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Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

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Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#221

Post by FireBeyond »

zamalek wrote: post #84
reitanqild wrote: post #10

> Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella were among those unconvinced by the idea, with Gates pushing instead to add more features into Skype to make it more competitive with Slack in the business market, our source says. I'd say fix it first. Somehow the Skype name has gone from being an asset to being a liability to the point where I cannot understand why they renamed Lync to "Skype for business".

> fix it Don't fix it, just rewrite it. Honestly. If they're focusing on Skype I think that would be great. The feats of that program are innumerable, including breaking system-wide sound settings. I simply can not fathom why it would want to change them. As for "Skype for Business," it's significantly less stable than Skype. If Lync fails we switch to Skype.

For me, system-wide sounds aren't changed, but I can specify non-system sounds, so that I have my headset plugged in, am listening to music from speakers, if a Skype call rings it rings on the speakers, and I answer and take the call using the headset. I've not seen it change system settings.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#222

Post by carlosnunez »

Negative1 wrote: post #138
cdnsteve wrote: post #93

We initially used Skype on our team to communicate with others. However, the software was horribly buggy on OSX. Slack has become part of our main toolchain. It works, has the basic features you need and doesn't get in our way. The integrations are great and we'll continue to use them. Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the b…

"Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up" This. This exactly. Is it really unbelievable to assume Microsoft wouldn't attempt to build their own IRC+ clone and save a few billion while they are at it? I do agree with you, Slack is much better than Skype, but I would add that Lync is just as good. I went from Lync to Slack (after changing jobs) and I would say that Lync not only works just as well but has mor…

I've used and help maintain Lync and OCS, its predecessor. Both were significantly more bloated, difficult to navigate and laggy than Slack is. Additionally, you need SO MUCH infrastructure to support a proper Lync deployment, especially if you want video, voice and PBX. (Yes, Lync comes with its own PBX.)

Lync 2013 was even worse! The message window was laggy in typing words out of the box and every UI animation was choppy. This was on a really beefy Dell (I forgot the specs). I was stuck in this awkward position where I had to defend the implementation even though (a) many people hated it (myself included), and (b) I actually used Pidgin because it was so much lighter (even if user discovery and lookup wasn't as great).

Fuck Lync. I love Slack. I can see why Microsoft attempted to acquire them, and I am super glad that they didn't.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#223

Post by spdustin »

0x0 wrote: post #211
kough wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was forced to use Lync (due to an acquisition) in 2014 it was absolutely fucking terrible. The OS X client failed to report online status correctly, couldn't participate in most group chats or video or audio calls, and crashed regularly. Also weirdly non-native UI. And, no linux client to speak of - for a startup like the one I worked for where many devs used linux, that was a nonstarter. Has the story improve…

LOL, "lync.exe" a.k.a. "Skype for Business". 1. The worst brand management this side of 1984. "Skype for Business" has nothing to do with Skype and the .exe is still called "lync.exe" 2. SDK: Trying to use the C# SDK for even simple tasks leaves your app deadlocking or spinning 100% CPU in threads you didn't create or throwing native exceptions that doesn't make any sense as they are referencing raw hex 0x12345678 po…

Microsoft products are filled with references left behind by what I can only assume to be developers who were just hoping to get on a different product team after their next review.

SharePoint's virtual path for its SOAP services is "_vti_bin". VTI = Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, the makers of FrontPage and the FrontPage Server Extensions.

Then there was Groove (brought in Ray Ozzie's luggage) that was renamed SharePoint Workspace (groove.exe).

SharePoint Designer (which didn't actually have a visual designer in the 2013, and final, release) crashes when performing some operations in source files ... With an exception in the FPEDITAX.DLL (FrontPage Editor ActiveX).

Those can all almost be forgiven - they are like vestigial organs after each product evolved into something else.

Until you get to OneDrive. smh

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#224

Post by FireBeyond »

recursive wrote: post #65
bad_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate Skype, but unfortunately Skype has no alternative for group audio / video calls, with the occasional screen sharing. Hangouts seemed promising, but it's worse. But I can tell you that at our company we are giving up on Slack, but not on Skype. > rebuilding every native app they have from the ground up, every single one is awful On Mac OS X, which is what I use, it's acceptable. I found it to be fairly a…

Hangouts works far better for me than Skype. It just works. With skype, I struggle to even create video conversation. I remember one fateful day when I tried 4 different devices with skype installed, and had a complete failure to get any of them to work.

