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

[dante_mr]

The article has been updated, and the part about custom greeting has been changed. It has been mentioned multiple times above.
Just read the comments y'all...

The article has not been updated since I posted my comment and still claims:

“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.”

And all complaints have been about the default message not custom ones.

 

[blonko]

It’s only available in the U.S. and Canada, or at least only in those languages

Available in English... unless you are English and speak the actual language.

 

[pauldunlop]

I was the original Product Manager for the Pixel 3 Call Screen feature which is obviously very similar to Live Voicemail, and this was always the biggest single issue we faced - caller comprehension of what was going on is incredibly hard, and it took a lot of tweaking to find the right balance. We ended up biasing towards making people think, if in doubt, it was just normal voicemail, so they didn't sit waiting for ages for something to happen - seems like Apple have, to start with at least, gone the other way.

I've no doubt Apple will adjust this a lot before it launches - but there's a certain degree of public awareness you need before you can really take full advantage of features like this.

 

[jclardy]

The weirdest thing for me is that they just turn this on by default. Hopefully they are going to add an update onboarding step that explains how to use the feature - it was a bit confusing to me even as an iOS developer (Call has to come in, it makes a ping in the dynamic island, which you have to tap (not long press, which seems more obvious to me) then your phone also has to be unlocked...but you also just blocked the camera by tapping on the dynamic island. The chances of my parents being able to use this feature successfully are near zero.

IMO should have just been a normal looking notification, that when opened moves into the island.

 

[jhollington]

I don’t see how this is confusing. This is just bringing the functionality of an answering machine to the 21st century.

Well, we have a generation or two that have never encountered answering machines 😏

When I was involved with a youth organization about 20 years ago, we had an old rotary dial phone on one of the desks in the office. It was amusing to see most teens walk in and have absolutely no clue how to make a phone call with it. Answering machines survived as plot devices on sitcoms into the late nineties, but I didn't know too many people who were using them in the real world by that point.

 

[jhollington]

The article has not been updated since I posted my comment and still claims:

“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.”

And all complaints have been about the default message not custom ones.

To be fair, the article had not been updated when the comment you were replying to was posted. In fact, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the original article actually implied the opposite (emphasis mine):

The person calling you does not hear the typical voicemail message that you might have customized, as Apple has replaced the wording.

and...

It is not yet clear if Apple has plans to make any changes to the Live Voicemail messaging or implement an option for custom messages ahead of when ‌iOS 17‌ launches this fall.

The first three pages of comments came before MR changed the article to clarify that it didn't actually apply to custom voicemail greetings. Several folks were quite concerned about the custom message not playing, except for those of us who had tried it and were confused because it seemed to be working fine. The original wording was enough to make me go back and call my iPhone to test this feature again, just in case something has changed in the most recent beta (it hasn't — it works the same as it has since beta 1, including the annoying lack of a beep).

After the article was updated, we ended up with a dozen or more posts criticizing people for not reading the original article when, in fact, they probably had — and that's exactly why they were alarmed. I wish MR had posted the change as an update/correction rather than revising the original, as it makes most of the early commenters look like they're getting upset over nothing.

The original article can still be found at the link below, thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine.

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

Apple in iOS 17 is introducing a new Live Voicemail feature that is designed to provide you with a transcript of the message that's being left as...

web.archive.org

 

[Scott Baret]

I'm hoping this feature actually works well.

I personally have never found the iPhone voicemail system intuitive. The cassette-based AT&T answering machine I had in the 90s was far easier to use and is, for me, still the gold standard of audio message retrieval systems. What's wrong with the iPhone? For starters, the controls are far too small and always have been. Every iPhone I've ever owned has a bad habit of not even playing the message most of the time (or pausing in the middle of it).

The transcriptions have at least been useful, even if they aren't perfect, so I don't have to waste five minutes of my time trying to get the message to play or just attempt press that teeny tiny play button that seems to be a fraction of the size of a keyboard key on an old iPhone 4S.

What would be great is a complete redesign where the buttons are larger and options exist for better transcription--or just a way to convert them to a message that would go in with the text messages.

I have no choice but to use it for business, as some clients do prefer leaving voicemail, but family and friends know that I'll likely just text back or call them and ask what they need, especially if they know my great disdain for the iPhone voicemail system.

