For a stretch of the pilot we were working on an optional voice-call reminder — the idea being that for someone driving between deliveries, or a doctor between consultations, a short call could carry a reminder more reliably than a text sitting unread in a busy inbox.
We spent time on the design and the plumbing. When we got to the first real test, we found the shape of the work required to do it properly was different — and larger — than we'd planned for. Not impossible; just disproportionate to what we're actually building right now, which is a memory that helps you get through your day.
So we've shelved voice calling for the pilot.
Nothing changes for anyone using HERE today. Reminders you set continue to arrive as text, at the time you asked, in the language you use. The daily summary continues to land in the evening. Everything HERE remembered, it still remembers.
We may come back to voice later, once two things feel settled: that pilot users would actually pick up a call from a business the moment it rings, and that we're ready to run the extra plumbing it would require without pulling attention away from the memory work. Right now, neither is a confident yes — which we think is a fine place to pause rather than push through.
The reason we're writing this up rather than quietly moving on: we've been telling anyone who asks that HERE is built in the open. That has to include the parked things too, not only the shipped ones. Every serious build has a few of these along the way, and we'd rather name ours than pretend they don't happen.