Love em or hate em, you can’t ignore them. Ringtones in modern society are unavoidable. The iPhone got ringtone friendly two months after its release, but they were restricted to ‘ringtone capable’ songs purchased from the iTunes Store. Apple then softened a bit and added ringtone creation functionality to Garageband, and the smarts of the world figured out how to trick iTunes into making ringtones out of anything at all. iPhone 3.1 even got ringtone purchasing capability right on the iPhone. Given all this, there haven’t been any ringtone related complaints about.
A few months ago Ringer, a ringtone creation app sprung up on the Mac platform. Puzzled about why we would want to review such an app, I asked the developer what was their take on people using the free and excellent Garageband to create ringtones instead of having to buy something. Steinmetz Jon replies:
We feel that Ringer is much easier than using iTunes for songs but Ringer also does more than you can do with iTunes by allowing you to make ringtones from almost anything that QuickTime can open including movies. Ringer also lets you graphically select the portion of the song you want rather than using numerical time.
I downloaded the app, and I can say, that for creating more than a ringtone every few months, Ringer makes the process a whole lot easier than anything out there. The app has a beautiful user interface to start with (musical notes floating about). Your media is presented in the sidebar, and you can search through your entire iTunes library.
The best part about Ringer, as Jon mentions, is its ability to process anything QuickTime can play. So as long as you have Perian installed, you can pretty much drop any media from your hard drive. Quickly adjust the selection, press the preview button (which keeps looping), add fades, and finally send it to iTunes.
I personally don’t know how many Mac-iPhone users create ringtones on a regular basis, but for those who would like to, I can vouch for Ringer’s functionality. It’s slick, easy to use, and offers functionality you would otherwise take a few minutes to achieve using iTunes or Garageband. Ringer costs $15, so depending on how many ringtones you intend on creating, you decide its value. I’m posting this today since I saw the MU Promo going on that’s offering Ringer at 50% off, as in, $8 for a license [affiliate link].
The problem with such enabling technology of course is your favourite songs end up being murdered by some yo-yo who decides it’s cool to repeat a single part of the song over-and-over again on tinny speakers. /end rant.
Update: Macworld has done a writeup of 4 ringtone apps for the Mac, should you be interested.
