I don't think I've found a SINGLE positive thing said about Skype 8 in the hundreds of comments I've read, but here's some samples. (PS, this forum itself is pretty confusing itself just to post a thread & how about a *preview* option so I don't have to fix everything after I've posted it, geniuses?!)
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The same is clearly true with Skype. Microsoft is still a petulant child. They claim to want your feedback, but they do not. What they want is for you to stroke their ego. Would you expect any less really? It is the same old story: big company buys smaller
company, big company gets rid of people who made smaller company, people stop using smaller company's product, big company wonders why. I stopped using Skype a very long time ago because it just wasn't that good anymore. All Microsoft has to do to make it
good is listen and I mean really listen -- something they have shown an inability to do since SatNad took over.
Skype appear to have been listening to serious user concerns on their user forums for years... and then moving in precisely the opposite direction. Personally, I will not "upgrade" to version 8 until it reaches feature parity with v7, and has a compact mode
with screen-real-estate parity with v6.21, which was the last version without the wasteful speech bubbles.
So would this bloatware/feature reduction shrink the size"
Since it needs now a whole javascript runtime and framework to work, I won't bet on it....
Ah, the good times when applications were native ones just calling the OS APIs....
Corporate-speak is such asswipary. Anyway, hands up whose going back? I used Skype for years, but MS couldn't stop hitting the kill-switch, which made it hard to stay in touch with people who need help maintaining a PC or who don't see any benefit in upgrading
to 64-Bit / Win10. But hey, wish core scenarios meant a Ribbon re-think and a halt to Win10 Slurpage too!
Microsoft is in full "me too!!!" mode (and it's not about the #metoo movement). It's desperate about copying whatever had a breadcrumb of success somewhere else.
I'm surprised they didn't add to Skype a taxi operation, or a food delivery system yet. Or to plug some AR/VR system within - when most people just need a simple way to communicate via voice or messages.
Dear MS
Please just return Skype to what it was on the day before you bought it.
Thank you
Former Skype User.
It sounds like a lot of job justification was going with Skype along the lines of what they did to Windows. Things don't need a lot of bells and whistles and shiny. They just need to work and not get in the way which is something I think MS forgot.
If it ain't broke, management will fix it - there will be meetings and the PHB will demand new features, that existing features be enhanced, renamed, moved and rewritten in Java, Ruby or VB. Management have to justify their existence by making decisions. And
if these means the death of a product? Doubles all round at the annual bonus meeting.
I need to see multiple conversations at once
Is that really so hard?
That is why I am running Skype 7, and why I continue to use Skype at all.
I think MS realise many active users will drop Skype if they pull the plug on Skype 7, that's why they changed their minds and why they're now getting rid of idiotic features on Skype 8.
The bloody bastards removed the ability to disable auto updates from version 7.41.0.101 (the one available from skype.com).
The fact that a spokesdrone says that at all is nice to hear. Too bad it's just PR and nothing will change as far as Microsoft's mentality is concerned. It has been a long time since MS ever thought of _maintaining_ simplicity.
“maintaining simplicity while enhancing functionality is critical to usability,”
Being in his position, I would be unable to keep a straight face while saying that; Opening Sgripe on my Win7 takes 6 pages just to sign in, the functions that bloat it seem to work when they feel like it and quit when they are bored.
It's clear this guy is responsible for Outlook too as it shows a similar lack of basic functionality and over- complication along with similar recurring faults that should have been seen and fixed well before the release of each incarnation.
Another upper manager that can't manage.
It might be a blessing if someone could arrange as lahar from Mt Rainier to visit Redmond.
Try just *asking* the users
Although big tech and its enthusiasts keep wittering on about "innovation", there is actually very little of that going on. It is not "innovating" to find yet another field where an app can be levered in as a parasitic intermediary between a service and a customers
(taxis, food, room lets, what's next?). It is not "innovating" to add yet another CPU core to the dozen or so already shoehroned onto a die. It is not "innovating" to make incremental performance improvements to a phone or a laptop or a tablet. And it certainly
was not "innovating" to take a relatively simple application that just does what it says on the tin and slap on endless pointless and unwanted frills, furbelows and witless nods to social media.
Microsoft could have asked Skype users what they wanted from the application and what improvements were needed ... but I'm afraid if you gave MS devs, marketurds and UI folks the design for a hammer—which has been basically the same for 10,000 years—they'd
"innovate" and "improve" it to the point where (a) it was difficult to use it to drive nails in, and (b) the blinking lights and paisley-themed interface used too much battery power.*¹
I was so disgusted by the v8 Skype "up"grade that I reinstalled 7.44 on my phone and have killed autoupdates to stop it rising from the grave again.
I suspect the problem is (as ever) that Skype is supposedly free, meaning that corporate greedmongers are obsessively looking for ways to monetise it. As with social media and search, a great many problems, ranging from usability to data privacy, would be solved
if you simply had to pay for the software. Give MS a $10 credit and get 500 hours of calls or something. The pressure to tinker with the app would largely evaporate, and even better, would be driven only by what rivals could successfully offer, and that would
mean only what customers actually prove to desire.
