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OpenAI should build Slack

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Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#171
post #121

Google should build slack. Its a travesty how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is, and then google chat is what sits between it all. If it wasn't for the fact that google bungled an internal communication tool so badly, slack wouldn't even have to exist. For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space. Source: I use…

I hope I don't suffer from early onset Alzheimer's, but I seem to recall the joke pre the pandemic was that Google would constantly make new chat apps. Google Dou, Google Chat, Google Wave, Google this, Google that. Seemingly because someone needed a promotion and the way to do that was to create a new chat app or lead the effort for the same.

You don't, it was egregious. Don't forget that Gmail chat and google chat were also different and merged but not, I don't even remember very well but it was confusing.

Wave was fine, I liked it for the short time it lived and I am happy that google docs carry some of its collaboration legacy.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#172
post #106
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is shovelware. Force bundled, with questionably reliable messaging, okay video calling (if your organization policies don't break it), and a fairly useless Phone System component that misbehaves often. Great for organizations that believe these forms of communication should be an afterthought that has rough edges and inconsistent reliability. The recent changes to end webhook support, kill Linux desktop support…

Maybe in 2020. Teams is the defacto IM app for enterprise now. It may not be to your liking, but most workplaces don't need apps to constantly be adding new features. They need videoconferencing, chat, meeting recording and AI transcription and note-taking. All synced with everyone's Outlook calendars and authenticated by the same SSO used org-wide. Teams has had all of those for years.

Only because they use Office and Teams is bundled, everyone using it that's heard of Slack wants to be using Slack instead.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues do you have with teams? It works well and there’s nothing I can think of that I want in it. It’s just a video and chat app.

It's by and large the slowest, jankiest, laggiest software I use regularly. And I say that as someone who swears Adobe has added a bunch of sleeps in Lightroom. On basic chat: it will sometimes scroll up when I get a new message, while I'm actively participating in that chat, so I need to scroll back down to read the new messages. Occasionally it flickers, for bonus points. It will not mark the chat as read if I'm on…

If you are having perf issues in calls, see if you can buy the hevc codec from the Microsoft store. Windows does not come with it by default, and supposedly teams needs this to offload video processing to the gpu. I think it made a difference to me. But who knows.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#175
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's by and large the slowest, jankiest, laggiest software I use regularly. And I say that as someone who swears Adobe has added a bunch of sleeps in Lightroom. On basic chat: it will sometimes scroll up when I get a new message, while I'm actively participating in that chat, so I need to scroll back down to read the new messages. Occasionally it flickers, for bonus points. It will not mark the chat as read if I'm on…

> It drains my laptop's and iphone's battery like no tomorrow Use Teams in Firefox with ublock for battery issues, somehow it consumes much less. > It's the only software I use that, for some reason, has an effect on my typing accuracy. That's because the typed letters appear with a large (often even ~1 s) delay. Close your eyes while typing and you'll be back on you track.

> Use Teams in Firefox with ublock for battery issues, somehow it consumes much less.

I've tried it multiple times in Firefox, since it's the browser I normally use for everything else, and it was somehow even wonkier than in Chromium. I didn't stick with it long enough to notice the difference in battery use, especially since I don't often run the laptop unplugged.

> That's because the typed letters appear with a large (often even ~1 s) delay. Close your eyes while typing and you'll be back on you track.

I do notice the delay, but I swear they sometimes come out in the wrong order. The most common occurrence is it registering the enter key and sending the message before the last 2-3 letters. Sometimes it doesn't register the enter at all and the message just sits there, while I wait for a reply, which obviously never comes.

I'm not saying I'm some kind of god of dactylography, I do make mistakes, but, somehow, I only have issues of this magnitude and frequency in Teams...

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#176
I'd agree if OpenAI seemed any good at building apps. They're a frontier AI lab and not operating like a product company. A lot of great and interesting things come from that, but not refined products.

Their MacOS app really sucks. For months now, it's been eating up 100% CPU with some zombie process occasionally, their helpful global shortcut layover often doesn't autofocus, and their UX has never felt like it gets a lot of attention.

They lack user obsession. Altman talks a lot about going above and beyond RLHFing to get the tone just right. But it's never felt right to me.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#177

I use Slack every day, and I love it. Integrations are simple and reliable, giving us useful information about critical things. Why it uses 400mb I have no idea.

because there is a spare copy of Chrome jammed into the app bundle.

Why do people even use the app? I never understood it. I always just run Slack in my browser.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I have this problem with Microsoft software in general lately. Last time I had the Office suite installed on a Mac, it was constantly popping up focus-stealing (literally and figuratively) notifications that it was updating PowerPoint or whatever, even when I didn’t have any Microsoft apps open. I really try to stick to the web-based Office suite and Apple Pages/Numbers/etc. to avoid dealing with this.

What do you mean lately? I remember Office apps always looking and behaving a bit off ever since, like, Office 2000. For some reason, they seem to have never quite embraced the design language of the current Windows version, even though they're in-house apps.

Now, the latest version of whatever the suite is called this second is a web page in some weird browser window, which has some rather funny failure modes [0]. What makes this all the more ridiculous is that running them in actual full-blown browsers is a better experience.

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[0] I'm specifically thinking of New Outlook, which, sometimes, kinda hangs, but not completely. It will fail to either fetch new mail or update the view with the new mails (can't tell which it is), but the view isn't actually broken! You can click around, select different mails and it will show the contents, move around folders—everything looks fine! Except no new mail comes in. And then, you want to, say, maximize or minimize the window. But you can't! The window controls don't react at all to the mouse! You obviously need to "end task" and restart that crap to get it working again.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#179
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally it is the biggest missing piece of their ecosystem and would complete their offering so nicely. Get a pm and 3 engineers and vibe it out

Wait What exactly does Slack do that other chats don’t? If you had to boil it down to 10 main features what is the point of this? Realtime chat seems to me to be distracting, and I much prefer threaded forums and issue trackers. But I’m willing to listen.

It's most likely already installed when you send an invite to someone and they already used to how it works. It just works most of the time, well, besides slightly buggy text editor and almost non-working calls.
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