Support Our Site
Get Better Gear!
- Notability For iPad: Much More Than A Note Taking App from Ginger Labs, Inc, US$0.99
- Scosche’s RH656m Headphones With Microphone Are Wonderful from Scosche, US$129.99
- IPEVO’s Typi Folio Case & Keyboard for iPad is First-rate from IPEVO, US$79.99
- Scosche’s boomSTREAM BT Speaker: Features & Compromises from Scosche, US$99.95
- FX Photo Studio HD: iPad Painting of Effects Made Easy from MacPhun LLC, US1.99
Premier Sponsors
Top 5 Free Apps
iTunes New Music Releases
Top 5 Paid Apps
Discover New Music
- Alanis Morissette
- Ten years after the original release, comes the traditional celebratory acoustic re-recording. The album has held up remarkably well. While it is not as meaningful to me as it was when I was sixteen,
- Depeche Mode
Oddly enough, Playing The Angel is a return to form for Depeche Mode, even though it may well be argued that they never truly deviated from their roots in their more recent offerings. In the
- Rush
- We all know it, right? Well, ya just gotta have it. 2112 finally showed Rush out on their own, doing their own thing, and doing it well, IMHO.
- Prefuse 73
- It's an album about a breakup, done with beats instead of mopey lyrics. But the beats are raw, and the emotions are there, even if there aren't many words on top of it. While possibly not Scott Herren
- Brian Eno
- In his first proper solo release since 1996's relatively cold "The Drop," Brian Eno has constructed a whimsical and ecclectic masterpiece which is arguably one of the year's strongest records thus fa
Reader Specials
Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!
News
Pogue: Ringtones Are Digital Ripoff
Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 4:00 PM - by John Martellaro
Rigtones are a profitable industry, world wide. However, there are some baffling elements to ringtones, and they’re basically a digital ripoff, according to David Pogue at the New York Times on Thursday.
First off, Mr. Pogue had some questions. Is Apple’s ringtone deal really a bargain? It turns out that it is compared to other mobile carriers. Ringtones from T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon range from US$2.50 to $3, the user cannot customize them, and incredibly, after a period of time, they die. The user must repurchase. With Apple you pay a buck for the song and own it forever. So Mr. Pogue wanted to know why ring tones are so popular with the other carriers. "Does this not enter the heads of the people who are paying $5 billion a year?" he asked.
The bigger question is the use of the ringtone. "Why must I pay one fee to play it by tapping Play, and a second fee to play it when someone calls my phone? It just makes no sense," Mr. Pogue wondered.
All in all, Mr. Pogue was pleased with Apple’s handling of the situation. What he wondered about is those music company executives "rubbing their hands together with glee and hoping that their young customers don�t identify the ringtone industry for what it is: a digital ripoff."
Recent Headlines
- Reading, Writing, & Saving the World
- Free Retro Gaming for iOS - Activision’s Kaboom!
- Apple Adds Chomp Bits to iOS 6 App Store Discovery
- Notability For iPad: Much More Than A Note Taking App
- Scosche’s RH656m Headphones With Microphone Are Wonderful
- Tim Cook & Larry Page Reportedly Discuss Patents
- Analysis: Amazon Kindle Fire Sold Out, Kindle Fire 2 Pic Leaked
Post Your Comments