William S. Kincaid (born March 10, 1956) is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur notable for creating the MP3 player

SoundJam MP SoundJam MP is a discontinued MP3 player for classic Mac OS-compatible computers and Rio-compatible hardware synchronization manager that was released in July 1999 and was available until June 2001. Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid developed SoundJam ...

with

Jeff Robbin Jeffrey L. Robbin is an executive and software engineer at Apple, Inc.. He developed the SoundJam music player software, which was acquired by Apple in 2000. There, he created iTunes, and was "closely involved" with the iPod's development. I ...

that was eventually bought by Apple and renamed

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

Work

Robbin and Kincaid worked for Apple in the 1990s as system software engineers on their operating system project Copland; the project was later abandoned. Both left Apple, where Robbin created Conflict Catcher and Kincaid worked at a startup. After listening to a show on the radio channel NPR, Kincaid created hardware and

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and ot ...

support for the Diamond

Rio Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

line of digital audio players. He then enlisted Jeff Robbin to develop the front-end for an MP3-playing software they named

. Dave Heller completed the core team. The three chose Casady & Greene as distributor, whom Jeff had previously worked with to distribute Conflict Catcher. The software saw early success in the Mac music player market, competing with Panic's Audion. In early 2000 Apple was looking to purchase an MP3 player and approached both Casady & Greene (SoundJam) and Panic (Audion). Because Panic was caught up in negotiations with

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

, the meeting never took place.The True Story of Audion
/ref> Turning to Casady & Greene, Apple purchased the rights to the SoundJam software in a deal covered by a two-year secrecy clause. Think Secret - SoundJam MP was renamed

. Jeff, Bill, and Dave became the original developers of the software. All three continue to work at Apple, with Jeff as the current lead developer of iTunes.CNNMoney, ''How Big Can Apple Get"
/ref> In his spare time, he enjoys racing. In a racing profile, he says “A buddy and I wrote Apple's iTunes software and helped develop the iPod and the Apple music store. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't heard about MP3 on the radio on the way to a race...”

References

External links

1956 births Living people American computer specialists 20th-century American businesspeople {{mac-stub