From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jim Reekes was a programmer at Apple Computer for 12 years. His work has
significantly affected operating systems, most notably System 7 and QuickTime. He also is
responsible for creating many of the system sounds for the Apple Macintosh operating system. Some of
the most famous creations during that time were the Mac OS startup
sound and the system sound sosumi.
Biography
Reekes graduated from California State University Fullerton in
1981 with a degree in Music Composition and Theory.
Despite Reekes significant achievements in the field of computer
science, he did not take any computer science courses in college
but opted to teach himself programming on the Apple II and then on the
Macintosh 128k. During this time, Reekes
could not afford the high cost associated with the Apple Lisa development
system.
In April 1988, Reekes began working at Apple Computer Inc. in
the Developer Technical Support group (also known as MacDTS). His
work at the time encompassed developing the beta version of System
7 and the Sound
Manager control panel. He also created the startup chime used
on every Macintosh since 1991.[1]
Reekes said, "The startup sound was done in my home studio on a Korg
Wavestation. It's a C Major chord, played with both hands
stretched out as wide as possible (with 3rd at the top, if I
recall)."
Patents
Reekes has earned several patents from the work he has done in
the past 20 years:
Accomplishments
- Created the client-server tuning Web
Service for Kerbango,
the world's first standalone internet radio, a tuning method later
adopted by Apple Computer's iTunes.
- Designed a jog wheel and hierarchical menu interface
predating the iPod.
- Responsible for porting the Real Networks RealPlayer to an Internet appliance.
- Original member of the QuickTime team.
- Responsible for numerous releases of operating systems and hardware products.
- Supported the development of multimedia products such as Mercer Mayer's Just
Grandma & Me, Myst, Macromedia's SoundEdit, Bias Peak,
Intelligent Music M, Great Wave ConcertWare, Articulate Systems Voice
Navigator, Rainmaker Research Thunder, Adobe Premiere,
Opcode Vision, QuickTime
Movie Player, HyperCard,
Final
Cut, and the enhanced Audio CD.
Trivia
- In 1989, Apple
Corps sued Apple Computer as part of long-running trademark litigation (see Apple
Corps v. Apple Computer). The System 7 operating
system was then under development for the Macintosh. System 7
was to include the new Sound Manager program, which Reekes had
written and patented. He
created a sound that he says was initially called "Chime",
though he says it may have been named "Xylophone". In either case,
Apple's legal department felt the name seemed too musical, and
therefore might give Apple Corps more grounds to sue; Reekes had to
change the name.
- As he worked with Apple Computer's music and sound programs,
Reekes often had to deal with legal scrutiny due to the ongoing
lawsuits about his company's legal rights to market music-related
products. In response, he says he first thought of the name "Let it
Beep" (parodying the title of
"Let it
Be", a song by The
Beatles, who founded Apple Corps). Told that the name might
create new risks for his company, Reekes claimed he replied, "So
sue me." He decided to use that phrase for the sound's name
instead, but spell it "s-o-s-u-m-i" and claim that it was an actual
word in Japanese. The plan worked and the
name "sosumi" was used for the
sound.
Quotes
The people on the outside think that, you know, it’s like this
wonderful world of Oz or Disney going on and all of us are just all
these brilliant amazing happy people and like ‘it’s not’ it’s like
a sausage factory, I mean, you really don’t want to know how this
stuff happens. A lot of it is just bad arguments and politics and
working around the rules and, and and not doing the right thing and
apologizing for it later and getting fired a few times, I mean,
that’s how things got done. It’s definitely like “Don’t pay
attention to the man behind the curtain. [2]
Engineers are retarded. They have some kind of brain damage that
allows them to not have social skills so that they could
concentrate long enough to write code. But it's a disease. That's
why I had to quit. I mean, I'm like an engineer in recovery. I
don't want to write code anymore. It just makes you retarded. I
mean, get a girlfriend, get a life.[3]
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