Yeah, so I bought this iPhone thing. Generally, I love it, but I won’t waste your time with a lot of observations that are available elsewhere. I will say that I moved to it from a Samsung Blackjack, and while both have their advantages and disadvantages, I will be sticking with the iPhone. There are three things that I wish the iPhone had right now that it does not; the ability to tether to my laptop for data, a disk mode, and the ability to use my music as ringtones. This post is about that last item.
So, right now, you are stuck with the default ringtones, welcome to 1999. Every phone that I have had for the last 8 or 9 years allowed me to use other ringtones. That’s just dumb from a company that is largely about music these days. Then, I read this article this morning. So they are going to charge us for ringtones via the iTunes store.
Now, I am no lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, or even want to play one. This, however, seems like a real issue to me. I have paid for a lot of music via the iTunes music store. I already paid for it. I want to use it as a ringtone on a device that I also paid for. It seems, to me at least, that this is charging me twice for the same thing. I wonder aloud if I ponied up some money, if this is a lawsuit that we could win for everyone. Let me know your thoughts.
mingaling says
I’m sure someone techie will be able to hack this eventually, no?
Robert says
It’s likely that they will eventually find a way to use non-DRM’d music as ringtones. Especially once Apple actually starts selling ringtones via Itunes and there is a model to work with. Having said that, my issue is more one of principal. I’ve paid for something, and having to pay for it again to use it in this one area seems like they are double charging me for it.
Greg says
I might be in the minority, but thank god!
I’ve had enough of [insert annoying top 40 artist song here] blasting at me when someone wont answer their phones… And ironically, I’ve used the iPhone ringtone on my Sony Ericsson for the last 5 months back when some kid pinched it from the keynote audio track
Maybe it’s just me though…
cyan says
Bump, I don’t see how you could go from tethered 3G speeds to the iphone. I love my blakckjack just because I can hop on the net from anywhere in ATL at decent(TM) speeds. Does the iphone offer ANY type of laptop tethering?
Robert says
@Greg I totally get what you are saying, but it’s a basic feature that people expect now. It is annoying, and I try and use mellow stuff instead of T.I.’s latest single.
@cyan It doesn’t support any sort of tethering. However, most of what I want to be on the net for, I can do on my phone now. It’s a first class browser, unlike the Blackjack, where web browsing on the phone itself is just painful. I also have a Sony laptop with an evdo chipset in it and a data account with Sprint for that, so I can get on for full featured stuff with that. (I can even play WoW on that laptop from anywhere. I am a loser.)
dpb says
I’m not saying a lawsuit couldn’t be won, but I believe it would be inappropriate for the government to get involved. Enough customers bitch and complain, then they’ll get their way… eventually. It happened with the non-DRMed music in iTunes. It could happen with the ringtones.
KYDS3K says
you have an iPhone? why have i not seen it yet?!?!
Anonymous says
what we need to do is send a vast amount of complaints to apple or at&t through e-mail, and hope for the best. how else will are voices be heard..?
Amanda says
download Audacity and the MP3 Lossless encoder (the audacity website should have this info). Your music will need to be in mp3 form, so you'll have to convert it in iTunes…load it in audacity and make your ringtone. Then save and go into itunes and convert back to the m4a, then rename it to a m4r and it'll be a ringtone. Kinda a pain but thats what i do. If you want more info, let me know…RogueAlias@gmail.com.