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New Skype Update Is Horrible

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Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#241

Post by cyphar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #220
cyphar wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm likely channeling Jason Scott here, but this rhetoric is not helping. Yes of course people should back things up, but responding to "I just lost things of sentimental value to me" with "well you should've backed things up" doesn't come off as helpful advice. Really, the problem is that online services (startups that are shutting down are the worst offenders[1]) are allowed to destroy user data with reckless aband…

> that's kinda like arguing that a library that accepts book donations and then goes on to shreds book that nobody is borrowing anymore is justified in their actions. You mean, all libraries?

Yeah, fair cop. My point was meant to be a library that shreds books without first attempting to sell them, give them away or otherwise archive them (which is what most libraries do before they resort to shredding books).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#242

Post by always_good »

tomc1985 wrote: post #168
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 10 toggleable features you add 1023 additional app configurations. This quickly becomes incredibly difficult to maintain and test. Picking and choosing a feature set for most applications sits in the completely infeasible plane.

Oh boo hoo. Back before this automatic update crap you could at the least keep your old versions. Maybe if we returned to building our applications so they didn't require super-expensive bullshit cloud infrastructure you wouldn't have to worry so much about the maintenance burden of 10 oh-so-scary toggle features. Design like this is the Fischer-Pricing of software, infantilizing users for a little more blood to sacr…

Then don't use it?

I don't see why we need to get laws involved. Also, it sounds like you're chomping at the bit to pull one over on Microsoft. Sure. Maybe you feel wronged by what Skype has become.

But how would that affect every other operation that's smaller than Microsoft that doesn't have the resources to make -- and I'm not even sure what was described -- some sort of pick-and-choose UI/API adventure.

Just doesn't seem like a coherent reaction. Can you actually pitch a solution that sounds reasonable for everyone instead of just corporations?

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#243

Post by apostacy »

cyphar wrote: post #215
api wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should think twice about storing anything in the cloud, especially if the service is "free." Always make your own backup of anything you care about. Basically if it's local back it up to the cloud, and if it's only in the cloud back it up locally.

I'm likely channeling Jason Scott here, but this rhetoric is not helping. Yes of course people should back things up, but responding to "I just lost things of sentimental value to me" with "well you should've backed things up" doesn't come off as helpful advice. Really, the problem is that online services (startups that are shutting down are the worst offenders[1]) are allowed to destroy user data with reckless aband…

I hate to be insensitive to people, but, it is important to point these things out when the message will hit hardest.

I remember, a long long time ago, someone I knew had just ripped his massive compact disc collection to his Windows computer, and, by default, they were in encrypted WMA format. He was very receptive to me pointing out how bad DRM was, because now he couldn't copy them to his other computers, and how Microsoft lied to him.

DO NOT TRUST THE CLOUD

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#244

Post by iamcreasy »

nailer wrote: post #169
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…

I had a similar experience: Microsoft deleted all my childhood email because I didn't log into hotmail frequently enough. This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me. All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. I love Microsoft and an writing this on a Surface device now but Christ, that was awful and would make me think twice about using Microsoft online servi…

It doesn't end there. When you update to a new Windows, the old files from previous Windows installation (i.e. User documents etc.) are stored inside C:/Windows.old folder, and you have around 15 days to save your important file to some other location after which Windows will delete that folder without any notice.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-...

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#245

Post by apapli »

locusm wrote: post #205
apapli wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a 40 person organisation and use S4B via our Office365 subscription. It works perfectly. That said, being in Australia we don't have Microsoft-provided telephony in it, nor do we have any requirement for hunt groups and so forth. All our staff use their mobiles to talk, so Skype is purely used for teleconferences and video chats. Enterprise telephony is a weird space right now - Microsoft ought to emerge the w…

Serious question - what is so compelling about S4B. Competition is very healthy in that space, last time I looked at Lync etc it was seriously lacking.

It's just the convenience that is compelling. If you already use Office365 the integration with outlook for web (and desktop for that matter, which I rarely use) is really neat and for the most part "just works".

I've got some seriously non technical people in the business who find it super easy to now arrange a conference call, when previously they would be using their iPhone on speakerphone to merge calls.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#246

Post by mabey »

netsharc wrote: post #108
dpatrick86 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not really seized, just deactivated, and you can reactivate it any time. I don't know why either, I'm guessing for legal/accounting purposes, like at one point Apple had to charge people for iPod updates: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/09/accounting-rules-chang...

Wow, I never knew that was the reason why Apple used to charge for the updates. Thanks for the link.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#247

Post by TheRealPomax »

cyphar wrote: post #241
thaumasiotes wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's kinda like arguing that a library that accepts book donations and then goes on to shreds book that nobody is borrowing anymore is justified in their actions. You mean, all libraries?

Yeah, fair cop. My point was meant to be a library that shreds books without first attempting to sell them, give them away or otherwise archive them (which is what most libraries do before they resort to shredding books).

Not really, though. If you donate a book that cannot be made presentable with minimal effort, it will get scrapped, rather than be put up for sale or archived. There's only limited budget, and the discard bin costs less, by far, compared to staffing a book sale (even if it's once a year) or books take up space in "an archive" when another branch or library has the book in active circulation. Way more books get discarded than you might think.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#248

Post by mistermann »

worldsayshi wrote: post #195
eigenvector wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me that half of Microsoft is a rotten mess. Some parts know how to make good software for sure. The other half makes really bad decisions and keep rolling out patches that barely should've passed QA.

That's about right I think. Or in some cases, half of a product will be good (MSSQL engine), whereas the UI (SSMS) is a bug ridden mess (despite being head and shoulders above most other products).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#249

Post by codedokode »

Skype has become horrible long ago when original team sold it. I remember Skype when its binary was several megabytes and there was no Facebook inside.

And now it became slow (at least on Windows XP) and buggy - for example I have no notifications sound anymore and it is unable to accept incoming calls. Judging by interface lagginess they have put at least several modern Javascript frameworks inside. And maybe something to work with immutable values judging by memory consumption.

Every proprietary messenger ends up like Skype sooner or later.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#250

Post by sametmax »

nailer wrote: post #169
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…

I had a similar experience: Microsoft deleted all my childhood email because I didn't log into hotmail frequently enough. This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me. All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. I love Microsoft and an writing this on a Surface device now but Christ, that was awful and would make me think twice about using Microsoft online servi…

It's a free service, it's part of the deal. If you want permanent storage, you pay.
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