Hangouts is horrific on a Mac. It'll peg an i7 with discrete graphics at 80%+ CPU, and run at 170F for the length of the call.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#225

Post by spdustin »

saulrh wrote: post #200
cdnsteve wrote: post #93

We initially used Skype on our team to communicate with others. However, the software was horribly buggy on OSX. Slack has become part of our main toolchain. It works, has the basic features you need and doesn't get in our way. The integrations are great and we'll continue to use them. Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the b…

> Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the ball. The funny thing is, they didn't just have a chance, they had a huge chance. My company can't currently use Slack because our regulatory environment (HIPAA) frowns on our data crossing other people's servers. An enterprise-focused Slack equivalent, hosted on client-owned hardware…

That would be (maybe?) solved with self-hosted Hipchat.

https://www.hipchat.com/server

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#226

Post by jhgg »

vehementi wrote: post #188
sergiotapia wrote: post #169

I wonder why Discord isn't more popular, it's basically Slack with voice chat baked in that works really well. All of your favorite Slack shortcuts work exactly the same. Even pressing the Up arrow key to edit your last message. I guess the 'gamer' branding hurts it's potential use in the workplace.

Yeah it's heavily gamer focused. Not that it coulnd't be used for business. Slack is a lot more featureful though and you can do cool integrations. Discord has no search ability. Discord is also conspicuously free and I think everyone's waiting to see if they implode or not. I love Discord.

>Discord has no search ability.

Yet. It's in our pipeline.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#227

Post by GFischer »

GFischer wrote: post #89
douche wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've finally fixed this with the last update to the Skype for Business client. It's still a huge clusterfuck of a rebranding. The two clients are just barely compatible, and it's a huge mess when you're building a Skype for Business tool, and the users think they can use regular Skype to do anything with it. Hopefully "investing in Skype" is a code word for building out an API for Office 365 Skype integrations tha…

They have regularly bought out companies in that space (last one was Ray Ozzie's Talko, in December, and they specifically said "Talko was acquired to help fuel future innovation in Skype and Skype for Business. As part of the Skype team, we’ll leverage Talko’s technology and the many things we’ve learned during its design and development."). Let's hope they actually benefit from those. http://betanews.com/2015/12/21…

I think the meaning got lost here :( . I was genuinely hoping for Skype & Microsoft to benefit, it was not sarcastic or anything, and I thought it was relevant information.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#228

Post by ant6n »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #12

Skype is horrible. I'm sorry but it is such an awful tool. It crashes, it loses my old conversations, group calls never work. It is truly horrible, the codebase is a rotting pile of garbage that will never be fixed. I am glad that Slack will not be eaten by Microsoft. I hope they really do implement voice soon.

And the constant forced password resets -- and then you can't reuse passwords, so there are even more password resets. Of course you sign in after a password reset, you're greeted with another password reset.

Most recently, Skype told me I've lost control of my gmail account an invited me to create a hotmail account to link with my Skype account instead. Wtf?

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#229

Post by ant6n »

avtar wrote: post #178
vpkaihla wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's far more than web-based IRC How exactly?

Mobile clients, persistent chat history when switching clients/devices, search, @mentions notify you when you're away from your desk, and easy integrations with lots of services. P.S. I mainly use IRC everyday :)

"persistent" up to 10,000 messages per team.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#230

Post by dasil003 »

area51org wrote: post #217
kough wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was forced to use Lync (due to an acquisition) in 2014 it was absolutely fucking terrible. The OS X client failed to report online status correctly, couldn't participate in most group chats or video or audio calls, and crashed regularly. Also weirdly non-native UI. And, no linux client to speak of - for a startup like the one I worked for where many devs used linux, that was a nonstarter. Has the story improve…

Between the two I'd pick Slack, hands-down. Lync is awful, and I have to use it—so I use the Adium with the OCS plugin instead. It doesn't do audio calls or video, but it is stable and fast. (For video, hangouts are much better anyway.) Slack? I use it, but I don't see the attraction. It's just another chat client with a couple of cute features. I'm really not clear on why the world seems so enamored with something t…

It's a huge practical improvement over IRC. The integrations are turn-key for most things, very powerful, and deep search integration, so it can become your one-stop shop for things. It realistically has the possibility to replace Dropbox and email for internal collaboration. The channels, groups, and notifications preferences make it possible to structure your team for maximum signal to noise across both desktop and mobile.

Saying that Slack is "just another chat client" is sort of like all the old arguments about how much more powerful PCs were than Macs because they have more features—it's ignoring the value of design and conceptual elegance, and the real impact that has on UX and productivity.

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