
New Skype Update Is Horrible - Kaibeezy
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/forum/skype_prevandroms-skype_messms/new-skype-update-is-horrible/bcc5c863-6358-43d2-ab1b-b55ff97eba0d
======
pveierland
My worst Skype annoyance was when they seized your purchased credits if your
account was left unused for 180 days. As a sporadic user of Skype when I
needed to place an international call etc, having purchased credits reset
automatically was such a provocation [0]. Every time I have to re-install
Skype for some reason, there's always a new regression or dark UX pattern in
use.

[0] [https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/14/skype-lawsuit-to-
yie...](https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/14/skype-lawsuit-to-yield-credit-
for-customers/)

~~~
nailer
I had a similar experience: Microsoft deleted all my childhood email because I
didn't log into hotmail frequently enough.

This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me.
All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. I love
Microsoft and an writing this on a Surface device now but Christ, that was
awful and would make me think twice about using Microsoft online services.

PS. If anyone on HN somehow knows ways to recover the contents on deleted
hotmail accounts then please let me know.

~~~
iamcreasy
It doesn't end there. When you update to a new Windows, the old files from
previous Windows installation (i.e. User documents etc.) are stored inside
C:/Windows.old folder, and you have around 15 days to save your important file
to some other location after which Windows will delete that folder without any
notice.

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_8-...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/windows-8-has-deleted-my-
windowsoldprogramfiles/dbdf75c0-09d9-4992-b8eb-d9fac3efe9b8)

~~~
Double_a_92
What important things could you possibly have in C:/Windows?

~~~
abhinickz
Windows.old contains your User Folder which have these folders Documents,
Downloads, Google Drive etc.

~~~
cricalix
No, it doesn't, or darn well shouldn't.

XP put that data in \Documents and Settings\<user>. Vista and 7 put it in
\Users\<user>, and some stuff in \ProgramData.

If you've got user downloads and documents in \Windows (and thus
\Windows.old), you're doing something really strange.

~~~
NTripleOne
You appear to be under the impression that windows.old is a based on the
windows folder.

It's not.

~~~
ryanlol
Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is trivial to google [https://www-
howtogeek-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/www....](https://www-howtogeek-
com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/www.howtogeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/img_56d020b4a788b.png)

------
muppetman
Microsoft have driven Skype into the ground. How they can release something
this childish and terrible, yet also have the "Skype for Business" brand I
don't understand.

If this had been released as "Skype for Fun" or "Skype for Kids" I'd almost
understand. But trying to force users into this hideous mess is very
frustrating, Skype was a dependable, if bloated app. Now I fear getting
messages via it, it's so horrible.

Nothing will happen though. We're all upset, but Microsoft isn't going to roll
back an upgrade/decision of this magnitude.

~~~
eigenvector
Both my employer (120,000 employees) and our main contractor (20,000
employees) use Skype for Business. By use, I mean we've purchased it and
deployed it to every employee in the world.

It's never worked, ever, for anything. Not for audio, not for screen sharing,
not for chat. I now decline all meeting requests that rely on Skype for
Business for some essential part of the meeting.

~~~
rasjani
Worked for company that was bought by MS. During the acquisition period, I was
working for 3rd level enterprise support and were main contact for escalation
of issues from our OS X users and MS. And yes, it never worked. Higher up guys
where patting themselves on the backs for migrating to Lync and now it was So
Well Executed while we in the actual client interface where left to deal with
abysmal (platinum) support, private hotfixes, fixes what worked at one release
and didn't on newer ones and all sorts of crazyness.

The "reason" that was said to be the issue was "our internal routing between
the sites" and Yeah, pretty much every issue we had never manifested it worker
was at home and used home connection or used cellphone client and gsm operator
for data.

But yeah, fuck Lync. Worst gig ever. One reason why I think rebranding Lync to
Skype for Business made sense: let's fool someone to buy it by letting them
think they where getting same tech as real Skype, not just same shit with
different name.

~~~
mathw
Except in my experience in an organisation forced to transition from Lync to
Skype for Business, Lync always worked fairly well (although we only used chat
and voice calls), and Skype for Business was wobbly and unreliable. Even
though they were theoretically the same product, somewhere in the rebranding
they managed to mess up the network behaviour too.

Skype used to be pretty solid, years ago. These days it's just dodgy as heck
and moving Lync to be Skype-branded was one of the more baffling decisions
I've seen from Microsoft marketing, because none of us thought Skype had any
pedigree worth trying to exploit anymore.