 

[JEY]

This seems over-engineered. Just play the voicemail greeting as normal and give the recipient the option of picking up. You know, like we used to do with answering machines.

I don’t want to announce to incoming callers that I’m screening my calls.

I don't understand how Apple would have access to my regular greeting, it's managed entirely by my cell phone company. A generic one would be the only option. I don't pay for visual voicemail through my provider, so would Apple have access to my greeting then?

 

[jhollington]

What would be great is a complete redesign where the buttons are larger and options exist for better transcription--or just a way to convert them to a message that would go in with the text messages.

Well, it’s a small thing, but iOS 17 at least adds a more prominent “Voicemail” button/banner in the Recents list when someone has left you a message.

Sadly, though, this just brings you to the same voicemail page we’ve had for years, and not much has changed there. Live Voicemail messages will also be saved alongside VVM messages in the same list. You can’t actually tell them apart right now.

 

[jhollington]

I don't understand how Apple would have access to my regular greeting, it's managed entirely by my cell phone company. A generic one would be the only option. I don't pay for visual voicemail through my provider, so would Apple have access to my greeting then?

If you’re using Visual Voicemail (VVM), you likely recorded your greeting on your iPhone, and it’s always kept a copy of that anyway.

Even if you dial in and record a greeting, I believe the iPhone still downloads it the same way it does with the voicemail messages you receive. I haven’t tried that in a while, but I don’t see why it would have changed.

Apple won’t have access to your greeting if you don’t pay for VVM. While Live Voicemail doesn’t technically require VVM (or any voicemail service), I suspect Apple will make it a requirement for the sake of a seamless user experience.

When I did a hands-on with this in the second iOS 17 beta a few weeks ago, I tried swapping in a SIM card with a plan that lacks VVM. The results were inconclusive, but I also never tried wiping the iPhone and setting it up from scratch or even giving it more than a few minutes to see if Live Voicemail would deactivate. This was what I wrote elsewhere at the time:

When I swapped that out for a prepaid SIM card for a line without voicemail service, iOS 17 wasn’t sure what to do about Live Voicemail. My iPhone still answered calls and transcribed messages, but the voicemail button in the Phone app showed I had no voicemail service, so it wouldn’t let me see or listen to my messages or change my greeting.

 

[1129846]

”silence unknown callers” works really well for that

Silence unknown callers is a far cry compared to Google’s system.

It works fine until you have to deal with and answers calls not in your contacts. It goes double when you know those calls are coming in.

Apple needs to add it like google as the carriers are refusing to give users that filter.

 

[spazzcat]

Silence unknown callers is a far cry compared to Google’s system.

It works fine until you have to deal with and answers calls not in your contacts. It goes double when you know those calls are coming in.

Apple needs to add it like google as the carriers are refusing to give users that filter.

What does Google do?

 

[1129846]

Theoretically, it could have. There have been Android apps that replicate this functionality for years, but of course Apple doesn't let third-party apps play with incoming phone calls beyond a few specific (and recent) APIs that allow for things like spam call detection and blocking.

Apple has chosen not to do this, and there are probably some valid reasons why it would have wanted to avoid this. Early iPhone models may not have had the performance to handle it properly, but the biggest issue is that having the phone answer the call requires that it actually be able to receive calls.

Standard voicemail works when your phone is dead or out of coverage; this new Live Voicemail won't, but at least you'd have a "real" voicemail box to fall back to in those situations, and Apple appears to be doing this as seamlessly as possible — at least if you're using a custom greeting, your callers won't know the difference. That's a stark contrast to Google's call screening, which puts the person into a conversation with Google Assistant asking them to explain why you should answer their call. It's also why I suspect Apple may tie Live Voicemail into having VVM; I'm really hoping it doesn't, but Apple is all about the user experience, and the average user may have a hard time understanding why their callers don't get their voicemail box every time they can't answer.

As for why Visual Voicemail costs more, that's due to the "visual" part of voicemail that Apple cooked up — and bear in mind this has been around since the original iPhone launched 16 years ago. This requires special software on the carrier's voicemail servers to download and synchronize the voicemail messages directly to the iPhone over a data connection. It's a lot faster and more reliable than having the iPhone automatically dial into the carrier's voicemail service the old-fashioned way to playback and record the messages onto the iPhone, which would be the only way Apple could do this without setting up special Visual Voicemail services with the carriers. That would end up being a nightmare considering that every carrier uses a different set of menus, prompts, and touch-tone numbers to access voicemail messages.

