Skype is dying because the client has been bloated and slow for ages along with poor call quality and reliability. Those two things together made it far less appealing than the many alternatives.
Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#32Skype would have been destroyed at this point by Google and Apple and Facebook. Platform integration always wins over early movers once the giants catch up technologically. The real story is that MS wildly overpaid for a brand that they couldn't leverage and that they didn't need to target the corporate market where "Skype" (which isn't actually Skype, just rebranded MS code!) is doing well.
At least in Europe, Skype is actually being replaced by WhatsApp, so I do not think platform integration is the main issue.
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#33For business, just use Zoom. A few months ago I fired it up after years of neglect and— wow— the client connected to the meeting no update required. Now that’s software built for the future.
I use Zoom frequently to provide people with a dial-in number for conference calls; video conferencing; and quick screen sharing. It's great, and inexpensive to boot.
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#34The article is about "Skype for Business".
But let's talk about the Skype for consumers. They transformed a nice software in one of the most clunky and unusable and frustrating experiences ever. The UI is just that broken.
The thing is that try to follow all the last shitty trends of development and webdesign, and the results are absolutely horrible. The new Skype "electron"-like interface for MacOS is the worst UI I saw in a long time... No thinking behind it, just trends without actually understanding them for real. The designers clearly never used Skype one day in their life. They made it impossible to use.
I am urging anyone that wants to talk to me to use Telegram those days.
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#35Um.. I'm not sure the article author is familiar with the fact that "Skype for business" (the "complex" one) is actually home grown and was just rebranded from Lync. This is not at all the same as the consumer Skype, which actually tries to be a weird mixup between Snapchat and whatnot at the moment (failing utterly of course). Skype for Business (+ PSTN calling) is actually pretty great on Office 365 tbh...
I work at a large corporation where we use Skype For Business and I swear, this is probably the worst piece of software I have ever used. They can't get basic things right - I can send a message to my coworker right now, and it will appear in the list of messages on his machine somewhere in between past messages. For a while, we had someone who couldn't receive any attachments, skype would just say "failed sending" -…
Yeah, I got the latest "Unified" version now with Win10 and it takes more clicks to do the same things now.
Plus it keeps insisting on showing my profile photo over any new screenshare, and doesn't remember when I pop it out and minimize it. Buttons hide and show (but the background behind them is still opaque).
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#36"Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use ..." This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common. Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to…
> Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to spend the first 4-5 minutes in handshaking ("can you hear me") and troubleshooting problems.
But of course doing this in no way guarantees lack of problems later. Almost every time I use Skype at some point in the middle of the call one caller is suddenly unable to hear the other.
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#37"Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use ..." This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common. Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to…
I don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have now.
What did they do with it? Do they not regression test? Are they letting each new intern add a new feature while nobody really cares about quality? Did they just replace the old software with a new bug-riddled software that's getting pushed out the door without quality checks? Is it some manager trying to earn a medal by using that new MS-framework to rebuild everything and needing to push it out fast to declare success and move up while leaving the ruins behind?
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#38Um.. I'm not sure the article author is familiar with the fact that "Skype for business" (the "complex" one) is actually home grown and was just rebranded from Lync. This is not at all the same as the consumer Skype, which actually tries to be a weird mixup between Snapchat and whatnot at the moment (failing utterly of course). Skype for Business (+ PSTN calling) is actually pretty great on Office 365 tbh...
Unless you're not using Windows, in which case it functionally doesn't exist. Seriously. I have never successfully connected a single call with it. (Understood that the same criticism can be levelled at Facetime etc -- which I also don't use.)
> I have never successfully connected a single call with it.
I have (on mac), but then I have been treated to terrible call quality and an incredibly poor UI (half the time we need remote control, there is no option for it, for some reason).
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#39"Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use ..." This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common. Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to…
Lol, I had an issue like this Skyping with one person in particular. For some reason, after exactly 5 minutes and 10 seconds, the call dropped. Every single time we called each other.
I use google meet now and it’s way better.
Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand
#40I really wish MS was better with UI/UX and understood humans. Skpye and Skype for business are both disasters to use. I avoid them at all cost. Not sure why can't they just copy Zoom for example which is an absolute bliss to use, low energy usage on mobile, intuitive easy to use UI and also has the right features. I know it does not have the same chat capabilities as Skype but I don't miss that too much in an enterprise environment.