For as long as the Mac has existed, users turning on their Macs have been greeted with a delightfully familiar chime. Apple, in a move that will undoubtedly surprise and perhaps infuriate many, has removed the startup chime from its new MacBook Pros. Word of the startup chime’s untimely demise was originally noticed by the website Pingie.
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Notably, this isn’t an instance of Apple tossing one of the most iconic components of Mac computing to the curb for no reason. On the contrary, the chime’s removal is reportedly the byproduct of a new design whereby Apple’s new MacBook Pros turn on automatically once a user begins to lift up the display. And now that SSD-based Macs boot up quicker than ever before, the chime — which was originally intended to signal that no hardware of software issues were found at the beginning of the boot process — has arguably outlived its usefulness.
The current Mac startup chime — an F sharp cord — hasn’t changed at all since Apple introduced the iMac G3 in the late 90s. Prior to that, there were any number of variations to the startup chime sound, as evidenced in the video below.
As a point of interest, the Mac startup sound is one of the rare sounds that has been granted trademark protection, joining other well-known sounds such as NBC’s chimes and PlayStation’s robot-esque “play-sta-tion” sound.
