Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#141

Post by wirrbel » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:12 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…

I am pretty sure they had such tests, and they tested everything in their corporate network and maybe uptown where the engineers live.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#142

Post by api » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

There's some kind of law in operation that states that all chat and telephony apps must evolve toward increased suckitude. I've lost count of how many good chat/voice/video apps started decent but then over time accumulated bloat, experienced degraded service (often due to bloat or a shift away from p2p), and got encrusted with gimmicks and marketing junk to the point that they became unusable.

I suspect it's because simple chat, voice, and video is a relatively bounded and commodity feature set. Everything must justify its existence, so there's always a drive to add more features and bloat to attempt to differentiate. Over time that swamps the original design. This is a problem for all software but it seems particularly bad in the chat/telephony domain.

I also think the move away from p2p driven by lightweight mobile devices (and I suspect also by governments) degrades service. Non-p2p links are by definition higher latency and lower bandwidth as they're passing through additional indirect relay devices.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#143

Post by aksss » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:15 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" -…

We use dedicated accounts for our conf room PCs. You invite the room to the meeting, join from that PC. Works well and avoids the problem you mention. People don’t use personal accounts on conference room pc. Also using that program to ‘freeze’ known good config of pc and reboot nightly helps ensure it’s always working the next day regardless of what people mess up during the day.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#144

Post by coredog64 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

DrPhish wrote: post #117

Someone1234 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for Business is actually being deprecated and replaced with Microsoft Teams[0]. Microsoft Teams is impressive that it actually manages to have a worse desktop client than Skype for Business, and the web site is barely any better. If people on O365 haven't used it, they should since Microsoft will force it on you sooner or later. It is like Microsoft wanted to clone a bunch of popular services (e.g. Slack) and j…

I agree completely with your assessment. I used to gripe about SfB, but Teams is hilariously bad. Off the top of my head: -200MB minimum memory usage whether you use the desktop app or in a browser. Usually much more -Animated GIFs animate FOREVER with no way to turn them off, except by turning them off for everyone in your entire organization -Attachments fail constantly -Randomly takes over your SfB chats/calls -Ca…

Add to that "crappy search" and "scrolling back through history results in long delays during which the entire display is blanked".

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#145

Post by yakk0 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

DrPhish wrote: post #117

Someone1234 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for Business is actually being deprecated and replaced with Microsoft Teams[0]. Microsoft Teams is impressive that it actually manages to have a worse desktop client than Skype for Business, and the web site is barely any better. If people on O365 haven't used it, they should since Microsoft will force it on you sooner or later. It is like Microsoft wanted to clone a bunch of popular services (e.g. Slack) and j…

I agree completely with your assessment. I used to gripe about SfB, but Teams is hilariously bad. Off the top of my head: -200MB minimum memory usage whether you use the desktop app or in a browser. Usually much more -Animated GIFs animate FOREVER with no way to turn them off, except by turning them off for everyone in your entire organization -Attachments fail constantly -Randomly takes over your SfB chats/calls -Ca…

Teams does something much better than SfB. It keeps IMs in sync between clients and devices. If I reply to an IM on my phone in SfB it stays on my phone. There's no way to get that conversation history onto my desktop client. Teams acts like you would expect and all clients get all the history.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#146

Post by consumer451 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

fhood wrote: post #80

consumer451 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Oh, agreed, it is nearly useless.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#147

Post by fireflash38 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #83

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.

Well, that may have been their reason but I had excellent service on Skype prior to the acquisition super nodes and all and absolutely rotten service afterwards. So whatever they tried to fix it didn't work. Of course this is all from a European perspective and the broadband situation here could not be compared to the US at the time (and in some places still can't).

From a US perspective, quality ranged from fantastic to awful to non-existent depending on who started a call. If you learned who had the best hosting, then always had them start it, you would be fine.

I gather my experience is not an outlier, which is probably why they switched.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#148

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Jun8 wrote: post #5

"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…

They just stopped paying attention to Skype and renamed Lync/Office Communications Server/Live Communications Server to “Skype for Business”. They are distinct things that suck in their own unique ways for their own unique reasons.

Lync was a garbage product, and renaming it didn’t magically fix it. Almost a decade into its inclusion in Office 365, it still doesn’t integrate with AD the same way as the rest of Office. The whole product saddles the customer with a bizarre application architecture that pushes complexity on the customer. (Pop a beer and check out the networking requirements sometime! https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-urls-and... )

Both Microsoft and Google fubar this function because these text/voice/meeting products really exist because the vendors see them as a lever to control their enterprise customers. Offering a function, coherent communications platform is a secondary or teritary consideration.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#149

Post by jgaa » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

Why is everybody hating skype? It's great!

- It's almost as fast as SMTP for messages (pulling every 30 minutes or so).

- If someone calls you, it never rings on the device you're currently using, allowing you play with that other device you had totally forgotten about.

- It does it's best to distract you from what you want to do (communicate), by teasing you with social features you hate.

- It's user interface is awesome. Trivial things becomes real challenges - like finding the button for screen-sharing. (I have spent weeks trying to figure out how to upload a profile picture - and I go to sleep every evening knowing how delightful I will feel when I finally find that easter egg!

Seriously - Skype was great. But unfortunately, everything Microsoft touches turns into dirt. That's just how it is.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#150

Post by zamalek » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #5

"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…

> Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market

It's also patently incorrect. Skype for Business (formerly Lync) is a completely different product and protocol than Skype - it is one of the few implementations of SIMPLE[1] (plus proprietary extensions), where Skype proper is completely proprietary.

> This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem

Agreed, I'm not sure if it is because SIMPLE (which is anything but) was used or because it is coded poorly, but Skype for Business is unusable. Teams supposedly uses the same infrastructure, which is why we still use G2M for conference calls.

[1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6914