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Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#761

Post by DocTomoe »

Daub wrote: post #454
DocTomoe wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Why two windows when you are in a meeting? The second window is sometimes hard to find intuitively. Seriously, that is a godsend if you are presenting a lot and have a two+ monitor setup - have the presentation up on one, still see your participants on the other one. > - Upload a file to chat and sending that file are two separate actions. Why? I can’t count the number of times I have to remind students to press…

Maybe. But in teaching, the bulk of users expect Facebook-normal behavior. Dropping a file in a FB chat places it into the chat box but does not upload. Placing it into a Teams chat box will upload the file and give the impression that the 'task is done'. As I mentioned, in class, every single day I have to remind students to press the send button. This tells me something very clearly: that they did not observe users…

Hm, to me it sounds more like Microsoft Teams was not designed to be a tool for teaching, but meant to be used in Office-like environments, which have other requirements than classrooms.

Trucks are useful and many features of them make sense on a ranch - but they are cumbersome and awkward in the inner city.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#762

Post by vegai_ »

blodkorv wrote: post #718
vegai_ wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and the logical conclusion would be to stop paying for O365.

There are no real alternatives to office-365 for a majority of the companies out there.

What does Google Workspace lack for a majority of companies?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#763

Post by 4ggr0 »

jtvjan wrote: post #480
4ggr0 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest thing on my Linux laptop is that when I check the OS-menu where I can control every Applications volume, MS Teams is diplayed as "Skype"... I use the official Microsoft Teams Preview for Linux or whatever its called, no idea why they decided to call it Skype in the Application Settings. Can't even really be legacy stuff, as far as I know a Skype for Linux Application never even existed.

Skype has always had a Linux client. It was a nice Qt app that looked like the old Windows client. Unfortunately, it was replaced with an Electron app in 2017.

Wait, my bad, I always forget that Skype was also available for consumers, and that part definitely had a Linux client.

What I meant was Skype for Business. I had to use a Windows VM, which only use was running Skype for Business so that I could join meetings and call colleagues etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#764

Post by f1refly »

dachryn wrote: post #614
f1refly wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to transfer PII to microsoft under GDPR though, so wouldn't it be like setting up a minefield for your employees to consciously choose ms teams for daily communications?

no its not illegal, it just needs a lot of lawyers to workout the details. GDPR does not block a lot of things, it only requires you to work out the proper procedures and paperwork. And that is where Microsoft is good at, the compliance support.

How is is not illegal? The details are basically "PII EU resident data cannot be given to companies falling under legislation of governments not following due process regarding access of PII belonging to those residents" + "The US government regards itself above anything else and does not follow due process when accessing PII of EU citicens stored on premise of companies falling under its legislation" => "EU law does not allow transfer of EU residents PII to US companies". There's no "proper procedures" when it comes to protecting data stored by US companies from the US government.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#765

Post by hansel_der »

djtango wrote: post #333
phreack wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hilarious and sad is that MSN Messenger had a lot of features back in the early '00s that major players like WhatsApp and Telegram now only implement through gritted teeth, one every year if you're lucky. Things like custom emojis, audio messages, sending a drawing, avatars you could see, choosing your display name, exportable conversation history, you even had games! Nowadays people cheer for the bare minimum…

Right but WhatsApp solved a very different problem in the beginning - how do I send a message to someone who isn't online right now (or has a flaky connection). THAT was what was needed for mobile devices. I remember trying to use MSN messenger when I was on WAP and it sucked. And then I remember Skype on iPhone sucked for messages too. SMS also wasn't great if you were remotely international and had friends and fami…

> To this day, when you want guaranteed delivery, in order and without duplicates WhatsApp runs circles around its competitors.

idk about slack et.al. but telegram does that with native clients for linux, android, ios and windows. even media-sync is pretty much flawless ime.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#766

Post by agumonkey »

skinnymuch wrote: post #746
agumonkey wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think facebook's main "revolution" is that it was the first internet as real society platform. Others were websites to make profiles, myspace added artists, but facebook was all about the "real you". It was just ripe for when internet became a plausible soil for society.

MySpace added artists after it lost to FB and itself.

You mean the big redesign ? In my memories they rapidly had an 'direct music' crowd.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#767

Post by nl »

JohnFen wrote: post #705
nl wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF is it with this weird "things were better in the old days" nostalgia? They really, really weren't! > Original skype would probably work better than zoom does today with a few tweaks When it came out, Skype was amazing because it let you get video calls on your computer. The audio was flaky (I paid for a number for a work line and yeah - wasn't good!), the video broke up all the time, and it dropped out a lot. But…

> WTF is it with this weird "things were better in the old days" nostalgia? They really, really weren't! A lot of things really, really were. Some weren't. Generally speaking, I do think that modern software tends to be worse in terms of usability, robustness, and resource usage. But it tends to be prettier and have more "features", so that's something.

I've gone months without rebooting my MBP, and weeks without restarting Firefox. I don't remember the last time software crashed and I lost work.

15 years ago I'd reboot nightly because things were more stable.

20 years ago I debugged an issue in the JVM where it was deleting any file it touched (http://nicklothian.com/blog/2003/08/13/a-java-bug-worthy-of-...).

25 years ago it was normal for a computer to crash multiple times a day and wasn't uncommon for files that had been saved to get corrupted by a crash.

So yeah, very happy with modern software reliability.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#768

Post by whatarethembits »

brightball wrote: post #634
zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

Along the same lines, Googles Chat and Spaces are really close to becoming “good enough” that you don’t need Slack. Their threading setup is awful and they desperately need to let admins set sane defaults for notification sounds, do not disturb hours, etc. But aside from that it’s really close to being a good enough chat option that Slack doesn’t feel necessary. Google Meet is already good. Gmail is excellent and the…

No matter how good Google chat gets, it’s inevitable that Google will kill it sooner or later. It’s a non starter.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#769

Post by executesorder66 »

JohnFen wrote: post #704
gigel82 wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, almost everyone at MS is using Teams internally. When they collaborate externally they use whatever the partner prefers. For example, there is a Discord server for ReactNative contributors and collaborators with a bunch of MS folks on it. I guess it's also possible there's a Team for Meta folks to talk to MS directly but I somehow doubt it - or at least, I doubt it gets used very much if it exists :)

> Yup, almost everyone at MS is using Teams internally Really? So they have to know how awful it is. That makes its continued awfulness even more perplexing.

Really? With the exception of Office I can't think of a single microsoft product that could ever be considered "good". They have consistently crapped out sub-par products for decades. It would be perplexing if they could actually get any IM software to a good state. This is their 3rd one. They even bought arguably the best one in the world (Skype) in 2009. Which was "coincidentally" the year that Skype usage fell of a cliff.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#770

Post by karottenreibe »

All of this thread I read so far is complaining on a very high level. Compare the teams era to the pre teams era where companies often either had no meeting software and experience at all and onsite visits or phone calls was the only option, or they used Skype for business which was arguably even worse. Then the minor annoyances of teams seem small in comparison.

That's not too say these things shouldn't be improved, but bundling teams with office for free sure made my communications with most of my customers 1000% easier.

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