Sure, it's not new that people get interrupted at dinner by a cell phone call. In the past, it must have been a pager, or maybe in olden days, a courier pigeon. But with the increasing number of people getting iPhones (I have to admit that a scion of my friends are over it and are eagerly awaiting the next iPhone) what's happening is now I know what types of messages are interrupting that long-planned catch-up dinner with that over-scheduled friend sitting across the table from me. Whereas before you knew there was a message, now (thanks to the limited number to iPhone tones available) you can have a pretty good idea that Johnnie Q. Public is being texted, has a new e-mail, maybe missing an iCal appointment, or has new voicemail. Even if your iPhone is on silent you can hear the vibration, persistent buzzing (a call), short buzz (everything else).
Of course, this brings up a new set of disclosures, expectations, and etiquette that I'm sure Emily Post would reject out of hand: don't answer; switch off your phone, stupid. OK, maybe not the "stupid" part, but I'm sure she'd lean toward giving your dinner date your full attention. But we all can't be Emily Posts, nor should we. But what are the guidelines? Do you tell the person or persons you're eating with who texted/called/e-mailed you? I kind of want to know who interrupted my dinner. Who would dare?
When I get called, I try not to break eye contact with the person I'm dining with--let me emphasize try. I would expect the same behavior in kind, but I'm sure this would be fantasy in today's world. For example, I taught an ex how to check work e-mail on their iPhone and never saw their eyes again while dining. They are now an ex. Or, what's worse, someone across the table gets a text message that makes them smile more than you can. Ouch!
So, what's the balance? There have been complaints about life getting less personal and communicative, so why spoil a personal face-to-face interaction with acknowledging absent person/communication? That said, anytime there's a gentle e-mail buzz, a jarring ringtone, or a subtle vibrate notification, you and your dinner date know someone, somewhere is trying to make some form of personal contact too. Shouldn't that be acknowledged too? Incidentally, because the iPhone (like many other PDAs/phones these days) has a large screen that definitely lets you see that John Doe is calling or texting in a font just large enough for Johnnie Q. Public to see and read. Oh, the interesting situations this can get you in.
Anyway, the trend my friends and I have been working out to strike a balance between giving your attention to your dinner date and making sure the calls during dinner weren't more important (or from someone more important) is the pre-dessert text break. Purely optional, of course. It was unspoken at first, but now it's explicit. So, during dinner, phones away. After about an hour into dinner, after the plates are cleared but before the post-dinner coffee/dessert gorge fest, phones out: we now all have a short break to check on the very, very urgent messages we may have missed over the salad and seared halibut course, but clearly pressing enough to check before the lava cake comes out.
Oftentimes though, it's disappointing: e-fare e-mails, a news alert via e-mail, an American Idol text, junkmail about a new diet. How fitting.
A while back I wrote about the iPhone's limited ringtone selection and the phone's inability to relegate an unwanted call to a silent ringtone. In other words, when that pesky boss or ex calls you don't want to know they ever called. The silent ringtone becomes an exercise in call avoidance, a technique for diverting them to voicemail without them ever knowing what you're up to. Now that iPhone problem is, well, no longer a problem.
Hand in hand with the ability to have no ringtone for a specific caller would be the desire to assign specific ringtones to specific friends. So, when Steve Jobs announced that ringtones with iTunes for the iPhone were coming, I was again stoked. While the last update of iTunes enabled you to see a little bell icon for ringtones in the iTunes store and desktop interface, it wasn't until this morning that I could purchase ringtones on iTunes and try them out. (This is why I ended up being late to work this morning--doh!)
The iPhone's ringtone feature is pretty straightforward: if a song can be used as a ringtone, it'll have a little bell icon lit up next to the track. I looked at my purchased music and sorted by the bell. Not that many songs appeared, but a good number did. In the iTunes store the little bell icon will be lit up too if the track can be used as a ringtone. Sadly, some of my favorites, like "Glamorous" by Fergie or "Because of You" by Ne Yo, are not available. (I suppose I can use a third-party fix that other bloggers have talked about to record and convert a song into a ringtone to be fed into iTunes, but hell, I'm too lazy sometimes.) Strangely, however, songs like "The Chairman's Waltz," from Memoirs of a Geisha, were available. How did these license deals get worked out?
