I will say Microsoft is overly agrees installing Teams. When removing I find three different listing under add/remove programs. The App Store version Microsoft Teams, the Microsoft Teams system installer, and Microsoft Teams.
It then proceeds to try and set the default to auto-launch and request a Microsoft sign in at login.
This is aggressive, annoying and in at least to me comes off as desperate or in the least adwarey.
Installing the updated beta replaces the Office installed one. I don't know if it's possible to have the old Office installed one and the beta client at the same time.
Yet when I search for teams in the start menu, I get two entries for "Microsoft Teams (Work or school)". If I click on the one without "new", it'll launch the old one and ask me if I want to go back to the old one or keep using the new one.
I think you can uninstall the old one but by default just enabling the preview doesn't uninstall it. Or at least, that's the behavior I've seen on my machine (same as vladvasiliu).
I use it on Windows, and it's not the best application I've used, but I can't think of many meetings where I was unable to attend...maybe a minute of kill teams + restart. But, I hear it's more flaky on macos.
> can't think of many meetings where I was unable to attend
does this mean you can think of /some/ meetings you were unable to attend? I would assume that "doesn't work half the time" was slightly hyperbolic, and so it seems like your experience is roughly in line with the parent comment despite your response being worded like a rebuttal.
Yes, I'm saying over a couple years I can think of a few times where I had notable trouble. It's not great, but it's not on my top 10 list of troubles. It's also not terribly different from my historical experiences with webex and other similar software. Multi-person video chat tends to find the weak points (slow vpn, using during os updates, etc).
>lol, okay. so it's basically flawless.
I never understand what this kind of snark is meant to do. I didn't say anything like that at all.
just so we're on the same page, you think having to kill and restart while you're in or trying to join a chat or meeting doesn't count as notable trouble, because after all you were able to join eventually?
Comparatively, it our current world of mostly shitty software, occasionally having to restart my meeting software is not something I worry about much. Perhaps you meet more often than I do, so it's of relatively higher importance.
I don't think it matters how often you want to meet. When you do, you should want it to work. We're not talking about a side feature either, this is software for having meetings.
Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies on this planet with decades upon decades of experience in software. Let's not pretend like their willingness to cut corners wherever they can and compromise on quality, as long as the profits keep coming in, is anything but an affront. Controlling the whole stack should make it easier to do this, but in reality monopolies have the opposite effect because capitalism has these averse incentives baked in. Yet another reason to bring back aggressive antitrust enforcement, i.e. break up big tech.
Man, I don't get it. I have a lot of problems with the (imo anti-competitive) behavior of big tech companies, but the bundling of Teams is among the least of my concerns.
What about App Stores and API availability? What about constantly preferring and promoting first-party offers (required accounts, MS Edge, Bing, Apple iCloud)? All the platform leverage they're more or less starting to abuse to lock users into "services" only they can provide. THOSE are problems that are limiting competition and getting worse and worse. They're really, entirely; unapologetically holding users hostage and more or less forcibly extracting rent from them (hey, your iCloud is full!).
Yet the EU steps in in these what feel like token ways. A bit like the recent Apple move of ("We support right to repair ... at authorized service providers, for repairs we approve").
I know of the Digital Markets Act, but haven't yet seen a hint that it will limit rent-seeking by platform providers (worse yet: the idea has been floated that Apple may still be able to do it on third-party app stores, completely circumventing the point of the law, just like "legitimate interest" has for GDPR!).
I love my little EU and its general (verbal) attitude towards consumer and market protection. But there's a lot more talk than there is walk. I hope this will change at some point - the direction is still the right one, after all.
> but the bundling of Teams is among the least of my concerns.
I don't understand this point of view. We should be addressing all forms of anti-competitive behavior. This included. The fact that this is being addressed at all even though it's a "minor" (which is laughable, considering it's Microsoft, one of the biggest tech companies in the world) issue is an incredibly positive event. I look forward to further anti-competitive behavior being looked at, whether Microsoft or Google or whoever else.
Going after things that are technically anti-competitive, but realistically aren't particularly major, is a problem. Everyone thinks "yep we're doing our job, making a difference!" and stops there.
Like a government going after tax evasion "we stopped Frank from claiming an air freshener in his car, so we're saving the economy!" while Facebook farms billions in profits offshore.
Fixing something small has the risk of creating a facades of activity/effectiveness when in reality its still 90% broken.
