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Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#121

Post by wittekm »

Skype for Android is unbelievably bad. I uninstalled it after the following:

- a spam bot texts me asking to connect - which, whatever.

- my locked phone wakes up from sleep and /launches into Skype/ to show me this exciting information

- it literally could be solved by a notification

- it is not configurable in settings

I can understand the "bypass lock screen" behavior for an incoming phone call, but this is such an unbelievably bad interaction even for contacts you do know, nevermind contacts you don't.

Skype engineers - and I know you're reading this - show this to your PMs.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#122

Post by uhhhhhhh »

100% yes.

I used to use skype with all my family. the MS bought it and quality noticeably dropped after redirecting all calls through their servers instead of p2p.

we moved to other services and except for my cousin no one uses it anymore in our family.

Move it back to p2p, improve call quality, and I'll recommend it again.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#123

Post by sloxy »

djsumdog wrote: post #66
nkoren wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Windo…

> but I could have just installed a Windows VM, used VNC, shared the VNC session and gotten the same thing

I'm pretty sure there would be a noticeable(couple of seconds) lag between both incoming & outgoing audio to the VM making smooth flowing conversation near to impossible.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#124

Post by _ZeD_ »

std_throwaway wrote: post #72
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

your superfluous is my essential.

one thing is to start small, the other one to remove for the sake of removing

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#125

Post by uhhhhhhh »

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.

My experience with it was the switch to centralize significantly dropped quality and reliability, and my family ditched it alltogether about 6 months after.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#126

Post by tzahola »

stephenhuey wrote: post #12
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 do not understand why a software company who has long made money in the enterprise with Office, SQL Server, etc cannot make an integrated chat program that works well in a corporate environment. This Lync Skype beast is so buggy and it doesn't even have code paste one tenth as decent as what Sametime had a decade ago, and MS makes TOOLS FOR DEVELOPERS! Do they not use Lync/Skype in-house? Dog-folding should make it…

    Dog-folding
Microsoft Origami Club to the rescue!

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#128

Post by djsumdog »

sloxy wrote: post #123
djsumdog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Windo…

> but I could have just installed a Windows VM, used VNC, shared the VNC session and gotten the same thing I'm pretty sure there would be a noticeable(couple of seconds) lag between both incoming & outgoing audio to the VM making smooth flowing conversation near to impossible.

At my old job I had this setup for WebEx. I did voice over a standard phone, so only video went over x11vnc -> vnc client in Windows VM -> WebEx. It worked pretty well; way better than Sky (Linux Skype for Business client) which is just laggy as hell.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#129

Post by occamrazor »

gowld wrote: post #119
bigdubs wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is peer-to-Internet--peer worse connectivity than peer-to-DC-to-peer for UDP streaming? The peers aren't moving themselves to the DC to sit on their calls.

When both users are behind a firewall, in some cases the Skype connection was peer-to-supernode-to-peer, not straight peer-to-peer. Replacing a supernode, which could have been a user on a mediocre DSL connection, with a server in a datacenter with good connectivity _should_ improve call quality.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#130

Post by mattmanser »

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…

Enterprise software is a catch-all term, I worked on enterprise software and none of our customers were bigger than 500 users, most were less than 100.

Enterprise software comes in a huge variety of quality.

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