As much as I might want to tell you how great the method of getting ring tones for the iPhone is, based on my newbie experiences with it, Apple needs to be slapped as far as I am concerned.

But both my wife and I today discovered that on a non-jail broken iPhone, if you wish to “legitimately” purchase ring tones, you will be using iTunes on the Mac or Windows. Let me say this again, while every other phone in the universe can easily get ring tones within a couple of minutes with no cables or hassles, I must connect in some fashion to my computer and run iTunes for ring tones. If this is the case, why in the heck are they selling the damned things on iTunes ON the iPhone itself then! To tease us?

So here is how it went down for me. I again, as a total newbie to this phone, purchase a great Irish comedy bit that is LABELED as a ring tone, bearing the Apple trademark, the works. I then go to my ring tones to set it up in my sound profile, you know, like one might do on a normal phone. No dice, no ring tone. Half ticked at this point, I do some checking online and sure enough, I need to run desktop iTunes to do ANYTHING with transfers…amazing.

Despite being a Linux user, I have iTunes in XP in seamless mode on my Ubuntu notebook. For you Windows users, this means that old XP install provides me with my Windows apps via VirtualBox seamlessly with full USB support for my iPhone, in Ubuntu. In short, Apple cannot stop me from enjoying their hardware no matter how hard they might try. Love your phone, not interested in your computers, sorry.

Anyway, so I get everything ready and I go to move my purchased ring tone, stored in the song folder, over to the ring tone folder. Again, not working. Really mad at this point, I discover I must do this using the “Store” feature and transition a “song” into a ring tone, despite being under the impression this is what I purchased in the first place!

So I get all of that working, I am then prompted to “create” the new ring tone. Awesome, it took over an hour of screwing with this, but finally we are cooking with gas here. Then it happens….iTunes asks me to buy the ring tone, still referred to as a song, yet AGAIN!!!!

Now my Mac hugging wife informs me how this makes sense to her as clearly, this is simply making up for the usual $2 one might spend buying a ring tone on a normal mobile phone. Livid at this point, I shot back with something like…”Seriously, asking me pay twice makes sense to Apple users?”

Again, let me be clear. I am aware of all of the methods of how one can “create” their own ring tones for free, using a Mac and an iPhone. But silly me, I wanted to be legit and pay for it - guess I won’t make that mistake again! In other words, this is it for ring tones, I’ll stick to the apps instead. Sorry Apple, that is a piece of my business you will not get again. But I do love your other features on the phone, so it’s a wash I guess.

I have no problem with the price being asked, even at $2. This is Apple’s choice, I accepted it, that is fine. What frustrates me is making this process so ridiculously unintuitive that it was like Apple is discouraging people from buying ring tones! Who in their right mind is going to use a desktop app to BUY a ring tone when everyone else can do it from the phone by itself? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of.

Folks, I love the iPhone. But my goodness, this is NOT the way to get people to buy ringtones. Apple, if there is an easier way to do this, it might be nice if you made this information available in a more obvious format as I have searched up and down Google only to find iTunes on the desktop as the only means. This is simply unacceptable and frankly, really sad.