Is Apple's iOS 17 Live Voicemail Feature Too Confusing?

[dannyyankou]

Well good thing there's another 2 months of beta testing to work out the quirks

 

[redbeard331]

Am I the only one who loves this feature??

I’ve been hoping that Apple would update the long forgotten phone app for YEARS! The google version was light years ahead, I’m so glad they have finally done something with it!

ALSO: This is still a feature that is an early BETA meant for us big time developers, I’m sorry but your boomer parents and wives should know what you do for a living and cut you some slack. We don’t know what improvements Apple may make in the coming months before the public release of iOS 17, if this is such a headache for people you can always revert back to iOS 16.

And the article states that you can opt to record your OWN message, or turn it off entirely, so we aren’t sure what all the hullabaloo is about.

It is not yet clear if Apple has plans to make any changes to the default Live Voicemail messaging ahead of when iOS 17 launches this fall. There is an option to customize a voicemail by going to Phone > Voicemail > Greeting > Custom, which can provide a solution as you can record your own message.

 

[Stewie]

Boy, this really doesn't work for people who use their phone for business. A generic voice mail prompt will get most folks to simply hang up. If I can record a custom one maybe better, but man this just seems caller-hostile. If you don't pick up, then you're sending a message that you're not important enough to talk to. That's the last thing I want a customer/prospect to experience.

I plan to disable this feature.

You didn't read the article did you? it stated that if you have a customer recording, which if you are using your phone for business you should, then this doesn't impact you. It only changed for the default greeting, which as you stated will get most people to just hang up.

"Note that if you had a custom message in ‌iOS 16‌, there will be no change, so this impacts people who are using the default voicemail greeting feature.

 

[SoldOnApple]

Maybe some of the processing power in our phones should be used for a mini AI to detect this confusion and explain to the caller what is going on.

 

[TonyC28]

Ok here's the fix:
The message needs to say "Please leave a message after the beep. But just so you know the person might pick up while you're leaving the message. Basically it's like an answering machine from the back in the day except they are reading what you're saying instead of hearing it. (beep)"

 

[retroneo]

I can only assume it’s not technically possible for them to place this feature after your carrier voicemail message hence why they did it this way. However, I think they missed the mark a bit on the process. It is a jarring message to hear and then saying they MAY answer the phone is unnecessary imo.

They can make it so you record a custom greeting on the phone, or type one out for Siri to say.

True, but the iPhone has a copy of your greeting if you're using Visual Voicemail, and that's how mine has been working since the first beta.

The whole option for this live voicemail doesn't appear on my iOS 17 phone at all. US and Canada only at this stage.

 

[Nightflyer720]

It's confusing people because it's illogical, counterintuitive, and unnecessary. The caller has ZERO need to know you "may" pick up. It's not their business to know that. Either you pick up or you don't . . . how on earth does that require an advisory to the person leaving a message? Another case of Apple overthinking something no one was "thinking" about in the first place.

 

[alexandr]

That's true, it's transcribed. 😆

Oh yea... it is.

 

[MrRom92]

Leave it to apple to overcomplicate something that worked just fine for decades

 

[Kulfon]

Do not even see the need for messages to exist. Communicators are just more versatile and convenient.

 

[Mrjoedot]

Nice gimmick tho but No one worldwide uses voicemail anymore.

 

[svish]

Don't think it is confusing. But maybe before iOS 17 is released, Apple may change something

 

[RickDEGH]

The folks complaining on Reddit can certainly set custom greetings. Apple is not stopping anyone from creating a custom message, which most folks do. And if you’ve had one already it stays.

 

[chucker23n1]

A lot of people don't know the difference between "may" and "can," so yeah, I can understand how some people would get confused between "may" and "will"

Sure. But even “can” doesn’t mean “will”.

I like the suggestion by someone else to add “if they are available”, but I don’t think “may” is all that confusing.

 

[rembert]

As long as my telecom provider requires me to pay extra for visual voice mail, I won’t use it.

 

[Nozuka]

I would prefer to be able to disable VM altogether.

Pretty much every provider should support disabling it. At least in my country they do. Some require sending an SMS, some have the option in the customer portal etc.

 

[Yptcn]

The folks complaining on Reddit can certainly set custom greetings. Apple is not stopping anyone from creating a custom message, which most folks do. And if you’ve had one already it stays.

OK but will it still be transcribed then ?

 

[cgs1xx]

I wonder how this will affect telemarketers 😆

 

[hagar]

Is this English only? Hopefully the feature is smart enough to seamlessly switch between languages.

 

[spazzcat]

Why shady? I remember when folks listened to their answering machines in order to screen calls.

I'm guessing zoomers have no idea how answering machines work.

 

[spazzcat]

Sounds like there are lots of people out there that aren’t the smartest in the world.

I have been a computer programmer for over 20 years; you have no idea...

 

[spazzcat]

We are still in beta, and this is the whole point of testing stuff like this out. I'm sure, based on the feedback, it will be tweaked.

 

[mattopotamus]

Ditto here, and that's how it's been working for me since the first beta. The only difference is there's no beep after my recorded announcement, but it otherwise stays in sync with my standard Visual Voicemail box, which confused my dad a bit when he called the first fewtimes...

That’s exactly what it does for me. My custom voicemail is working just with no beep, so I always have a delay with people starting, but there is no message that this article refers too. Maybe it’s carrier dependent? I have Verizon.

Edit: never mind, I actually read the entire article. All of these people having issues use a standard greeting.

 

[TriBruin]

So, all of you complaining are using Feedback Assistant to file feedback with Apple, right? Feedback is not just for bugs. It is also for making suggestions for improvevent or changes to features. If you think that there a better way to handle this, file feedback.

 

[jmh600cbr]

ITT a bunch of people that didn’t read the article.