------
CSDude
I have witnessed Skype to go from almost perfect video & chat communicator to
absolute crap over almost 10 years, and I feel very sad that it has come to
rip off Snapchat. There is no alternative like the old Skype now in the
desktop.

~~~
Fezzik
It really is astonishing. I remember using Skype around 2004/05 on a horribly
crappy Dell laptop and it (Skype) worked flawlessly. It sort of boggles the
mind how far in to the ground it has been driven.

~~~
flashman
It's like an artist who doesn't know when to stop painting.

~~~
arkitaip
It's more like a mediocre artist buying a great painting made by a master and
the decides to "improve" it by adding more and more paint.

~~~
thedailymail
The software monkey christ

------
ravenstine
It's absolute crap like this which is why I have turned off automatic updates
in Google Play. What a terrible feeling it is to merely open an app and, out
of seemingly nowhere, a seemingly different app opens up and you can't go
back. There's security and all that, but literally screw security if big corps
are going to remotely fiddle with my device and turn me into a beta tester.

How do you take the original king of VoIP and easily make it the worst
experience? Sweet Jeebus.

~~~
makecheck
This is probably going to be a problem that next-generation lawmakers have to
solve: how to force entities to distinguish between different _types_ of
changes, and be liable for sticking to that set.

Just like it’s ridiculous to let installers run as root without a sandbox, it
should be considered ridiculous that we can’t constrain updaters: I should be
able to say “bug fixes only” or whatever, and see _only that happen_. Instead,
it’s UI-of-the-week.

A straightforward way to ensure this would be to have substantial limits on
_size_. It is pretty hard to redo an entire UI if you’re restricted to a 100K
update, for example. And it would help to prevent data plans from being sucked
up by careless app vendors.

~~~
Bud
Wait. You actually think that individual consumers should be able to,
essentially, construct their own unique snowflake version of an app which only
fixes bugs but retains the UI (and god knows what other code) from an
arbitrary previous version?

Look, I don't like some of these stupid updates either, but that idea is
completely unworkable.

~~~
inetknght
I wish I had the downvote feature just for your comment.

Unworkable? Are you kidding? It's absolutely brilliant. It's exactly what _I_
want.

Give me a feature set. Give me a separate UI which interacts with that feature
set. Let me pick and choose both of them, completely separately. That's what
an API is _supposed_ to be and do.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
With 10 toggleable features you add 1023 additional app configurations. This
quickly becomes incredibly difficult to maintain and test.

Picking and choosing a feature set for most applications sits in the
completely infeasible plane.

~~~
tomc1985
Oh boo hoo. Back before this automatic update crap you could at the least keep
your old versions. Maybe if we returned to building our applications so they
didn't require super-expensive bullshit cloud infrastructure you wouldn't have
to worry so much about the maintenance burden of 10 oh-so-scary toggle
features. Design like this is the Fischer-Pricing of software, infantilizing
users for a little more blood to sacrifice to the petty, vengeful god of
costs.

Yes Skype is a comms app that supposedly "requires" cloud infra spend but...
wait... they had a decentralized peer-to-peer communication system years ago
but decided to move away from it. It was a poor choice if not to further their
control over the product, so they could better force their crap on us when all
we wanted was to send texts and make calls.

~~~
always_good
Then don't use it?

I don't see why we need to get laws involved. Also, it sounds like you're
chomping at the bit to pull one over on Microsoft. Sure. Maybe you feel
wronged by what Skype has become.

But how would that affect every other operation that's smaller than Microsoft
that doesn't have the resources to make -- and I'm not even sure what was
described -- some sort of pick-and-choose UI/API adventure.

Just doesn't seem like a coherent reaction. Can you actually pitch a solution
that sounds reasonable for everyone instead of just corporations?

------
makecheck
The sad thing is that this exact Skype headline could have appeared at any
point within the last several years. It seems every change that they make is
just more and more ill-conceived.

The best thing they could have done years ago would have been to open-source
it and let it evolve naturally.

~~~
knolan
I have to agree. Every version of Skype since 4 has been an exercise in a
appalling design choices, in particular on the Mac. Whereas it used to occupy
a tiny window listing contacts Skype 5 switched to a large obnoxious screen
filling mess. Here is an excellent summary of the mess that is Skype:

[http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/)

~~~
Nition
Much the same on Windows. You used to be able to undock the chat part and have
just the contact list showing until you actually started a chat or a call.

~~~
tpxl
You can still do that to the best of my knowledge.

------
JoshMnem
After Microsoft bought Skype, it went downhill. The Linux version became even
more buggy. The Android version didn't work well.

