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Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

> They aren’t available whilst a call is in process > They have vastly less capability or flexibility than the systems they replaced

I don't understand the first point because I can access my calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone without problem (Android 10).

The second makes sense if you look at it from the lens of you not having infinite markup possibilities in your digital calendar compared to writing whatever you want on a desk calendar, but my calendar is with me everywhere. You can get a lot done with plain text notes and the 'description' section of a calendar event.

I consider my phone an all in one productivity machine, not an entertainment machine, and I think that works well for me.

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The larger thrust of my essay is that simple feature checklist marketing and product specification fails to consider a larger ecosystem and workflow of usage. The fact that much of the intelligence of the system was "women's work" (e.g., provided by secretarial and switchboard staff), made it all the more invisible.

Regarding the limitations of the post-1980s "smart phone" ecosystem (both desk and mobile devices), the limitations and UI/UX failures:

1. Apply to a number of different devices. Not merely flagship smartphones, but several other variations on featureful telephony equipment, including a number of generations of office phone systems (typically Rolm desksets), VOIP systems, and consumer landline / wireless handsets, etc., with which I've had direct experience. These tend to exhibit a range of UI/UX failures, to a greater or lesser extent.

2. The opening quote was from an aquaintance, who's more than slightly technologically literate.

3. The statement isn't absolute, but conditional. Frequently implies "not always".

Comments so far seem to miss both the focus on overall workflow, and the nuance on feature completeness and/or suitability.

Perhaps I'm a less effective communicator than I'd hoped.

Perhaps the technological blinders are more formidable than I'd feared.

It's pretty obvious that most poster here don't understand and don't want to understand your article. Most of them are invested in software. Pretty bad software, probably. It seems the only way they can feel good about what they use or develop (often not by any real choice) is by constructing an imaginary past where everything was absolutely awful and comparing the current tools to such imaginary past. Anything that undermines that meta-narrative must be immediately responded to with shallow off-point comments to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

Thanks.

Part of the entire project is to see what the response is, and how it responds (if at all) to different communications methods.

Challenging assumptions, let alone slaying sacred cows, is a fraught task.

And to correct a misapprehension: it's not that the 1970s-era office phone ecosystem was better. It's that it was different than the set of affordances and features of present comms devices and systems embody and the underlying design understanding evidences.

In the earlier Reddit piece the article references, the immediately preceeding concept addressed was Chesterton's Fence. Many here are eager to move it.

> I don't understand the first point because I can access my calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone without problem (Android 10).

This might be a weird question but are you always connected to WiFi?

I think you're alluding to the Verizon (IIRC) problem of data and voice access not working simultaneously. So on a call, you could use the device locally but not access anything via data (aside from being on wifi). This was unique to them and carriers using similar technology, since I don't use them I don't know if it's still an issue (but suspect not).

When I'm not, I likely have mobile data service, and even if I don't, my calendar and contacts are available offline and sync once I'm online. Email won't be accessible, but I can draft one and set a calendar reminder to send it later.

Not familiar with any issues with using data while on a call as some comments have alluded to. I have Google Fi as a provider and haven't experienced any issues with them, or Verizon before.

If you have VoLTE you can do data and voice at the same time. But many networks and phones don't have that yet

> I don't understand the first point because I can access my calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone without problem (Android 10).

Not all phones could. Verizon in particular had a lot of phones in the previous decade which couldn't access voice and data services at the same time.

That is problem of low end GSM modules.

It's a poor person's problem, doesn't apply here...right?

It is a problem with CDMA that Verizon and Sprint use. CDMA can't do voice and data at the same time. Both Verizon and Sprint have mostly migrated to LTE and VoLTE and are retiring their CDMA networks next year.

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