After watching Steve Jobs’ keynote and reading some articles (like [1]) in the press about the iPhone, I really wonder what is so revolutionary about this visual Voicemail feature. I mean, showing an email box like a list of voice messages and the possibility to select them randomly sounds like something that was somehow forgotten to be implemented in current mobiles and networks, but I cannot see any technical reasons or problem. Maybe the phone network had to be extended to allow this feature, but that is more a political problem than a technical one. Though this feature is hyped so much by many journalists that one starts to think that revolutionary technique is not a matter of engineering, but of marketing alone.

In fact my SkypeIn account had this feature months ago and I wasn’t surprised at all when seeing it there. It’s like a logical step. Keep in mind that we are speaking about digital phones and digital networks, not about analog technology.

So please, dear press, try to be a bit more neutral and question what marketing (and Apple certainly has one of the best ones) is trying to tell us.