Zapper
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Ask TUAW: Where do you put your Apple remote?
"Where's the zapper?!"A time old phrase uttered countless times in countless living rooms across the world, usually accompanied by an expletive or two. Now that Apple has standardized Front Row and bundled a remote with nearly its whole range, Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro owners are also screaming out for their lost "thingy", "zapper" and "remote control". iMac owners are in the clear: they've got a nice little magnetic section on the side of their machine that the Apple remote will elegantly stick to. Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro owners aren't so fortunate. Apple's forgot to give us non-iMac owners a place to stash our remote! The MacBook, with its magnetic lid, offers a semi-viable solution. The remote will happily stick to the left and right corners at the top of the screen where the lid magnets are. It looks pretty stupid though.One solution that Apple could use, for the MacBook Pro at least, is to adapt the Apple remote so that it will fit inside the laptop's ExpressCard slot. That would allow users to store the remote out of the way while the machine was closed (our less than elegant solution shown above doesn't tackle that problem). Have any TUAW readers come up with a way to keep the Apple remote with their Mac when they're not using it? Guides for Velcro mods, tractor beam construction manuals and levitation how-tos are welcome!
E3: The Wii Zapper prototype revealed
Over at the Nintendo booth, contained within a glass case adjacent to the classic shell (revealed earlier by IGN) is a prototype for the "Zapper Style" attachment for the Wii remote. Note that you get a joystick for your thumb and a standard gun-style trigger. Not much to say, but the prototype looks promising. We wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being really close to the final product.
NES Zapper plus gyro mouse = Duck Hunt emulation heaven
Not content with his gyroscopic PowerGlove hack, leadingzero has decided to turn an NES Zapper into a gyration mouse for some authentic Duck Hunt emulation action. He writes, "I wired the [gyration] mouse to the NES Zapper, allowing for both free range motion sensing and trigger happy left-click action. This is a very easy hack, as long as you are comfortable soldering on a $30 gyration mouse, and will give you a fully functional (yet ugly) motion sensing mouse gun fashioned out of the old-school NES Zapper..." Of course, he's posted pictures of the entire process so, if you're feeling adventurous, or just have a burning desire to put a dusty old Zapper to good use, you can hack-by-numbers. [Via MAKE: Blog]
