Does Apple Monitor the Apple Support Forums At All?

Now I have had this hunch for quite a while. I am not sure what experiences other people have had, but despite the “it just works” marketing hoopla, many times our Macs don’t just work. In recent memory I have had problems in OS X, Logic, iTunes and iPhoto just to name a few. These problems aren’t just glossy little I can’t figure it out problems, they are bugs or glitches. So big that searching Google almost always brings up a huge 50+ message thread on the Apple Support Forums.

The one thing that seems to be missing from these support forums is any comment or interaction at all from anyone at Apple. I am not sure what the expectation for product support forums but I am used to seeing a “this isn’t a bug” or “we are researching this” or whatever. But in all my searches on Apple’s support forums I only see hundreds of hapless souls who are suffering from the same problem with no response or resolution from Apple.

Today I got screwed out of $0.99 by Apple. I wanted to add Megadeth’s Sweating Bullets as a ringtone for my iPhone. Now let’s be clear, I not only OWN this song outright, but I also have it on Zune Pass, so I kind of double own it. But I wanted to do it the easy way which costs $1.48.

I bought the song, downloaded it, right clicked and choose “Create Ringtone” and got this little jewel of a message from the iTunes store:

Excuse me? I bought it. It said I could when I paid for it, now you are saying I can’t after I already repurchased a song I already had? The Apple Forum page I found on it said that lots of other people have had this problem and not a word from Apple.

Make any song a Ringtone

Well, that’s crazy, but as all good geeks do, I found a way around it. Do you have the song you want as an MP3? Drag it into Garageband. Clip it to the length you want and choose “Send to iTunes as Ringtone” from the share menu. Then it doesn’t matter if you ever owned it or not.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon of useless support forums at Apple?

Submit this post to

• Get DVDs onto your iPad Free and Easy
• I am sorry Apple, it’s true, you are a monopoly
• The Mobile Wars are in full effect, do we really want the iPhone to “Win?”
• Say it ain’t so Apple, Safari now iTunes crapware???
• iTunes Movie Rentals, What’s a new release?
• iPhone Rant, entitled: and what’s more…
• The Philocast HD – Using the iPad as a Control Surface for Logic Studio
• Oh EU, DOJ, turn your Mordor like gaze to Mr. Jobs.
• Wow, not loving the iPad makes me Anti-Apple apparently
• Apple Automator For the Win!