This is the origin of the Mac startup sound known as "Sosumi"

The Mac sound was created by Jim Reekes, who in 1980 began working as a sound designer at Apple.. Reekes developed other everyday sounds in our day-to-day life at the same time, such as the camera sound in the screenshot.

Through a recent interview granted to the CNBC network, Jim Reekes commented once again on the origin of the Mac startup sound, known as "Sosumi", but also gives his opinion on the design of the audio of the Mac today. We will therefore see a point of view of the past and the present.

The name "Sosumi" arises through the controversy that turns into a lawsuit, with the record label The Beatles. At that time Jobs promised that the focus of his company would be the development of computers, leaving aside music. Therefore, Apple and The Beatles should not be competitors.

But the confrontations did not end. The Mac added support for recording audio and MIDI (a format for importing sound from instruments to the Mac). At that moment, The Beatles sued Apple and forced it to rename any sound that had a musical name. 

Reekes, decided to use a name that, without meaning anything and less with a musical sound, made fun of the sentence that forced him to change the name of the audios he had produced. He thought about calling it "let it ring." or any nonsense name like that. To this day it is one of the few Apple sounds that are registered.

As for the sounds of Macs on current computers, Reekes complained about the lack of start tunes in the teams. It is true that sound can be annoying depending on the type of environment you work in, but it is also a distinctive symbol of Apple. Regarding the sounds of Apple today, he stated:

I haven't really seen much interesting audio coming out of Apple in a while.

Reekes left Apple in the late 1990s and is a consultant away from the sound design business.