Earlier quoted context omitted.
or they had a real desktop client.
They do have something for chat, but it's a bit quirky - pairs with your phone somehow.
I think that's what gp was referring to when he emphasized "real".
Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
121–130 of 130 posts
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#122I'm pretty certain that Microsoft already (mostly) made this backward-incompatible move several years ago, when they shut down the last of their (old Skype protocol) (MSNP24) gateways in 2014, so any Skype clients that predate the MSNP24 support being added to Skype no longer work. The thing they're doing now is probably either breaking Skypeweb backward compat or a rev on MSNP, depending on which mechanism the embed…
I've just read the blog post and it seems that they will migrate Mac client to Electron soon. That sucks, since I like native Mac client.
Am electron app is 100x better than the "native" windows 10 Skype app. Seriously, the native windows apps are so thoroughly non native it blows my mind that Microsoft still employs a UI team.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#123A personal anecdote: I had the same account on Skype for most of the last 10 years. The same username. It was stable. Lots of people could contact me reliably. It was an account that was created long before Skype was bought by Microsoft. Then came the update that they pushed out last year. Now everyone needed a Microsoft ID to login. There was some kind of "improvement" in the way authentication was done. So I had to…
I know as developers we try to solve everything ourselves or with google, but did you try contacting support ... sometimes things just break.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The recent introduction of WebRTC to browsers could throw Skype off its throne. You pretty much just go on the webpage of such a WebRTC-service, start up a conversation, which generates you a link, then you send that link to your conversation partner and they just have to open this link in their browser to join the conversation. That's so incredibly simple to use, that it should be much less of a problem to get peopl…
It's "incredibly simple to use " only when the asynchronous use case you describe is desirable. Consider this very basic use case: my mom and I want to be always able to call/interrupt each other. - Skype fits the bill: I just double-click her name in the contact list. She hears the ringing, and answers. - WebRTC-based services do not: I have to generate a link, email it, and hope she sees the email (she won't) then…
But nothing prevents people from building such a presence mechanism as an app, or using browser notifications. The point is that with WebRTC the hardest bit is taken care of. The number of people who have the skills to meaningfully innovate on the surrounding UI and capabilities is vastly greater than the number of people who'd be able to come up with usable video calling.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The recent introduction of WebRTC to browsers could throw Skype off its throne. You pretty much just go on the webpage of such a WebRTC-service, start up a conversation, which generates you a link, then you send that link to your conversation partner and they just have to open this link in their browser to join the conversation. That's so incredibly simple to use, that it should be much less of a problem to get peopl…
But how do I send that link to people? That doesn't address the issue arunc mentioned of persistent group chat. These days with a lot of people I do text chat on skype and we hop onto discord for audio. There's no good single program that can do everything yet. The "I want a pony" contender would have: text chat that can work asynchronously and let you view history offline, voice and video and screen sharing, the abi…
Several webrtc services offers persistent chats at a URL you define. There's plenty of room for improvement there, but webrtc lowers the barrier dramatically by solving many of the hard parts.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#126What are people using for video chat? I use it so rarely (maybe once a year) that every time I do, I have to learn some new software, install stuff, sign up for accounts, etc. Facebook messenger is great for talking with my niece, but that's not appropriate for business. I ended up using Facetime most recently. That only works if I bring my personal computer to work. I had the same experience as @lkrubner when I trie…
Google Hangouts with people who have it and where it works (not a given), and talky.io (webrtc) with my mom (we tried repeatedly to get Skype and Hangouts to work between her and my computers, and neither worked properly).
talky.io is great as long as you have a new enough browser, especially as you can pass people a link and they won't need to install anything new.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#127Let's be a little more dramatic. Instead of reading into what they didn't say, what if you... asked them and reported on that.
I did ask them, and the post contains everything they had to say in response.
Interesting - I can't really get down with that kind of chicken little speculation. That's a shame.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the general, yes, we're talking about privacy, but specifically, no, it's not what we're talking about -- we're specifically talking about Skype's need to be completely private, and how if it's not, we're somehow losing the battle for privacy everywhere, as if Skype's insecurity will make people unable to use PGP or some other good encryption. Just because I can post a bulletin on a public poster board, doesn't me…
No, but the freedom to have "no privacy" is not a problem anyone has. There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use.
> There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use.
WhatsApp is used by 1 billion people worldwide, so no, this is completely false.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but the freedom to have "no privacy" is not a problem anyone has. There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use.
> There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use. WhatsApp is used by 1 billion people worldwide, so no, this is completely false.
Oh it's completely false because you found an exception, haha.
Re: Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use. WhatsApp is used by 1 billion people worldwide, so no, this is completely false.
Oh it's completely false because you found an exception, haha.
Yes, that's correct. You claimed there were no black sheep, and I found a black sheep.