Someone needs to Slap the Microsoft-Skype abortion employees

[DimitriP]

Twice!

[Ash]

Twice!

Yep, preferably repeatedly..

What was once mostly functional has now become a rainbow farting unicorn interface which is terrible to use... 

On my phone, calls always start in speaker mode, rather than normal ear piece mode and I can't find any settings to fix it.. 

Ash.

[EEVblog]

What was once mostly functional has now become a rainbow farting unicorn interface which is terrible to use... 

David2 (who is a Microsoft fanboy), concurs.

[MarkS]

Huh? This sounds like a rant coming from a schizophrenic off his meds.

[Ampera]

If you can get past the gamery exterior (I can, as I am a gamer), Discord is the most promising offer. Google Hangouts is actually pretty decent too, although the UI is a bit of a mess.

[DimitriP]

Yep, preferably repeatedly..

   
Maybe if they are too busy getting slapped around they'll quit screwing it up.
Although, smart idiots in large numbers should never be underestimated.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I rarely use it but as far as I could tell the "Skype for business" thing doesn't work with the normal Skype application and needs some stupid plugin that doesn't work with Firefox (or at least I couldn't get it to work) 

[Gyro]

We've given up on Skype and adopted VSee instead, nice clean minimalist interface, very low system overhead, secure, better video and no ads.

That pretty much makes up the 'declaration of independence' set now... Firefox instead of Chrome / IE. DuckDuckgo instead of Google. Sumatra PDF instead of Adobe and NO FLASH!

[Ash]

I rarely use it but as far as I could tell the "Skype for business" thing doesn't work with the normal Skype application and needs some stupid plugin that doesn't work with Firefox (or at least I couldn't get it to work) 

Ah, yes.. Marketing..

Skype for Business used to be called Lync. It has absolutely nothing to do with Skype.  You might be able to use Skype credits to call out to a Lync service, but that would be just like a normal phone call.

For what it is worth, even friends of mine that work for Microsoft think this was crazy..

I also try to avoid Skype when possible, but I can't always.

Ash.

[bd139]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

[Kevman]

We just switched to Skype from IBM Sametime.

It seems better for the most part (wouldn't be hard), but the UI is confusing and very, extremely, astonishingly, impressively slow. I can type a whole sentence, push enter, and alt-tab away before anything updates on the screen. Same thing with highlighting- Click, drag, release, wait, contemplate life choices, check personal phone, maybe grab a bite to eat and then it'll show the highlighting and I can control-C it.

I'm also not a fan of the whole "everything is giant and takes up half the screen for no reason" thing, either.

[691175002]

Failures of this magnitude are rarely precipitated by the programmers themselves.


Some middle manager drank too much of the "touch ui" kool-aid, then paid outside consultants $2mil to tell him what consumers want in an app.

He forwarded the resulting 60 slide presentation to the programming team and told them to make something exactly as described.  Any dissenting opinions were remvoved from the team as they were not team players.

After destroying the morale of his programmers and creating a worthless monstrosity, the manager then got the marketing department to put together a snazzy presentation and presented his successful Skype 2.0 project to the next layer of management.  This upper management has of course never used Skype before and simply loved the colorful charts in the PowerPoint.

Everyone above ground level thinks that Skype 2.0 is a smashing success.

[hans]

The linux client for Skype is basically unmaintained.

I don't think I will even get it properly installed anymore if I reinstall my computer this autumn. Skype is not in the normal package repositories, and I believe they made some (at first sight) silly change to the client once more.

Also, the client has been severely crapified. Incoming calls that I notice on mobile can't be taken on PC. Video doesn't work on iOS. When I close the main window of Skype during an audio conversation the microphone drops. When someone wants to send me a photo I get a link that asks me to sign in on the website, which then doesn't work. And above all, Skype doesn't listen to normal system shutdown commands, thus hanging out till a timeout which takes a few minutes.

I only use Skype for calls with family because they have trouble learning new stuff, but if I could drop it today I would have.

[Richard Crowley]

Google Hangout is no better. Another moving-target jumbled-mess user interface.  Half the time my collaboarator calls me, the audio comes out as chipmunk-speak and we have to re-connect.  And web-cams regularly go out of compatibility and then return after a few weeks.   

[Zero999]

Twice!

