So incredibly angry at iOS oh my god. I will have to write something about it tomorrow but I am FURIOUS.

Ok, back in front of a real computer for this longer post.

So, my mom uses an iPhone. While I was visiting, she told me that she didn't like any of the alarm options provided, but she did like the default Android one (Bright Morning). I offer to change it over for her, thinking this will be easy, right? All I have to do is download an mp3 and then set it as the alarm tone. I can do all of this directly on the phone. Easy!

You cannot just set an mp3 file as your alarm ringer on an iPhone.. You can set a custom song easily enough... as long as that song is in your Music Library. But you can't add a downloaded mp3 to your Music Library from the phone (and also I don't really want this file to be part of the music library anyway??).

Now, the hack is you can use GarageBand to Share As Ringtone. Fine, whatever. It takes some time to learn how the fuck to use it, but I finally manage to wrangle GarageBand into reading the mp3 file, and I'm able to export that track as a ringtone.

But then it comes out way too loud. And on Android, I'd just change the alarm volume and be done. But that's not how shit works on iPhone: the ringer volume and the alarm volume are the same. And my mom needs her ringer to be max volume for a variety of reasons (for example, sometimes she's cooking and the phone is in her purse on the other side of the house). So I go back to Garage Band, and adjust the volume, re-export, and it's still ear-blisteringly loud.

I try this a couple more times until I finally realize that GarageBand is automatically normalizing the volume on output, which is a fucking WILD thing for an app I was expecting could be used for mastering audio to do. And it turns out, you can turn that shit off in the app if you're using it on macOS. But if you're on an iPhone then fuck you, I guess!

Now, obviously, I could sidestep all of this by just loading the damn file onto her phone via iTunes on a computer. But she hasn't had iTunes on her computer in fucking years, and why the hell should that be necessary?? This would have taken me all of 5 goddamn minutes on Android, and instead I spent several hours before I eventually realized it just wasn't fucking possible. Apple did not want me to do this, and so I could not.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous.