Mar 28
Text… Pix… AV… xR.
Remember surround sound home theater & 3D TV? A fading memory… all in your head. The promise was real but the technology was premature.
Unlike my younger Millennial cohorts, I can remember a time before the Internet took off. Al Gore may have invented it (or not) before my lungs first cried “Hello, World!” but like all nascent technologies, the Internet took a while to develop & fan out.
A few years before the awful sound of dial-up modems became commonplace, my first experience with this new thing called the Internet was at my mom’s workplace - the local community college. I was in grade school and had learned to type in “computer class,” but was young enough to still periodically revert to pecking at keys. So with this Internet thing in front of my eyes, I persevered at pecking out the names of Smashing Pumpkins songs so that I could print out the lyrics for my umm solo karaoke parties at home.
There were no images in this early portal to the Internet, and it wasn’t until later that I’d discover the graphical & social power of the emerging Internet. To be fair, the community college’s connection wasn’t quite text-only. At this time, people were apparently already sharing digital music online, albeit in the form of low-data MIDI files rendered locally by receiving soundcards.
By the time we got a dial-up connection at home, America was well into AOL’s brief dominance. I never had AOL, but if you’re my age you probably remember the associated acronym: AIM.
AIM was like magic to teenagers in the late 90s. Much the way teens today are engrossed in texting, so too were my classmates & I enthralled with the ability to virtually “hang out” well into the evening on a school night. This was the age of “chat rooms” for anonymous social connection, and AIM broke through the creepster barrier to connect teens directly to each other.
Before blogging was a thing people did, Xanga helped me and some likeminded peers easily create a platform to share our writings & ramblings. Weblog, it was called, but I doubt I ever called it that. I essentially viewed it as a public journal, a place for me to share. Not just a precursor to blogging, but somewhat of a precursor to social media in general.
MySpace goes down in the history books as the social media platform that lost to Facebook. But to me it was never a social media platform. It was a streaming music platform long before streaming music was a thing.
To me, MySpace was what Bandcamp is now. But even before Bandcamp, YouTube supplanted MySpace as the streaming music platform for indie artists to share their music, grow their audience, and possibly hit it big.
By this time, Napster & iPods had already revolutionized the music industry.
Instead of MySpace pivoting & adapting to become a pioneering leader in streaming music, they simply petered out like Yahoo. Google ended up acquiring YouTube and the service remains a seminal platform for distribution of cat videos and other such nonsense. Yet neither YouTube or Blockbuster were able to adapt quick enough to compete with another new entrant - Netflix.
Apple, at this time, was winning the war against the pirates, effectively taking down Napster. Other illegal music downloading services had emerged to pick crumbs from the rotten pie, but the writing was on the wall. The iTunes Store was the platform for downloading digital music, and the cost was worth the convenience & legitimacy of the whole experience.
By the time I was in grad school, Napster had pivoted from the fallen lord of pirates to a play for legitimacy. They negotiated a deal with Penn State that provided free access to Napster’s new service for the entire university. This new service, which obviously never took off, was essentially a streaming music service much like Apple Music would eventually become.
By 2008, when this “new Napster” was making its way to the ears of a new cohort of Penn State students, Napster’s visionary creator had already moved on. Years earlier, Sean Parker had recognized the revolutionary potential of a new website called “TheFacebook.” Parker’s most publicly notable contribution to Mark Zuckerberg’s quickly growing website was to drop the “The.”
Given that you probably didn’t even know Napster was still kicking around in 2011 and that it was purchased by uhh Best Buy, the bleeding retail giant that once unseated Circuit City. Remember Circuit City? Yes, like their brick & mortar peer, Blockbuster, neither Circuit City or Best Buy could combat the growing competition of online media sales and streaming services.
2011 also happened to be the year that Spotify was introduced to the US, much to my satisfaction. To be fair, Spotify wasn’t the first to hit the nail on the head of streaming music. They were, however, the first to provide on-demand access to a streaming library.
At this time, Pandora was already a dominant streaming music service across the country. People loved the power & simplicity of “tuning in” to personalized, customizable, and free digital radio stations.
In the Summer of 2011, Siri was just a person’s name, Google was just a search engine & smartphone company, and echo was just reflection of sound. Cortana? Then as now, no one ever heard of it.
But by the Fall of 2011 with the launch of iPhone 4S and the introduction of Siri, a new era was birthed. As an audio engineer and Apple fan boy, the news struck me like lightning. My mind was flooded with grandiose visions of the world soon to come, and I freely sputtered prophecies to my friends & colleagues at Shure. To me, voice would soon sit alongside text as a dominant communication IO medium.
Perhaps in my mind at the time was the shocking introduction of the voice-only controlled 3rd gen iPod shuffle in 2009. Tiny as it was, its voice-only UI proved to be prematurely introduced and was subsequently superseded the following year by the 4th and final generation of the iPod shuffle. Of course, the iPod shuffle never connected to the Internet or Bluetooth headphones, and it never crammed Siri into its tiny shell. It used a programmatic non-AI voice UI called VoiceOver.
And see, that’s the thing - it wasn’t just the audio side of the equation that made Siri exciting. It was its introduction to the public as the first AI Neanderthal.
Over a decade later, one might argue that Siri is still in the Stone Age, but clearly the writing is on the cave wall.
Echoing loud within those cave walls is, of course, Amazon’s Echo.
Within the MOTIV team at Shure, Amazon’s introduction of Echo in 2014 was definitely a topic of conversation. Admittedly, I was skeptical that people would be comfortable with placing an “always listening” Internet-connected device in their kitchens & bedrooms. But unlike Siri, Echo caught like fire on the draught-stricken California hills and spread just as fast.
