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Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#431

Post by BuckRogers »

dragandj wrote: post #202
BuckRogers wrote: post #105

I was recently looking for a PC-to-PC only text chat program to use between my computer and my wife's. We text using iMessage otherwise. Part of the requirement was to be able to see when the other person was online/away. The latest Skype is terrible, along with basically every other Windows10 chat program available today. I can't tell if companies are trying to hide when their contacts are online/offline in order to…

You might find Telegram incredibly useful for what you describe.

I tried that one, from the Microsoft Store and it didn't show when people were on or offline in my tests. I liked the idea behind it though, end to end encryption like iMessage.

I don't know if these modern messaging apps are using the same framework or what, but Skype/Telegram and whatever else I tried seem almost identical. I took away the idea that they were trying to encourage usage and engagement by not letting you know when someone had shut off their machine or not. Like a push to always be connected, install the mobile app and then not worry about ever being away..

that concept doesn't work for me because my phone has nothing but SMS/iMessage and calls enabled. I am trying out two more options though, since I'm always looking for better privacy/encryption.

Retroshare & qTox are two that I'm currently testing. I'm not entirely happy with Trillian's encryption (nonexistent).

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#432

Post by jodrellblank »

magduf wrote: post #415
jodrellblank wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows, macOS and iOS quality usability and discoverability have dropped year on year, Linux usability has stayed abhorrent, every major website I use that has done a big redesign has made it worse for me with more focus on whitespace, style, hiding UI elements, and adverts than substance and usability. Google search experience has gone seriously downhill, Amazon's marketplace and search has increasing quality probl…

>Linux usability has stayed abhorrent Linux usability is only abhorrent if you use Gnome (3). It's fine with KDE, Xfce, and others. I started using Xfce recently at work and it's great: usability is just what I expect (i.e. it doesn't do any weird UI experiments like Gnome3, Windows, etc.), it's stable and reliable, and discoverable since it was designed back when they thought discoverability was a good thing. KDE5 i…

I'm not even talking of GUIs, I'm talking of exchanges like this:

root@server:~# ip route add 192.168.1.0/30 10.0.0.1

Error: either "to" is duplicate, or "10.0.0.1" is a garbage.

The "help" is literally a dump of the grammar, which doesn't contain enough detail to add a route (the syntax of PREFIX is not described). The error message is bafflingly useless. Of all the options available relating to routing, the two I use most are "route a network via a gateway IP" and "remove a route" and I'm going to guess that those are the two most common operations for most people not doing any advanced networking.

Note that this is the replacement to the old "route" command, which had a single line of help: "inet_route [-vF] add {-host|-net} Target[/prefix] [gw Gw]" which is way way more helpful for this use case!

Of course it's possible to go into `man ip` and then find routing help is elsewere and go into `man ip-route` and at the bottom of a 400 line document there is /a single example/ of adding a default route which doesn't include a subnet definition, and then to decode that the error message about duplicate/garbage means "you didn't add the word "via"" and then to backtrack into the grammar dump and trace where that was mentioned.

And of course this is but one tool.

And of course it's better for many use cases that it be stable and performant than that it be frilly.

But all over, it feels like this. Usability, quality error messages, making the common things easy and discoverable, are all afterthoughts with priorities somewhere between "caveat user" and "it's free so shut up" and "we refuse to change it because ~POSIX~" and "usability is for wimps, Linux is for clever people (where clever means 'able to edit a text file and willing to do everything the hard way')" and "we benefit from people buying RedHat Certifications so why should we make it any easier than we have to?".

I'm not saying it's incapable or unstable or useless, but I am saying usability for common tools and overall experience is really, really, really, really poor. With possible exception "install Ubuntu/Mint/flavour-of-day and run FireFox to get to your Googles".

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#433

Post by smsm42 »

braythwayt wrote: post #163
erikb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you…

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…

That sounds plausible but does not explain why UI became so progressively horrible lately. I get that they may be developing corporate features I can't see, but why did they spend time on developing series of new UIs, each of them slower and crappier than the previous one?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#434

Post by smsm42 »

pvg wrote: post #418
braythwayt wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious, I want to snarf that! But actually, I meant that it is apocryphal that salespeople have to play golf to close Enterprise Sales. It's more of a stand-in catch-all term for semi-formal socializing with the client.

Right but it's not really apocryphal because apocryphal doesn't connote or denote stereotypical, proverbial, cliche, conventional wisdom, caricature, etc. Salespeople playing golf with customers to close enterprise sales is not some uncertain thing that has reached us through dubious sources.

It isn't? I certainly doubt whether it's true (not being in enterprise sales myself and not being important enough to end up on the other side of those sales) enough to make a cliche (I don't doubt somewhere somebody invited a client to golf to make a sale - but how common is it?) and haven't seen any reliable sources on the prevalence of it.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#435

Post by pvg »

smsm42 wrote: post #434
pvg wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but it's not really apocryphal because apocryphal doesn't connote or denote stereotypical, proverbial, cliche, conventional wisdom, caricature, etc. Salespeople playing golf with customers to close enterprise sales is not some uncertain thing that has reached us through dubious sources.

It isn't? I certainly doubt whether it's true (not being in enterprise sales myself and not being important enough to end up on the other side of those sales) enough to make a cliche (I don't doubt somewhere somebody invited a client to golf to make a sale - but how common is it?) and haven't seen any reliable sources on the prevalence of it.

It's a big fat cliche. For instance, here's how Tony Rodoni (Executive Vice President for the Commercial Business Unit at Salesforce.com) starts a blog post of some sort:

"When I started in sales, my boss told me, "Your job is to get to know your customer and build a relationship. Nothing is more important than building a relationship.” The second most important thing was to make sure that the customer always won when we played golf."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2017/01/03/the-death...

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#436

Post by magduf »

Pica_soO wrote: post #429
magduf wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not a monopoly, and they're not forcing anyone to use software they don't want. There's a bunch of different options if you don't like Skype. I've used GoToMeeting in the recent past, and it worked fine. The problem is that people are just too stupid to look for alternatives to Microsoft products, and would rather complain than do something about it.

Oh, my, the customers got stupider. They could use the old skye just fine, but then the IQ sank - and its been rock bottom ever since. Completely impplaussible that maybe those stupid people do not use the alternatives, because they suck even more? As in, they are non standardized, not easy to setup et etc.

>They could use the old skye just fine

The old Skype was great. But it's gone now; that's how the world works: things change, and not always for the better. You have to adapt.

>Completely impplaussible that maybe those stupid people do not use the alternatives, because they suck even more?

Given all the complaints I've seen about new-Skype? No. It's because people are just too stupid to look for alternatives when the thing they've been using turns to crap.

>As in, they are non standardized, not easy to setup et etc.

The newer alternatives are web-based and easy (or, at least, no more difficult than new-Skype). And WTF does "standardized" mean? There's no standardization for video chat programs; that makes as much sense as asking about standardization for social media websites like Facebook.

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