Modern life is full of obnoxious sounds—ambient noise, schizophonia, and industrial music—but there is one sound so nasty that it cuts through all of them, which is kind of the point. Of course, we’re talking about the iPhone’s default alarm sound, known as “Radar.”
Did somebody drop a penny down the drain? Did the world’s best triangle player quickly seal themself into a closet? Is there an evil dentist nearby using a tiny drill on a mouse? No, it’s just an Apple fanboy too lazy to change the default settings.
Click upon the score and despair.
The alarm sound is a series of 32nd note triplets in decrescendo. The F#6 is high enough that it will wake the neighbors. And the 5/4 time signature is awkward enough that you can’t return to a rhythmic snooze. The lynx-eared among us will hear this sound and instantly want to kill it. I think they call it “Radar” because it’s supposed to be like sonar.
Sonar pings are among the least annoying sounds in the world. They are so pleasant that many a sonarmen and sonarwomen have fallen asleep at their screens. That’s how the Great War was started.
The Apple logo is the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge with a bite taken out. The first Macintosh computer sold for $666.66. But that’s not because Satanists are running all the world’s corporations. The elite just do that stuff for funsies, okay? They’re just trollin’, baby!
Somehow the ad wizards at Apple convinced multiple generations to buy their overpriced crap in order to be hip. Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, created this slick style of self-branding through the art of public relations, but even he couldn’t envision the power of a Justin Long commercial.
