I find it interesting that the iPhone, a device that combines a cell phone with a device that plays music, still requires users to download ringtones.  This seems remarkably silly to me.  Why can’t the iPhone allow you to simply set downloaded songs as ringtones?

The answer is, of course, all about money: Apple makes more money if they charge extra for ringtones.  Basically, iTunes charges you a buck per song to take a song you already own and convert it into a ringtone — something you would think should be able to be done for free.  (After all, it doesn’t cost you anything to convert a CD audio file to MP3, WAV, or iTunes format — all you need is the software, which is usually free.)

If, on the other hand, you want a song you don’t yet own as a ringtone, it’ll cost you two bucks — $1 to buy the song, and $1 to have it converted.

Thankfully, there are ways to get around Apple’s greed.  There are a number of ways to "hack" your iTunes and fool it into thinking you paid for your iPhone ringtones — evidently the file conversion is actually little more than a smaller file, a different file extension, and a different location in iTunes.  There are also a number of websites out there that offer free or cheap T-Mobile, AT&T, or Cingular ringtones.