New Skype Update Is Horrible • Hacker News Board

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#91

Post by JepZ » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

CSDude wrote: post #7

I have witnessed Skype to go from almost perfect video & chat communicator to absolute crap over almost 10 years, and I feel very sad that it has come to rip off Snapchat. There is no alternative like the old Skype now in the desktop.

The closest thing to Skype is Tox.

But I hope for the return of XMPP. While the client development stagnated for the most part over the last years, there are a few which seem to catch up with the innovation of the last years (conversations, chat secure).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#92

Post by hellbanner » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

crb wrote: post #52

scrollaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have high hopes for Discord video, which is coming out soon. Knowing the discord team and seeing the quality of the voice product, I'm finally going to be able to replace god-awful Google Hangouts.

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

Can't default to video off in calls.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#93

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

It's absolute crap like this which is why I have turned off automatic updates in Google Play. What a terrible feeling it is to merely open an app and, out of seemingly nowhere, a seemingly different app opens up and you can't go back. There's security and all that, but literally screw security if big corps are going to remotely fiddle with my device and turn me into a beta tester.

How do you take the original king of VoIP and easily make it the worst experience? Sweet Jeebus.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#94

Post by komali2 » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:42 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #24

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Has Hangouts ever been good? Like, I totally get complaining about Skype. The P2P stuff caused it to be kinda wonky. But your choice for "better" is Hangouts? Between the five or six alternative Google chat offerings, the attempts to merge it with the dialer and SMS apps, the cutting out of the online/offline statuses. Google Talk was great though, back in the day.

Five or six Google chat offerings? There's one more now, Hangouts video chat is becoming "meet". https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/9/14864552/google-hangouts-c... https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-quietly-launches-me...

Well there's Allo, or Duo, I can't remember which, then Hangouts, and I guess "meet."

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#95

Post by davidf18 » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

faho wrote: post #89

madaxe_again wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FaceTime, if you're on mac.

You and everyone you want to chat with.

Use FaceTime when you can. A lot of people have iPhones and many these days now have Macs.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#96

Post by dpatrick86 » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

pveierland wrote: post #66

My worst Skype annoyance was when they seized your purchased credits if your account was left unused for 180 days. As a sporadic user of Skype when I needed to place an international call etc, having purchased credits reset automatically was such a provocation [0]. Every time I have to re-install Skype for some reason, there's always a new regression or dark UX pattern in use. [0] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01…

It's actually worse than that. They seize your credits if you don't make a call (or text) that uses the credits in six months... it doesn't matter if you've been on skype or not.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#97

Post by drdaeman » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

projectramo wrote: post #28

Maybe mine is a lonely voice but I like Skype because: 1. It works. Every other video chat platform I have tried is simply unreliable and crashes. (Skype does so but with far less frequency). 2. Facetime is more reliable, true, but it is the only one and does not allow for group chat. (I have thrown down the gauntlet, and I realize I risk major downvoting for making such a controversial statement, but I cannot sit in…

It works, except for when it breaks. Which happens every 1-2 months.

Group messages fail to send or don't show up, notifications either don't happen or unread messages get stuck, calls seem to fail to connect at random. Last time - I think it was just a pair of weeks ago (I'm bad with remembering exact times), even the web version haven't worked (usually, it still does).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#98

Post by digi_owl » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

JepZ wrote: post #91

CSDude wrote: post #7

I have witnessed Skype to go from almost perfect video & chat communicator to absolute crap over almost 10 years, and I feel very sad that it has come to rip off Snapchat. There is no alternative like the old Skype now in the desktop.

The closest thing to Skype is Tox. But I hope for the return of XMPP. While the client development stagnated for the most part over the last years, there are a few which seem to catch up with the innovation of the last years (conversations, chat secure).

The problem with XMPP seems to be that it is stuck in extension hell. There is simply too many XEPs bouncing around.

The last great hope was back when both Facebook and Google used it, and you could connect one to the other.

Since then both have gone proprietary, and dragged their user base with them.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#99

Post by richardknop » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

necessity wrote: post #38

rynop wrote: post #8

You could totally remove "New" and "Update" from that sentence and it would still be a very true statement. * Full disclosure: my co. was acquired and forced to use office suite.

What are better alternatives in terms of call quality? Hangouts is pretty bad and WhatsApp is awful in my experience. Despite the bloat and the UI Skype is still the only good experience I had.

Slack has a good call quality from my experience.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#100

Post by digi_owl » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

dingdingdang wrote: post #69

crb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

Why would anyone at this point go with Google's solutions for voice/video? Last time someone over at Arstechnica did a count they had 4 or 5 competing and largely incompatible solutions - they are NOT a serious player when it comes to producing, and perhaps more importantly - maintaining, a Skype replacement/alternative.

Almost as if Google internally use IM clients are proof of concept implementations...