Ask HN: Why is it difficult for Apple to create more than 1 tolerable ring-tone? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is it difficult for Apple to create more than 1 tolerable ring-tone?

I've been thinking about this for a while... I find it interesting that everyone w/ an iPhone uses the Marimba ring-tone. This makes me wonder why it's so difficult for a company like Apple to create more than one popular ring tone. I wish Apple would come up with another tolerable ring tone so I am not always reaching for my phone when it's someone else's phone is ringing Marimba.

View on HN

There are actually 2 usable ringtones. Xylophone is very good too, and is the ring tone I use. However, I think it is in Apple's best interest to only have one popular iPhone ring tone as it extends the brand. Every time you hear Marimba, you think iPhone which is powerful marketing.

Good point, I'll give you one for this.

The extending the brand comment is exactly right. And it goes back way before iPhones too, Nokia is probably the best example. While people may not be able to hum the melody of the original Nokia ringtone when asked spontaneously, I bet that they could at least recognise it when it is played. It's a catchy jingle that makes you think "oh that's a Nokia phone ringing".

After thinking about your comment today you defined why I dig HN|ASK. I was debating whether to ask this question for a while because I didn't think I'd get a solid answer but because of you, I did. Impressive. Thanks again.

Ringtones were important in the previous era of cell phones, but I think in an era of smart phones actually using your phone as a phone seems secondary to other activities like texting, facebook and facetime in terms of actually connecting to people. And it might actually be the case at this point that talking on a phone is what old people do (example: mom calls up worried about daughter staying out too late).

Seems to be the same in the Android/Cyanogen camp. There are one or two usable sounds by default and lots of crap that I'd like to never hear again in any situation.

But hey - it's not the same situation we had with feature-phones. You couldn't have a custom ringtone on those. Nowadays you can just use whatever music you already have imported.

Why not upload a ringtone that you like to your phone?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com