Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#71

Post by noonespecial » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

erikb wrote: post #56

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…

Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you…

>putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional".

That had to be the most succinct description of the corporate work environment I've ever encountered. I'm shamelessly stealing that. Well said.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#72

Post by std_throwaway » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #54

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…

Based on recent Linux updates (but not the most recent, it's become unusable for contacting family) I think they let each new intern remove a feature.

I don't consider removing superfluous features a bad thing as long as the core features are working flawlessly.

EDIT: Apparently they removed really useful features which is a bad development.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#73

Post by toyg » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

harel wrote: post #16

What I find most interesting about Skype is that it rose from the ashes of Kazaa, and as far as I can remember was originally using a similar/same backend and peer to peer protocols to facilitate the calls. When MS got I think they removed the peer-to-peer elements (which made skype great) and made it a centralised service. At least that is my recollection of events.

The move to "supernodes" happened barely a month after the acquisition was finalized, iirc. I remember thinking it was a bit too quick to have been instigated by MS alone. The chief architect later declared that they started working on the move more than a year before the acquisition was done, mostly for scalability issues. But it's true that, before the acquisition, Skype had been resisting requests for wiretapping capabilities from the US government for at least three years. It is not unreasonable to think that this move was factored in the acquisition (a conversation like "the US government will remain on your tail forever -- just sell to us and switch on those supernodes, and the problems go away: we take the reputational hit (and reputational credit with USGov) and you get f-u money" would not be out of the realms of possibilities).

After the acquisition, for sure, Skype has been completely owned by NSA and friends - this was confirmed in the Snowden docs.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#74

Post by Shorel » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

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.

That's what their public relations department says.

We don't have the full data, and seeing past behavior, it is completely possible they have second intentions with the change. We just can't rule out that possibly because of a press release.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#75

Post by mbesto » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

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" -…

It's amazing how things MS got wrong with Skype for Business. For something that had so much potential, that piece of software on Mac's is so ridiculously bad. It's a shame too, I'd definitely pay and be happy to be locked into a really nice softphone technology with corp IM/directory all in one.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#76

Post by taurath » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #10

The problem with Skype is the software is terrible. Connection issues, even strange things like working audio and video but only some attendees being able to see screen sharing. Somehow it still has devotees even though far superior products like Zoom, Slack, and even Hangouts exist.

It doesn’t. Microsoft just will never admit that it’s bad

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#77

Post by codedokode » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

Several years ago MS released a new, "RT" version of app for Windows. One of the differences is that it doesn't even have an option to disable updates. So if Microsoft decides to add more ads or integrate more Facebook pages or make the app even less usable, you cannot opt out of that.

By the way, I hate updates. Today I updated Sublime Text and the background of code changed from light grey to white, making it harder to read. And they removed all bright themes (including Dawn), leaving only dark ones with poor contrast.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#78

Post by ijafri » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

It was a consumer product until Mircosoft acquired it, now it's neither.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#79

Post by akvadrako » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

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.

Is that really true? My understanding is most CGNs are full-cone, and keep the same external IP+port for the same source IP+port combo for the duration of the mapping. Thus, you can use a STUN server to establish a direct connection.

Certainly my ISP works in this manner, but I can't find much data about industry trends.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#80

Post by fhood » Thu, May 10, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #70

fhood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have heard this before, but it doesn't explain why it was ever released without features such as, I don't know, WORKING CONVERSATION HISTORY!