251–260 of 450 posts
Re. the other comments about robocalls, I use the "Silence unknown callers" on my iPhone and it works quite well. The only drawback is that you have to remember to disable the feature if you are expecting a call from someone who's number you don't know (eg a delivery driver.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
dating apps over phone calls is an absolutely ludicrous take that demonstrates a disconnect from reality
Definitely not. It depends on who you and your circle of friends are, of course, but dating apps are definitely way higher usage than phone calls among anyone I know. I use my phone as a phone less than half a dozen times per year. If the phone functionality vanished, I don't think I would mind.
I expected this to be about the now common pattern of subjecting people to some shit version of Alexa for 10 minutes before you eventually crack and allow them to sit on hold for someone who might actually be able to solve their problem. Bonus shit biscuits if you allow them to get to some answer from Brenda (the brainless Alexa clone) where you basically say "great news, you can do this online". As if anyone with ha…
I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…
Article plays up the fumbling for effect, but is otherwise spot on. The PSTN was immensely overbuilt. Old Western Electric equipment is, literally, built of tempered steel, from the crossbar switches in the CO to the red telephone on the desk. The human artifice erected in between, electrically and mechanically connecting a microphone at one end to a speaker at the other, was staggering in its analog complexity, and…
Digitalization has added so many layers people don't even know - it's sad that there aren't many actual direct analog connections you can make anymore to see how "realtime" it was.
I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…
> It's gotten so bad I just don't answer my phone unless it's a call from someone I know I have my phone set to silence calls unless they are in my contacts list. I tell people this whenever I give out my phone number. Honestly I think this should be the norm. There's no reason for a random stranger to need to call you, if they want to reach out they can text or email, and I can't imagine many urgent situations where…
My ringer is always silenced, I get notified to calls because I have notifications for calling enabled on my watch. I should consider disabling notifications altogether for calls not in my contact list.
The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over. It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having…
What phone are you using? That sounds like a terrible experience, I'll need to make sure I avoid it. For what it's worth, you can install a new dialer from the Play Store. Or you can grab an open source one from F-Droid. The Simple apps are quite popular because they just do one thing and do it well, i.e. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/
When I had a Samsung Galaxy, I installed the full suite of Simple apps onto it because the included apps sucked so bad. Simple gets it mostly right from a UI/UX perspective, and I was happy to support the author by purchasing the apps in the Play store.