I admit that I haven’t really been using Macs much lately, but I fondly remember the Ancien Regime System 7 operating system and its distinctive “quack” sound. I think it may have played when you tried to do something (like click somewhere) that the computer didn’t want you to.
Does this sound still occur officially in Mac OS X?
It doesn’t come with any version of OS X that I’m aware of, but it, and the other classic sounds like sosumi, ChuToy, and moof are available. IIRC, I found them all in a package somewhere a couple of years ago.
Found 'em: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19079/mac-os-classic-sound-pack
They’re in .wav format, so Windows people can use them as well.
The quack was an optional alternative to the default system beep. The System 7 Control Panel came with about a half dozen sounds that you could choose from, and of course you could add your own.
“Monkey” and “Elephant” were my favorites.
OS X does have “Sosumi”, which is the same as it was in System 7. It might be the only default sound from that time that’s still included.
There’s so much history and drama represented by that little “PLINK” sosumi noise that I doubt Apple will cast it to the dustbin any time soon.
Speaking of quack - that article says the quack noise is really an Apple filesystem engineer imitating a duck. Alas, he didn’t say exactly who it was.
Thanks for posting that link; it’s a fun read and nice to see just who came up with those sounds.
I have the “Wild Eep” as the default error sound on one of my PCs at home.
So that explains why it echos.