Ringtones Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

PocketMac Ringtone Studio for iPhone

by Steven Sande (Jul 1st, 2008)

Information Appliance Associates, the company that brought us the PocketMac series of sync software, has announced PocketMac Ringtone Studio for iPhone. While the $14.95 application doesn't do anything that you can't already do with GarageBand and a little bit of knowledge, it does make creation of ...

Ringtone Subscriptions in iTunes

by Erica Sadun (Mar 24th, 2008)

Here's a clever concept that I would never have dreamed up myself in a million years: iTunes ringtone podcasts! The idea is this: you subscribe to podcast that delivers ringtones to iTunes and allows you to sync them directly to your iPhone. I gave it a try, downloading one "episode" and sure enough ...

Apple relents, sanctions custom ringtones!

by Erica Sadun (Dec 14th, 2007)

So how do you know if Apple has made a big policy change and snuck it through the back door? Is it because: Porcine aviation establishes itself as a viable transportation mechanism. Chicken entrails begin to dance and rearrange themselves into oracular shapes while you're fixing up some nice korma. ...

The Curious Case of the 1.1.2 Ringtones

by Erica Sadun (Nov 13th, 2007)

Apple's 1.1.2 iPhone firmware release brought easy custom ringtones back to life. With 1.1.2 you can once again add end-user ringtones to iTunes and, from there, sync them to your iPhone. Did Apple intentionally thwart third party ringtones with its 1.1.1 firmware or not? Is the 1.1.2 reprieve an ...

iTunes 7.5 and iPhone 1.1.2 return custom ringtones

by Erica Sadun (Nov 11th, 2007)

For reasons I do not begin to understand, the combination of iTunes 7.5 and the 1.1.2 iPhone once again allow you to add custom ringtones without fussing with property lists and special software. Take any m4a file, thirty-seconds or less (although some report success with tracks up to 40 seconds), ...

iToner working with iPhone Firmware 1.1.1

by Erica Sadun (Oct 12th, 2007)

Looks like those Ambrosia Guys have made a break-through. This video shows their iToner utility working with the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware. iToner, as you may already know, allows you to install third-party ringtones onto your iPhone. So you can either use your personal audio collection or record ...

Apple: Nine ringtones is too much

by Mike Schramm (Oct 9th, 2007)

Now this is just getting silly. Apparently there is a bug with the iPhone where if you try to automatically sync more than eight ringtones up, only the first eight will sync. Nine, according to Apple, is too many ringtones to automatically sync up at one time. To get more than nine on, you've got to ...

Ambrosia: Committed to making iToner work

by Erica Sadun (Oct 1st, 2007)

Ambrosia is the maker of iToner, Mac-based software that adds third-party ringtones to your iPhone. Today Ambrosia issued a statement to TUAW saying that they remain committed to making iToner work with the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware. The problem with 1.1.1 is that Apple has started encrypting and ...

Ringtonator Studio makes ringtones from any QT format

by Mike Schramm (Sep 22nd, 2007)

We wrote about Ringtonator a while back, reader Joe's GUI program that used Cleverboy's hack to make ringtones. At the time, we were looking for a program that didn't require AAC, where you could pull any mp3 out and turn it into an official ringtone on iTunes. Then 7.4.2 hit, and we had bigger ...

iToner 1.0.2 is available

by Dave Caolo (Sep 21st, 2007)

In the world of iPhone ringtones, there's the Apple way, and there's the way everyone else does it. For the latter, Ambrosia has released iToner which lets you use any MP3 or AAC as a ringtone for your iPhone (we first looked at iToner a couple of weeks ago). Changes in version 1.0.2 include: ...

MakeiPhoneRingtone hits 1.1, further obsoletes the ringtones racket

by Mike Schramm (Sep 14th, 2007)

Rogue Amoeba has already updated their MakeiPhoneRingtone application to 1.1, in order to bring in the Cleverboy hack that was discovered the other day. If you missed it, they also posted a guide on how to turn any audio file into an AAC file with their product Fission (but don't forget that iTunes ...

Ringtonator, a GUI for the ringtone hack

by Mike Schramm (Sep 13th, 2007)

Last night, Joe sent us a GUI app he put together for Cleverboy's ringtone hack we posted yesterday. Ringtonator is a drag-and-drop application that will turn any AAC file into an iTunes/iPhone ringtone, or vice versa. One caveat-- while this program doesn't require a separate install of ...

Cleverboy discovers ultimate ringtone hack

by Erica Sadun (Sep 12th, 2007)

Hacker par excellence Cleverboy, aka Dudley, has pretty much figured out what makes ringtones ringtones as far as iTunes is concerned. He discovered an atom in the m4a metadata that identifies the file's role. He downloaded a copy of AtomicParsley, the command-line metadata editor, and after a bit ...

Apple adds "Top Ringtones" feature to iTunes store (US)

by Dave Caolo (Sep 12th, 2007)

Just 24 hours after enabling ringtones in the US iTunes store, Apple has added a "Top Ringtones" tracker [iTunes link] to the front page. As of this writing, Nickleback has a lock on the #1 slot [iTunes link]. This demonstrates that someone is buying these (just not very many TUAW readers). I'll ...

TUAW Poll: Will you purchase iTunes ringtones?

by Dave Caolo (Sep 11th, 2007)

iTunes ringtones officially became available in the US iTunes store late last night (or early this morning, depending on where you live). It looks like fun, but will cost you another buck. Considering that you can make your own (until Apple breaks this routine again), we're wondering: Will you buy ...