Create iPhone Ringtones in GarageBand

Ringtones are a fun way to personalize your iPhone. GarageBand, on every Mac, lets you create ringtones from music in your iTunes library.

Create a Ringtone Project
Launch GarageBand, select "iPhone Ringtone" (in the left column) and then double-click "Example Ringtone." Name the new ringtone project as you like.

Next, GarageBand will open the new project with a single track named "Jingles." In the track is a music snippet named "Pastel Slide Medium." Click on the snippet and press the Delete key to remove it.

Choose a Song
Click the Media Browser button (in the lower right corner of the window) and then drag a song from your iTunes Music library into the "Jingles" track. A bar with the title of the song will appear in the track.

Most songs are too long to use as ringtones. GarageBand uses a yellow bar (above the track) to let you specify an 18-second piece of the song to use.

Drag the yellow bar over the portion of the song you want to use for the ringtone. If you like, you can drag the ends of the yellow bar to create a longer ringtone. While the default 18 seconds is a nice length, 30-45 seconds is typical and let's you include more of the song.

Ringtones loop. So, if you let a  ringtone play long enough when your phone rings, it'll play again from the beginning.

Send Ringtone to iTunes
Select "Send Ringtone to iTunes" from the Share menu. GarageBand will convert and export the ringtone to the Ringtones library in iTunes. The next time you sync, the ringtone will be installed onto your iPhone for you to use.

How To Re-Download an App From The App Store

If you accidentally remove an app you purchased on your iPhone (of iPad or iPod touch) before syncing it to iTunes, or if you remove an app from iTunes on your Mac, you can re-download the app without paying for it again.

The App Store keeps track of all the apps you've downloaded - paid for or free - whether you downloaded them directly to your iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) or into iTunes.

In iTunes, to download an app again, find it in the App Store and click the Buy App button. A dialog window like the one below will open. Click OK and the app will begin to download.

You can re-download an app from your iPhone, too. Launch the App Store and find the app. Tap the price, then tap BUY NOW. A message will pop-up, similar to the one displayed by iTunes. Tap OK to start the download.

Note: Make sure you are signed in with the same account you used to purchase the app originally.

Another important note: If the application is no longer available on the App Store, you will not be able to re-download it.

iTunes Visualizer: A Mesmerizing Music Lightshow

The iTunes Visualizer shows you what music might look like, if you could see it. Lights blink and change color. Shapes pulsate to the beat. Particles travel across the screen as though they live for the music.

When you start up Visualizer, you can't help but stare at it as the music somehow causes lines and balls of light to pulse and transform in an unending pattern of motion.

To see Visualizer, launch iTunes and start playing some music. Then, select Show Visualizer from the View menu. Visualizer will start playing in the iTunes window. Select Full Screen from the View menu to expand Visualizer to fill the entire screen of your Mac.

iTunes includes a few other Visualizers to choose from: Lathe, Jelly, Stix and iTunes Classic Visualizer. Select them from the View menu, in the Visualizer menu.

Give Apps, Movies, Audiobooks and TV Shows as Gifts from iTunes

iTunes Gift Cards always make for a nice gift to friends and loved ones on special occasions. For a more personal touch, the iTunes Store lets you give someone a specific movie, TV show, audiobook or iPhone app.

For the romantic, give them the movie, "Sleepless In Seattle." For the casual gamer, give them "Bejeweled 2." Give the gift of an audiobook, like "The Great Gatsby." You can even gift episodes of "LOST."


Gifting an app, movie, TV show or audiobook is easy.
In iTunes on your Mac, for every app, movie, TV show and audio book, you'll see a little triangle next to the price.

Click it to open a menu that will let you gift the item to someone. Your gift will be sent to that special someone via email. The email they recieve let's them easily get (download) their gift with a single click.

How To Get More Free Space On Your iPod and iPhone with iTunes 9.1

If you're iPod or iPhone is near full and you're not able to get any more music, videos or anything else on it, don't despair. Here's a way to reclaim some space. And all you have to do is sync... a little differently.

iTunes 9.1 has a new feature that reduces the size of your music.

A great majority of music on the iTunes music store is digitized (encoded) at a bit rate of 256 Kbps. The new iTunes feature reduces music in size by converting music files to 128 Kbps. The hearable difference between the two bit rates is so subtle that you would be challenged to hear a difference at all, even with really, really good headphones. (Really, if you can hear a difference, you're not happy listening to music at 256 Kbps either.)

Launch iTunes and connect your iPod or iPhone (or iPad). Toward the bottom of the Summary screen in the Options section, check the option "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 Kbps AAC". Now, whenever you sync, music (the music being synced) with be converted to a smaller 128 Kbps size and transferred to your iDevice. The music in your iTunes music library (the originals) are unmodified.

Please note that the first sync after you've turned this feature on may take a long while, depending on how many songs need to be converted.

We tried this feature on an iPhone that had 1,395 songs totaling 6.51 GB in size. We started the sync. A few hours later, 757 songs were converted. (The rest were already at 128 Kbps.) The new total size of all the songs? 5.35 GB. That's 1.16 GB reclaimed!