Appiphilia: Missed call notifier -- the missing iPhone app
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Unlike Steve Jobs and the Apple fanboy cult, I don’t have my iPhone attached to my hip.
I know it’s hard to believe but sometimes I take showers, or (gasp) turn off my phone -- especially when I go to the movies. Sometimes I even go to sleep!
When those rare occasions happen and I do not hear (or see) my phone ringing, I would like my iPhone to act like every other cellphone in the world and chirp or beep or make a sound to notify me that someone called or someone left a voice mail.
Since Jobs & Co. didn’t find it necessary to include this basic feature in either of their two models of phones, we are stuck waiting for such an improvement in the App Store, but, alas, there is nothing out there to solve this simple and universal problem.
The Internet has noticed.
In September 2007 someone with the handle ‘reptile247’ posted this message in the ModMyi forum: ‘Does anyone have a Missed Call Reminder App in development?’
Six months later, ‘posborn’ posted a similar message on the everythingiCafe message board. ‘Anyone know of a program that will serve as a missed call/voice mail reminder? I know I can just turn the phone on to see what I have missed but sometimes I step out of the office and when I come back I don’t remember to turn the phone on to see if I have missed something.’
There is an app or two floating around for those who have ‘jailbroken’ their devices, but doesn’t it seem crazy that you’d have to do something that dramatic in order to have a feature that’s an afterthought on any cellphone produced after 1989?
And if Apple were really smart, they’d tie it to one of the thousands of songs resident in the iPhone. Heck, tie it to the ringtones if they really wanted to milk us for a few more shekels. But for Pete’s sake, this is the coolest, smartest phone ever; let us know when we missed a call while we were in the hot tub.
-- Tony Pierce