So I started telling people that "I don't use Skype" and to call me on Google
Hangouts or my cell phone instead. Slack's free plan also offers voice calls.
If you need a phone number that forwards to you, Twilio offers that service at
a much better price than Skype.

Abandoning Skype over the past few years hasn't been a problem at all.

------
m1el
I might have a complete misunderstanding of the situation, but I see three
main explanations:

1) Microsoft has absolutely no interest in Skype being a viable option, and
wants Skype users to adopt some other Microsoft product. Why doesn't Microsoft
tell Skype users "Well, Skype is done, just use MSN."

2) People responsible for Skype are optimizing for some metrics, which is
opposite to user satisfaction. What is that metric?

3) People responsible for Skype have no idea what they're doing, get no input
from community, don't see how people are mad about these particular UI
changes, and misunderstand how people use Skype... In which case, why are they
still in charge?

~~~
ClassyJacket
"Why doesn't Microsoft tell Skype users "Well, Skype is done, just use MSN."
I'm not aware of anything else they have now that could be supposed to replace
it?

They already did this the other way around. They closed MSN Messenger in 2013,
and told everyone to just use Skype. Skype WAS supposed to the their main
messaging app now.

~~~
candiodari
You forget that they replaced Skype with an MSN service while doing this.

So in reality you might as well say they "reskinned" Office messenger, called
Lync (which I believe started as a version of MSN messenger long ago) and then
put out an "update" for Skype that replaced it with Lync, with the banners,
window titles, website names, etc, replaced with "skype". That's what
happened.

------
codedokode
Skype has become horrible long ago when original team sold it. I remember
Skype when its binary was several megabytes and there was no Facebook inside.

And now it became slow (at least on Windows XP) and buggy - for example I have
no notifications sound anymore and it is unable to accept incoming calls.
Judging by interface lagginess they have put at least several modern
Javascript frameworks inside. And maybe something to work with immutable
values judging by memory consumption.

Every proprietary messenger ends up like Skype sooner or later.

~~~
8draco8
Are you still using XP? If yes, can I ask why?

~~~
codedokode
Yes, because it uses less resources than newer OSes. Windows 7 for me has no
advantages over Windows XP but works slower. The only good thing in Windows 7
is search field integrated into main menu.

I guess I will have to upgrade either to Windows 7 or to Debian (if it won't
work too slow) because many applications including browsers don't work on XP
anymore.

~~~
martinald
Err Windows 7 has the advantage of not being incredibly insecure, which I
would definitely consider a major advantage, probably the most important one
for an OS...

Windows 10 is pretty resource efficient. There's even a stripped back 'long
term support one' which is incredibly lightweight. Anyway, RAM is incredibly
cheap now, I don't think you should be risking getting totally pwned for the
sake of an investment in a few GB of ram.

------
rubatuga
Seriously, skype is not a social media platform, so stop trying to make it one
Microsoft! Skype is a standard video/voice chat/conferencing that has found
its place in everywhere from gaming to professional meetings, so what you’re
doing here is diluting your target market.

~~~
Bud
It's not their target market. They don't care about Skype. That's clear. They
bought it to eliminate it as a competitor.

~~~
jackvalentine
Competitor to what?

------
rynop
You could totally remove "New" and "Update" from that sentence and it would
still be a very true statement.

* Full disclosure: my co. was acquired and forced to use office suite.

~~~
necessity
What are better alternatives in terms of call quality? Hangouts is pretty bad
and WhatsApp is awful in my experience. Despite the bloat and the UI Skype is
still the only good experience I had.

~~~
oAlbe
I find Signal video calls to be extremely stable, clear and with a very very
good quality.

Too bad they don't have a desktop client :/

~~~
fkistner
Well, they do [1], but you are correct in that they currently do not support
calls on their desktop client.

[1]: [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Desktop](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop)

~~~
oAlbe
You are right, but I really can't get myself to call a chrome extension
"desktop client".

------
derefr
Question: does Skype for Business (nee Lync) mirror these same UX changes as
Skype makes them, or does it do its own thing?

Because I'm guessing this is just Microsoft further differentiating their
product categories: today's Skype is for consumers (ala Facebook Messenger),
so it gets "cute" features at the expense of the ability to use it for
productivity; while Skype for Business continues to be about efficient
collaboration and productivity (ala Slack) at the expense of "fun."

The real thing that's upsetting people, I think, is that before Skype for
Business existed, Skype was for both use-cases, so a lot of people used
"Skype" to get things done and were satisfied with it, and it has since
evolved into a product that's not for them. The product that serves those
people's needs now is Skype for Business, not Skype.

