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New Skype Update Is Horrible

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Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#141

Post by lightedman »

scrollaway wrote: post #45
CSDude wrote: post #7

I have witnessed Skype to go from almost perfect video & chat communicator to absolute crap over almost 10 years, and I feel very sad that it has come to rip off Snapchat. There is no alternative like the old Skype now in the desktop.

I have high hopes for Discord video, which is coming out soon. Knowing the discord team and seeing the quality of the voice product, I'm finally going to be able to replace god-awful Google Hangouts.

I hope Discord Video uses less resources than Camfrog. If they can, then I'd finally switch to Discord, assuming Discord can handle many hundreds of video streams at once like Camfrog can.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#143

Post by fkistner »

oAlbe wrote: post #107
necessity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are better alternatives in terms of call quality? Hangouts is pretty bad and WhatsApp is awful in my experience. Despite the bloat and the UI Skype is still the only good experience I had.

I find Signal video calls to be extremely stable, clear and with a very very good quality. Too bad they don't have a desktop client :/

Well, they do [1], but you are correct in that they currently do not support calls on their desktop client.

[1]: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#144

Post by a2m »

thecupisblue wrote: post #73

Disclaimer: I'm 24. I'm into tech. I am on instagram 24/7. Snapchat less and less. This update actually made me open skype and talk to people. Skype became terrible, but this update interested me and now I'm actually using it for first time in months. The design is pretty straightforward and satisfying. Could be better, but this is a huge improvement over what they had. Don't know why they put in stories tho.

lol. you have fun with that.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#145

Post by lightedman »

Meekro wrote: post #10

What could I switch to (on both Mac and PC) that would give me better video chat functionality? Edit: Just to clarify, here's what I'm looking for: 1. Free plan; available everywhere in the world (I have family outside the US). 2. Both Mac and PC clients that are actually good. 3. Video chat quality (including noise filtering and such) that matches or exceeds what Skype can do. 4. IM-like client that supports text, v…

Camfrog (minus noise filtering) does all of that, and has Mac and PC clients.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#146

Post by njarboe »

jjeaff wrote: post #121
dasil003 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wild guess would be that their finance people do not like a monotonically increasing liability on the books. Since some users will never use their credits, this is their way of satisfying the bean counters.

That was my thought. But as far as the bean counters are concerned, they would base it on an aging schedule. Unused credits stop being counted at 100% after x number of months. But there isn't really any reason to disable them in the software. Especially since they can be reenabled. Just like if you have fully depreciated an office desk, that doesn't mean you march into that person's office and take it away. Sorry, t…

"Sorry, this desk must be thrown out as it is now fully depreciated!"

This gave me a good laugh. With lowering interest rates and quantitative easing not pumping up the economy as expected, any bets on long before this becomes a reality?

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#147

Post by inetknght »

Bud wrote: post #126
makecheck wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably going to be a problem that next-generation lawmakers have to solve: how to force entities to distinguish between different types of changes, and be liable for sticking to that set. Just like it’s ridiculous to let installers run as root without a sandbox, it should be considered ridiculous that we can’t constrain updaters: I should be able to say “bug fixes only” or whatever, and see only that happen…

Wait. You actually think that individual consumers should be able to, essentially, construct their own unique snowflake version of an app which only fixes bugs but retains the UI (and god knows what other code) from an arbitrary previous version? Look, I don't like some of these stupid updates either, but that idea is completely unworkable.

I wish I had the downvote feature just for your comment.

Unworkable? Are you kidding? It's absolutely brilliant. It's exactly what I want.

Give me a feature set. Give me a separate UI which interacts with that feature set. Let me pick and choose both of them, completely separately. That's what an API is supposed to be and do.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#148

Post by s73ver »

inetknght wrote: post #147
Bud wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. You actually think that individual consumers should be able to, essentially, construct their own unique snowflake version of an app which only fixes bugs but retains the UI (and god knows what other code) from an arbitrary previous version? Look, I don't like some of these stupid updates either, but that idea is completely unworkable.

I wish I had the downvote feature just for your comment. Unworkable? Are you kidding? It's absolutely brilliant. It's exactly what I want. Give me a feature set. Give me a separate UI which interacts with that feature set. Let me pick and choose both of them, completely separately. That's what an API is supposed to be and do.

We're not talking about an API. We're talking about an entire app. That kind of thing is unworkable, especially for small teams. You're exponentially increasing the number of combinations that have to be tested together. "Well, for that issue, they've got bugfixes #2562, 6834, and 3945, but they're still on UI Tweak #201."

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#149

Post by drcross »

My biggest gripe is that the REMOVED the auto answer feature on skype. I used to call my parents who are not all that computer literate in their kitchen on a whim and say hello. Now I cannot do that. The extra messing about means I talk to them less. I think Amazon's new product does something like this but I wont shell out hundred of dollars for something that used to work fine for free.
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