Ringtones

The introduction by Apple of ringtones to its arsenal has prompted some discussion, and made me actually think a bit about something I generally just find to be a nuisance.

The general consensus when the iPhone first came out was that the lack of custom ringtones was something Apple needed to remedy. This has been a staple of all of the other phones and providers for some time now. They did just that with their most recent announcement. However, I think many were expecting more/different since it was Apple doing it.

First, some things that I think they did right. Being able to pick which 30 seconds of the song to use is good. This is something I would have always considered a must, but it isn't available directly from any of the cell providers. Next, they don't force you to just buy an overpriced ringtone (anywhere from $2 to $5 from what I can tell most places); they allow you to make them from your own music that you already own. Yes, I know there is a catch, we'll get there in a minute. Finally, it can all be done from the safe haven of iTunes. Pick the song, pick the musical selection, and get it loaded on the device is all possible and very simple. The last one is the type of thing I have come to expect from Apple, and may be the single largest benefit. As usual, most people miss the benefit of simplicity.

Now, the things I think were not done the way I would have hoped or expected. I need to preface this by saying I don't think any of the current providers or ringtone offerings have done anything positive; they have been nothing short of horrendous. Overpriced, a pain in the ass to get or use, lack of choice, and a general annoyance is how I would summarize all previous offerings. I can't understand personally why people pay anything for a ringtone, let alone more than I am willing or need to pay to purchase a full song from the iTunes store.

Although the 99 cent price sounds about right, you can't actually purchase any ringtone for that amount. You have to already have bought the song or buy it at that time, which means there is an additional 99 cents to include. Thus, the minimum for a ringtone is actually $2. However, you do also get a full copy of the song for listening as well.
Not all songs are available for making ringtones though, even if you have purchased them from the store. This one seems confusing. You would think if you bought it from Apple, they would let you pay them another $1 to make it a ringtone no matter what.

Now, these few downsides seem to be far overwhelmed by the positives. However, I wondered immediately why Apple would put restrictions such as these on the songs. It doesn't fit with some of their past policies and my expectations of them. Coupled with the recent news that found many of these issues could be easily circumvented in iTunes 7.4 (although they have since been "patched") it made me start to wonder if Apple had nothing to do with these. Were they in fact mandated by some other entity?

I did a (very) little research on this, and came up with some additional conclusions and thoughts. Since this post is fairly long though, I'm going to make like Back to the Future 2 and leave you with this...


SEE THE EXCITING(POSSIBLY) CONCLUSION IN TOMORROW'S POST: "Idiocies of Licensing"

Pain and Suffering - Courtesy of Redmond

This one is for the true geeks, or those who just like to be dumbfounded by how bad software can go. In this case, it demonstrates how software can interact in completely odd and unexpected ways, and this is why computers are far less deterministic and stable than they should be.

I was attempting to install Silverlight. I'm not really going to even get into why, that's not important at this point.

The important part is that after downloading and running the installer, it stopped with an error at 90%. The installer splash screen then pointed me to this incredibly helpful error page: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/help.aspx?errorID=2. Once my head quit spinning, I started investigating a bit more. Obviously, the error page didn't help in the slightest, it was actually completely out of date. I tried moving the file, extracting it manually, various things did not work.

Amazingly, I did actually find the problem, thanks to a point where I had moved the installer to my root c: drive, but the temp folder still magically showed up on my desktop with a reference to s:.

It is at this point that I should mention a cool little trick I have setup on all of my Windows machines. I create a batch file that runs automatically at startup, using the old dos "subst" command to map a drive letter to my desktop. Yes, I was adept at tab-completing the full profile name (documents and settings\username\yada yada), but it's much nicer having it as my s: drive.

So, seeing the s: drive in the error message tipped me off. I deleted my shortcut drive, and lo and behold it all worked. Bizarre.

If you've read this far, you probably need professional help. I'm still in denial.