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I refuse to upgrade to Skype 5 after trying it once and accidentally upgrading a second time when the app tried to auto upgrade itself. The horrid UI combined
by poutine 16y ago
I refuse to upgrade to Skype 5 after trying it once and accidentally upgrading a second time when the app tried to auto upgrade itself. The horrid UI combined with Skype's stated desire to bring ads to the client makes me search for an alternative which sadly there isn't.
In a business setting I would say that 90% of the time Skype is used as an IM client because of its working persistant groups and functional file transfers.
Entrepreneurs take note, there's an opportunity to make a competitor to Skype even though many would say that's crazy since Skype is so entrenched. However Skype has failed to innovate and is regressing in user experience. If someone nails the group chat features first and give table stakes for the voice/video chat we'd have a viable alternate for business use.
- emehrkay 16y agoWhat's missing from skype that isnt provided by AIM or GTalk? Is it the ability to make phone calls?
- jwatzman 16y agoI have been unable to find an alternative that allows me, a Mac user, to do a video chat with my girlfriend, a Windows user, with no fuss when both of us are behind separate NATs.
- emehrkay 16y agoNot even AIM? I find that hard to believe
- lemming 16y agoIt's absolutely true. I haven't used AIM much but a while ago I was trying to find an easy way to talk to my parents. When you want a hassle free experience, Skype so far is the only option.
- lancewiggs 16y agoIt's absolutely true. I haven't used AIM much but a while ago I was trying to find an easy way to talk to my parents. When you want a hassle free experience, Skype WAS the only option. It's now no longer hassle free. Like the OP I find the new Skype wretched, now use it less and would jump at helping my contacts and I switch. Question: How many Mac users are in the internal Skype testing program? I'm guessing not many
- emehrkay 16y agoI find it crazy that chatroulette does the cross-platform thing pretty well while using flash, but these IM clients are dedicated apps that are closer to the os and still cannot make it happen.
- whatusername 16y agoWhat is this AIM thing you mention? // The rest of the world never really used AIM. Certainly here in Australia it was ICQ and then MSN (and now facebook) for chat. Skype has always been the VOIP / Video Chat service of choice..
- jswanson 16y agoHave you tried gtalk on Chrome? Seems to work everywhere that has an OS Recognized camera and mic. I've talked with people on linux, and windows, from my OS 10.6 machine.
- GeneralMaximus 16y ago- Group chats. - Group calls, group video calls. - Only works on Windows. All other platforms require a weird plugin thing that's shit.
- kahawe 16y agoWhat's missing is all the people and business partners who are already using skype right now and who have not switched to an alternative and probably don't plan to. Users seem to be very accepting of all sorts of nonsense in software if "everybody else" is still using it and they can contact their loved ones through it. (Just like why is "everyone" using facebook and twitter instead of competitor x and y?) And I am not sure you are in a position to tell a client "sorry, we would rather use GTalk or Jabber!".
- Angostura 16y agoCross-platorm decent quality video conferencing with ease of set-up.
- roadnottaken 16y agoThis reminds me of RealPlayer's rise and fall. That software, too, used to be the ubiquitous, entrenched, dominant platform for streaming video. And then it was horribly ruined and competitors took over.