Sadly, I think Apple's original vision for Visual Voicemail didn't pan out the way it had hoped. AT&T didn't charge extra for VVM with the original iPhone — it was all part of the "iPhone plan," which also included unlimited data for the first time ever. Sadly, as other carriers got their hands on it, they saw it as another money-making opportunity and started charging for it as a value-added service, often at a higher price than "basic" voicemail. Apple had to fight the battles it could win if it hoped to get the iPhone sold around the world, and it held its ground in more important areas, like refusing to allow carriers to sully the iPhone with their own branding and bloatware.

You missed one system that would completely remove the carriers and how the 3rd party ones do it android and even how google Voice would work. That is forward the call to another number and that would be Apple’s control and in Apple’s system.

It means the carrier’s voice mail system is not even involved and as an added bonus you can review your voicemails not on your phone and makes them easier to save. That easier to save example oddly enough was great about google as I was able to back years and find an old voicemail of my father after he had passed away and even longer after he had stop being able to speak due to dementia and I was able to hear his true voice and way of speaking again. I haven’t listen to it in a few years now but I have it saved and it is nothing more than a 5-6 sec clip.

 

[1129846]

What does Google do?

Google basically will auto block high likely spam calls and the blocking goes farther as they don’t even get sent to voice mail. The call just ends.
Flags political calls to tell the user I can not remember if I could set those to auto block.

Calls that are suspected spam but not pass the threshold auto block and let’s you decide.
Also gives reports on what came in even if auto blocked so you can set future overrides if needed.

Long term the carriers need to implement shaken and stirred and block the spam on their side.

 

[jz0309]

Google basically will auto block high likely spam calls and the blocking goes farther as they don’t even get sent to voice mail. The call just ends.
Flags political calls to tell the user I can not remember if I could set those to auto block.

Calls that are suspected spam but not pass the threshold auto block and let’s you decide.
Also gives reports on what came in even if auto blocked so you can set future overrides if needed.

Long term the carriers need to implement shaken and stirred and block the spam on their side.

so Google as in Android or Google as in Google wifi (or whatever its called) where Google is your carrier?

 

[1129846]

so Google as in Android or Google as in Google wifi (or whatever its called) where Google is your carrier?

Google as in Android and worked like that on all carriers. In my case it was AT&T.

I know it has worked on Verizon and T-Mobile and of course the Google cellular system but iPhone while it can work on Google cellular it can not use that feature.

Also for it to work you did need a data connection as it would pings googles servers. So in cases where I cellular connection but at the time no data or very poor data connections it wouldn’t work as well if at all and might be a little slower on the uptake.

 

[jhollington]

You missed one system that would completely remove the carriers and how the 3rd party ones do it android and even how google Voice would work. That is forward the call to another number and that would be Apple’s control and in Apple’s system.

Good point. I'd kind of glossed over that, but I'm well-acquainted with this as I did exactly that with other private voicemail services, including my own Asterisk PBX, in the days before the iPhone.

I figure that running voicemail services wasn't something Apple wanted to get into — and considering the state of MobileMe in those days, that's probably a good thing. It was easier to partner with the carriers on this, especially back in 2007, which was a year or two before anybody was doing this in the mainstream. IIRC, Google Voice launched in 2009.

The other catch is that while no-answer-transfer is supposed to be a standard GSM feature, some carriers block user access to it, likely to encourage you to pay for their voicemail service. This omission alone was enough to have switch carriers at one point. It also wasn't an option at all on CDMA carriers like Verizon.

It means the carrier’s voice mail system is not even involved and as an added bonus you can review your voicemails not on your phone and makes them easier to save. That easier to save example oddly enough was great about google as I was able to back years and find an old voicemail of my father after he had passed away and even longer after he had stop being able to speak due to dementia and I was able to hear his true voice and way of speaking again. I haven’t listen to it in a few years now but I have it saved and it is nothing more than a 5-6 sec clip.

