Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is killing Skype

windowscentral.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 682 posts

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#231

Post by delecti »

OvbiousError wrote: post #108
drooopy wrote: post #101

The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools. The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime…

Almost everything I do for work uses teams, so I can't say MS missed any boats. It's spectacular how pervasive teams is given how universally reviled it is. I'd personally switch back to slack in a heartbeat for instance.

At my job we use Teams, but basically just for meetings (and the associated chat), and it works really well. About the only complaint I could make is that it occasionally guesses the wrong audio devices, but it's fairly easy to change them.

I didn't understand all the hate until a few groups tried pushing the actual "teams" inside "Teams", and goddamn they are bad. They're an awkward and confusing mashup of chat rooms and forums, with conversations spread across different levels and constructs that each receive different levels of UI focus.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#232

Post by ffsm8 »

drooopy wrote: post #101

The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools. The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime…

huh? Microsoft massively leverage their market position and spread their teams application like the plague!

They just decided they like teams more then skype

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#234

Post by tverbeure »

Well, that sucks.

I still use Skype whenever I’m calling internationally to my mother’s land line. I still have $9 in credits.

Skype is also a life saver when you’re abroad and need to call a US 1-800 number.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#235

Post by DanielHB »

pjmlp wrote: post #194
DanielHB wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine internally they have a hard time staffing the Teams project. Like VSCode is a WebView2 project but it is miles ahead of Teams in quality. At least on the client side features seems far more complex too. Teams used to use Angular 1 and I think they are still migrating out of it. Microsoft would need to pay me a lot of money to want to dive into that mess. I imagine there are a lot of devs who would love to b…

It was also React Electron for a while, but that isn't the only issue with Teams, even if we comparing them running as pure Web application across browser tabs, Teams, Slack, Discord,..... I really don't know what the Teams team does all day long.

Dealing with old crappy codebases can really tank a product, especially if you don't have management support to fix the broken practices.

I imagine the Teams project gets a lot of pressure to deliver features instead of fixing the underlying problems. While the VSCode project probably only occasionally gets a push from upper management (like to add copilot stuff)

Delivering features on top of an unmaintainable mess just makes the mess bigger.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#236

Post by ohples »

Kinda hope they have a good way to migrate Skype numbers. I have one that I used sometimes when I don't want to give my real number. I have been meaning to look into alternatives. I think I can port it to some other provider, but haven't found one I liked.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#237

Post by ACS_Solver »

edwcross wrote: post #32

Microsoft killed Skype for me a few months ago: the Linux version simply stopped working, and unless I install a Snap-based one (which I cannot do remotely on family computers), it's now useless. Also, my Skype credit simply disappeared from the account (granted, it had been sitting idle for a few years, but still). WhatsApp, Signal and similar apps completely replaced Skype, which stopped innovating years ago. Other…

I'm one of the apparently few people still using Skype, had the same issue with Skype just no longer working one day. But I was easily able to install the Snap package remotely on both my parents' laptops, wasn't any harder than any typical remote install.

As much as Skype has deteriorated, I've happily kept using it since signing up for an account very early, probably in 2004 or even 2003. And I'm not even sure what to replace it with for family communications. I want something that works on desktop, phones and tablets without requiring a power user. Signal is my preference on phones but it doesn't work on an Android tablet. I don't want to use WhatsApp, I've never used any Meta-owned service and that's the number one tech company I want to avoid. So it's not easy to replace Skype.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#238

Post by datadrivenangel »

delecti wrote: post #231
OvbiousError wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything I do for work uses teams, so I can't say MS missed any boats. It's spectacular how pervasive teams is given how universally reviled it is. I'd personally switch back to slack in a heartbeat for instance.

At my job we use Teams, but basically just for meetings (and the associated chat), and it works really well. About the only complaint I could make is that it occasionally guesses the wrong audio devices, but it's fairly easy to change them. I didn't understand all the hate until a few groups tried pushing the actual "teams" inside "Teams", and goddamn they are bad . They're an awkward and confusing mashup of chat roo…

Yeah teams for actual phone calls is good, often with better noise cancelling and reliability than zoom these days.

But the mess of sharepoint/o365 opened in wrappers inside of teams for the teams and it's just a hot mess that makes me angry when the UI is so different.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#240

Post by Timpy »

Back in the Windows 7 days I installed Skype on my parents computer before moving abroad, their user experience was basically like receiving a phone call. Even though they weren't tech savvy we never had any issues. I would call them, and if they were home and near the computer, they could answer it and we'd be video chatting.

A year or so ago I found this to be impossible, there was no application for desktop that was as simple as receiving a phone call. My father has no smart phone. I sent him a zoom link via email but he couldn't log on to the family computer without getting blasted with UI updates, terms of service changes, "Do you want to use OneDrive?", "Here's what's new in Chrome", "Try asking Copilot anything!", etc. From his perspective the computer never worked the same way twice. I wish we had regulations that prevented buying out competition.

Post reply on HN