When HomePod launched in 2018, it was the uncontested best sounding smart speaker on the market. Hands down. Still is. But in 2022, 8 years after Echo’s debut and 11 years after Siri’s industry-leading splash, you’d be hard pressed to argue that HomePod is the smartest smart speaker on the market.
Enthusiastic about Spotify from the day I received access, I spread the word to everyone I knew. So if you knew me and weren’t into emerging trends in audio technology back in 2011, you probably rolled your eyes a lot. But I was as I’ve always been - relentlessly passionate. Spotify finally nailed it. They did what no one else had been able to do at that time. They launched an on-demand streaming music service with a winning subscription model.
Pandora never successfully pivoted. Napster had never successfully legitimized their business. Not only did Steve Jobs miss the boat on streaming music, he also apparently thought that even Jesus Christ might not be capable of successfully introducing the subscription model to the music industry.
I might’ve agreed with Steve when he made that outrageous statement back in the 2003 Age of iPod. But I probably wouldn’t have. You see, even as a young kid I was obsessed with audio technology. With this obsession, my career has been guided by two life-long questions:
- What comes next?
- When will I be able to simply think of a track and hear the music?
The first question is eternal and its answer ephemeral. The second has been my career’s driving motivation, and we are quickly approaching the incredible answer to that remarkable question.
Music’s progression of consumer media formats has been a tango between performance & convenience. It has been an ever-quickening dance whereby each step appears for a fleeting moment to perhaps be the last.
What could be better than CDs?
I thought to myself back in the 90s. The best I could come up with at the time was a smaller CD, or perhaps a smaller and more skip-proof equivalent like the MiniDisc. But alas, elusive was the answer.
What could be better than mp3?
I thought to myself back in the 00s. The best I could come up with at the time was a smaller file or higher quality format, like AAC or FLAC. But alas, I was blinded still to the future yet to come.
What could be better than streaming music?
I thought to myself back in the 10s. To be fair, I was older by then and joined Apple’s Audio EE team at the exact mid-point of that decade.
I was recruited to Apple in 2015 and my first day of work in Cupertino was the first day of work in 2016. When I broke the news of my departure to my colleagues at Shure, hands down the two most common comments were:
- Will you be working in that crazy spaceship campus?
- Tell them not to remove the headphone jack!
Both of those comments made me laugh at the time and make me laugh still. In fact, I’m still commonly asked by “civilians” if I work in “the spaceship.” Although lately the questions are more centered around whether I work at home or in the office.
During my final year at Shure, I had been laying groundwork for next-generation MOTIV products with a small group of equally passionate colleagues. One of my skunkworks campaigns at that time was to legitimize Bluetooth in the minds of key pro audio industry leaders. A legendary acoustics engineer who helped recruit me to Shure and who worked with me during the early days of MV88 had left to join Apple. Later, he was one of the contacts that ultimately recruited me to Apple as well.
Joining Apple’s Audio EE team within its Acoustics org was a dream come true. Still is.
My very first week there I was privy to the fact that the rumors were indeed true - the iPhone 7 would launch in Sept 2016 and shock the audio industry not with what it offered but what it removed: the headphone jack.
After cutting my teeth for a few months on 2nd gen Apple Watch(s), I jumped in to help the team with some pressing late-breaking issues on the Lightning to 3.5mm Adapter and the now iconic but then top secret 1st gen AirPods.
In fact, the first person to ever show me prototype AirPods was my former colleague from Shure, who was by then a critical member of the Acoustics team developing AirPods.
I’ll never forget my very first impression of AirPods, and the following months unpacking it.
“Hmm. It’s basically just EarPods without a cable.” I thought.
I, like most people, didn’t realize how revolutionary this tiny device would become. But I knew immediately that it would feel comfortable & familiar to the public. Along with its flawless execution and seamless operation, AirPods became the sort of smash hit that only Apple could pull off.
The 6 years since I joined Apple have been an utter whirlwind of spectacular happenings and absurd challenges. I’ve had the immense privilege of playing a key role in every model of AirPods ever launched, including the most recent full platforming of 3rd gen AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max.
2nd gen AirPods may have looked just like 1st gen, but on the inside it was an entirely new product. W1 was replaced with the H1 chip that would later also drive AirPods Pro & AirPods Max. Each new generation used an entirely different custom amplifier that I helped develop and was directly responsible for integrating. Did I mention this is my dream job?
Chief among the updates in 2nd gen AirPods was the introduction of the “Hey Siri” feature. This was a public sneak peek of the transition from mere “Bluetooth earphones” to the growing category of “smart earphones.”
Back in 2001, the iconic white cord connecting iPod to eardrums often had to blare music to overcome loud ambient noise. Exactly 10 years & 3 days after Apple’s introduction of the 1st gen iPod, we launched the 3rd gen AirPods with Spatial Audio. First introduced in 2020 for AirPods Pro & AirPods Max, I’ve been super excited about Spatial Audio since the very first demo I heard back in 2016. Along with support for the new Dolby Atmos, AirPods with Spatial Audio offer an incredible glimpse of the aural world to come, where sound through headphones is externalized to a virtual environment outside and around our heads.
Along with its Pro & Max siblings, the AirPods family not only offers active noise cancellation (ANC), but also an increasing array of Hearing Health features like noise dosimetry and Ambient Noise Reduction (ANR) & Conversation Boost (CB).
The sound around
Mono speakers, stereo speakers, quadraphonic & surround sound, headphone… the audio industry has been on a century-long progression towards Spatial Audio & Atmos.
When I first heard an early demo of Spatial Audio, it totally blew my mind.
I’ve experienced countless incredible undisclosed developments over my six years at Apple so far, and my lips have always remained sealed. I have never and won’t ever leak confidential information, so don’t expect to find any secret nuggets here.
But these days I find myself thinking more and more about that timeless question I’ve chased since childhood:
