Skype 5 for Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#41

Post by jdminhbg » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #29

jdminhbg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protocol does; the application does not.

The protocol is proprietary - and in that case it is in Skype's best interest to maintain a similar look and feel throughout all platforms they support. This of course doesn't mean that they shouldn't be doing so much more on both systems - I just think in this case the requirement of having a similar application on both systems is necessary.

I'm not sure the second half of your first sentence follows from the first, but that's not all that important. OP said he'd rather use Mac-only apps, to which the response was "I guess you only want to talk to Mac users." You can very easily have (and there plenty of examples of) Mac-only apps that talk a protocol that also has Win/Linux/Android/iPhone/etc-only apps. You don't have to give up OS-specific design to have interoperability.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#42

Post by technomancy » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

I've been grumbling for a while that the Linux client was still on version 2.1, but I guess that's something I should be thankful for. (Though these days with the pidgin and gnome-do plugins I rarely interact with Skype directly; I don't know how people can work in chat rooms without nick coloring.)

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#43

Post by roadnottaken » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

poutine wrote: post #15

I refuse to upgrade to Skype 5 after trying it once and accidentally upgrading a second time when the app tried to auto upgrade itself. The horrid UI combined with Skype's stated desire to bring ads to the client makes me search for an alternative which sadly there isn't. In a business setting I would say that 90% of the time Skype is used as an IM client because of its working persistant groups and functional file t…

This reminds me of RealPlayer's rise and fall. That software, too, used to be the ubiquitous, entrenched, dominant platform for streaming video. And then it was horribly ruined and competitors took over.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#44

Post by sudont » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #29

jdminhbg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protocol does; the application does not.

The protocol is proprietary - and in that case it is in Skype's best interest to maintain a similar look and feel throughout all platforms they support. This of course doesn't mean that they shouldn't be doing so much more on both systems - I just think in this case the requirement of having a similar application on both systems is necessary.

There's an appropriate saying about history: it doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.

A good cross-platform app isn't just dumbly copied at the whiteboard stage of MVC planning. It needs to have certain similarities, sure, but the key interface elements will integrate with the host operating system.

Since Windows has window-attached menu bars, why don't cross-platform apps on a Mac have the same thing? Don't say because there's a menubar object to attach commands to. I've seen plenty of apps that use nspopupbuttons to create window-attached menus while clearing the global menu. The reason it's not done is that it's egregiously bad taste. Defeating the user's expectation of how the app interacts with the operating system forces the user to break out of typical interaction into some unknown set by the developer. It's almost never a pleasant transition because someone with the ego to say "do it my way or else" generally doesn't care about testing on users.

In this case, Skype's mistake was breaking OS X's window management portion (Expose), along with the fact that mac applications are almost always one window : one task.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#45

Post by emehrkay » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

jwatzman wrote: post #37

emehrkay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's missing from skype that isnt provided by AIM or GTalk? Is it the ability to make phone calls?

I have been unable to find an alternative that allows me, a Mac user, to do a video chat with my girlfriend, a Windows user, with no fuss when both of us are behind separate NATs.

Not even AIM? I find that hard to believe

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#46

Post by cmontgomeryb » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

jonursenbach wrote: post #22

cmontgomeryb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://mac.oldversion.com/Skype.html

Ah neat. Not obvious on how to get there though. Thanks for the link.

Sorry for the curtness, that reply was from work. I actually found this site for the first time last week while searching for the subject of this very thread - I had reinstalled OSX and in the process ended up with Skype 5. I'm thankful that sites like this exist!

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#47

Post by dguaraglia » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #2

Skype has noticed that there is a discrepancy in quality between the two versions, and has decided to make the two versions more similar to each other. Unfortunately, instead of making the Windows version of Skype better, they’ve decided to fix the discrepancy by making the Mac version of Skype more like the Windows version. This is the number one reason that I prefer Mac-only products to products that are available…

I wonder if you realize that because the Macs have a "tiny market share" (as you describe it) it's just easier (cheaper, too) to produce a re-chromed version of your software rather than writing a completely new interface just for those users. Also, it's a plus for the users coming from the PC market because they don't have to relearn the interface.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#48

Post by simonh » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

I'm going to have to downgrade. My mother sometimes uses skype on my computer to chat with relatives, but the auto-hiding toolbar that now owns the buttons to stop a call or activate/eactivate the camera confuses her. It confused me for ages, since if you move the mouse off the video area to the top the toolbar stays permanently, but if you move the mouse away to the bottom it auto-hides. Took me several sessions to find how to reach the chat window as well. Gah!

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#49

Post by liedra » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

Additionally to the very spot-on dissection of Skype in the article, what I find amazingly frustrating about this version is the list of recent calls in the left-hand menu thing. I call a lot of numbers in Australia, and where it used to show the full number, now it only shows the first 2-3 digits (i.e. the +61). When I click on that to hopefully see more about which damn number it is, the title of the right hand chat/history screen thing is "+61..." ARGH. NOWHERE does it show the full number. How am I supposed to know if it was my mum, my sister, or my brother I called? Very frustrating.

I discovered more recently that if I mouse-overed the number in the left hand menu it would eventually pop up in a tooltip, but eventually is the operative here. I have to wait a full 5 seconds or so for it to show up, and that's a long time in annoyed-liedra time.

I hope they fix a lot of this up, because at the moment it's just rubbish.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac

#50

Post by Legion » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 5:08 PM UTC

What other options are out there that are (a) cross-platform and (b) can be set to auto-answer video calls?

Skype has been in our plans for our poor man's Telepresence setup, but at the same time, I've never been super comfortable with relying on Skype, particularly with their bare-bones Linux support.