Making the Sounds of Vista 375
Bengt writes "The sounds of Vista took 18 months to get right for Microsoft. Artist Robert Fripp recorded hours of sound, and assisted Steven Ball in choosing between several different options. A clapping rhythm was rejected for 'sounding too human', and a techno beat was removed from considering because it was just the opposite." From the article: "If it seems like overkill to go to all that trouble for a few seconds of sound, consider this: Microsoft estimates that the clips such as the e-mail alert will be played trillions of times in years to come. That's a lot of opportunity to annoy, offend -- or, if the job is done right -- please or appease computer users the world over. One major concern was that the startup sound not grow grating after a time. You want a sound that people will love the first time they hear it, but it's a paradox to also say, 'Oh and by the way, we need people to love it the tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time they hear it,' Ball said."
Sounds? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yep, work on that startup sound (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, whether or not they've paid attention to the right details is another question entirely... and one which will be answered shortly.
Startup-sound (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds? (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X & Linux don't have "startup sounds" (Score:1, Insightful)
(That sound you hear when you turn on your Mac is NOT the operating system starting.)
Can Frippertronics save Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)
The title of this post is a bit of a Lark, of course it can.
My choice for the startup sound of course would be the opening section of the song "Discipline" from the "Three of a Perfect Pair" album. And perhaps a good error noise would be Belew singing, "I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat!"
But enough of this banter.
Re:Sounds? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise that MS employs both programmers and sound engineers, right? And that devoting some time for a sound engineer to try to make sure the sound scheme is as good as possible does not detract one iota from the amount of effort that the programmers can put in to their parts of the project, right?
On a project of this size, aesthetics and engineering considerations are not mutually exclusive, you can have both. The problems only come when you have too few people, the wrong mix of skills, or too little time/money. None of these are problems for Vista.
A good sign (Score:5, Insightful)
We see this often with computer and programs. Thinking about how long it take a computer to boot up or wake. Thinking of how many key clicks it takes to get from one place to another. Thinking of the opportunity costs of forcing users to enter 30 character validation keys at every turn.
As long they have funded the sound as additional work, and not just redirected the effort from another project, I see this as a good sign. It could mean that MS Windows will be a tool that people like to use, and not just one they have to use.
Re:OS X & Linux don't have "startup sounds" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a big difference between polish and flashiness, the former applies to functionality as much as anything else while the later does not.
The problems only come when you have too few people, the wrong mix of skills, or too little time/money. None of these are problems for Vista.
There is always a trade off between where you allocate resources, it's simply a question of degree.
Are startup sounds really necessary? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about getting rid of the sound? What else does a startup sound inspire other than the sour feeling of having to restart the PC all the time?
Re:Sounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
> This seems to underscore Microsoft's focus on flashiness over function, to me.
> I would hope that far more development would go into security, efficiency, and reliability.
I think you have a misunderstanding of how software development works. It's not as if Microsoft Executives said "Stop working on the security, boys, and start frettin' those guitars!" They're independent teams - working on Windows sounds isn't going to pull resources off the programming teams.
> Adding new and exciting sounds is pretty far down the list of what would make me want to run out and buy a new OS.
No, but it's going to contribute to your sense of comfort with that OS; and if that doesn't apply to you specifically, it WILL apply to most Windows users. What's going to make people feel like they're using a well-designed OS? I can guarantee that for the vast majority of people, it's not going to be clever kernel I/O scheduling algorithms or an efficient garbage-collection subroutine. It will be the look and feel of what they see (and hear) every day when they turn on their PC.
> Especially since we've had the ability customize the sound scheme since what, Windows 3.0?
Accounting for statistical outliers, approximately.... nobody does that. So, the default sounds had better be pretty good.Re:Sounds? (Score:3, Insightful)
With a company the size of Microsoft, it's not the zero-sum game you imply. Your sound team has very little if any overlap with the engineers who make the damn thing work.
Adding new and exciting sounds is pretty far down the list of what would make me want to run out and buy a new OS
I don't think it's going to be marketed as a selling point.
Especially since we've had the ability customize the sound scheme since what, Windows 3.0?
But very very few people do. (And I think many of the ones who would've back in the bad old Win3.1 days have probably moved on to OSX or Linux by now.) So the sound becomes an important "signature".
Seriously, if this were about OSX, no one would bat an eyelash. Apple gets huge kudos for thinking about the aesthetic elements of their UI, and for good reason. Now, Microsoft is generally much less graceful with this stuff (like the Fisher Price look of XP) but still, you can't really rip on them for sinking resources into this.
Car analogies (Score:3, Insightful)
In the OS world, you can have
-a non-userfriendly (at least not beginner-friendly) but technically superb system. Think of classic UNIX as an example.
-or as the other extreme, a pretty, newbie-friendly but unreliable system, like Windows 9x.
Of course the differences are smaller these days. Microsoft is getting better on security and reliability, while modern Linux distributions make getting started a lot easier. But the underlying difference in philosophy still seems to be there, and my trust in Microsoft is still limited.
Re:Sounds? (Score:3, Insightful)
That depends on how much time and money you have to devote to the project. Time clearly hasn't been an issue for Vista, and given Microsoft's resources, I very much doubt that money has either.
Yes, of course for most projects there are constraints on how much effort can be expended, and the same is certainly true of Vista. However if you think for one second that resources have been diverted from making the OS secure (as in the OP's complaint) in favour of the sound scheme then you're a fool. That's not to say that it *will* be secure; just that if it isn't, it won't be because they paid some guy to make it make pretty noises.
