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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

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).

djrogers 9y ago
There’s nothing controversial about what you’ve said - nobody would be P.O.’d if a useless app updated to a horrible UI. The reason everyone is so angry is that they don’t like/can’t use the new app for the things Skype is good at.
derefr 9y ago
For video chat, sure. I think video chat itself is a bit over-rated, though; for most use-cases, a combination of frequent audio chat and less-frequent face-to-face conversation works just as well, and audio chat is a very-well-solved problem at the enterprise level (that solution being: set up a PBX server local to your central office; create a conference-call room in it. Bonus: make your employees SIP accounts; get them all to install soft-phone apps; now the conference line is "local" to all of them, so jitter is zero and everyone will hear everyone else in high-bitrate digital fidelity.) Because that "solution" exists for N:M conversations, N:M video-streaming infrastructure just doesn't get very heavily invested in by any major parties. Instead, what you do see is heavy investment in 1:N video-streaming, ala Livestream/Twitch. If only one person needs to be visible at a time, and everyone else can survive with existing in a text chat-box adjacent to the video stream, you can do fine as well. But, like you said, for N:M streaming with "conference call" semantics, Skype is one of the only good solutions.
drdaeman 9y ago
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).

djrogers 9y ago

There’s nothing controversial about what you’ve said - nobody would be P.O.’d if a useless app updated to a horrible UI. The reason everyone is so angry is that they don’t like/can’t use the new app for the things Skype is good at.

derefr 9y ago

For video chat, sure. I think video chat itself is a bit over-rated, though; for most use-cases, a combination of frequent audio chat and less-frequent face-to-face conversation works just as well, and audio chat is a very-well-solved problem at the enterprise level (that solution being: set up a PBX server local to your central office; create a conference-call room in it. Bonus: make your employees SIP accounts; get them all to install soft-phone apps; now the conference line is "local" to all of them, so jitter is zero and everyone will hear everyone else in high-bitrate digital fidelity.) Because that "solution" exists for N:M conversations, N:M video-streaming infrastructure just doesn't get very heavily invested in by any major parties. Instead, what you do see is heavy investment in 1:N video-streaming, ala Livestream/Twitch. If only one person needs to be visible at a time, and everyone else can survive with existing in a text chat-box adjacent to the video stream, you can do fine as well. But, like you said, for N:M streaming with "conference call" semantics, Skype is one of the only good solutions.

drdaeman 9y ago

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).