On Macs, The Best Yosemite Feature is The Worst Yosemite Feature
Ring, ring!
Ring, ring!
In the good old days, let’s say during the pre-cell phone 1980s, a family might have had several phones in the house. There’d be a wall-mounted phine in the kitchen, a phone in the living room, and a desk phone in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, perhaps on their desk.
And if Sis was lucky, and if she behaved well, her parents might provide her with an extension phone of her own. If money was plentiful, she might even receive her very own phone line with a separate phone number for total privacy.
The Bell System had some iconic advertisements for such services. They’d picture a teen-aged girl on a frilly bed, yakking on a Princess telephone.
Let’s say Sis didn’t have a line of her own, just an extension phone. When a call came into the house, everyone would hold their breath. Sis’ little-squirt Brother would answer in the Kitchen. All the phones in the house would stop ringing when Brother picked up the kitchen wall phone. He’d yell, “Dad, it’s for you!” Dad would pick up the desk phone in his bedroom. Life would move on.
But let’s suppose the phones did not stop ringing when Brother picked up the kitchen phone. Let’s suppose they kept ringing, even while Dad talked on his extension.
Sis would be annoyed. She’d take her precious Princess phone, yank the connecting cord from the wall jack, and toss the whole thing into the trash.
That’s about what we have with the new “Continuity” feature in “Yosemite,” the still-new version of Apple’s Mac OSX operating system. Yosemite — “version 10.10” to the wonky crowd — turns your iPad and your Mac into extension phones.
Its great whe your iPhone is in another room, or it’s buried at the bottom of your backpack, briefcase, or handbag.
But in the experience of some users — me included — when you answer a phone call, the Mac doesn’t stop ringing. In fact, it doesn’t stop ringing ever. Until you do something drastic. Like yanking the power cord.
That’s what I’ve had to do on one occassion with my 2013-edition iMac.
It’s a flaw that turns one of Yosemite’s best features into one of its worst features.
Fortunately, as Dave Taylor and many other Apple lovers advise, you can turn off the feature on your Mac. Just follow these instructions.
But it also kills the feature entirely. Not just the ringing. It kills the ability to send or receive telephone calls from your Mac.
And that’s a shame. A real #MacFail. It’s time for Apple to fix it.