Andy Hertzfeld on the Original 'Boot Beep'

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Boot_Beep.txt

by evo_9 • 13 years ago

88 36 13 years ago

That anecdote does nothing to lessen my dislike of marketers and other similarly worthless people that value form over function.

danko• 13 years ago

But isn't a better sounding boot beep also form? Isn't this really just somebody choosing form over form? Just because the engineer was an engineer doesn't make his aesthetic preference (a better-sounding boot beep) any more empirical than Jobs' aesthetic preference (no extraneous holes in the case).

Also, calling marketers 'worthless people' is a callow statement. I'm an engineer, but we build the things we make for people to use, so the people who help other people understand the value in what we make are far from worthless.

icebraining3• 13 years ago

the people who help other people understand the value in what we make

I thought the discussion was about marketers.

icecreampain2• 13 years ago

If you need people to explain to other people why the stuff you build is great, then maybe the stuff ain't that great after all and you need propaganda experts to lie to people and fool them into buying your products?

Neither an automobile, a bridge nor a fridge require people telling me how those two objects can ease my life. It is immediately obvious to me - as all good engineering projects should be.

marbletiles• 13 years ago

The function was already established: it made a beep. The entire discussion was around form. It's not form over function, it's arguably exactly the right balance between the two.

I wouldn't say that only those who care solely about function are the only worthwhile people, either. Unless you wear only woven sackcloth and eat only nutrient pills.

rollo_tommasi• 13 years ago

If you can't sell the form it's not going to matter what the function is.

rimantas• 13 years ago

I wonder, what amount of money goes to making sure the sound of car door sounds just right. Is it form? Is it function?

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

sadface! enthusiasm shouldn't always be encouraged, but this was a wonderful contribution! how did computer cases not have holes like this in them already?!

SwellJoe• 13 years ago

The history of Macintosh boot sounds, including the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns3ynH7bFsU

Fuzzwah• 13 years ago

Seems to me like the later ones pitched down right at the end, making them sound kind of sad. All the early ones sounded nice and chirpy.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

My favourite is the Macintosh Quadra AV. After that they get droopy.

etjossem• 13 years ago

Here's one that includes the "death sounds" played in the event of a crash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTVmrX6Lee0

HCIdivision17• 13 years ago

Not knowing that the death chimes existed while playing tech support in high school, I heard one of these.The chime that ascends and then descends off-key really can send a chill down your spine if you're not expecting it, especially when the machine dies and won't play it again.

kleiba• 13 years ago

Cool story, with a definite hacker vibe to it. It's also understandable that Jobs didn't want to drill a hole in the case just to improve the boot beep.

Then again, it's cool that he listened to the demo.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

I don't think the hole would only fix the boot beep, it would probably improve all sound on the machine (as it would all suffer from the same muffling, it doesn't seem like it was a resonance issue).

joezydeco2• 13 years ago

Related: someone has reproduced the beep in Javascript for posterity:

http://blog.parse.com/2013/02/27/reproducing-the-macintosh-b...

sgt2• 13 years ago

I wonder how to get rid of the "smacking" sound at the beginning.

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

Just need to fade the volume up from zero (actually -∞ but never mind) over the first few samples. Same at the end.

The problem is that the generated waveform does not begin at zero, causing your speakers to jump from the zero position instantaneously to some other position when the sound begins playing.

Now, obviously the laws of physics prevent this from actually happening, so you hear a pop. The lower the pitch of the sound, the louder the pop is likely to be, for reasons I'm sure people here can work out.

So, the solution is to generate a wave that starts at zero, or add some tiny fades. Note that music playback software does this when you hit pause/play. Some of them have an obvious fade you can hear, but they all add some fading, to avoid popping from stopping/starting the sound in the middle of a cycle.

EDIT: I was feeling ultra-helpful so I took a screenshot of the waveform to show what I mean: http://imgur.com/uWOlJcs

icebraining3• 13 years ago

Folklore.org is a great site, and I say this as someone who doesn't really like the recent Apple at all. The stories about the technical team, particularly those about Burrell Smith, are just great.

joezydeco2• 13 years ago

I'm holding out hope that one day we'll have Folklore.org-style recollections and inside stories about the making of products like the iPhone. But I'm not counting on it.

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

I'd have more hope for companies that went down under after being wildly successful, whose early team members no longer feel the need to stay silent.

Some candidates would include the Delorean car company, RIM (they'll surely cease to be a going concern with time), some of the Linux companies of the 90s, etc

qrr9712• 13 years ago

this is essentially the same trick that gave birth to Karplus-Strong algorithm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karplus%E2%80%93Strong_string_s...

tripzilch2• 13 years ago

I was thinking the same. Though Karplus-Strong generally starts out with a triangle, pulse or white noise, if I am not mistaken?

qrr9712• 13 years ago

The vanilla algorithm starts with buffer full of white noise. However it originated as modification to a wavetable synthesizer that modified the waveform samples as it played them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUcNzPhZdwk&t=28m34s

gnu8• 13 years ago

That is far from the original boot beep. PCs were beeping when turned on long before Macs ever existed.

rsl7• 13 years ago

I suggest you read the article.

swamp40• 13 years ago

Charlie Kellner should have looked for a less visible way to get the sound out. A hole in the back? On the bottom?

Seems simple enough that I bet something is missing from the story.

Andy Hertzfeld on the Original 'Boot Beep'

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