, lest you think this is only for controlling iTunes, here are some more ideas unrelated to that app:
You've loaded up a bunch of tabs in Safari and are lying in bed reading them before going to sleep. With your hands on the sides of the machine, to go to the next tab, you tilt the machine to the right. To go to the previous tab, you tilt it to the left. To scroll down the current page, you tilt the machine towards you, to scroll up, you tilt it backwards. Since you can specify that these actions only occur if Safari is the active application, while using another app tilting the machine could be ignored.
With scriptable applications like Indigo, when the ambient light senses that it is getting darker, it could turn on the house lights (you could build more intelligence into the AppleScript action so that it only does this if it is before a certain cutoff hour, say 11:00 PM lest you really want to turn out the lights).
Conversely, in the morning, when the sun is coming up and the machine detects the new light, it could run a script that reconnects to an ISP or other network resources, downloads the latest news or sports scores, or generally prepares itself for the day's use.
Really, the possibilities are only limited by imagination.
In the next release package, there will be even more bundled actions (including examples for complex actions based on the degree of the sensor information, controlling apps like DVD Player, and more) and I highly encourage users to submit their own actions or ideas for using and improving the software.
I'll have to see if its possible, but my first thought is that if I rotate the Macbook Pro so the screen is portrait, that Lilt makes the display switch into portrait mode.... and when you rotate it back, it rotates back. I'dpay $5 for that alone.
(Like the Radius Swivels of old)