Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

LightWaver-67 · Dec 23, 2004, 07:07 AM

WAY-Back in the early nineties... I bought my first Mac. It was a Mac IIvx w 8MB of RAM and a 32Mhz '030 processor. For the time, it was a ctually a really cool machine.

(Yes, let's all take a moment and get nostalgic about things like CD-Roms being new, Hard drives costing about $1 per MB and software coming on multiple floppies... causing us to do the "FloppyDisk-Shuffle": Insert disk 3, Insert disk 1, insert disk 4, insert disk 1, insert disk 5, insert disk 1...)

At the time, I went-out and got myself a modem and hooked-up to the good-'ol internet... BUT, I also picked-up some cool Fax/Voicemail software. This software allowed me to use my Mac as an information center. I could send/receive faxes, preview them, I could record voicemail messages and assign boxes and passwords, it would notify me onsceen of my messages and faxes... it was a cool, little application and VERY functional.

Now, about 10 YEARS LATER on hardware that is exponentially more powerful and on an operating system that is light-years ahead of what was offered in the early nineties... I cannot find ANY SOFTWARE that can do anything close to that on my G4 (soon to be G5). Heck, in this day-and-age... I can watch live camera feeds of traffic on my screen, but I can't setup & manage my built-in modem on my computer to MANAGE my phone line...? What about BASIC things...? Caller-ID...? Voice-mail...? Telephony, where I can use a USB headset to converse w/ people through my Mac...? Record phone calls...? iTunes hold music...? NOTHING! None of that!!!

Am I missing something...? I have looked all-around and there is nothing even remotely close to the functionality of that 10-year-old software that ran on that 10-year-old Mac way back when. Am I the only one who could USE such software functionality...?

I work from home. I sit at my desk all-day and it would be GREAT if my Mac could be my receptionist:

- Calls come-in, they display on-screen, shows if it is phone or fax, if it's phone it shows caller-ID and if they are in my address book I see their picture and info, I can choose to ignore, answer, go straight to voicemail... or how about having some pre-recorded responses to choose from that the caller may hear: "I am on the phone right now and will return your call when I am done" or something... setup multiple voice mailboxes with passwords: "For Bill, press ONE now, for Janet, press TWO now..."

There is so much that seems like is possible, but no one has done it yet. Why?

Sorry to rant about this... but it just boggles my mind that something so functional that came on a (free?) application that was written 10-years ago for slower hardware can NOT be found for today's much FASTER and more-capable hardware.

Any insight...? Thanks!

LightWaver-67 · Dec 23, 2004, 07:12 AM

AUGH!

The distant sounds you hear are "Me eating crow"...

I wish I had done another search BEFORE ranting. Apparently, "Phone Valet" was released a couple weeks ago on VersionTracker. I am looking into it right now. Sorry!

LightWaver-67 · Dec 23, 2004, 07:39 AM

AHA! - It gets close... but still, it requires you to have a real phone on your desk. It does not allow for using your Mac as your phone via a USB headset. I guess I'll keep looking.

cpac · Dec 23, 2004, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by LightWaver-67:
AHA! - It gets close... but still, it requires you to have a real phone on your desk. It does not allow for using your Mac as your phone via a USB headset. I guess I'll keep looking.

2 things:

(1) I believe the fax/modems installed on all Macs are NOT voice capable. It's a hardware, not a software, issue.

(2) You can quite easily set up what you're looking for if you switch to using a blue-tooth cell phone. It interfaces with Address Book nicely, allowing caller ID and whatnot to pop up on screen or to dial your phone going out using your Mac.

tooki · Dec 23, 2004, 11:35 AM

Why is it that people have so much trouble posting their software questions in the SOFTWARE forum?!? This was not a Mac OS X question.

tooki

Disgruntled Head of C-3PO · Dec 23, 2004, 12:37 PM

Have have been wanting a call display on screen for years and I don't understand why nobody has done it yet.

cpac · Dec 23, 2004, 01:10 PM

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
Have have been wanting a call display on screen for years and I don't understand why nobody has done it yet.

It's there for bluetooth.

I'm not sure if the not-voice-capable modem can pick up on caller ID information, so it may not be possible on the hardware.

Millennium · Dec 23, 2004, 01:19 PM

Originally posted by tooki:
Why is it that people have so much trouble posting their software questions in the SOFTWARE forum?!? This was not a Mac OS X question.

Actually, it is sort of related to OSX, sort of. When OSX was first announced, the word somehow got around that it would lack a telephony API (which OS9 apparently had). This caused quite a bit of controversy in some circles, but Apple's rationale was that they said nobody was using this technology, and so they saw no reason to port it.

I was on the side that Apple should have included it, but then, they did have something of a point, given that I'd never even known that the Mac had a telephony API until its exclusion from OSX brought it to light.

LightWaver-67 · Dec 23, 2004, 03:07 PM

Originally posted by tooki:
Why is it that people have so much trouble posting their software questions in the SOFTWARE forum?!? This was not a Mac OS X question.

tooki

My apologies, I was thinking that it might be an OSX related deficiency... the inability to do such things, but as I see the responses, I see it is/was a limitation of the internal modem. Thanks for moving this.