NOTE: This is an old article. The ringtones are no longer available via podcast. You can download them all directly here: http://macmost.com/free-iphone-ringtones.
So it looks like putting our MacMost free iPhone ringtones in the iTunes store as a free podcast was a good idea. A lot of people have subscribed. I wanted to do a short blog post about how to get these ringtones on to your iPhone.
1. Go to our iPhone ringtones page at http://macmost.com/iphoneringtones/ and click on the “subscribe to the free iPhone ringtones feed as a podcast” link. This will open iTunes and take you right to the subscription page. Note that iTunes will not show you the ringtones in the list of episodes — a bug in iTunes. But they are there. Click on the Subscribe button.
2. In iTunes, under the Library heading on the left, look for “Podcasts.” Click on that and then look for “MacMost iPhone Ringtones” in the list on the right. Click on the triangle to the left of that to see all of the items under that podcast.
3. Press the Get button next to each of the items you want to add. Or, press the Get All button at the top of the list.
4. Plug your iPhone in to your computer. Let it sync with iTunes.
5. Click on the iPhone in the iTunes list on the left, under Devices. Now you should see your iPhone settings in the main iTunes area. Click on the Podcasts tab.
6. Set your iPhone to sync all episodes of all Podcasts. Or, alternatively, set it to sync only the podcasts you want. Either way, you must have it set to sync ALL episodes. If you set it so it only syncs the X most recent episodes of your podcast, you will not get some or any of the ringtones.
6a. Alternatively, you could create a Smart Playlist by choosing File, Create Smart Playlist. Set the options so the “Kind” contains “Ringtones” and Live Updating is turned on. Then select the Music tab of your iPhone settings and make sure that the new Smart Playlist is set to sync to your iPhone.
7. Re-sync your iPhone to send the ringtones to it.
7a. Some people have reported that you must have at least one ringtone in your iTunes library for ringtones to appear on the left side of iTunes and for ringtones to sync at all. So you may need to download a free ringtone here and drag and drop it into your iTunes library.
8. In the Settings app of your iPhone, click on Sounds to set you default ringtone. You can also go into the Contacts app to set a specific ringtone for some of your contacts.
9. Go back to iTunes and write a review!
Also: If you are still having trouble, please contact us via email and we’ll be glad to help. You can also just go to the iPhone Ringtones page and download any ringtone individually and add them to iTunes without subscribing to the podcast. So you have plenty of options.
Enjoy the free ringtones!
I don’t mind MacMost being labeled as a “fanboy” site. I am an Apple fan. But it doesn’t mean I think everything the company does it right. Here are five things I think Apple should do differently.
1. The iPhone should be on more carriers. They shouldn’t have an exclusive deal with AT&T. We should have all the major mobile companies in the U.S. and elsewhere competing to give us the best price and service. The bottom line would be more iPhone sales and happier iPhone owners.
2. MobileMe should be free and better. The price of admission for MobileMe should be simply owning a Mac or an iPhone. And MobileMe should have features like Blogger, FaceBook and Flickr. MobileMe as an Apple-only social network would be a huge hit and would drive Mac sales like crazy.
3. The iTunes store should ban DRM. Apple should use its market-leading position to put an end to DRM. I’ve been buying music exclusively on CD and at DRM-free sites like Amazon. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
4. New versions of Mac OS X should have an upgrade price. Paying full ticket price to upgrade isn’t reasonable.
5. Make Apple TV more useful by making rentals good for 36 hours and adding some basic RSS-reading Web-browsing functionality. Add a BluRay/DVD player to it for $100 more. To make it really great, add DVR functions.
So we’ve had a collection of free iPhone ringtones for a while. The idea is that we think it is ridiculous to have to pay for new and interesting ringtones — they are just ringtones!
We’ve added a feature to that page where you can subscribe to the ringtones as a podcast feed.
There’s a trick to it, though. iTunes doesn’t show .m4r files through its iTunes store listings. So when you look at the subscription page, all you see is the sample .mp3 file. But when you subscribe to the feed in iTunes, you will see all of the .m4r ringtones in your iTunes Library, Podcast, MacMost iPhone Ringtones list.
The great thing there is that you should be able to control which ringtones you download rather easily through your iTunes podcast subscriptions screen. Then, you can automatically get new ringtones when we add them. In addition, if you set up your iTunes/iPhone settings properly, the ringtones will automatically transfer to your iPhone and be available to be used as ringtones.
We just added two new iPhone Games to the free iPhone games section of the site: Poker Solitaire and Astro-Blobs.
Poker Solitaire is a card game where you place 25 cards in a 5×5 grid to make 10 vertical and horizontal poker hands. You get points based on how good the hands are.
Astro-Blobs is a version of the Flash game at GameScene. The original game dates back to the early days of Flash, but the gameplay is well suited for the tap interface of the iPhone.
Setting aside MobileMe’s launch problems, I have to say I’m very disappointed with MobileMe.
Sure, it is push email to the iPhone. But only for me.com email addresses. As a business owner with my own domain(s), I want to use my own email address. There are several ways to do this with MobileMe, such as forwarding all my email to my me.com email address, but none of them allow me to easily reply to an email from my business address. This makes MobileMe email essentially useless to me.
Once email is out of the picture, the other features fall flat. Push calendar and contacts are nice, but they don’t really get me anything that syncing my iPhone doesn’t. iDisk is essentially the same as before, which makes it marginally useful to me. But since I produce media when making the fun games at GameScene.com and other sites, 20gb is not enough for a backup solution.
The most useful feature for me is the photo gallery, which is the same as the old .Mac. The ability to publish photos from iPhoto quickly and easily makes the $100/year cost worth it. But the photo gallery is still not all it could be. I’d love the ability to publish to a gallery directly from my iPhone camera roll. Right now I either have to email a photo, or sync with my Mac and use iPhoto to move an image to the gallery.
So, ways that .Mac could be great:
1. Allow me.com to automatically get email from another account, and also reply to emails using a reply-to of our choice.
2. Increase storage enough to back up a standard drive with system, applications and documents.
3. Allow us to access documents on the iDisk via our iPhone. You can already read Word, Excel, PowerPoint, iWork and PDF files in emails on your iPhone. Why not have a iPhone Documents directory on your iDisk where you can see these documents as well.
4. Instead of emailing photos to a photo gallery, allow iPhone camera roll photos to go directly there.
5. Add a Web-based blogging system, similar to Blogger.com or WordPress.com. Right now, the only option is to use iWeb and it isn’t easy or very functional.
I could go on. I can think of dozens of ways that MobileMe could be better, and none of them should really increase the fixed costs on Apple’s side. In fact, if I was in charge I’d position MobileMe to compete as a social network as well.
