The iPhone 3.0 software introduces a new app, Voice Memos, into the Apple canon. It’s function is simple enough: Tap one button to record, tap another to stop, tap one more to share via email. This is where the fun can begin.
To create your own ringtone from the audio of your choice, simply use Voice Notes to capture your soundbyte. The sky’s the limit, but you’ll need to keep the duration to 40 seconds or less. Use the share function to email yourself the file. You’ll notice the file will be saved as an .m4a, a format Apple has popularized as a flavor of Mpeg-4. But I digress.
Converting an .m4a into a ringtone that iPhone recognizes is dead simple. Simply change the filename extension to .m4r and drag it into iTunes. Next time you connect your iPhone, clicking the Ringtones tab in iTunes will give you the ability to sync your new ringtones to the phone.
Have fun!
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Design company Teehan+Lax has released a robust Photoshop template to aid in the design and comping of iPhone applications. Download the template from their blog.
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Ever since we’ve hacked our iPhones, we’ve been noodling on themes for SummerBoard.
We’re happy to share six of them with you today, with more to come in the future. If you grab them, be sure to post comments to let us know what you think. Five more after the break…
1 Bit by Jared Benson
Pixels rule. What if the iPhone was released with a 1-bit display? Enjoy this old school rendition. Download it here.
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The context versus consistency debate is not new, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be over. 37signals adds another argument to the context pile…
I read this interesting (short) article on 37signals.com concerning Apple’s placement of their new iTunes icon on the iPhone home screen. Given that the western world reads from left to right, users would expect this last icon to appear on the left side, right?… Not so says Apple, here’s why:
Read Context over Consistency at 37signals.com.
Although it’s something that the common person might not notice or ‘get’, it shows that the Apple UI folks are never asleep at the wheel and that they spend time thinking about the small details and their resulting implications. Don’t just do things automatically because tradition says we should or because the technology says it should be that way.
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You’ve probably had this experience:
- You anticipate the arrival of a new device for weeks.
- You discuss it with your friends, read the reviews and the promised features.
- You listen to the hype; sometimes a believer, sometimes a skeptic.
- You try the device in the store. It’s got some nice features.
- You buy it.
- Your friends ask to play with it and strangers ask what it is.
- 1 week later the allure is gone. The experience has imperfections.
- 2 weeks later its weaknesses are clear. You don’t love it. There are a few cumbersome interactions and design flaws.
The iPhone stands out strongly as an exception. It definitely passes the 2 week test criteria: a) you love it more after 2 weeks than you did when you got it and b) you can’t remember life before it. (Okay, so I’m exaggerating that last point.)
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This iPhone tip goes out to those of you following the growing “Life Hacks” movement - gaining back precious minutes of your life through efficiency practices.
We’ve all been stuck in meetings that we wish we could get out of. Well, fortunately His Steveness has designed something handy into the iPhone which will help us reclaim our lives so we can get back to doing what we _really_ want to be doing. If you have the foresight, try this before attending your next meeting:From the main menu, select Clock then Timer. Use the wheel interface to set your interval (How much of this meeting are you willing to endure?), set your ringtone and hit “Start.”
Attend your meeting. Go ahead and shut your phone down (read as: Hit the hardware button on top right) and set it on the table next to your notebook, printouts, etc. and act as interested as you can in the meeting. Resist the urge to check the timer - don’t worry, it won’t let you down. When the timer reaches zero, it will wake up your iPhone and play the ringtone. To anyone glancing over at your iPhone, the combination of idle screen wallpaper and ringtone will look convincing, even to a fellow iPhone user.
Grab it shortly into the first ring, give it a quick glance, and apologize to those left in the room.. “Sorry, I gotta take this…”
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iPods sold at a brisk pace over the 2006 holiday season, which would seem to end the recent iPod sales slump. However, Tomi Ahonen aims to blow away any speculation that the iPod is still holding on to the music player throne. The barrage of evidence from Asian, European and UK studies he presents is pretty compelling. In a nutshell, he says that while iPod sales grew 45% that music phone growth has boomed to 243%, which means that though iPod sales are growing, the iPod market share has been long overtaken by music phones and is shrinking by comparison. (SonyEricsson alone shipped 60 million musicphones compared to Apple’s 46 million iPods).
Now, you’re thinking, “but just because people own a music-capable phone, a so called music phone, do people actually use them for listening/buying music?” Well, Ahonen says yes, and backs it up with some interesting European and Asian studies. The UK study he sites says that 80% of musicphone owners are satisfied or very satisfied with them. Thus Ahonen’s argument goes: the iPod is so totally over.
He’s quick to dismiss the iPod and usher in the music phone era, but I don’t think he’s really discussing the US side of the picture…
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Ripped from the headlines, here’s a collection from media sources around the web. Apparently when Apple made its announcement, editors and bloggers around the world sharpened their lucky pencils and exclaimed, “Now here’s a piece just begging for a snappy headline.”
Apple’s iPhone is pretty ordinary at its core
Andrew Kantor, USAToday
Cisco Bites Into Apple Fame (video)
Forbes.com Video Network
Why it’s the Apple of everyone’s eye
Phyllis Furman, New York Daily News
Apple’s new fruit forbidden for now
Jim Rossman, The Dallas Morning News
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“Cool, no hard hard keys!” versus “Are you kidding? No keyboard?”
First, I’m not deluded enough to think the iPhone is the holy grail of devices. They have a lot in their favor in the US, but they don’t have a smooth ride like they did with the iPod.
If you read the US blogs and tech papers, the iPhone is best thing since the personal modem. Glowing headlines like Apple Waves its Wand at the Phone, where David Pogue equates Apple to a fairy godmother, to “It’s Expected, but it’s Stunning” from the SF Chronicle.
But if you read what the Europeans and Asians are saying, this is cool, but not worth all the hype. Russell Buckley even says it’s just a music phone. Then there’s the LA Times story: “In Japan, Barely a Ripple”, which is saying that all these features (plus mobile payments) have been available in Japan for 2+ years already. (But come on, they haven’t thrown out cumbersome soft keys in exchange for full-face, multi-touch screens, have they?)
So, what is it? Is it just a music phone?
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This question was asked a few days ago on the Adaptive Path blog. The following was my response:
Device manufacturers have been chasing the iPod’s form factor for several years now. How many white phones have entered the market in recent years? How many preemptive iPhone knockoffs have already been blogged? One need only look at Verizon’s Chocolate, Sprint’s Fusiq, or Helio’s KickFlip to see examples that have gained mainstream traction in the last 12 months.
Both the carriers and OEMs are trying to figure out how to create a device that generates the level of allegiance, enthusiasm and evangelism that Apple seems to create with every product release. When was the last time someone loved their phone so much that they insisted you hold it, try it, then get one for yourself?
User experience has only recently been getting lip service from the mobile industry as they recognize that it becomes the differentiator in a crowded marketplace where the competitive choices are so similar. Suddenly we’re hearing mobile executives talking about it openly at the conferences. The rumor of an Apple phone has much of the industry on guard as Apple has proven to be a company who truly “gets�? user experience and have leveraged that knowledge to create unparalleled loyalty.
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