Slashdot Mirror
Behind the Story of the iPhone's Default Text Tone
An anonymous reader writes "In a fascinating post from Kelly Jacklin, the long time Apple software engineer details how he helped create the default text alert sound on the iPhone — a sound otherwise known as 'Tri-tone.' The history of the the pleasant text alert sound that we've all come to know and love stretches all the way back to 1998, nearly 10 years before the iPhone ever hit store shelves." Here's Jacklin's post.
Wether you love or hate Apple, it's exactly this attention to detail that makes many of their products special. As long as you pay enough attention to hold them right, of course ;)
I can't for the life of me think of what the 'tri-tone' sounds like.
On the other hand, the Nokia tune is possibly more well known than Mickey Mouse.
Not being an iThing user myself, I didn't know what this Tri-tone
is supposed to be. And it doesn't seem to playable at or even linked
to from any of the story links.
So here it is.
Aaaaah, that one.
Its no Nokia tune thats for sure.
Dah dala da da
(or angry frog for poor quality but memorable)
I know that the Slashdot editors get a lot of stick for apparently being asleep at the wheel, but taking the time to add the original source article and not just the blog provided in the original submission is very welcome.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The story of some cute beeps and boops is a pretty low threshold for fascination.
Captcha: Teh Shiny!
It's fucking annoying.
Am I the only one that's annoyed they they link to some blog post about the interview instead of the actual interview? If the write-up is really good on the blog, sure, post it. At least LINK to the actual story though.
The first thing I did when I got an iPhone 5 was to replace this sound with the much subtler but more recognizable HTC Woodblock sound I've been using for several years. But now I call it Fakeblock for obvious reasons.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Who's this we you refer to?
He used Lisp, nice. Granted it was just for analysis and not to generate self-modifying, evolving code.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Having been an Android user for some time, I have always thought that tone we all "know and love" sounds clunky and antiquated. Step back. Look at your surroundings. Find something else that deserves obsession. This isn't it.
In music lingo, "tritone" just means an interval of six semitones, or an augmented fourth. It's the strange sound you get when playing a C and F# at the same time.
"my job was secure and cushy, and I didn't feel like taking any risks"
Or is this the leading edge, risk taking private sector?
how many iphones can you pack in your ass at once without leakage?
I don't think the wombat features highly in the /. demographic:
As you splash along the track
Eyes alert and ears pinned back
You might have seen those queer square turds
And thought, if not expressed in words
The stress of such a defecation
Baffles ones' imagination
But it's not done to entertain us -
The Wombat has an oblong anus.
So if your slumber is disturbed
By cries and screams, don't be perturbed.
Eyes closed, teeth clenched and racked with pain
A Wombat's gone and crapped again!!
HTH
Tri-tone as in "melody using 3 tones", not to be confused with the tritone interval http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone which is considered the most dissonant interval there is in the so called just intonation system.
yEAH i'M IN THE toilet! The TOILET!!! No!! Just finished. Tchao!!!!!!!!!!!
"Know and love"
When I hear that sound I think (a) asshole should set her damn phone to silent instead of annoying everyone around her (b) uncreative as she's too lazy to pick something more original (c) probably wants to show off her iGadjetness as a fashion statement which makes her seem even more shallow
Yes, I'm aware these thoughts may reflect poorly on myself as well
Have gnu, will travel.
Too bad he didn't some how arrange to have royalties paid to himself for each copy of that little sound. :)
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I ripped them a few years ago. When the Treo Flute sound goes off, people my age and older often give me a smile.
The Astral tone on the Motorola T900 pager was a very simple tone by comparison to tones of the last few years. However, it was great for waking you up from a deep sleep to let you know part of your infrastructure was down. The way scaled notes up and down made it much easier to hear over ambient noise, like a TV, if the pager was accidentally left in another room. If anyone has link for the tone, would you mind sharing?
Route Nagios notifications to your phone and you will never describe your text message notification sound with an adjective "pleasant" :)
All I can say is never in a million years did I think I would ever search for "wombat turds." Even more surreal is this video. I'm just astounded. Fuck the iPhone tritone, this is far more interesting....
Would it have driven you crazy that "ess em ess" and "ess oh ess" are only one letter apart? And in some dialects, "em" and "oh" even sound similar, as the British "oh" sound starts fairly forward in the mouth.
Not necessarily. For several versions, avast! antivirus used a very similar tone to show that it has downloaded new definitions, followed by a synthesized voice stating "Virus database has been updated."
You've not really heard it unless you've heard it in its original dentist-drill format
You mean back when the lyrics were "You annoying stupid douchebag, turn your phone off now"?
Guess what kind of space the snakes in the Nokia phone game moved around on.
Yes, they were MFing snakes on a MFing plane long before Samuel L. Jackson starred in that meme of a movie.
.... if you give a shit about this.
So the real problem with Nokia's SMS tone is pop-cultural osmosis failure. You were familiar with how to key "s" and "o" through pop culture, but only hams and others who find Morse code "a familiar dialect" know what "m" is.
One of the frustrating things about custom ringtones in the iOS platform has been that for whatever reason, users weren't able to assign custom ringtones to the text notification until iOS 6. That had been a thorn in my toe for several years.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
What was wrong with the morse for SMS: ...--...?