~~~
julianz
The Business one still looks like MSN Messenger of old, give or take.
Unfortunately it has a host of it's own small, annoying bugs. The first chat
message of the day routinely appears above yesterday's messages so you don't
see it. Emailed "missed conversations" have timestamps that are 8 hours out so
you wonder why someone was talking to you in the middle of the night and it
turns out it was 10 minutes ago. All of these seem to have been reported to
Microsoft, who have ignored or wilfully misunderstood them.

~~~
bigger_cheese
My workplace recently(~a year ago) switched to Skype for Business. We were
using Microsoft communicator before this. Skype came in with Office 365
update.

I like that it integrates well with Outlook. You can do something like create
a meeting invite from within the calendar in Outlook. Then when meeting
reminder pops up it will automatically contain a link the invitee can click on
to join meeting remotely via Skype things like that make teleconferencing etc
dead easy.

There are some other pretty nice features like being able to see someones
Skype status from outlook when you read email. i.e so you know if they are at
their desk or working remotely etc.

It is also simple to do things like sharing a screen, we use this feature a
lot for remote meetings. There are a heap of non technical people in my org
and screen sharing was always a huge pain point in the past.

I haven't noticed the issue with timestamps but no one in my org really uses
the messaging/chat features everything here has traditionally been email based
so I've never seen many missed conversation messages. The only thing
conversations are used for are quick fire stuff like "Are you coming for
lunch?" and even then 90% of people still use email or phone for this.

One horrible bug I have noticed is Skype will email me when I have a new voice
mail and it uses some horrible speech to text conversion to describe what is
in the message which results in what is essentially nonsense.

Bad voice mail auto translation have become a kind of office meme around here
with people sharing the funniest ones etc. I do not think their speech to text
understands Australian accents at all...

------
Meekro
What could I switch to (on both Mac and PC) that would give me better video
chat functionality?

Edit: Just to clarify, here's what I'm looking for:

1\. Free plan; available everywhere in the world (I have family outside the
US).

2\. Both Mac and PC clients that are actually good.

3\. Video chat quality (including noise filtering and such) that matches or
exceeds what Skype can do.

4\. IM-like client that supports text, voice, and video chat. This
disqualifies business-type solutions that are geared around groups pre-
scheduling meetings. I just want to see who's online and send them an IM or
video chat request.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Signal, Join.me, FaceTime, _et cetera_. I no longer accept invitations to
communicate via Skype.

~~~
Meekro
FaceTime is Mac only. Join.me seems geared towards business users and pre-
arranged meetings -- I want something more like an IM client where I can see
who's online and ask to video chat with them. Also, join.me doesn't seem to
have a free plan (only a free trial.)

Signal actually looks great, but their Mac/PC client has been in beta since
2015 and isn't linked from the homepage -- I had to dig it up on their blog.
Also, video chat has been in beta since March 2017. It's not clear if their
beta non-phone client supports the beta video chat. Still, I'm digging their
encryption.

I don't mean to shit over your suggestions, I really am looking for something
better. But so far, nothing seems like a clear winner.

~~~
mfwoods
> Also, video chat has been in beta since March 2017.

Video chat actually came out of beta in March [0]. The beta was released in
February.

[0] [https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-video-
calls/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-video-calls/)

------
api
Video chat and IP telephony apps seem like some kind of software lemon market.
There's some kind of perverse incentive operating here. Even ones that start
out nice inevitably degrade over time.

FaceTime used to be nice if you were all Apple, but when they removed P2P it
went to crap. The performance got terrible.

Lately I've been using appear.in, which works if you have a webrtc browser or
you use the app. It works decently well.

~~~
sgt
I don't know. FaceTime is my go to choice for video calls, and I use it almost
daily. I wouldn't say the performance is terrible, and it doesn't spin up my
MBP's fans like Google Hangouts does in the browser.

~~~
api
Hangouts is another one that's gotten awful.

------
nyolfen
it's almost impressive how skype manages to become unidirectionally worse and
worse over time

------
thecupisblue
Disclaimer: I'm 24. I'm into tech. I am on instagram 24/7\. Snapchat less and
less.

This update actually made me open skype and talk to people. Skype became
terrible, but this update interested me and now I'm actually using it for
first time in months. The design is pretty straightforward and satisfying.
Could be better, but this is a huge improvement over what they had. Don't know
why they put in stories tho.

~~~
Double_a_92
> Don't know why they put in stories tho.

That's the problem man! You wanted an app to talk to your friends. Now you got
some kind of snapchat clone.

