Skype has always been an example of garbage software: https://stallman.org/skype.html
Not at all true. That article is only from a few years ago. The era when Skype was quite good was more like 7-12 years ago.
New Skype Update Is Horrible
131–140 of 334 posts
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#132My 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…
That's the reason I switch to google hangouts for my international calls. Just open the browser and make the call.
It also works in countries where Skype is banned / blocked by the government in my experience.
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#133Microsoft have driven Skype into the ground. How they can release something this childish and terrible, yet also have the "Skype for Business" brand I don't understand. If this had been released as "Skype for Fun" or "Skype for Kids" I'd almost understand. But trying to force users into this hideous mess is very frustrating, Skype was a dependable, if bloated app. Now I fear getting messages via it, it's so horrible.…
We're all upset, but Microsoft isn't going to roll back an upgrade/decision of this magnitude.
Not unless there is sufficient opposition --- and by "sufficient", I mean almost everyone refusing to upgrade or suddenly moving to an alternative.
Flashy dumbed-down UIs seem to be the "modern" trend now. I hope it starts going back in the other direction, but sadly I doubt that will happen...
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#134It'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…
I don't know why MS acquired Skype. It seems like they never really knew what to do with it, so now they try to make it "cool".
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#135I 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.
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.
Have you tried appear.in? It's become my go-to video conference. No logins, just make up an arbitrary link (ie appear.in/some-random-string) and voila. So far it's been more reliable than hangouts.
(I have nothing to do with them other than wondering why everyone doesn't use it)
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#136Just get a SIP account and use, for example, linphone.
Skype is dead, and I'm going to miss it.
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#137and now that PiperChat’s as been acquired by Hooly it will probably suffer the same fate as Skype. http://www.piedpiper.com/farewell-piperchat/
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691295 and marked it off-topic.
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#138Microsoft have driven Skype into the ground. How they can release something this childish and terrible, yet also have the "Skype for Business" brand I don't understand. If this had been released as "Skype for Fun" or "Skype for Kids" I'd almost understand. But trying to force users into this hideous mess is very frustrating, Skype was a dependable, if bloated app. Now I fear getting messages via it, it's so horrible.…
Both my employer (120,000 employees) and our main contractor (20,000 employees) use Skype for Business. By use, I mean we've purchased it and deployed it to every employee in the world.
It's never worked, ever, for anything. Not for audio, not for screen sharing, not for chat. I now decline all meeting requests that rely on Skype for Business for some essential part of the meeting.
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#139I use(d) Skype 4.3 on Linux. It was great.
Then my account was "accidentally" suspended and required proof of being an adult. In order to prove I'm an adult, I had to pay $0.50. So I didn't. I was using that as an excuse to finally change to something better.
...after a couple weeks and a lot of complaining, my account was un-suspended. Welp, so much for that excuse.
Now I'm getting forced to update to Skype 5. Or, at least, that's what the email said. It said Skype 4.3 would be disabled. Well it's not (yet) disabled. And, I'll keep using 4.3 until it is.
I can tell you right now that Skype 4.3 was better than Skype 5 in pretty much every way imaginable.
* It was more configurable. -> All notification customizations? Simplified to "do you get notifications?" and "do you want sound with your notifications?" -> It didn't bother me with system notifications for every message (really, I just want sound, not a system notification popup) -> The new Skype sound is extremely annoying, so much that I would rather miss being notified of a message instead of being constantly bothered by the sound that I cannot change -> Show me as 'away' when I am inactive for X amount of minutes feature is gone -> Where's the Skype API? Is that gone too?
* It was faster. -> Skype 5 frequently (once or twice per day) hangs for minutes at a time. I just `killall -9 skypeforlinux` and restart it.
* It crashed less often. -> okay it doesn't actually crash often, but I consider the hang (see above) as a crash
* It actually had a window that showed file transfers and their status (although it showed them twice), instead of showing it only inline in the chat.
* You could actually search your the chat history -> Skype 5 doesn't let you search your chat at all, let alone your chat history
* The UI didn't follow the bloated shitware that the Web seems to be moving toward -> The list of users in chat rooms is actually usable ->-> try scrolling a chat room user list with 120 people in it? trololol no I'm serious here I can't find anyone
-> Right-click menu appeared to use the system menu widgets instead of yet another "I'm going to be different than everything else" widget that takes up half of the friggen window for no reason
-> Window scrolling (someone typed a message) didn't prevent the contextual menu from working
-> Yeah, okay, it couldn't load images that people shared. It also couldn't load those full-screen animated movies that people shared. I consider both of those to be benefits though.
At this point, Slack and Discord both seem like better communication options.
...that's just going from Skype 4.3 to Skype 5. I'd hate to see what's going on with Skype 8. Honestly, at this point, I'm very much glad that Microsoft ignores the Linux side of things.
Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible
#140My 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…
I never used Skype again after they stole my credit (about 9€). No excuse when they could have emailed or otherwise told me it was going to expire, I only found out when I needed to use it...