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

Attention to detail

[tuo42]

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 ;)

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.

I must be some kind of outlier

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Here's the sound

[the_other_chewey]

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.

Re:Here's the sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Who leaves the default tones on/leaves clocks blinking/etc?

People who have better things to do with their lives.

But, yes, we're the (screaming, bitching, whining, butthurt) moron.

Thanks, timothy

[Sockatume]

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.

Re:Thanks, timothy

[Princeofcups]

And not get kickbacks from the bloggers?

I don't think they are smart enough to ask for kickbacks. Ooooo, burn. :-)

Ah, the old days when you could check slashdot at 3:00AM and see Cowboy Neal diligently posting new interesting articles...

Re:Hardly Iconic

[Enry]

IIRC, Thomas Dolby came up with that one. Or at least made the technology to do polyphonic sound on a phone.

Easy to Fascinate Tomithy

[Anonymous Coward]

The story of some cute beeps and boops is a pretty low threshold for fascination.

Captcha: Teh Shiny!

Re:Hardly Iconic

[Sockatume]

The Nokia Tune predates polyphonic ringtones. You've not really heard it unless you've heard it in its original dentist-drill format, in its preferred setting of "important part of movie you've been waiting to see for months" or "close enough to hear, but too far to reach and silence, while you are attempting to fall asleep".

First Thing to Replace

[Colonel Korn]

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.

Re:First Thing to Replace

[AmiMoJo]

When I eventually figured out what it was I was surprised. It isn't really iconic, any more than the default Windows XP event sound. Generic, mushy, tuneless, forgettable...

For a while I used the JR East announcement sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T9qVpa6coE

Coo

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

He used Lisp, nice. Granted it was just for analysis and not to generate self-modifying, evolving code.

Re:Hardly Iconic

[Njovich]

Oh he came up with it? Was that before or after Francisco Tarrega wrote in in 1902?

Really?

[Iconoc]

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.

Not really a "tritone"

[Clueless Moron]

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.

Re:Not really a "tritone"

[operagost]

In addition to this head-scratcher in the linked article:

For all you music buffs out there, Jacklin also mentions that he wanted the sound to have a happy vibe, so he particularly experimented with "notes from the major scale, focusing on I, III, IV, V, and VIII" octaves.

I'm guessing the article writer isn't a musician, not knowing that the VIII and the octave mean the same (although I never hear anyone use VIII; it's octave or in notation "8va" because harmonically the I and the VIII are the same).

Re:Not really a "tritone"

[harperska]

The original quote from Jacklin's blog is:

I wanted a happy feel, so notes from the major scale, focussing on I, III, IV, V, and VIII (the octave).

But yes, it's clear that to the article writer 'octave' was simply a buzzword, and he didn't grasp the significance of the roman numerals. So he assumed that those numerals were different sorts of 'octaves'.

Re:ass pounder v.1.0

[BrokenHalo]

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

Not to be confused

[trumpetplayer]

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.

Sarcasm

[greggman]

"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

Re:ass pounder v.1.0

[pongo000]

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....