Creative Technologies founder Sim Wong Hoo died

His company confirmed that Creative Technologies founder, CEO and chairman Sim Wong Hoo has died. He "passed away peacefully on January 4, 2023," according to a press release. He was 67 years old. The company was huge in the MP3 player space with its Creative Nomad and Zen line of players and successfully sued Apple over its iPod, winning a $100 million settlement.

Sim originally set out to build an entire computer that he could talk to, according to 1993 and 1994 profiles of the man in Bloomberg and The New York Times. He founded Creative Technologies in 1981 in Singapore, and yet by 1986, two years after Steve Jobs let the Macintosh "speak for itself," the company's PCs had sold so poorly that reportedly only he had a handful of engineers.

It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when computer sound was not guaranteed. If you wanted to connect headphones or speakers that could do more than bloops or bleeps, you needed a sound card, and none has been as successful as Creative Labs' Sound Blaster. It sold more than 400 million units as of its 30th anniversary in 2019.

In the pre-Windows 95/DirectX era, few words in PC games were as important as the phrase "Sound Blaster compatible," allowing gamers to hear dogs bark in Wolfenstein 3D or play with a synthesized voice. in Creative's Dr Sbaitso demo (you can play it on the web these days). Creative hasn't been a household name in recent years, but it sells popular soundbars like its Sound Blaster Katana, speakers, webcams, and headphones. There's a dedicated Sound Blaster sound card still in their lineup.