------
jeltz
So it is not just us Linux users which will be hit by a horrible Skype
upgrade? I run the by now ancient 4.3.0.37 (they never bothered to port Skype
5.0 an later to Linux) which they will kill off by the end of the month in a
favor for their half-assed beta client which is still missing many of the
features which Skype 4.3 had.

~~~
Jach
I gave up with the native clients earlier this year when I could no longer get
any to run and log me in. I now use [https://github.com/stanfieldr/ghetto-
skype](https://github.com/stanfieldr/ghetto-skype) Yeah it's Electron web-shit
and it doesn't work with video calls (but there are enough low-friction
alternatives now like Hangouts I can insist on should a skype friend really
want to video chat) but at least it's no worse than their browser interface
and won't just stop working. And I don't have to worry about the potential of
some RCE in their really old native binary.

I really just want them to de-unify MSN Messenger (those contacts who don't
get on Matrix or anything else are the only reason I still use skype) and let
me use Pidgin/Emesene again but that's way up there in the pipe dream clouds
of never happening.

~~~
jeltz
There is a plugin which adds Skype support to Pidgin which I have yet to try.
[https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin/tree/master/skypewe...](https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin/tree/master/skypeweb)

~~~
Jach
I tried it once and it didn't work, didn't realize they had a flow chart
though. Maybe I'll try it again in the future. But the other potential issue
is that I login with my old MSN credentials (in the native app there used to
be a separate 'login with Microsoft account' screen) so that might screw
things up too.

------
Kaibeezy
I just got forced to update on iOS. OMFGJMOAP, it is a horror. I use it to
make calls from Europe to the US and elsewhere, and it has worked great for
that, but now it's all about chit-chat and colorfulness, bleh. What's a good
option?

------
mmanfrin
This title could come from any year between 2005 and now. Skype has only ever
gotten worse.

------
bdibs
It seems like every Skype update leads to more frustration and (somehow) more
bugs. Yet another product Microsoft has managed to mess up :(

------
cygned
Using Skype for business communication and I think this update is awful. The
new tabs do not make any sense to me - "Highlights"? "Capture"? I cannot see
if someone is online from the contact list anymore. Swiping back to close a
chat hardly works, most of the time it opens the "Find" tab - where I can find
things I don't need. The call screen is confusing (what is difference between
"Microphone" and "Headset" anyway?).

Skype does not feel like a serious communication tool anymore.

------
martinald
I genuinely thought my phone had been hacked or something when I saw this
update. Appalling.

I can't believe they are working on this garbage instead of making it as
reliable as slack. Ridiculous.

------
jokoon
The worst part is that google hangout doest seem to work well anymore, the
plugin crashes, etc.

~~~
kilroy123
Not sure about you, but the call quality has gone to shit the last 2 years. At
least it seems like it to me.