What do you hate about Skype? Is it just the UI? I've never used it before. One of the things which annoys me about Microsoft is, they keep changing the UI for the software on a whim, often taking a step backwards, in terms of speed, intuitiveness and usability. I hate to think how many hours from employers have been lost, as their staff try to figure out how the latest piece of Microsoft software works. I wish they'd keep the UI the same, only changing little bits, when new features are added.

[sasa]

If this refer to a version from a linux repository (4.x, i think), then yes, it is quite problematic.

However, latest beta for linux (5.4.0.1) from their official site is usable, at least chat (have not tested voice call). Some options missing though, as logging conversation history...

Edit: Voice call works fine. I do not have web camera to test video as well.

All in all, beta is at least usable and UI looks good enough.

[DimitriP]

What do you hate about Skype? Is it just the UI?

It started with not letting me log in until I added a "rela name" etc.
Then the skype account became a "microsoft account".
Then Skype can't connect (check you internet connection) numerous youtube videos on how to "fix it", haven't tried all the methods yet.

All I need is the basic skype functionality but it seems all skype users have fallen victims to the Malakosoft  marketing machine.

The software changed/got crippled/broken/discontinued/unsupported   to accomodate Satan's needs. Not mine.

[IanMacdonald]

"One of the things which annoys me about Microsoft is, they keep changing the UI for the software on a whim, often taking a step backwards, in terms of speed, intuitiveness and usability."

Well then, at least that's being consistent with their other products. 

[CJay]

We use Circuit, seems to work well but it's not cheap.

Slack was highly recommended by a client but I've no direct experience

[Howardlong]

"One of the things which annoys me about Microsoft is, they keep changing the UI for the software on a whim, often taking a step backwards, in terms of speed, intuitiveness and usability."

Well then, at least that's being consistent with their other products. 

It's a similar mentality as supermarkets deliberately moving their stuff around to entice you to you try new things whether you want to or not. The problem is that when all you want to do is to make a frickin' phone call it's astonishingly tiresome and becomes the direct antithesis of a "productivity" tool as you have to hunt and pick trying to find how to do things.

This has been happening for some time though. It's not uncommon to prepare for a conference call at 10:00 only to find the f***ing thing needs to spend five minutes updating plus a reboot, meantime you miss the beginning of the call, or worse, everyone else has already hung up waiting for you.

[schmitt trigger]

Failures of this magnitude are rarely precipitated by the programmers themselves.


Some middle manager drank too much of the "touch ui" kool-aid, then paid outside consultants $2mil to tell him what consumers want in an app.

He forwarded the resulting 60 slide presentation to the programming team and told them to make something exactly as described.  Any dissenting opinions were remvoved from the team as they were not team players.

After destroying the morale of his programmers and creating a worthless monstrosity, the manager then got the marketing department to put together a snazzy presentation and presented his successful Skype 2.0 project to the next layer of management.  This upper management has of course never used Skype before and simply loved the colorful charts in the PowerPoint.

Everyone above ground level thinks that Skype 2.0 is a smashing success.

And then, that manager is promoted to a trendy European subsidiary. 

[Rerouter]

Just got caught by the update last night (had wifi on and charging, which meant auto update went through), I agree on the unicorn farts description, you can see all the tapeworms dancing.

Equally on the microsoft forums, people with similar opinions have been told that in a few months, any pre V8 versions will be force disconnected  and told to update. as they wish to ensure "software uniformity"

This to me is like when dropbox killed XP, A tool i liked and recommended, took a hard sharp turn to something that i hate, as now i am invested in using it,

[netdudeuk]

Skype for business is a total pile of shit. We got it when we inherited office 365 when the CTO decided he'd had enough of running exchange. This was mandated by the business as the one true tool because of the spec sheet. One year down the line and we're using Slack internally (started on an internal rebellion by the sales team) and just phone each other and clients.

Seventy thousand concurrent connections (out of a total user base of 150,000) and twenty thousand of those with enterprise voice going well here thanks.

[netdudeuk]

I rarely use it but as far as I could tell the "Skype for business" thing doesn't work with the normal Skype application and needs some stupid plugin that doesn't work with Firefox (or at least I couldn't get it to work) 

You might be able to use Skype credits to call out to a Lync service, but that would be just like a normal phone call.

You don't need PSTN breakout to make calls between Skype and Skype for Business.

It's also very easy to set up SfB to work with Skype once the edge servers are running properly for federation.

[ivaylo]

We just moved to zoom. Person to person is free, group conferences are free up to 40 minutes. Then it ads up...