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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#651

Post by johnisgood »

niutech wrote: post #631
DrFalkyn wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this is the culture now at tech companies. All the data has to go through company servers, whether it makes technical sense or not Pretty sure I flunked a system design question this reason. I was asked to design an online chat system. I asked of they wanted support for groups, they said no. So I gave them simple two way socket solution. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, They wanted a full DB storing everyone…

There are also Jami and Tox as decentralized Slack alternatives.

Or Mattermost, Zulip, or... Briar, among others. :P

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#652

Post by hyperdimension »

kolp wrote: post #102
AnonC wrote: post #7

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 voip.ms. Incoming texts can be sent to you as an email. A US number costs about $1.50 a month.

Seconding VoIP.ms - they're great. Calls are billed at about 1c/min depending on if they call you (DID) or you call them.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#653

Post by kernal »

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…

> The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling

IMO this hasn’t been true since 2020.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#654

Post by bombela »

thwarted wrote: post #592
bombela wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Charbon". The French commoner will refer to the rock coke as "charbon de terre", shortened to charbon. Similar to "pomme" is apple, and "pomme de terre" is apple from the earth (potato). Charbon is also the word for charcoal. So my grandma used charbon (coke) when she was a kid. And my mom uses charbon (charcoal) for her barbecue. In journals and scientific papers the words coke will be used. In everyday speech, cok…

In everyday speech, coke means cocaine. Coca is short form for coca cola. And cola is the generic for a coca cola flavored soda. I admittedly used a very rare/specialist example homonym. What I'm really wondering is how context plays into it. If you're ordering drinks in France and an English speaker says they'll have a Coke, does anyone really think they are referring to cocaine? Coke is vernacular slang for cocaine…

"Un coke s'il vous plaît" is not a proper French sentence. It does not sound right. It will be obvious it's a language difference and people will easily guess coca cola. In fact French people will most likely quip back "Un coca vous voulez dire ?".

Fun aside, coca cola/cola is male. Cocaïne is female. A rail (of coke) is male.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#656

Post by endofreach »

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…

It's just insane how this is a pattern with microsoft. That should be studied. It's not meant snarky. I am really fascinated. I dislike microsoft but feel that my bias is taking over whenever i get to say things like "of course it failed– it's microsoft". But it is also true every time. Somehow microsoft has a unique talent to take things and just find ways to screw it up in ways, people couldn't imagine. That is really, really fascinating.

But, of course: thank god they blow it every time. They bring the spotlight to the places where others create good things.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#657

Post by fifticon »

ratg13 wrote: post #17
notTooFarGone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The codebase is reportedly the biggest mess and impossible to navigate. In that light is just crystal clear why you would want to reinvent the wheel.

They’ve rebuilt popular software many times over in the past. Even with Skype they rebuilt the entire backend as well when they moved it from a decentralized platform to a centralized platform. I struggle to believe that this theory holds any water. It also lends support to an old conspiracy theory that the primary driver for Microsoft buying Skype was so that the service could be centralized so that communications c…

No conspiracy neeeded. The simple reasons they bought it was:

1 to buy the users

2 to reign in an upstart empire

3 to buy the goodwill towards a 'cool' brand

4 to be able to peddle 'Lync'

They mismanaged the entire thing spectacularly; they changed skype from something to chase and desire, to something to avoid :-/.

A background to this mess is that MS at the time had an unpopular crappy product called Lync, which was supposed to provide internet phone for companies. But customer's weren't really enthusiastic about adopting their crappy product. As soon as they had acquired Skype, they renamed and reskinned Lync to 'Skype for Business'.

It was annoying and painful to be witness to and to be subjected to.

For a range of years, the machines I had to use, would have multiple versions of "skype" installed, all with the fantastic feature of limitations of which receivers of calls I could see and were allowed to call, and glass walls to avoid them being able to call each other..

/s So wonderful to be locked into various versions of 'skype', with arbitrary limitations on who I were allowed to call..

/s That is really what I am looking for in a replacement phone service

- "No, in THIS version of skype, you can only call people in your own local department, because your company is not paying the the variant where you can all people in your companies's other offices",

"you can't call your CUSTOMERS in THIS version of skype",

"you can only call SOME of your CUSTOMERS in THIS version of skype",

"you can't call people on real phones in THIS version of skype",.

So, skype going from 'this enables me to call people all over the place!' to 'this enables me to NOT call people all over the place!'

Enshittification galore.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#658

Post by bdavbdav »

Timpy wrote: post #240

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 w…

I think this is definitely get them an iPad and use FaceTime territory. They seem to be the least invasive in terms of just letting you get on with the task in hand, instead of having to understand what a OneUI update is and what each of the 5 different TOS checklist items means.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#660

Post by chrismorgan »

chrismorgan wrote: post #48
isaacremuant wrote: post #23

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 remember how it ceased working on Linux once they bought it 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.se…

Update: I just gave up and uninstalled skypeforlinux-bin. I’m fed up with it. After taking a few minutes to log in (if the window isn’t visible, it doesn’t progress much through logging out and in and all), it looked like everything was fine, but didn’t show contact presence status or display incoming calls, which is something I’ve seen happen once or twice, but those times it sorted itself out after a few minutes, whereas this time it hadn’t after ten minutes, and I’m just done with it. I only used it once a week anyway. Not sure if this is actual Linux client breakage, or bugs in the web tech part of the stack, or some combination.

So for the last while until my family switches to something else, I’ll stick with Skype for Android, which is… not completely broken. But all their stuff is falling apart. In the last few months, Skype for Android stopped receiving calls unless the app is open (or perhaps been opened recently, not sure). Maybe Android background app killing is partly to blame, but nothing else that acts like a dialler has trouble.

Everyone keeps on changing their software and making it worse. :-(

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