(Paying for Skype and ensuring it couldn't become part of a data-collection 'monetise the user' paradigm would improve the product and encourage rivals to emerge for true competition, and this is also true of other currently "free" services. The solution to
many search and social media problems is right there, too ...)
I honestly don't care about your "designer" stuff. The second it isn't to my taste, I start ditching the program. And because you can't account for everyone's taste, don't. Provide options. Let people choose. Focus on the core product - how do I send audio/video
over the net nice and fast. Everything else is none of your business and pointless trying to control how "my" desktop appears.
"Skype and Outlook design director Peter Skillman" - There is a design director for Outlook? No kidding!
Skype has been trashed. It's official.
Pre-Microsoft, I set up my Dad with a little hardware box that combined skype/landline and it was cheap as chips. He could use his landline phone and and hit *9 I think ? and it would route his call through skype. It was great. That's gone.
He has a lot of his contacts in speed dial. that's gone.
Adding people to a video call is now difficult as it fails to do anything sometimes, and just adds them to the group but you can't redial them.
The UX is horrid and leaves you wondering how the hell to do simple things.
I regularly skype with my Dad and Brother and all we do mostly on calls (after finally setting up) is just moan about how bad Skype is.
However, at least i can send one of 5 or 6 emoticons to the callers, now that's SOOOOOO useful.
Skype will be dead soon. All they will have left is Skype for Business.
Does Microsoft have ADHD or something?
I honestly can't keep track of their product line these days. It seems that not a month goes by where they've not rebranded, or deprecated, or otherwise changed something that we literally just finished migrating TO after the last pointless change. I'm so utterly
sick of spending more time migrating from platform to platform than I actually get to spend using the damn things.
Just what businesses want, to have to keep migrating to new products when MS get bored and decide that they will release something new to replace the thing that was new only a couple of years ago.
Does anyone know...
..why MS bought Skype in the first place?
From here, it looks like they bought a customer base and threw away the product.
Anybody using ZOOM for video/audio conference and team work. It rocks. We’ve just moved from Skype to it (not the dreaded Skype for Business BTW) and the signal quality, user interface and ease of use has truly impressed an old cynic: I go back to VNC and WebEx
Can the last skype user turn the light out when they leave please.
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I use Skype every week to talk to an elderly and technophobic relative, on the far side of the planet.
What version is he using? Heck if I know, and I'm damn sure he wouldn't even understand the question. But if it suddenly stops working, I wouldn't give much for his chances of learning to use anything else. It's taken him several years to learn how to receive
calls on Skype, and even now he's far from confident with it.
Dear Microsoft: is it really asking too much for you t* just STOP F***** AROUND WITH THINGS THAT ALREADY WORK?
Nah, it's a tradition for Microsoft: "if it works, break it" - Aero, Office, configuration panel.... the list is a long one.
The truth is, Microsoft like to change user interfaces in order to piss off users. It's the only logical explanation.
This seems to be their main hobby.
If it works, break it.
If it's useful, hide it.
If they like it, change it.
"Microsoft like to change user interfaces in order to piss off users"
Seems like it, huh? I don't think it's outright deliberate. Just negligently clueless and selfishly arrogant.
Well, Micro-shaft CLAIMS that they're continuing 'to work on your most requested features". Yet the article points out that the most requested features are, basically, to RESTORE the capabilities of "skype classic".
But you _KNOW_ Micro-shaft will *NEVAR* do that. Why should they? They're MICRO-SHAFT! If they don't like it, then it was never even mentioned (*cough* *cough*), at least not 'enough' to be 'most requested' [I think their dictionary definition of 'most requested'
might need some serious re-editing] and so they fly off into "la la la I'm not listening" mode with their hands firmly planted against their ears as if NOT perceiving it means it doesn't happen...
Micro-shaft started doing this when 'Ape' (windows 8) released. Why is anyone surprised? Ok nobody is, and this is why many of us *SNARK* about it. I miss their customer-centric attitude (ok not entirely but still...) when 7 was released. Now it's "world domination"-centric.
Right?
I wasn't even aware that the deadline had been extended. I ran down my Skype credit and stop using it before the original deadline.
When I want free mobile to mobile calls I use WhatsApp. Oh well, out of the frying pan into the fire.
Does the register get paid directly by Peter Skillman!?! If you go to the skype forum HOSTED BY MS you'll see that virtually NO ONE LIKES THE NEW SKYPE. Please, I IMPLORE YOU read the forums and even his own twitter account before regurgitating what Peter tells
you to say. The new skype 8 is an abomination and all the features no one users are posted over an over and over again to return - including the ability to just make skype call without it dropping sound or dropping completely. Skype 8 is a turd from top to
bottom and I'm not just one person - thousands of people are complaining about the new skype on many forums including MS' own web page - how did you miss this. You've posted a number of articles and my guess is you've never used skype or you'd know what rubbish
the product is.
The general consensus is to roll back to 7, skip 8 and fire Skillman.