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.

Comments

Re:Attention to detail

[Sockatume]

Or in this case the attention to detail of a sound designer creating a sound effect for a different product that Apple would eventually buy out, and reuse the sound from in another completely different product for a completely different purpose.

Kudos to Apple for picking a sound out of all the possible Apple-owned sound effects that sounds appropriately "messagey", especially in comparison to the specially-composed ring- and message-tones it had to compete with, but the nerdly attention to detail belongs to someone else.