What makes you think that's happening? This is just one of multiple things the EU has done and is doing about anti-competitive behavior. The EU has been doing far more than the US on this front. Don't mistake US complacency with the EU's efforts. It feels like you want to let "lesser" evils go in favor of just the "big" ones. Don't you see how immoral and problematic that is?
> but realistically aren't particularly major
Your opinion and not fact. It seems quite major to me.
I imagine the reason is that bundling things for free is a lot easier to argue and prove in court. Promoting "first-party offers" is a lot harder.
Note that in most jurisdictions promoting first party offers and bundling is not illegal, what is illegal is to use your monopoly in an area to push competitors out of another. Bundling free things with Office is a pretty clear example of this. Office has essentially a monopoly in enterprise office text documents, presentation software and spreadsheets
Promoting Edge in Windows is not such a clear case, Windows doesn't have a monopoly anymore if you account for phones and macos
iOS App Store shennenigans can always be argued that Apple doesn't have a monopoly in smartphones and smartphones application stores
I know all of this example should sound "obvious abusive behaviour" but you have to remember these things need to be proven in a court of law and if the defendant, even if 100% in the wrong, can drag out a case they will. Therefor it is not worth for the bureaucrats to chase them, it is easier to petition the legislators for more broad laws to make persecution easier first
> worse yet: the idea has been floated that Apple may still be able to do it on third-party app stores, completely circumventing the point of the law, just like "legitimate interest" has for GDPR!
Can you share that idea? How can one use "legitimate interest" to circumvented GDPR legally?
I still can't understand why MS is forced to break up product bundles but Google can make Android with a bunch of Google apps, some of which are very difficult to turn off.
The reason you can't understand it is that your entire premise is faulty. The EU already forced Google to unbundle parts of Android (while also issuing a 4 billion Euro fine) about 5 years ago. Specifically, for Android it's the device manufacturer who decides what gets pre-installed on the phone. The EU required Google to not make preinstalling Search and Chrome a precondition of getting to install the other apps.
I was under the impression that the EU is working on legistlation forcing all smartphone apps to be uninstallable, including manufacturer bundled ones.
Understand for a moment that Microsoft isn't even counted as Big Tech by most people: GAFA (Google Apple Facebook Amazon) or FAANG (Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix Google) as Big Tech is usually referred by.
Microsoft isn't or can't line the necessary wallets to play with the big boys, simply speaking. This means they don't get to enjoy the perks of Big Tech, but also get to enjoy not being lambasted along with them.
Microsoft is in the top 3 of big tech market cap (US). They officially spend about $10M per year lobbying in the US, which is in the same ballpark as other big tech. Maybe the HN crowd doesn't count Microsoft as big tech, but financial markets, enterprises, governments, and regulators most definitely do.
No Microsoft isn’t treated like BigTech by geeks who listened to a loud mouth guy on CNBC who originally coined the term “FANG” (notice the missing “A”) that included a Netflix who’s market share is nothing compared to Apple and Microsoft that were already two of the 5 most valuable companies even when the term was coined
Outside of the English speaking world (and Japan) iOS market share is generally much lower than particularly in the US.
I would be tempted to say this is because a lot of the iOS pitch is “trust Apple because you don’t trust the regulatory environment” whereas in places like Germany the regulatory trust is higher so that pitch sounds weaker.
Apple hardware is prohibitively expensive for most of the world. That's probably the primary driver for the market share gap. Even in the US, the brand is a status/class symbol to some extent.
That said, I have heard the "trust" version of the pitch from some VC types floating around UNLV and I find their trust in Apple to be perplexing.
I used to think teams was OK (the audio is seriously great), but now I have a use for my RAM, and while idle, it consume twice as much RAM as a plain Firefox, and more than a wsl running vscode. This is abnormal.
It also has an endless list of visual glitches, hardware issues even with "headphones recommended by Microsoft", input issues, pretty bad UX, poor integration with Microsoft's own services (SharePoint, outlook calendar..), a horrible "test call", etc.
Doesn't seem to matter anyway, once a Windows shop is captive they know most clients are there for life..
The most annoying to me is that the elapsed time element doesn't have a fixed size. It constantly changes size and pushes all other elements from left to right. It is very distracting. I can thing of so many easy fixes for this yet it is there since at least 3 years. This comes across as very amateurish for a product of a multi billion company.
It then proceeds to try and set the default to auto-launch and request a Microsoft sign in at login.
This is aggressive, annoying and in at least to me comes off as desperate or in the least adwarey.