41–50 of 682 posts
Skype got me through my first few years living in a different country from my family/friends/girlfriend/enployer. There was a time when whole companies were on Skype the way they're now on Slack. It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged it.
Skype for Business UX > MS Teams UX
GroupMe is also still listed on the App Store with Skype as the developer, though their website lists Microsoft as the developer instead. GroupMe has seen recent feature updates, so I’d suspect it would be mostly unaffected. Interestingly enough, GroupMe still has a public API [1], so in that sense it is more open than Skype is these days.
Also of note is that the Microsoft Account sign-in screen still accepts legacy Skype names as an alternative for an email address or phone number. It would be interesting if the ability to log into Microsoft Accounts this way outlives Skype itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They’ve rebuilt popular software many times over in the past. Ironically, I think this list includes Teams.
The calling functionality of Teams seems to be based on skype. (if strings, binary layout and even some subprocess names are to be believed)
Did Skype ever, like, actually work? I gave it a few chances over the years, but personally, despite living in an area with very fast broadband, it was always had quality issues. For me, Ichat and Hangouts always worked better.
When Microsoft acquired Skype (the company), it was clear they would kill it. Skype had previously been bought by eBay, for which it served the purpose of entering a new market. Then, it was bought by some investment funds, for which it served the purpose of making money. However, to Microsoft, which already had its Windows/Live messenger (which copied Skype’s homework anyway), Skype served no purpose except to remov…
Tangential: I have a U.S. Skype Number (i.e., a real phone number offered by the Skype service) that's mainly used to receive and make (occasional) calls from/to a bank and to receive SMS occasionally. The cost is about $40 a year. With Skype Number not available for purchase since December and the Skype platform (including Skype Number) going away soon, what are some simple, good (and preferably cheaper) alternative…
Try zadarma.com I've multiple numbers there
Skype got me through my first few years living in a different country from my family/friends/girlfriend/enployer. There was a time when whole companies were on Skype the way they're now on Slack. It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged it.
When we made the jump to Slack in early 2014, we migrated as much of our Skype history as we could, which was _a project_, but again, mostly worked.
MS was always going to kill Skype once they purchased it. One way or another. I remember how it ceased working on Linux once they bought it but I'm not sure whether it had to do with moving to centralised servers or if it had been moved from P2P long before.
I can’t speak for long ago, if that’s what you’re referring to, but the last two generations of the Skype client have run just fine on Linux. I’ve been using it for the last five years. My only real annoyance with it (that is, the Linux client rather than Skype problems in general, which have steadily got worse) is that it relies on an org.freedesktop.secrets implementation (e.g. gnome-keyring, kwallet) to stay logged in, and so because I stubbornly don’t have such a thing (I have no other software that wants such a thing, and I use Sway so anything will be poorly-integrated), I have to log in every time it restarts. And it’s really slow to start, badly-implemented web tech UI; twenty seconds to start and show the normal logged-in start screen, then it decides you’ve been signed out and takes you back to the login screen… all up, it tends to take almost a minute to start, including typing password. Except that some time in the last couple of months it broke further, and now freezes up for a minute before taking you to the login screen, in which it also requires you to enter username, not just password. So now it’s more like a solid two minutes of startup time, if you’re paying attention to it.
End of an era, but the writing was on the wall. I have fond memories of using skype to contact my friends and family circa-2011 when I was working for Nokia in Finland. Ironically, microsoft killed nokia the same way microsoft killed skype, an acquisition and then strangulation. if nothing else, it’s at least two times the european tech sector was actively harmed by US tech giants… which isn’t much, but weird that it…
> actively harmed by US tech giants Both Nokia and Skype went under due to usual European leadership stagnation and comfort before getting bought. Thankfully both sales funneled enough funds into EU to bootstrap a startup culture here.
I guess one could call it leadership stagnation, but I would argue more it being just plain old stupidity