That's a sweet story. My condolences on the loss of your father, but it's nice to hear you were able to keep a memory of him that way.

You're absolutely right that it's a great feature. I also still have voicemail messages I've saved from other services that provided easier access that way, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I used to run my own Asterisk server.

Messages can be saved from the Phone app on the iPhone, but it used to be a lot trickier to do. More importantly, it wasn't until a few years ago that Apple finally stopped syncing deletions with carriers' VVM servers. I believe it was in iOS 12, as I have messages going back to July 2018 in my Phone's Voicemail app.

 

[danuff]

Mine seems to work just fine. I get voicemail, I can see it, and the other person hangs up normally. So, what's the problem?

 

[jhollington]

so Google as in Android or Google as in Google wifi (or whatever its called) where Google is your carrier?

I know it has worked on Verizon and T-Mobile and of course the Google cellular system but iPhone while it can work on Google cellular it can not use that feature.

Also for it to work you did need a data connection as it would pings googles servers. So in cases where I cellular connection but at the time no data or very poor data connections it wouldn’t work as well if at all and might be a little slower on the uptake.

Yes, it's 100% an Android feature, so it doesn't matter which carrier you're on. However, it's not there by default on all Android phones.

Caller ID & Spam Protection is actually a feature of Google's Phone app. This is now available for most Android phones, but some don't provide it as the default app. For instance, Samsung has its own Samsung Phone app, which has its own spam features, but those arguably aren't as sophisticated as Google's. Thankfully, Google now makes its Phone app available from the Play Store so it can be installed on other Android devices.

However, even when using Google's Phone app, the Google Assistant-based Call Screening feature is exclusive to Google's own Pixel lineup.

 

[jhollington]

Mine seems to work just fine. I get voicemail, I can see it, and the other person hangs up normally. So, what's the problem?

The issue is with the default greeting — the one that plays if you haven't recorded a custom one. While I'm confident Apple is going to tweak this before the final release, right now, it's a bit weird that it tells the caller that the person they're leaving a message for may pick up in the middle of the call.

However, even if you've recorded a custom greeting, the Live Voicemail omits the beep that sounds to tell the person they're clear to leave a message, which has confused a few of my callers as they're not sure if they're supposed to start talking.

We're still early in the beta phase, so it's a safe bet both of these things will be tweaked as we get closer to the final release.

 

[lovehateapple]

Too bad this feature only works if you use the default outgoing message. I don't see why it couldn't be made to work with a custom outgoing message? I agree with those who said, "the person you're calling may pick up" line should be removed.

 

[jz0309]

Google as in Android and worked like that on all carriers. In my case it was AT&T.

I know it has worked on Verizon and T-Mobile and of course the Google cellular system but iPhone while it can work on Google cellular it can not use that feature.

Also for it to work you did need a data connection as it would pings googles servers. So in cases where I cellular connection but at the time no data or very poor data connections it wouldn’t work as well if at all and might be a little slower on the uptake.

Thanks
I for one don’t care for the new feature in ios17 and I’m quite happy with the “silence unknown callers” but also u DER stand that different people have different needs

 

[MacAddict1978]

Just make it work like an old answering machine, use my recorded voice, and I'll pick up if I want to. The person leaving the message needs not know any difference.

That's exactly how it does work.

"May pick up" doesn't say "will pick up" and if someone hangs out for dead air for 2-3 minutes, that's on them. I get that people 20 and under are probably a bit remiss on the notion of an old school answering machine.

Lets not forget almost NO ONE leaves voice mails these days - so the demographic that still does should be quite familiar with an answering machine.

My question - why not just change your message?? Mine says, "We sorry, the party you're trying to reach is unavailable" because I mostly get scam calls - you can be less descript.

 

[racer1441]

Sounds more like people don't have the ability to know when their phone call isn't important enough to bother with. Actually, anyone who leaves a voicemail isn't worth responding to for about the last 5 years. My voicemail message is this actually...

"Hello, you have reached Racer1441, I won't listen to your message so leave one or not, I don't care. Text or email me if you think this is worthwhile of my time."

Works great to cut down on unneeded conversations with people!

 

[JustAnExpat]

I wonder... does this mean that too many people are installing beta software on production phones? Beta software isn't complete, and will cause problems.