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Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#361

Post by paul7986 »

Skype is flat out a bad user experience so much so it’s downright hostile to its once rabid user base.

I used it daily from 2004 to about 2016 when I lost my password. Trying to reset it somehow got me into a loop where the only way I could was to enter my credit card. Umm nope and see Skype. I now use Facebook messenger for the same VOIP calls I was making thru Skype.

I guess Microsoft is going to jack the crap out of LinkedIn next as they are making lots of money but in the long run their focus on $$$ vs. UX is going to bite them in the ass.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#362

Post by wdmeldon »

pvg wrote: post #334
braythwayt wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusing, but the issues with Enterprise Software are far more complex than that. Having spent my career working with Enterprises of one sort or another, here are a few off the top of my head: 1. You are not the customer. With ad-driven products, we have painfully realized that if we aren't paying, we aren't the customer, and when something seems awful to us, the explanation often lies in the fact that the thing that…

How does one play golf apocryphally?

Playing without the intention of treating it as a sport, but as an excuse to drink outdoors.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#363

Post by burntwater »

tialaramex wrote: post #340
magduf wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but I'm still wondering which hotels are these corporate-friendly anti-consumer hotels. I haven't seen any hotels with non-free Wifi, and I've stayed at quite a few different big ones. As for continental breakfast, sure it's not as good as some really good sit-down breakfast restaurant, but it's free and more importantly it's fast: you just go down to the lobby and either eat it there or grab some stuff and take…

I too have never stayed anywhere without free WiFi, and I travel for my work, thus I'm staying at corporate-approved hotels, for maybe 30-40 nights per year in various cities and hotel chains. And these aren't fancy hotels either, much cheaper than places I'd stay if I was on holiday enjoying myself. The closest I've seen was a budget hotel where I stayed (not for work) after a huge party. The WiFi at that hotel was…

You said it yourself "these aren't fancy hotels" - that's the point. The better and fancier the hotel, the more you pay for the room, the less likely you are to get free wifi.

I've stayed in some nice hotels in the U.S. and in a wide variety of hotels internationally. The best "nice U.S. hotel wifi" would often rank around the average 3rd world "acceptable" hotel.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#364

Post by imron »

jgaa wrote: post #149

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 aw…

> Trivial things becomes real challenges - like finding the button for screen-sharing

Tell me about it! The dialpad button is now hidden 2 levels deep in the interface. 2 levels!

My primary use for Skype was making calls to landlines from my computer and when they redid the interface I spent about 5-10 minutes searching for the dialpad (it used to be a top level icon).

It still takes me some mental effort every time I load skype to find it because it's behind non-obvious icons.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#366

Post by keithnz »

The thing I hate is that once they got skype they killed windows messenger, which I thought worked really well. Then they nerfed skype itself.

Now I just don't use skype at all. However our PABX does go through skype services to make calls, but you don't use the skype client for that.

The need to call landline / mobile numbers seems gone because 1. its a lot cheaper / flat fee on many telcos 2. who uses landlines? ( 800 / call center numbers perhaps ) 3. mobiles can run voip apps

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#367

Post by quickthrower2 »

howaboutnmc wrote: post #319
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of lost bets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703467 I just lost a 5-year bet for $10 to Keyframe ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Keyframe ) It would be mildly interesting to have an HN-bets type service, with the proceeds going to charity.

This website is not very active, but it does what you want : http://longbets.org/

This is a job for .... .... blockchain!

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#368

Post by fphhotchips »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #328
fphhotchips wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Office is one of the least applicable examples here. Software with such a mind-bogglingly large install base would be very difficult to improve, but they keep doing it relatively well. Recent versions of Office are significantly better even than a couple years ago in terms of stability, performance and functionality. Find me a better desktop office suite. I think a lot of the flack Office catches i…

I'll have to take your word for it that it's gotten better. I try to minimize my exposure to Office as much as possible. I used to think Excel was the one exception to Office being awful until I was assigned a project creating an app in Excel using VBA and found out how incredibly fragile Excel is. This was about 6 years ago. However, I don't think anyone thinks Office is bad because it has stuff they don't use, but…

> project creating an app in Excel using VBA

Oh yeah, this is generally where I'd say things start to fall over. A development platform, it ain't. Generally my advice around VBA is that if you're at the stage you need anything but the simplest VBA, you probably want something else (Access for DB style work or Python/R for data munging).

Outlook has got much better - most of the previous issues around lockups and poor performance have improved if not gone away entirely. Can't speak for Exchange.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#370

Post by telchar »

sebtoast wrote: post #318
packet_nerd wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Skype for business is absolutely excellent though. I beg to differ on this.. we use Skype for business and have heard nothing but complaints. One personal beef I have with it is IM messages don't sync between devices. I start a chat with someone on my workstation then when I leave my desk and try to see it on my phone it's unavailable. Or same issue when switching between an RDP and local session.

If you enabled it (it is by default I believe), the conversations are stored in Outlook. It sucks... but you can still get to them if you have access to Outlook.

When you say "you" here, do you mean "you" or the BOFH somewhere who controls the Exchange server? I stopped opening Lync at work because, among other issues, it wouldn't save conversations and I couldn't figure out how to make it do so.
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