Too bad they didn't think to let us vote (Score:2, Insightful)
To me the sound they picked kind of evokes an emperor with no clothes - it is four notes long: sol-do-re-sol. Kind of sounds like a rip off of the beginning of the Gates of Kiev.
Now if you really want a cool startup sound, check this one out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt1bgsvsWms [youtube.com]
Now that is a startup sound to make one proud.
Re:Car analogies (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think it's a lack of money to pay engineers that prevents a company like GM or Microsoft from creating bug-free products? That's amazingly clueless.
Don't you think that Microsoft wouldn't pay whatever it took to hire people to make Windows the best product they could? Yes, they would. The problem is not money. The problem is logistics and resources. There are a finite number of skilled developers, especially those with skills in a particular area. There are also a finite number of people that can work on the same project without stepping on each others toes.
You can't just throw more bodies at the problem. That just makes matters worse. So, no. It's highly unlikely that cutting the budget for fabric design would do anything to improve the engineering staff.
Re:Sounds? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think my issue is that if they spent 18 months working on a bunch of sounds, someone (or a group of someones) had to have been paid during that time. How much of that cost relates to the sticker price of Vista ? Do the sounds make me more productive ? Do they justify the added cost ? One person's labor of love does not translate into a business need. Besides, one of the first things I do when I install Windows is clear out the sound events because, well, I'm not blind. I can tell when email comes in because I'm staring at the email client. I can tell when someone IM's me because their stupid window pops up. I can also tell when I just clicked a link on a web page without that annoying click sound, because I just friggin clicked on it myself. I'd rather be hearing my own choice of music, or the carefully crafted sounds of a video game, unencumbered by all these spurious noises.
The same applies to other software developers too. I don't remember which one it is, but there's some burning software out there that plays a little xylophone jingle when the burn is finished. That was nice in 1996 when it took 80 minutes to burn a disc, and you had to leave the PC alone while it was doing it.. a polite tone to call my attention from the other room was appreciate. When the burn takes 5 minutes and I'm still sitting at the machine, I don't need it to go "ring-a-ding bing bong" and make me instinctively reach for the mute key. Or the girlfriend's printer that says "Printing started" in a loud SoBe collegiate voice, and "Printing complete" at the end. Gee, thanks! I didn't notice I had just clicked the "Print" button, and I was wondering why all that paper was coming out of that thing.
Noise pollution, that's what it is.
Re:Car analogies (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to bust your bubble but the Jap's did something entirely different,
they looked at the British designs and execution thereof and knew what not to do.
Book analogies (Score:1, Insightful)
The Mythical Man-Month [wikipedia.org] covered this issue. Apparently some here haven't read it.
Now two things. One what MS is doing makes perfect sense when you think beyound just one person (usually the poster). Two the complaint that the OP makes sounds suspiciously like the "Those KDE guys are wasting their time. They should help with Gnome instead" argument. In which case the same counter-argument applies to this situation as the other.
Illustrative comment... (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow.
That comment so totally captures the Linux vs. Windows desktop mindset. Yes, why not add an option in the install process to pick a sound scheme from 10 different styles? And why not also ask them what key they want it in? And what the volume should be? And whether they want it to stay at a constant volume, or whether over time it should fade down? And they may want to choose the "random sound and key" checkbox as well. Oh, and we should be sure to have an option for which device to play it through. And then there should be some radio buttons for playing only on weekends and holidays vs. work days...
Re:Car analogies (Score:5, Insightful)
Jaguar: Lucas Electric components leading to the "Off-dim-flicker" jokes even in Jaguar clubs and mailing lists.
What makes you think Japanese copied your engineering? Unlike British and American cars in the '80s when the Japanese began to dominate the auto market, Japanese cars actually WORKED. They didn't get where they did by copying your country or by copying America, but listening to engineering and manufacturing consultants whom no domestic manufacturers would listen to because improving processes is "too costly."
Re:Sounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
or if you're in denial and believe in your own superiority over everyone, like how some open source people have become. Note the replies that came after your post.
Let me quote:
and
And many more to come.
I'm almost certainly will be modded as troll, but I don't really care. This is exactly the reason why open source will never rule the world, the mentality of "we are superior" and "strike down those that say otherwise". Or even "silence those that criticize the obvious flaw in our thinking". Oh, and the lemmings mentality that praise everything Apple.
Instead of discussing WHY MS put so much effort in this area, it is instantly scoffed at and judged without the slightest clue. Scoff all you want, people. These guys are making millions of dollars each year, while most of you DO NOT. There must be something they're doing right, so if you want OSS to succeed, steal some of it instead of dismissing it like 5 year olds. Nevermind their monopoly tactics, their product DOES have some merit of its own, which are left as exercise for the readers.
The response of slashdot to criticism is very predictable. Watch how my comment is modded down to oblivion.
Re:OS X & Linux don't have "startup sounds" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they do. Certainly every distro I've ever used that includes GNOME or KDE has some sort of startup sound when they login.
(That sound you hear when you turn on your Mac is NOT the operating system starting.)
Doesn't matter. As far as Apple marketing (which is why these sorts of soundbits exist) is concerned, Mac == OS X.
Re:OS X & Linux don't have "startup sounds" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot about the part where if you say "go ahead and mod me down" or "I'll probably get modded down for this," you in fact get modded up. It's one of those Slashdot peculiarities.
Re:More bodies? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More bodies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most corporate development can't work that way.