New Skype Update Is Horrible • Hacker News Board

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#281

Post by majewsky » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #146

jjeaff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my thought. But as far as the bean counters are concerned, they would base it on an aging schedule. Unused credits stop being counted at 100% after x number of months. But there isn't really any reason to disable them in the software. Especially since they can be reenabled. Just like if you have fully depreciated an office desk, that doesn't mean you march into that person's office and take it away. Sorry, t…

"Sorry, this desk must be thrown out as it is now fully depreciated!" This gave me a good laugh. With lowering interest rates and quantitative easing not pumping up the economy as expected, any bets on long before this becomes a reality?

Planned obsolescence is already a thing.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#282

Post by majewsky » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:10 AM UTC

eigenvector wrote: post #138

muppetman wrote: post #34

Microsoft 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.

My employer (84,000 employees) uses Skype for Business. Audio, screen sharing and chat work reasonably well (with the occasional "Megan has to restart his client before joining" or "Jack cannot unmute himself for some reason"). However, any meeting with more than 40-50 participants leads to unacceptable general instability of the connection, so we need to use Adobe Connect for this. (The only reason why I still can't purge Flash from my work notebook.)

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#283

Post by RaleyField » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:10 AM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #147

Bud wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. You actually think that individual consumers should be able to, essentially, construct their own unique snowflake version of an app which only fixes bugs but retains the UI (and god knows what other code) from an arbitrary previous version? Look, I don't like some of these stupid updates either, but that idea is completely unworkable.

I wish I had the downvote feature just for your comment. Unworkable? Are you kidding? It's absolutely brilliant. It's exactly what I want. Give me a feature set. Give me a separate UI which interacts with that feature set. Let me pick and choose both of them, completely separately. That's what an API is supposed to be and do.

> I wish I had the downvote feature just for your comment.

Same.

a) I know this isn't reddit, but it would go against reddiquette to downvote a comment you disagree with. You donwvote comments that don't bring anything to a discussion, which your suggestion doesn't.

b) You installed a piece of software of your own volition. If you don't want updates to your software of a certain kind then choose another software whose developers are contractually obliged not to change it. Or write your own. But don't push your ideas on us.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#284

Post by majewsky » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:14 AM UTC

tajen wrote: post #180

userbinator wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I can't recall any software company who rolled back an upgrade. UI upgrades take a lot of resources and overhaul, they're also UX-tested, involve marketing ops, etc: If they haven't got the message before, companies prefer to risk dying than cancelling their attempt to pivot. Look at Ubuntu's Unity. Apple's emoji bar. Microsoft's Windows 8.1 tiles.

Two of these three examples were completely or partially rolled back.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#285

Post by chris_wot » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:35 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #281

njarboe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sorry, this desk must be thrown out as it is now fully depreciated!" This gave me a good laugh. With lowering interest rates and quantitative easing not pumping up the economy as expected, any bets on long before this becomes a reality?

Planned obsolescence is already a thing.

Wait till they apply this to people.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#286

Post by INTPenis » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:48 AM UTC

eigenvector wrote: post #138

muppetman wrote: post #34

Microsoft 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.

I actually have very good experience with SFB in my org. For meetings it's the best app I've used. But for persistent group chat it seems to be worthless. We're trying out stuff like Rocketchat and mattermost instead.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#287

Post by tomerv » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:49 AM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #146

jjeaff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my thought. But as far as the bean counters are concerned, they would base it on an aging schedule. Unused credits stop being counted at 100% after x number of months. But there isn't really any reason to disable them in the software. Especially since they can be reenabled. Just like if you have fully depreciated an office desk, that doesn't mean you march into that person's office and take it away. Sorry, t…

"Sorry, this desk must be thrown out as it is now fully depreciated!" This gave me a good laugh. With lowering interest rates and quantitative easing not pumping up the economy as expected, any bets on long before this becomes a reality?

It sounds silly, but these things happen! Just ask anyone who has worked in a Fortune-500 company for at least a few years. Things in good condition get replaced because there's a budget for replacing them, with asking the employees actually using those things (and sometimes despite asking and getting a response on the lines of "please don't touch my stuff, I like it the way it is").

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#288

Post by kennydude » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:55 AM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #98

JepZ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Hangouts/Allo/whatever-it-is-this-week still doesn't work. Google Talk actually worked :(

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#289

Post by lostboys67 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #261

nailer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I'm sorry for your loss, the idea of a cloud-based email account that doesn't delete your emails is actually pretty damn new. When Gmail launched one of its main features was the amount of storage space - people were used to having maybe 10MB of mailbox space. Companies competed over that number. It reflects that email was never seen as being permanent, you were expected to clear old emails out, and many servic…

Classically mail was always downloaded from the MTA to your local MUA (outlook, thunderbird etc).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#290

Post by lostboys67 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 11:05 AM UTC

owaislone wrote: post #71

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...

Hangouts is a good piece of tech and the has a great UX with minimal UI. The only issues with hangouts are that: 1. It is a resource hog. Laptops spit fire when they run hangouts for more than 10 minutes 2. It can be buggy and unreliable. Almost every 3rd hangout meeting, someone on my team is unable to hear others or is unable to use the mic. Fix can range anything between restarting the computer to killing audio pr…

are they trying to use the cheap built in mics/ A proper usb headset or even better an external sound card with a real mic e.g. a Shure SM58 the cheap entry level shures are also v good (bit more body noise though)