Jim innately understood that this particular sound was a strategic imperative-it wasn’t just a tactical decision. No matter what Apple innovations come up, the start-up sound stays mostly the same and brings its customers the same satisfying bong when they first turn on their new Macs. Only minor tweaks have been made, despite numerous operating system and feature alterations, lots of new hardware, and tons of icon and font changes. That sound has remained essentially unchanged since then. “It’s like a logo, you don’t keep changing it! Change isn’t bad, it’s just that it needs to be better.” Although no one has definite proof of this, Jim believes Steve Jobs himself finally fended off any alterations to it when he came back to Apple in 1996. Lots of people at Apple subsequently tried to change Jim’s start-up sound, he says, and he always argued against it. “That’s exactly what I was trying to do!” “I’m like, ‘Exactly! Victory!’ ” Reekes says.
The reviewer of the machine in the now defunct computer bible Byte magazine wrote: “I knew I was in for something great when I heard it turn on.” The Macintosh Quadra 700 came out in 1991.
It was a coup at a company that’s since become known for its iron grip on design. In the end, the computers shipped with Reekes’s sound. He went into the office in the wee hours, changed the code, inserted his sound, and eventually enlisted the support of one of his superiors, who looked the other way when others protested about the change. “No one would let me change it,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Reekes’s bosses told him. It’s a common reaction from people who don’t quite get the magnitude of the opportunity in sound-there are still a lot of innovative people who need convincing, even though they feel the impact of sound daily. When Reekes put it on a few of the early prototype machines, his superiors balked.
WINDOWS STARTUP MP3 PROFESSIONAL
“I used to joke about it being a palate cleanser for the ears.” He had to design it to fit a lot of different machines (Apple was considering many versions back then) and all of the various configurations where the sound would play-tiny speakers on the cheapest line of Macs, the beefier sound coming out of the (then) new Quadra series, even professional speakers in actual music studios hooked up to Macs. “I thought, I gotta have this meditative sound,” Reekes says.
WINDOWS STARTUP MP3 MAC
Reekes set out to design a Mac sound that would spark a magical experience. When a sound like this is played in the right situation at the right time, it’s incredibly potent. This tiny sound leads off all the connections that your computer enables-to other machines, to worlds of data and knowledge, to people. It’s a symbol of what’s to come-Reekes calls it an earcon (analogous to an icon). It’s literally the most dissonant sound you can make.”Īnd whether you realize it or not, your computer’s start-up sound frames the experience you go on to have with it. It’s bad,” he says of the sound he sought to supplant, the tritone.
WINDOWS STARTUP MP3 WINDOWS
The Windows elevent (as we’re now calling it) will start at 11AM ET on June 24th, and The Verge will be covering all the news live as it happens.“It’s not just me that thinks it’s bad. We’ll find out on June 24th whether Microsoft is ready to dial the version number of Windows up to 11, simply name it Windows Sun Valley, or something else entirely. Microsoft has been working on something codenamed “Sun Valley,” which the company has referred to as a “ sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows.” There will be many other changes, including some significant Windows Store ones, so read our previous coverage for what to expect. We’re expecting Microsoft to announce a new version of Windows with significant user interface changes. Microsoft execs have been teasing a “next generation of Windows” announcement for months, and it’s clear from this latest video that these 11 teasers will continue in the weeks ahead. Among those hints is the event starting at 11AM ET and the event invite that has a window that creates a shadow with an outline that looks very much like the number 11.