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Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#61

Post by Someone1234 »

kuschku wrote: post #41
std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They switched from P2P to a hosted model because suddenly CGNATs showed up everywhere on the internet with no way through them.

There's widespread speculation that they moved away from P2P because it made it harder for the NSA to wiretap, which the NSA gained the ability to do right before the acquisition[0].

Keep in mind I did say speculation, but the NSA definitely seems to have gained increase ease at wiretapping Skype in early 2011 which is also when Microsoft was negotiating/purchasing Skype.

From [0]:

> "Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011," reads a National Security Agency (NSA) training document

Which is within two months of when Microsoft publicly announced acquisition.

[0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s...

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#62

Post by kankroc »

binarymax wrote: post #15

"Microsoft Corp. says the criticism is overblown and reflects, in part, people's grumpiness with software updates." Denial is the first stage of acceptance. Not sure how long the full cycle takes for a company as large as Microsoft, but Skype is dead.

Anecdotal, but I'm definitely not in the "grumpiness" phase, it got so bad that my gf and I simply switched over to discord for everything after a very solid +5 years using Skype for pretty much everything.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#63

Post by iforgotpassword »

kuschku wrote: post #41
std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They switched from P2P to a hosted model because suddenly CGNATs showed up everywhere on the internet with no way through them.

Nope cgnat can be defeated too, also ipv6.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#64

Post by erikb »

mnkypete wrote: post #4

Um.. 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...

Yes, Lync's call quality is better. But in return chat is awful, screensharing sometimes simply doesn't work, and it seems Lync Windows and Lync Mac where developed with two unrelated communication protocols in mind. And updating it can kill your whole computer.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#65

Post by jay-anderson »

gambiting wrote: post #18
mnkypete wrote: post #4

Um.. 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" -…

They're pushing skype for business in my workplace as well (larger corporation). We've been using zoom and the IT department keeps telling us to stop, but skype for business just doesn't work well: high memory usage (seen on multiple machines taking 20gb+ before having to be killed), lack of features (e.g. video conference recording), instability, general flakiness of software. It is truly bizarre all of the problems given how long the software has been around. The only thing I can believe is microsoft is not putting the resources needed into it. They will fail unless they change that quickly. Us engineers will pay for zoom out of our own pockets before using skype for business.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#66

Post by djsumdog »

nkoren wrote: post #9
mnkypete wrote: post #4

Um.. 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 use Linux as my native OS at my current shop and thought "Well they use Skype for Business and there's a new Skype for Linux client" .. but nope. Just as stated in this thread, it's a totally different protocol that's part of their Lync product.

I ended up getting a license for Sky, a 3rd party commercial Skype for Business client for Linux. It's pretty decent for what it is, but I could have just installed a Windows VM, used VNC, shared the VNC session and gotten the same thing.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#67

Post by tytytytytytytyt »

bigdubs wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direct consequence of Skype going from a peer-to-peer model where the servers were just used during call set-up to a far more centralized model. I stopped using Skype shortly after Microsoft acquired it and started streaming all calls through their DC, I could see no other reason than surveillance for it.

It's actually the other way around. "SuperNodes" (elective service as a kind of hub) caused lots of dropped calls and flaky connections because people were trying to do it on bad home connections. Microsoft switched to centralized servers to _increase_ call quality.

Then why did quality drop so much?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#68

Post by vermontdevil »

mnkypete wrote: post #4

Um.. 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...

Explains why everyone at IU uses Zoom nowadays for conference calls plus Slack for daily convo instead of Skype.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#69

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sgt101 wrote: post #47

The problem is that there's no money in it. People won't pay for voice chat, it's an add on service for TV.

That doesn't really explain the timeline of crippling and disabling it. Surely is cheaper to reskin and fix bugs than it is to, seemingly, recreate the whole thing every year.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#70

Post by consumer451 »

fhood wrote: post #45
gambiting wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" -…

I can not agree with you more. Skype for business has is an unmitigated disaster of a piece of software and whatever team is in charge of it needs to be fired or relocated so that Microsoft can start over on it. Skype for business is so insultingly bad that it is pretty much the only piece of widely used software that I am willing to claim that given a month I could write something far better.

I believe they have stopped putting much effort into Skype for Business and are hoping to move everyone to Teams ASAP.
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