Apple intros ringtones for iPhones

Nokia phones, SonyEriccson phones, Motorola phones, Blackberry phones, and a handful of smaller manufacturers phones all play your stored MP3s (or whatever format) as ringtones. No added fees. No legal entanglements.

Apple created a device that could do this, then intentionally disabled that feature so it could sell it back to you at $.99 per clip. Period.

That's business.

When Apple does good things, praise them. When Apple does bad things, make no excuses. This is a BadThing.

Pay for a ring tone! haha, made me laugh anyway.

Think Apple are trying their hand at comedy.

Kind of sad there is no solution for custom songs on albums you have transferred to itunes...

I use Audacity to make my ringtones...there's no way I would pay 99 cents when I can do it for free.

As for those people who can't stand ringtones, I find them very helpful. Associating a song with a person enables me to know just exactly who's calling without seeing the screen. I love this when I'm at home and my phone is in the bedroom and I'm in another room...I know exactly whether I want to pick up the phone or not. Of course my phone is on vibrate when at work or in a public area.

@18, no. Creating a 30 second clip of a music track you have paid for to use as a ringtone would fall under fair use.

@32, only if you are a place of business or charging admission. A ringtone is no more a public performance than driving with the windows down and the car stereo on.

Sorry folks. This isn't a legal thing. It's greed. Plain and simple.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that the .99c extra is because a ringtone is technically a public performance, rather than a personal use.

When the iPhone is *finally* available in Australia, I'd really like to install my own ringtones, but would rather use Audio clips from my personal collection; Stuff not available from the iTS: "earlyvanhalenruled" by Jeph Jacques would make a great ringtone and a clip I have of Michael R. Menenga saying "I just had a Thought that Hit My Brain while you were talking that" is great for incoming SMSs. People with Garageband could even make their own ringtones.

I have an amazing ringtone on my phone. It's called vibrate. I wish everyone used this one too.

7.4 is up - no ringtones...

well put Michel, people think Apple, a multinational company, behaves as one person. Anyway, everyone goes on about apple charging twice for songs to be used as ringtones but what about non-copyrighted songs? what about a comedy/funny clip of a prank call? what about all those sounds that surround us and could be recorded and converted to ringtones? what if I want the guitar solo section of a song and not its chorus? No, it's not about record companies, it's about milking users for profit. A multimedia phone that can't convert any audio clip to ringtone with one touch and after 2 months of circulation starts charging 0.99$ per song from its manufacturer's digital media selling store, is a rip-off in my book of references.