------
zoom6628
MS is confusing me now. They do a brilliant job of fixing up Visual Studio for
2017 so that it installs quickly and efficiently. But their consumer products
which they acquire and mutilate (Skype, Wunderlist) just mystify me. They take
great products and make them awful when these products should be major
contributors to their war chest to solidify their hold on business.

~~~
worldsayshi
Microsoft is a big company. They do _not_ ship consistent quality across all
teams. Some products are kind of great.

Some are absolutely awful and it perplexes me to no end how people and
organisations are so willing to throw money at those products. It's like they
could do better with sending hand written letters sometimes.

------
knolan
Funnily enough I can track my relationship with my partner with Skype's
history. When we were doing the long distance thing and she was still on dial
up we managed to use Skype just barely. It was able to route around the
University firewall because of its port randomisation. It was a resource hog
that likes to set its CPU affinity to high but it worked.

Then it slowly got worse and worse. We both used Skype to talk to our parents
and spent most of that time fixing issues related to Skype not working or
explaining the latest daft UI redesign.

Nowadays everyone but her parents are on Apple devices and a FaceTime just
works and every visit to their place involves fixing Skype and explaining to
them about the clusterfuck that is Skype on Windows 8/10.

------
partiallypro
I've never liked the feel of Skype since its inception (before Microsoft even
bought it.) There are already too many chat apps, Messenger and SnapChat (in
the US) are the two dominant players. I assume that Skype for Business will
eventually be phased out and become a sort of extension for Microsoft Teams.
Skype will go back to being more consumer based, and as much as it hurts to
hear from former Skype users...this is the type of crap most tweens want now,
and it's easier to monetize to consumers. There's a reason why every other
chat app is copying SnapChat. So it's not a surprise Microsoft would go this
direction, I'm sure it will get better with time in this format.

------
hatemicrosoft
I HATE MICROSOFT, HOPE THE COMPANY COLLAPSES. Everything they touch turns to
shit. They have totally destroyed skype like they did with messenger. Totally
made Skype complicated and user unfriendly. I really hate you Microsoft.

------
minusSeven
Dunno, microsoft to me is slowly becoming like IBM. They don't see very
confident in delivering bug free application anymore. 50% of the windows 10
updates breaks my system. There failure to go mobile despite starting late.

------
whatitis123
My friend updated Skype on her phone. I called her from my comp Skype when she
was in a shower. Her new Skype got connected without her pressing any buttons
and I head everything what was going in her room (TV)! I called 3 times and it
happened every time! Seems that everyone can connect to your new Skype on your
phone without your permission and hear all your conversations? What is going
on? What they did? What for? When I told her about it she turned off her phone
and we talked by comp Skype. BTW she lives outside of the US. It's dangerous
for everyone, especially for businesses, and also for kids!

------
clamprecht
I would pay a lot of money to be able to watch the meetings between the PM and
the developers that preceded this release. How can it be so bad - did no one
ever try to use their own product during testing?

------
amelius
Reminds me of this Silicon Valley tv-series sketch

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU)

------
rabboRubble
Skype v2.8 was the last perfect version of Skype. Lightweight, respectful of
screen territory, and worked flawlessly. Even had the super sketchy "Skype Me"
mode in case you wanted to get weird p0rny type stuff and invitations from
Nigerian princes.

IMO the crappifying had a lot to do with centralizing of Skype's backend for
USLEO intercepts. At one point in time, Skype was the Signal of its day.

------
drcross
My biggest gripe is that the REMOVED the auto answer feature on skype. I used
to call my parents who are not all that computer literate in their kitchen on
a whim and say hello. Now I cannot do that. The extra messing about means I
talk to them less. I think Amazon's new product does something like this but I
wont shell out hundred of dollars for something that used to work fine for
free.

------
projectramo
Maybe mine is a lonely voice but I like Skype because:

1\. It works. Every other video chat platform I have tried is simply
unreliable and crashes. (Skype does so but with far less frequency).

2\. Facetime is more reliable, true, but it is the only one and does not allow
for group chat.

(I have thrown down the gauntlet, and I realize I risk major downvoting for
making such a controversial statement, but I cannot sit in silence anymore).

~~~
drdaeman
It works, except for when it breaks. Which happens every 1-2 months.

Group messages fail to send or don't show up, notifications either don't
happen or unread messages get stuck, calls seem to fail to connect at random.
Last time - I think it was just a pair of weeks ago (I'm bad with remembering
exact times), even the web version haven't worked (usually, it still does).

------
mosselman
They also keep breaking APIs left and right: my dedicated skype phone (DECT +
Skype) keeps losing features and now I can't even call people from the mobile
app that have a slightly older Skype version running.

The UI is nonsense: you can't quickly hang up and you have to click several
buttons to reach a core feature, the number pad.

What good alternatives are there that also allow me to call landlines?

~~~
mustacheemperor
The Skype api exists in a kind of semi-deprecated limbo. MS tried to kill it
abruptly a while back and were talked into keeping limited support over time.
It's completely undocumented now though. They're actively discouraging
developers from the platform.

------
badrealam
Microsoft had really screwed up Skype. Every update is making Skype worst and
there are frequent outage in different part of the world.

------
AlvySinger
Just tried to use skype on my iphone when an alert came up notifying me of a
required update.

I updated to find, not skype- but some new social network I want absolutely no
part of. The app is no longer on my phone. I'll continue to try and use skype
through my computer until the powers that be decide to mess with that as well.
Hello Google voice & Facetime

------
bash-j
Haven't seen anyone else mention it. Our company uses Cisco software for IM,
calls, video conferencing and VOIP handsets. Been using it for about 5 years,
haven't had any issues. It integrates with our outdated Office suite. With the
jabber software I can chat with my colleagues, share my screen, video chat,
route my phone, check voicemail.

------
futurix
Another Microsoft property they don't know what to do with.

Ten years ago I used Skype a lot - to keep with my parents in another country,
but recently I removed it completely. We switched to FaceTime and Facebook
Messenger long time ago, and I don't know anyone who uses Skype anymore.

------
alkonaut
Why is there a little smiley in every message bubble? Nothing happens if I
click it.

Is there any way to downgrade an app on iOS short of restoring a backup? I
don't have iTunes (it would be pretty ironic to use iTunes to try to avoid a
bad app wouldn't it)

