5 ms·

Why does Zoom even need an installer for.

ev1 4y ago
To harass you into downloading by hiding the "open in browser" link when you click a zoom url.
darkteflon 4y ago
PSA that you absolutely can attend Zoom calls from your Mac without installing this trashware. Firefox or Chrome is your friend.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  This is what I did but it doesn't work all the way, break rooms don't work, broadcasts (Zoom theater) doesn't work, it's shitty. Like even in a VM it's shitty. Zoom no like VMs, Zoom yes like you installing it as root.
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    Can it tell it is being run inside a VM?
    - More-nitors 4y ago
      hm that's what some banking apps / most malware apps do...
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
      No it can't tell--I'm sure they'd like to, the attitude is omniscience, infinite data for infinite perving looking for patterns. Like most patterns just aren't virtuous, like oh I can fuck them out of a few extra bucks if I bug them at 5 in the morning after a bad experience at small claims court. That's business intelligence. That's a pattern. Or another pattern, we get more signups after sending users "informative" messages terms of service have changed--it's actually a form of marketing, anything to nag and bug people with some minuscule link to the business and money that it craves for its tumescent growth aspirations. Otherwise it would be technological, like come up with actual useful knowledge that would actually be useful. Economists say in the long run all wealth and all progress comes down to technology. Technology is the only thing that matters. But yeah it can tell it's in a VM because that's when it decides to crap its pants. By this point it's impossible to tell if bugs are intentional when they benefit the startup, there's a whole game in bugs, like no don't fix it it causes the user to lose his shit and give up and pay for this upgrade in the hopes that it all gets better. There was one bug, yeah a bank bug I saw in Chile. So what this bug did is it fucked up printing the receipts after the user had paid and the bank machine said the transaction was approved. Employees would then insist the user hadn't paid because a receipt hadn't gone through. So the customer had to pay again--and the second time it always worked--double billing. Fucking stealing. Theft. MacDonald's at the SCL airport brazenly stole from me in exactly that way. And did that bug get fixed promptly? Ha...na let it be a little longer, it's not a high priority. It's...not urgent. Fix it next quarter, it's too difficult. You can't assume good faith in software as it's delivered.
  - dev_tty01 4y ago
    Not my experience. I run zoom in a linux vm on my mac. It runs fine. I've never installed zoom on the host.
- galad87 4y ago
  I mean that they could just ship the app on a disk image, and let the user drag it to /Applications or somewhere else.
- totetsu 4y ago
  In the past I had audio desync issue with zoom on Firefox in Ubuntu
- csydas 4y ago
  It's good to remind people, but Zoom does everything it can from my perspective to ensure no one is aware of this. By default if you click a Zoom meeting link to join, it takes you to the Zoom page and starts a download of the installer (.pkg for Mac). The "Join from Browser" option is hidden and if I remember right, you have to click "Join" again, and then it will show a small HTML link about Join from Browser. The Browser experience is subpar and buggy. A lot of features lag in the UI, it's very slow to connect to audio, and there are a few options I recall that reload the entire page without warning, meaning you leave the meeting and have to reconnect, often to find a double of yourself. I also noticed issues with USB Audio devices where after awhile, a static-ey robot noise would appear from you. No other voice apps I used experienced this, only Zoom and only with USB devices and from the browser version. Maybe it's something with Firefox + USB audio, but never was interested to investigate more. Zoom is really not good software and it's an exercise in frustration when we have to use it at work, and the pricing model seems a bit ridiculous, even for basic users.
  - darkteflon 4y ago
    There are loads of dark patterns, agreed. This drove me to go hunting in Firefox for a “don’t automatically download shit” option, but to no avail. I guess they hijack your click from the previous page. Just all round awful. On the other hand, I’ve not had any audio or video problems once in the call, so ymmv.
    - Aethylia 4y ago
      You could change the option of where to save downloads. Instead of automatically putting them in the downloads folder, if you change it to ask every time, then you will get the file browser prompt before the download starts.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > Zoom is really not good software and it's an exercise in frustration when we have to use it at work Having used pretty much all video conferencing software, it's by far the best in terms of features, UX, call quality, feature distribution across platforms (do you know that some like BlueJeans don't allow you to have a separate audio input/output device if the device chosen for one supports both? (I have headphones and a separate mic, i can't have the headphones for output only). With Zoom as long as everyone is on the app and not the browser version, all features work. Teams on Linux or mac is always lagging months behind.
_kbh_ 4y ago
A lot of macOS applications have a privileged helpers (these apps run as root and communicate with the main app) when you wouldn't think they would (teams for example). Most use them to update the application seamlessly without a pop up asking for permission from the users afaik. But yes it does mean you get hilarious stuff you wouldn't expect like privilege escalation to root in teams, zoom, etc.

ev1 4y ago

To harass you into downloading by hiding the "open in browser" link when you click a zoom url.

