If you have to leave a message, show your face
I haven’t left many FaceTime messages, but I already love them far more than I ever liked voicemail. Okay, I admit, I loathe voicemail. With this new feature on iOS 17, which lets me record a video message if a person doesn’t answer, I think we finally have a better answering machine, though you should still probably send a text.
The idea of voicemail isn’t bad, it just doesn’t work for most people. Every type of message option should exist, in some form. If I have something to say to you, but I don’t need to say it immediately, I should be able to leave a message, and the medium shouldn’t matter.
If the message is textual, I send a text message. If the message is audio, I can send an audio message, or I can call and leave a voicemail, hoping that you don’t answer the phone, of course. If the message is visual? I could send a photo or a video through the Messages app, but that seems clunky. It’s a natural fit for FaceTime to get its own message option.
Wait, go back, because I send text messages all the time, but audio messages? Never. And I hate voicemail. I hate voicemail because, let’s face it, we’re all very bad at it. Few people are good at leaving voicemail. Nobody knows exactly what to say. Even if I rehearse my message, I end up stumbling my words or sounding forced, and it sounds terrible.
Voicemail messages are public speaking, but only for one person to hear. Few of us enjoy public speaking, and even fewer are good at it. Yet voicemail, a message system that feels like public speaking in miniature, with all the pressure and attention focused on every word, was the norm for decades.
Of course it had to be, because phones were audio only. Before phones had screens and keyboards and autocorrect, we had to literally wire our phones into a tape recorder and make it record messages on a tiny little cassette tape, which we would then rewind to play back. If the tape was full, no more messages (hooray!). FaceTime messages feel more natural
Text messaging is thirty years old (at least, the SMS phone feature is that old), and it’s finally become the default way of reaching people, as it should be.