~~~
ajanuary
If I tap it I get the option to react with different emoticons to the specific
message, similar to iMessage's tapback.

~~~
alkonaut
That's what I'd expect it to do too. Obviously it doesn't (it does nothing at
all) but I guess I sort of expected nothing more.

------
rodtalbot
New Skype makes it frustratingly difficult to make calls to my contacts'
phones. Way too hard! Older version was eminently easier and friendly. Didn't
MS learn anything from its disasterois Windows 8 experience!?

------
rodtalbot
With the latest version of Skype (iPhone) it is frustratingly difficult to
make phone calls using my credit to my contacts' phones. What does MS make it
so hard!? Did MS learn nothing from its disastrous W8!?

------
manigandham
It's surprising that Skype has so much usage at all considering the immensely
saturated messaging space. Outside of network effect, is there some reason
that's keeping people onboard?

~~~
Nition
It's the (only?) popular video chat application that works reliably and is
highly cross-platform.

------
niggerfaggotgot
When I minimize skype, it puts my status as offline. My friends haven't
figured this out yet, so they are all labeled ass offline when they really
aren't. Fucking stupid.

------
blago
I literary spent 10-15 minutes trying to find a way to call a phone using my
contacts. And I'm a software developer, I do these things for a living. Still
not sure what I did it.

------
vilkbg
Well done microsoft you have introduced yet another dissapointment. I guess my
days of using skype are over now. Seriously what is wrong with this company...

------
komali2
Has skype ever been good? For as long as I can remember it was a necessary
evil until we finally managed to replace it with Hangouts and the like.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
...Has Hangouts ever been good? Like, I totally get complaining about Skype.
The P2P stuff caused it to be kinda wonky.

But your choice for "better" is Hangouts? Between the five or six alternative
Google chat offerings, the attempts to merge it with the dialer and SMS apps,
the cutting out of the online/offline statuses.

Google Talk was great though, back in the day.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Five or six Google chat offerings? There's one more now, Hangouts video chat
is becoming "meet".

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/9/14864552/google-
hangouts-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/9/14864552/google-hangouts-
chat-update-announced-slack-group-messaging-video)

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-quietly-launches-
me...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-quietly-launches-meet-an-
enterprise-friendly-version-of-hangouts/)

~~~
komali2
Well there's Allo, or Duo, I can't remember which, then Hangouts, and I guess
"meet."

------
omgtehlion
Desktop app updated itself recently too.

At first I didn't realize is this a viber or telegram client. All the
messengers now look the same...

------
voycey
I rarely have to use it thank god, I have switched pretty much everything over
to appear.in for our company, it is seamless :)

------
curiousgal
>If the Skype desktop is made anywhere near as bad, I'm officially going to
switch to Discord.

Aha, not a Linux user I see.

~~~
scrollaway
? Discord works wonderfully well on Linux

~~~
jchw
I think they mean, because Skype Desktop on Linux is already unbelievably
horrible. And always has been! Well, it was OK in the Skype 2 days.

~~~
Insanity
Skype on linux worked quite well for me some months ago. But I did not use it
for calling, only for texting. Then, at some point, microsoft released an
update and now the Skype for Linux Beta does not work decently anymore even
for text :(

