RIP Answering Machines
Okay, hear us out. Although the arrival of voicemail handled exclusively by your cellular carrier was arguably the real death knell for the physical answering machine, there was still one feature these devices offered that has a handful of boomers still refusing to say goodbye to them. You could ignore a call, but still listen to the message being recorded by the caller, and decide if the call was worth answering, after all. With iOS 17, Apple is more or less reintroducing that feature for the iPhone with Live Voicemail which provides a real-time transcription of a voicemail message as it’s being recorded, with the option to accept the call if it seems worth it.
