iMac Fire Alarm

[Ralphalph]

I was using my 2012 27" iMac that is about 95 days old for normal work purposes when it emitted several extremely loud noises that sounded like a fire alarm. This persisted for several seconds, and I closed whatever applications I was running (MS Word, Safari), and the noise stopped. The computer did not freeze or give any visual error or clue. I checked the log files, and there were several created around the same time, but I don't know what to make sense of any of them. It seems to be working fine now. Is this a signal of impending doom/failure?

I believe it made three long fire alarm like blasts, and then was silent. Note that the audio on the computer was turned all the way down, so this was not errant noise from some website or anything like that.

 

[apedance]

first I lol'd

then I googled

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3297230?start=0&tstart=0

 

[Ralphalph]

I found those also, but it turns out the source of the sound is less nefarious. The logs were a red herring.

My iPhone was under a sheet of paper next to my iMac, and the sound was the new "emergency alert' sound from my iPhone, not the iMac, for an alert on flooding to my area, with the volume turned all the way up. ATT just rolled the update out to allow for emergency alerts in my area, and I had never heard this before, and the accompanying message disappeared from my iphone when I later looked at it. Now I now to disable these alerts, or at least turn the ringer volume down.

 

[MeatRocket]

Haha! That's too funny! I'd probably wet myself. That you started closing Word, etc was priceless!

 

[Ralphalph]

Well, the sound went away when I closed Safari! It turns out that it also would have gone away if I had tugged my left earlobe, but you have to try something.