I am a skype user since close to its inception and I loved it, but the way
microsoft is handling it is far from good.

~~~
partycoder
The Linux version is garbage compared to the Mac or Windows versions.

This, and the fact that most Microsoft software doesn't have a Linux version,
tells a lot about Microsoft's Linux strategy.

------
ocdtrekkie
So, I'm only on Windows (desktop and mobile), and funny enough, Windows is the
platform that hasn't gotten the update yet. But everyone from the Android and
iOS camps is constantly complaining about this. :/ I feel lucky I haven't
gotten the update yet, and have a feeling I'll need to find a new messaging
client of choice soon.

------
Havoc
Skype "works" & covers a lot. That is their value proposition. The end.

------
pmlnr
Just get a SIP account and use, for example, linphone.

Skype is dead, and I'm going to miss it.

------
inetknght
I use(d) Skype 4.3 on Linux. It was great.

Then my account was "accidentally" suspended and required proof of being an
adult. In order to prove I'm an adult, I had to pay $0.50. So I didn't. I was
using that as an excuse to finally change to something better.

...after a couple weeks and a lot of complaining, my account was un-suspended.
Welp, so much for that excuse.

Now I'm getting forced to update to Skype 5. Or, at least, that's what the
email said. It said Skype 4.3 would be disabled. Well it's not (yet) disabled.
And, I'll keep using 4.3 until it is.

I can tell you right now that Skype 4.3 was better than Skype 5 in pretty much
every way imaginable.

* It was more configurable. -> All notification customizations? Simplified to "do you get notifications?" and "do you want sound with your notifications?" -> It didn't bother me with system notifications for _every_ message (really, I just want sound, not a system notification popup) -> The new Skype sound is extremely annoying, so much that I would rather _miss_ being notified of a message instead of being constantly bothered by the _sound that I cannot change_ -> Show me as 'away' when I am inactive for X amount of minutes feature is gone -> Where's the Skype API? Is that gone too?

* It was faster. -> Skype 5 frequently (once or twice per day) hangs for minutes at a time. I just `killall -9 skypeforlinux` and restart it.

* It crashed less often. -> okay it doesn't actually _crash_ often, but I consider the hang (see above) as a crash

* It actually had a window that showed file transfers and their status (although it showed them twice), instead of showing it only inline in the chat.

* You could actually search your the chat history -> Skype 5 doesn't let you search your chat at all, let alone your chat history

* The UI didn't follow the bloated shitware that the Web seems to be moving toward -> The list of users in chat rooms is actually _usable_ ->-> try scrolling a chat room user list with 120 people in it? trololol no I'm serious here I can't find anyone

-> Right-click menu appeared to use the system menu widgets instead of yet another "I'm going to be different than everything else" widget that takes up half of the friggen window for no reason

-> Window scrolling (someone typed a message) didn't prevent the contextual menu from working

-> Yeah, okay, it couldn't load images that people shared. It also couldn't load those full-screen animated movies that people shared. I consider both of those to be benefits though.

At this point, Slack and Discord both seem like better communication options.

...that's just going from Skype 4.3 to Skype 5. I'd hate to see what's going
on with Skype 8. Honestly, at this point, I'm very much glad that Microsoft
ignores the Linux side of things.

------
dharma1
on Android you can't tap somewhere on an entered Skype Out number to place the
cursor anymore - very annoying when you want to edit a number on the dialler

------
thechile
It is truly the worst thing I have ever used.

------
riffic
Skype has always been an example of garbage software:

[https://stallman.org/skype.html](https://stallman.org/skype.html)

~~~
Bud
Not at all true. That article is only from a few years ago. The era when Skype
was quite good was more like 7-12 years ago.

~~~
riffic
"quite good" means different things to different people. For those who care
about certain issues, Skype has been objectively bad for certain reasons as
listed here:

[https://blog.grobox.de/2009/ten-reasons-why-you-should-
boyco...](https://blog.grobox.de/2009/ten-reasons-why-you-should-boycott-
skype/)

In other words, Skype has always been garbage.

------
kakarot
Skype 2017 will now have stories!

------
jordache
they have taken away the ability to do group calls with free accounts.. cya
MSFT...

------
sagivo
You had only one job...

~~~
ryandrake
Companies should have to print that out on banners and hang them up all over
the office in order to be allowed to publish software. If only product
managers could simply resist that urge to de-focus, cram features and
endlessly re-design, and instead just continue to do That One Job really
well....

~~~
barbs
I agree, but unfortunately it's less obvious how much value you're adding as a
product manager if the software you're working on doesn't visibly change.

------
torrent-of-ions
I rarely use Skype, but I have it installed on my phone. The other day my
girlfriend decided to call me on Skype after it had updated without me
realising and I wondered what on earth was going on with my phone. It just
popped up with some bullshit about choosing a theme with no indication of what
was actually happening. I guess nobody thought that somebody might be
receiving a call the first time they launch the new version.

Once you actually get the thing working it's incredibly confusing. It has
weird line drawn icons that are not intuitive at all. Really hard to use.

------
onetokeover
When Wechat updates it's voluntary. Made a free w/c to w/c call
internationally. Decent sound. Then went to make a paid call on Skype. Forced
upgrade again? We went through this 2 or 3 years ago. It won't work this time,
not with me. I just got a refund. Will spend the day looking for an old school
html (not html5) site that let's us call the world for a penny a minute.
They're out there.

------
onetokeoverthe
I found mangnocall. Seems to be a free voice setup. You send the other person
a link. They click on the link and the call connects.

Too bad today's appointment said, "We need to do a normal phone call on a
phone.". I wanted to say, Sir, it's 2017.

But I digress.

Still need to find something accessible that lets me use legacy MAC OS and IOS
to call phones. Feels more like regression than progression.

------
0xbear
Dude is getting fired in 3, 2, 1...

------
m3kw9
Still can't make a (edit-added SKYPE.) call from contacts app in iOS. What's
so hard about that?

~~~
caryhartline
Do you mean a Skype call? Because you absolutely can make a phone call or
FaceTime video/audio call from contacts.

