Rings before going to voicemail

Typical Apple... Lets take what should be the easiest thing to do and make it as obscure and complicated as possible.

Heres a thought for their software engineers:

Choose 'Settings', followed by 'Phone'. Add a category called 'Number of rings before voicemail'. Enter a number and done. Simple, fairly intuitive, easy but so typically un-Apple. Why don't they ever learn from MicroSoft???

I see no reason the Phone could not communication my intentions to the carrier's software via a preference.

BTAIM, what I found ridiculous is the it goes to voice mail after only 2 rings. One needs time to get the phone from the holster, put in the password and answer.

And what would happen if you were on a plane and your phone was turned off when someone tried to call you? Unlike the old answering machine your parents had, the voice mail service lives on your carrier's systems. There may even be multiple voice mail systems in use by the same carrier, so there would be no uniform way of setting things up so that a phone could control this. NO phone has this feature. Why should the iPhone be any different?

robeehner wrote:

Typical Apple... Lets take what should be the easiest thing to do and make it as obscure and complicated as possible.

Heres a thought for their software engineers:

Choose 'Settings', followed by 'Phone'. Add a category called 'Number of rings before voicemail'. Enter a number and done. Simple, fairly intuitive, easy but so typically un-Apple. Why don't they ever learn from MicroSoft???

This thread has been nicely dead for 4 years! And as mentioned, had you read it, voicemail is a CARRIER feature and one that no phone can magically reach out into the carriers proprietary computer system and change an account setting. Thus you need to go through your carrier who controls that setting on your voicemail account on THEIR systems. Apple does not control the cellular service providers proprietary systems Or have unrestricted access to account settings with them.

This is really stupid. It should be a preference on the phone.

Kernos wrote:

This is really stupid. It should be a preference on the phone.

Carriers control this so it CANNOT be a preference on the phone.

tonymele wrote:
How do you set the number of rings before going to voicemail.

It could not communicate with the carrier's software via a preference mainly because the carrier does not provide a method to do so. Other preference settings vary from carrier to carrier, like the ability to set call forwarding, etc. If the carrier provides an interface to do so, it can be built into the OS. On AT&T, you can set up call forwarding on the iPhone. On Verizon, you can not. You instead have to call a # and enter a specific key sequence to turn it on or off. That's because Verizon does not provide a software interface to control this.