Boop?
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The latest xkcd:
Mouseover title: "With a good battery, the device can easily last for 5 or 10 years, although the walls probably won't."
The joke worked for me, although I was pretty sure that a (current) MacBook makes no sound when a usb device connects. I checked, and that's true.
A current Windows 11 laptop does make usb-connect sound — but "BOOP!" is not really a good onomatopoeia for it:
There are two distinct notes, roughly a descending fifth (at approximately 587 Hz and 392 Hz), so a monosyllabic "BOOP!" doesn't really work. And the onset of the first note is not really very stop-like, much less evoking a [b]:
It seems to me more like [ˈa.u] (= "AA-oo"), though I admit that's not nearly as evocative as "BOOP!". Commenters may have better ideas.
The only "device connect sound" I could find on the internet was this one:
It's more complicated, and even less BOOP!-like. The video's caption is "Windows 10/8 Device Connect Sound", which may be why it's familiar, though I can't place it more exactly than "that's a familiar sound".
Maybe Randall has a laptop with a different (and more boop-like) usb-connecting sound? Or maybe he was subconsciously inspired by the new musical?
The explanation and discussion at explainxkcd are not helpful with respect to this aspect of the joke.
Update — Commenters YRG and AKMA note that MacBooks make a rather boop-like sound when connected to charging power — here's what it sounds like on my laptop:
There are two partials, one at 880 Hz and the other at (concert A) 440 Hz, with amplitude contours that you can see in the spectrogram.
I wonder who invents such sounds, and who "owns" them (if anyone does)?
YRG said,
June 11, 2025 @ 5:55 am
The MacBook charging sound is the most annoying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y44-2Wdjq_Y
Jkw said,
June 11, 2025 @ 6:00 am
I think boop would be a good description of the sound Windows makes when it pops up an error message. Perhaps this indicates that the comic was rewritten without full proofreading.
I think the noise of a usb device unplugging would make more sense if you are trying to annoy someone.
AKMA said,
June 11, 2025 @ 6:09 am
My Apple devices typically make a sound similar to ‘boop’ when they’re connected to anything that supplies charging power (direct to mains, mediated by connection to laptop, connection to battery) — provided that sound hasn’t been silenced.
Philip Taylor said,
June 11, 2025 @ 6:52 am
"T]he onset of the first note is not really very stop-like, much less evoking a [b]:", well, I find it stop-like — I hear (descending fifth, two distinct syllables) "Pu-oo".
Circeus said,
June 11, 2025 @ 9:54 am
I think a "message received" sound would be even better to really drive people crazy. There's one song on my playlist which for some reason include at one point, of all things, the new message alert from MSN messenger and EVERY SINGLE TIME it takes me by surprise.
David Marjanović said,
June 11, 2025 @ 9:58 am
That's not remotely boop-like either, beyond being monosyllabic. It's like… saying [çi̯uŋ] with your mouth closed the whole time.
Anonymous said,
June 11, 2025 @ 12:02 pm
I’ve worked at these companies – there are in house sound designers who make these sounds (and other user interface sounds, like low battery warnings). The companies would certainly believe they own the specific sounds.
Daniel Deutsch said,
June 12, 2025 @ 8:31 am
Ok, not an alert sound, but the most annoying computer sound of all time was when our modems were connecting to the internet.
Philip Taylor said,
June 12, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
You didn't like it, Daniel ? It was music to my ears (and I can still hear it in my mind's ear to this day). Althougjh I suspect that when I first heard a modem connecting, it was to something considerably less sophisticated than "the Internet", and operated at 110 (ort at most 300) baud/bits per second !
Blaugen said,
June 13, 2025 @ 3:44 pm
"I wonder who invents such sounds, and who 'owns' them (if anyone does)?"
IANAL, but my understanding is that case law regarding use of samples in music has established that up to five notes can be sampled without having to pay royalties; once you hit six notes, royalties must be paid. Assuming that's correct, it seems to me that it would not be possible to "own" these sounds as all of them are effectively very short pieces of music that are less than six notes long.