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New Skype Update Is Horrible

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Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#191

Post by robin_reala »

crb wrote: post #52
scrollaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

Embrace-and-extend on WebRTC meaning that, despite 2 years notice when Firefox removed NSAPI plugin support, they still need a further 6 months to restore standards compatibility. That’s pretty god-awful.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#192

Post by rapind »

gerardnll wrote: post #102
pveierland wrote: post #66

My worst Skype annoyance was when they seized your purchased credits if your account was left unused for 180 days. As a sporadic user of Skype when I needed to place an international call etc, having purchased credits reset automatically was such a provocation [0]. Every time I have to re-install Skype for some reason, there's always a new regression or dark UX pattern in use. [0] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01…

It is nonsense. I don't think there's a reason to do that except to scam users. Any UX-UI Dev / Engineer / Person with common sense knows that users would not understand the process. 180 days and my credit is disabled but I can reactivate it again anytime? what the hell? What I'm not sure of is what happens if you buy credit without reactivating the inactive balance... Does it reactivate the inactive balance or not?…

Same logic with gift cards. If I have 50 real dollars that never expire, why would the $50 card you spend it on expire?

The marketing that has convinced us gift cards are appropriate while cash / cheques are not is impressive.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#193

Post by m1sta_ »

makecheck wrote: post #90

The sad thing is that this exact Skype headline could have appeared at any point within the last several years. It seems every change that they make is just more and more ill-conceived. The best thing they could have done years ago would have been to open-source it and let it evolve naturally.

I'm fine with it being closed source. It just needs to be 1000x simpler.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#194

Post by ClassyJacket »

m1el wrote: post #184

I might have a complete misunderstanding of the situation, but I see three main explanations: 1) Microsoft has absolutely no interest in Skype being a viable option, and wants Skype users to adopt some other Microsoft product. Why doesn't Microsoft tell Skype users "Well, Skype is done, just use MSN." 2) People responsible for Skype are optimizing for some metrics, which is opposite to user satisfaction. What is that…

"Why doesn't Microsoft tell Skype users "Well, Skype is done, just use MSN." I'm not aware of anything else they have now that could be supposed to replace it?

They already did this the other way around. They closed MSN Messenger in 2013, and told everyone to just use Skype. Skype WAS supposed to the their main messaging app now.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#195

Post by worldsayshi »

eigenvector wrote: post #138
muppetman wrote: post #34

Microsoft have driven Skype into the ground. How they can release something this childish and terrible, yet also have the "Skype for Business" brand I don't understand. If this had been released as "Skype for Fun" or "Skype for Kids" I'd almost understand. But trying to force users into this hideous mess is very frustrating, Skype was a dependable, if bloated app. Now I fear getting messages via it, it's so horrible.…

Both my employer (120,000 employees) and our main contractor (20,000 employees) use Skype for Business. By use, I mean we've purchased it and deployed it to every employee in the world. It's never worked, ever, for anything. Not for audio, not for screen sharing, not for chat. I now decline all meeting requests that rely on Skype for Business for some essential part of the meeting.

It seems to me that half of Microsoft is a rotten mess. Some parts know how to make good software for sure. The other half makes really bad decisions and keep rolling out patches that barely should've passed QA.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#196

Post by blago »

I literary spent 10-15 minutes trying to find a way to call a phone using my contacts. And I'm a software developer, I do these things for a living. Still not sure what I did it.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#197

Post by briandear »

owaislone wrote: post #71
crb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

Hangouts is a good piece of tech and the has a great UX with minimal UI. The only issues with hangouts are that: 1. It is a resource hog. Laptops spit fire when they run hangouts for more than 10 minutes 2. It can be buggy and unreliable. Almost every 3rd hangout meeting, someone on my team is unable to hear others or is unable to use the mic. Fix can range anything between restarting the computer to killing audio pr…

Great UX? Are we using the same product? It’s not intuitive at all, you don’t know what an icon does until you click it. Text labels would be nice. Then they seem to alter it every few months so “where is the screen share” becomes a common question. Good UI should be instantly clear to even a new user – it shouldn’t require hovering or guessing.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#198

Post by kondro »

necessity wrote: post #38
rynop wrote: post #8

You could totally remove "New" and "Update" from that sentence and it would still be a very true statement. * Full disclosure: my co. was acquired and forced to use office suite.

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.

Telegram voice chat is very good.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#199

Post by worldsayshi »

zoom6628 wrote: post #164

MS is confusing me now. They do a brilliant job of fixing up Visual Studio for 2017 so that it installs quickly and efficiently. But their consumer products which they acquire and mutilate (Skype, Wunderlist) just mystify me. They take great products and make them awful when these products should be major contributors to their war chest to solidify their hold on business.

Microsoft is a big company. They do not ship consistent quality across all teams. Some products are kind of great.

Some are absolutely awful and it perplexes me to no end how people and organisations are so willing to throw money at those products. It's like they could do better with sending hand written letters sometimes.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#200

Post by dboreham »

remir wrote: post #134
ravenstine wrote: post #93

It's absolute crap like this which is why I have turned off automatic updates in Google Play. What a terrible feeling it is to merely open an app and, out of seemingly nowhere, a seemingly different app opens up and you can't go back. There's security and all that, but literally screw security if big corps are going to remotely fiddle with my device and turn me into a beta tester. How do you take the original king of…

I don't know why MS acquired Skype. It seems like they never really knew what to do with it, so now they try to make it "cool".

Because there was a big business in providing a spying interface onto Skype users?
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