Anyway, once you highlight a song you want to use as a ringtone, a new window appears--the complete song appears in that seismic-graph way. You then drag the 15-second highlight blue box to the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. I mistakenly thought that you could manipulate this selection after you buy it. Nope. So choose wisely or you have to drop another $.99 to get another 15 seconds of the song.
So as a start, I picked four ringtones for songs that I already had: "Sexyback" by Justin Timberlake (as picked for my friend Gideon, who truly is bringing sexy back); "Vogue" by Madonna (for my fabulous friend Max); "Seven Days in Sunny June" by Jamiroquai (for sunny, happy calls); and "Love on the Run" by the dance group Chicane (to be assigned).
After you select the portion of the song you want, you are prompted to make your final selection, and then all you have to do is double-click to purchase. The ringtone downloads and will now appear in the iTunes sync window (right under podcasts for me). So once your iPhone is plugged into iTunes, a new tab--"ringtones"--appears as well. Like any other podcast, TV show, or music list, you can pick and choose which ones get synced. Once the ringtones reside on the iPhone you can then assign them to a particular contact by editing the person's details. (A note: I had to reauthorize my computer after downloading the ringtones--not sure why, but nevertheless it only worked after this. This, of course, drove me crazy and made me later for work by yet another 10 minutes.)
Now, these ringtones will definitely test the iPhone's speakers. Before, I had observed that some standard ringtones were barely audible if, for example, you have your iPhone in a pocket or bag. I selected the beginning of "Vogue" (the finger-snapping part) for Max's ringtone. Works like a charm. Loud enough, but not too intrusive, and subtle--just like my friend Max. However, the portion of "Sexyback" I picked was jarring, shocking and would scare the hell out of me if it rang, especially given the iPhone's less-than-stellar speakers. It's almost akin to the standard iPhone "ALARM" ringtone. This is not at all like the person who is bringing sexy back. Oops. I still have a lot to play with. but the iPhone/iTunes ringtone feature does meet my expectations.
Overall, it's pretty neat to have customizable ringtones. But this is not a new idea. Other carriers and other phones have had similar features too. (I'm not sure if those other ringtone services are as customizable as the iTunes platform.) The difference here is that the interface is slick and easily integrated with the iPhone. Other phones and services I've had in the past did not make the process of downloading ringtones simple or fast. The iPhone/iTunes ringtone feature is both of those things. Sure, I wish there were more songs available, but at at least now there are some tracks that have 15 seconds of silence that can be used as a ringtone...excellent.
So in our excitement with the iPhone my friends and I all picked the "strum" ringtone on the iPhone. It's sunny, happy and seems to sound the best on the iPhone speakers. I think it's appealing to us since it sounds like the ads. With that, it's pretty confusing when our iPhones ring. A typical conversation: "Is it yours?" "No, it's my phone," followed by, "Oh, wait, no it really is my phone!" We're such geeks.
You can see where confusion lies. But this highlights the limited choice of the ringtones currently available on the iPhone.
Apple has said that customizable ringtones are coming "very soon." You would think that with, oh say 4 gigs or even 8 gigs of music that maybe just one of those music files could be devoted to a ringtone, or that some of those gigabytes could be devoted to a wider variety of ringtones.
From a lawyer's perspective I'm sure there are copyright issues with using a regular old music file as a ringtone as it would likely constitute a "performance" under the Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act, but still, we can dream and Apple can license.
Apart from that, another feature that I'd like to see an update is assigning ringtones to a particular contact. Sure, you can set your phone so that when "Johnny Appleseed" calls the "harp" ringtone sounds while John Q. Public's calls sound the "strum." But what if you don't want to answer Johnny's call because he's an ex? (Or Joanna Appleseed) What if you wanted to silent him (or her) both in terms of ringtone and otherwise. Unlike my old Motorola Razr, you can't do this on the iPhone - yet. The capability of NOT hearing from someone when they call (but hearing others) should be an option because I think we've all wished that when an ex (or a boss other undesirable) calls that we don't want to call divert them to voicemail as they'll be able to tell. Somehow the "strum" with all its sunny and happy appeal wouldn't be so fitting for these folks and I think we'd rather not know that they called. Perhaps the "alarm" ringtone would be, but then you'd still know it was them.
- prev
- 1
- next
