I was surprised they didn't mention that after clicking 'Leave Meeting', a popup comes up with a 'Leave Meeting' button in it, that actually leaves the meeting. This inevitably means in every single Zoom meeting that everyone says goodbye and then spends a few awkward seconds actually leaving the meeting.
How Zoom works [slides]
71–80 of 149 posts
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#72Spot on. I really wonder if all those people claiming "Zoom just works, unlike x" have really believed that the first time joining a meeting, or if they're just used to its weird UX quirks.
We had millions of dollars of Cisco/Tandberg hardware in our offices. They worked OK (Telepresence was actually quite good, but $$$$).
We trialed every viable competitor in the space that we could find. Blue Jeans and High Five were finalists and I can’t remember which one we were close to settling for. Then a large snowstorm had us working at home for a few days and the experience of just trying to have a small leadership team meeting was miserable.
We paused and trialed zoom. This was probably 2015 or so. It was immediately clear that the audio on zoom was superior. It still is, IMO. (I do about 2% Chime meetings; the audio processing there is an utter joke compared to Zoom, IMO.)
If you can make the core feature of audio work and make on-boarding smooth, you can win a large part of the market, which I think is exactly what happened.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linux client does work. Its pretty bad, but the one redeeming feature that it has over Zoom is that I can turn off incoming video. I am in a country with poor internet, and when no one is sharing their screen, I prefer to turn off incoming (and outgoing) video. Others can continue to benefit from seeing each other on video, while I get to talk and hear them properly.
We've switched from zoom to https://team.video and have been loving it. They have a "low bandwidth" mode you can toggle on, that just turns off your outgoing and incoming video streams. I think it still tries to send around screen shares though, for better or worse. It has made a huge difference for some team members with very challenged Internet connectivity where they can just put themselves in low bandwidth mode a…
This is why we use it.
Slack video chat is fine for most people in the US but having people international causss problems for slower connections.
Zoom just works.
Also, they actually respond to support requests when there was an issue with their linux build in the arch user repos they went out of their way to debug and resolve the problem.
This is soo much better contrasted agaisnt e.g. slacks response to a similar query, paraphrasing: hur just use the web client.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#74I really don't like the Mute/Unmute button in Zoom. It shows a button showing a crossed out mic with "Unmute" below it. And the other state for this button is a mic with "Mute" below it. The button's icon and text are always opposite of each other. It is so confusing. I always have to think twice before clicking it.
I spend a lot of time on calls, but it’s always felt clear to me. The icon is the state and the text is the action that will happen if you click it.
But that's not how buttons work usually. Look at the reload button in Chrome. The icon shows you what will happen if you click it. The tooltip text also shows you what will happen if you click it. The text and icon are never opposite. At least I cannot think of another app that does this.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linux client does work. Its pretty bad, but the one redeeming feature that it has over Zoom is that I can turn off incoming video. I am in a country with poor internet, and when no one is sharing their screen, I prefer to turn off incoming (and outgoing) video. Others can continue to benefit from seeing each other on video, while I get to talk and hear them properly.
We've switched from zoom to https://team.video and have been loving it. They have a "low bandwidth" mode you can toggle on, that just turns off your outgoing and incoming video streams. I think it still tries to send around screen shares though, for better or worse. It has made a huge difference for some team members with very challenged Internet connectivity where they can just put themselves in low bandwidth mode a…
I looked but didn't see anything. Can you record meetings, and download them to edit, etc.?
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK it wasn't about E2E encryption, but P2P calls, and mega-peers which would serve as ad-hoc "servers" for coordination of other clients. That was dropped when Microsoft bought Skype and instead switched it to using central servers. However, I notice these days that calls are P2P, meaning I see in my PC's connections the IP of the person I'm talking to, so not sure what's going on there...
My guess is that the signaling servers are centralized. You need those for connection establishment between two peers. Once they 'know' each other, they may aswell talk to each other directly. Routing all calls through central servers would yield an enormous bill every month. On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary as direct communication between peers may not be possible (NAT, firewalling). IIRC, a central serv…
Yes, signaling is definitely centralized, before it was done by mega-peers. P2P contact does work behind NAT if it's a cone NAT. Symmetric NAT would require that the signaling server assign a forwarding server to handle data from and to each peer. In general CGNAT applications with cone NAT, UDP hole punching can be used to communicate between peers, organized by the signaling server.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#77Title is "How Zoom works". It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype. The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bi…
A few days back we were playing League of Legends and due to some permissions issue the person playing on Mac couldn't use the built in voice, so we swapped to Skype for a bit.
First: fans take off.
Second: Skype lowers all volumes of all other apps without asking.
Third: some people now have a weird floating bar in screen during the game, if clicked by accident the game minimizes.
Fourth: sound quality is horrible. How can a built-in, afterthought like Voice comms in LoL be better than a program written from the ground up to do voice calls?
Fifth: after the game ends the group has 3 spammers sending them a message since they logged into Skype.
Never again.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an Electron-hater in general, but are you forgetting the fact Skype for Linux didn't support group video calls until the Electron version?
This is simply not true.
Then why do I see people from 2016 saying
> "Skype For Linux does not support group video calling" [1]
and articles from 2017 saying
> "The latest update to the Skype Linux client makes it possible to place group video calls on Linux, [...] Electron-based app [...] This is the first update to the popular VoIP app since Microsoft retired the Qt-based Skype 4.3 [2]
Plus I was personally there, trying to make group video calls from Linux in 2016. So I've seen this firsthand.
What makes you think what I say isn't true?
[1] https://www.quora.com/Can-I-make-and-join-group-calls-with-S... [2] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/skype-linux-now-lets-mak...
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#79Title is "How Zoom works". It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype. The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bi…
A few days back we were playing League of Legends and due to some permissions issue the person playing on Mac couldn't use the built in voice, so we swapped to Skype for a bit. First: fans take off. Second: Skype lowers all volumes of all other apps without asking. Third: some people now have a weird floating bar in screen during the game, if clicked by accident the game minimizes. Fourth: sound quality is horrible.…
Try Discord if it happens again, it's great for gaming.
Personally I only keep Skype around for one specific customer.
Re: How Zoom works [slides]
#80Title is "How Zoom works". It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype. The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bi…
A few days back we were playing League of Legends and due to some permissions issue the person playing on Mac couldn't use the built in voice, so we swapped to Skype for a bit. First: fans take off. Second: Skype lowers all volumes of all other apps without asking. Third: some people now have a weird floating bar in screen during the game, if clicked by accident the game minimizes. Fourth: sound quality is horrible.…
Regarding your second point, Windows 10 has a feature to lower the volume of other apps when it detects communication activity.
I got bitten by that using another VoIP client (not Skype).