Another idea for getting a second number on your phone: See what options your carrier might have. T-Mobile has Digits, which allows you (among other things) to use more than one number on your phone. I got in while it was still $5 a month. I think it’s $10 now.
I use it for work (and my landline at work forwards to the Digits number). Mostly, I was tired of having to check multiple devices for voicemail messages.
I suspect other carriers may have similar services.
On the topic of video calling:
You mentioned FaceTime (which is obviously getting some nice upgrades), Skype, and Hangouts. Though I know Facebook is much-maligned amongst many in this community and you acknowledged you don’t really use Messenger, it does have great video chat. While reasons those in this group have for leaving Facebook are legitimate, Facebook is nearly ubiquitous which is a huge benefit to it as a video calling platform. It also has supported its own versions of stickers and face filters for awhile.
This episode is one of the reasons why I’ve been listening to MPU for almost the last 400 episodes. I love these deep-dives into certain functionality even more than the guest workflow shows. Keep bringing them on, please!
I’d be happy if there were an option to instantly send any call to voicemail if the caller isn’t in your address book. I do that manually anyway, like you mentioned in the show.
Is there a thread on the Monday meet up? Trying to figure out if I can make it.
Thanks, need to check on work and travelling from the South West but may indeed be able to make it.
I grew up in the south west! And as my parents are visiting me this weekend you’ll probably all get the ful brunt of my accent 
Most of my family live in Bristol and I live in Gloucestershire but I’m welsh so I’ve got a good combo accent
I was a little confused by the discussion of WiFi Calling. David and Katie both said at different times that a downside is that it could use up your data plan, but if it’s WiFi Calling then the calls should only be going over Wifi networks, not the carrier’s data network, right? Or is not really WiFi calling, but data calling?
Interesting idea, I use a different ringtone for most entries in my contact list (any that I know I want to answer) and ignore anything without that ringtone. If this was done silently in the background it would work for me and I’d like it since every call I get from a non-contact always goes to voicemail.
I use the voicemail transcription and I live in Canada. I believe it works with all of the major carriers here.
One of my favorite features of the Mail app on the iPhone is the ability to get an alert when someone replies to a particular message on an email thread. It’s like text messaging without having to give out my private contact information.
I don’t use that feature very often but when I do use it, it’s extremely helpful.
I took them to mean it could use up the data plan of whatever WiFi network you’re using, now that many ISPs have rolled out data caps.
Regarding iPhone communication, I have a tip that I hope everyone will find useful. If you’ve got your hands full (or dirty) and need to make a call, and your phone is nearby, use the following Siri command:
Hey, Siri. Call [person] on speaker.
Siri will launch the dialer, place the call, and route the call to the speaker phone, allowing you to continue working, unfettered.
Great show, guys! Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge!
Most of the non-mobile data caps I’ve seen are in the 300GB range and you’d have to make a LOT of calls to use up that much data. I got the impression they were referring to mobile data plans since David specifically mentioned the potential problem of using your data plan when you’re away from your home Wifi.
My department at work recently moved buildings, and we got rid of all of our fax machines (except photocopiers, because we won’t discriminate against a device that has a fax machine built in). We estimate that a fax hasn’t been sent to or from us in 5 years. Granted we’re the IT department, but we will now be using the central university fax number if it’s needed - which will hopefully be never!
The legal industry, unfortunately, still likes the fax. Even there, though, I’ve seen a decrease over the last couple of years. My next crusade, after getting other attorneys to stop using faxes, is to get them to stop sending sensitive data like medical records via email.
Great episode about the phone. Ir’s quite rare to hear about this topic in the age of “smart” home even if I have today unlimited phone calls to land- and mobile-phone + SMs inside the country, I’m not a frequent user. Using preferably Telegram / Facetime / Message / Whatsapp / Snapchat / instagram to “talk”.
Unknown phone number
My way to handle unknown phone number is tricky. In Switzerland at least, from the moment you take the call, even if there is someone or not, you phone number is registered as existing and send to potential marketing database… Despite the fact my number is officially marked as no-marketing please.
However is this happens, I created a “Marketing” user in my iPhone address book. Every time such a number rings, I add it to this contact. I set that contact with a silent ringtone (I call ring of silence 
) and disable vibration.
Google Voice
It’s always nice to hear about Google Voce, which is not yet in Europe… Because abroad calls from Switzerland are expensive, I’m using a (swiss) VoIP which is surprisingly cheap (0.5 eurocent / minute in most european landlines), no subscription.
Wifi calling
With my previous carrier, I could try Wifi-calling. It’s very handy when you are abroad, so you can call home for the price included in your subscription. However, I notice lower quality calls than classic GSM connexion.
Visual voice mail
I used to have Visual Voice mail with my previous carrier. Now I switched to the “low cost” carrier of Swisscom (the historic swiss carrier). Wingo doesn’t provide Visual voice mail, but Swisscom does. I miss the feature a bit, but as I don’t get so many calls, that’s fine I guess
It hasn’t been discussed in the episode, but we have no news from the SMS 2.0 : RCS (Rich communication Service), will is be supported by iOS12 ?
I was working for a small web agency in 2006. We didn’t had a fax machine, we didn’t bother to by one, we were an internet company after all But we regularly get fax tone on the line. So instead of buying such a machine, I connected our phone line to a fax card plug inside one local server, and set up a service to “print” and forawrd fax as PDF as mail… At least no paper involved, and the setup cost was just a linux service to set up, which I did myself
)