Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

jira.skype.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 92 posts

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#81

Post by pyre »

alexqgb wrote: post #67
ThomPete wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they had in mind was the 90% of their users who only have 5 contacts in their contact list and the 95% of their users who only use the text area to write "Can I call you" In other words Skype is designed for the 90% not us 10%

If you want to get a sense of how bad thing at Skype have gotten, check out this thread on their site. http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/01/mac.html It's their "big announcement", and it's followed by the longest, and most vitriolic stream of comments from people who are appalled by the terrible design. It's the only thing 9/10 comments even mention. The amazing thing is that near the bottom, their "Blogger in Chief" Pe…

Well, I wouldn't just state that they ignored them. I find it equally probably that someone higher up in the company has dictated that this is to be the interface, or that their designers take forever to actually design anything, so a redesign was out of the question (without pushing back the release date, which could be argued to have been necessary).

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#82

Post by [deleted] »

alanh wrote: post #72

1. Three months ago, a Skype customer reports a terrible, hostile, unreasonable problem with the new client via official Skype bug tracker 2. Company rep asks, “Can you provide us your feedback? You can send feedback through Skype Menu -> Provide Skype Feedback … Thanks” and provides not a glimpse of insight into why the customer is being asked to submit this complaint elsewhere instead of the rep just, you know, doi…

[deleted]

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#84

Post by nitrogen »

Maxious wrote: post #41
pmjordan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This to me implies that both Skype and Flash are doing something wrong.

Reminds me of the recent conflict between the IcedTea (Java) and Moonlight (Silverlight) plugins in Chrome/Firefox http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/01/plugin-... Is there an equivalent to Video for Windows/GStreamer on OSX?

Is there an equivalent to Video for Windows/GStreamer on OSX?

Apple's media framework and counterpart to VfW/DirectShow/GStreamer/etc. is Quicktime.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#85

Post by petercooper »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #78
jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://ww.com/ is also affected and we've already seen some support requests about this.

While we're at it, images displayed while in "Child friendly mode" ought not show ball sack. http://i.min.us/ibQ0Ci.png God, and ALL of the top links take me to a "PAY ME MONIES" page? And I have to browse 6 at a time with nothing but a thumbnail? I'd sad I wasted the time to sign up to be frank...

"Safe" picture scanning is so hard that even Google fails at it frequently. Searching for "meat spin" on Google Images with SafeSearch Strict mode on yield several "interesting" images on just the first page..

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#86

Post by drivebyacct2 »

petercooper wrote: post #85
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, images displayed while in "Child friendly mode" ought not show ball sack. http://i.min.us/ibQ0Ci.png God, and ALL of the top links take me to a "PAY ME MONIES" page? And I have to browse 6 at a time with nothing but a thumbnail? I'd sad I wasted the time to sign up to be frank...

"Safe" picture scanning is so hard that even Google fails at it frequently. Searching for "meat spin" on Google Images with SafeSearch Strict mode on yield several "interesting" images on just the first page..

It's a static photo...

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#87

Post by cookiecaper »

timerickson wrote: post #48
lukeinth wrote: post #2

Thought I would pass on a word of warning about the recently released Skype 5 for Mac. Once installed, if Skype 5 is running (even in background), it will block Flash from being able to access your webcam. This breaks quite a few popular web applications. Unfortunately users will think the problem is caused by Flash, when it is actually caused by Skype. Examples of sites and applications broken by Skype 5. * http://w…

To be fair, Beom Soo Park just posted a follow-up comment correcting his mistake in not calling it a bug. "I have to rectify the term I used before, this issue found to be a "bug", not "by design", We are working on the issue and will be fixed in future updates. Sorry for making confusions. Thank you"

Is Skype offshoring major development duties? That would be a serious red flag in my book.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#88

Post by cookiecaper »

nickolai wrote: post #31

For once, i am rather happy with skype devs not putting too much effort in the linux version. Hope it stays that way...

They've promised to open-source the UI and put out most of the functionality in a blob that the UI talks to, maybe over D-Bus or something I guess. That was quite a while ago, though.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#89

Post by adaml_623 »

DougBTX wrote: post #49
adaml_623 wrote: post #37

Does this mean that Skype can take snapshots through your web cam whenever it's running? There was a US high school that installed software that did that and got raked over the coals for it.

Almost any running application on your computer can use your web cam and your microphones. The only question is whether they do.

My point was that they can do it and you wouldn't be able to tell as they always have access to the webcam anyway.

Re: Skype 5 for Mac blocks all webcam access by Flash. Skype says it is "by design"

#90

Post by ZoFreX »

alanh wrote: post #72

1. Three months ago, a Skype customer reports a terrible, hostile, unreasonable problem with the new client via official Skype bug tracker 2. Company rep asks, “Can you provide us your feedback? You can send feedback through Skype Menu -> Provide Skype Feedback … Thanks” and provides not a glimpse of insight into why the customer is being asked to submit this complaint elsewhere instead of the rep just, you know, doi…

> (Can we get something to the HN front page about Skype for iPhone’s terrible behavior of loading all chat messages in chronological order, taking literally half an hour before the app is usable?)

The iPhone app does that too? The Android app doesn't do it until you open a conversation... but it does it every time you switch to that conversation, making it utterly unusable and potentially embarassing!

Post reply on HN