About the founder of Sound Blaster - Sim Wong Hoo

Tech Talk
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Hi hope @Leo talks about Sim Wong Hoo - passed away few days ago suddenly. He was the founder of Sound Blaster… and Mp3 players like the Zen, and Nomad. Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo, the man behind Sound Blaster, has died - The Verge

Here’s a local article about the interaction with Steve Jobs - Once upon a time, S'pore tech company Creative went up against Apple & walked away with US$100 million - Babelfish

In May 2006, Creative sued Apple, saying that the iPod and iPod Nano infringed on a patent that the company had for the interface in its Zen media player.

Apple countersued.

The legal dispute was eventually settled with US$100 million paid by Apple, granting them license to a patent for the hierarchical user interface used in Creative’s products.

In an interview with CNBC, Sim spoke about his belief that Apple had taken their ideas.

“It was something we had to do because Apple did not just… infringe our patent. Actually, Steve [Jobs] came to our booth, saw our products and liked the product. He saw the future of Apple there.

[…]

Then, he asked our people to go to his headquarter to present it to him. Our people went to look for some collaboration. Unfortunately, I was not there because I was in Singapore. Maybe if I was there, maybe the history would change. He was trying to work something together, but it didn’t turn out.”

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I saw your email. We’ll definitely cover it on TWiT tomorrow and MBW on Tuesday. Thanks!

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You’re a legend. Thanks for this.

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Actually just bought an AE-5 Plus card for my main rig to add on some audio capabilities that my mainboard doesn’t have. Quite a brand! Sim Wong Hoo will be missed.

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Hey Leo, I wanted to replay this video for my son to watch (he is much older now and understands) but the video isn’t working This Week in Tech: So Many Beans .

By the way I’m Singaporean and also I donated the Cubic99 back to Sim as they, surprisingly, did not have a full working set anymore. Later on I discovered someone recorded a video of the Cubic99 - The world’s first talking computer, in action. This was what “audio” sounded like from a PC - 2:40 onwards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX9Gw5H3rEk&t=170s

There’s even a video of Lode Runner running on it!

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Those days it was AdLib vs SoundBlaster. SB had the gameport which AdLib didnt.

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Hmmm, when I first went there, it didn’t seem to want to play right. But then I clicked ahead, and it started to play at around the 4 min mark, and now when I reload the page or return there, it seems to be working for me. So I guess give it another try?

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All good, I found the video on Youtube :slight_smile:

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Hmm. I’m not sure why the video isn’t working for you. It’s working here. Maybe Singapore is blocking it?

Here’s a direct download link: https://cdn.twit.tv/video/twit/twit0909/twit0909_h264m_1920x1080.mp4

It’s amazing how far we’ve come. My AI agent speaks to me in a perfect British accent indistinguishable from the real thing, without any additional hardware in nearly real time. I even have my own voice generated by Qwen from just a few minutes of samples.