PSA that you absolutely can attend Zoom calls from your Mac without installing this trashware. Firefox or Chrome is your friend.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
This is what I did but it doesn't work all the way, break rooms don't work, broadcasts (Zoom theater) doesn't work, it's shitty. Like even in a VM it's shitty. Zoom no like VMs, Zoom yes like you installing it as root.
- neodypsis 4y ago
  Can it tell it is being run inside a VM?
  - More-nitors 4y ago
    hm that's what some banking apps / most malware apps do...
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    No it can't tell--I'm sure they'd like to, the attitude is omniscience, infinite data for infinite perving looking for patterns. Like most patterns just aren't virtuous, like oh I can fuck them out of a few extra bucks if I bug them at 5 in the morning after a bad experience at small claims court. That's business intelligence. That's a pattern. Or another pattern, we get more signups after sending users "informative" messages terms of service have changed--it's actually a form of marketing, anything to nag and bug people with some minuscule link to the business and money that it craves for its tumescent growth aspirations. Otherwise it would be technological, like come up with actual useful knowledge that would actually be useful. Economists say in the long run all wealth and all progress comes down to technology. Technology is the only thing that matters. But yeah it can tell it's in a VM because that's when it decides to crap its pants. By this point it's impossible to tell if bugs are intentional when they benefit the startup, there's a whole game in bugs, like no don't fix it it causes the user to lose his shit and give up and pay for this upgrade in the hopes that it all gets better. There was one bug, yeah a bank bug I saw in Chile. So what this bug did is it fucked up printing the receipts after the user had paid and the bank machine said the transaction was approved. Employees would then insist the user hadn't paid because a receipt hadn't gone through. So the customer had to pay again--and the second time it always worked--double billing. Fucking stealing. Theft. MacDonald's at the SCL airport brazenly stole from me in exactly that way. And did that bug get fixed promptly? Ha...na let it be a little longer, it's not a high priority. It's...not urgent. Fix it next quarter, it's too difficult. You can't assume good faith in software as it's delivered.
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  Not my experience. I run zoom in a linux vm on my mac. It runs fine. I've never installed zoom on the host.
galad87 4y ago
I mean that they could just ship the app on a disk image, and let the user drag it to /Applications or somewhere else.
totetsu 4y ago
In the past I had audio desync issue with zoom on Firefox in Ubuntu
csydas 4y ago
It's good to remind people, but Zoom does everything it can from my perspective to ensure no one is aware of this. By default if you click a Zoom meeting link to join, it takes you to the Zoom page and starts a download of the installer (.pkg for Mac). The "Join from Browser" option is hidden and if I remember right, you have to click "Join" again, and then it will show a small HTML link about Join from Browser. The Browser experience is subpar and buggy. A lot of features lag in the UI, it's very slow to connect to audio, and there are a few options I recall that reload the entire page without warning, meaning you leave the meeting and have to reconnect, often to find a double of yourself. I also noticed issues with USB Audio devices where after awhile, a static-ey robot noise would appear from you. No other voice apps I used experienced this, only Zoom and only with USB devices and from the browser version. Maybe it's something with Firefox + USB audio, but never was interested to investigate more. Zoom is really not good software and it's an exercise in frustration when we have to use it at work, and the pricing model seems a bit ridiculous, even for basic users.
- darkteflon 4y ago
  There are loads of dark patterns, agreed. This drove me to go hunting in Firefox for a “don’t automatically download shit” option, but to no avail. I guess they hijack your click from the previous page. Just all round awful. On the other hand, I’ve not had any audio or video problems once in the call, so ymmv.
  - Aethylia 4y ago
    You could change the option of where to save downloads. Instead of automatically putting them in the downloads folder, if you change it to ask every time, then you will get the file browser prompt before the download starts.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Zoom is really not good software and it's an exercise in frustration when we have to use it at work Having used pretty much all video conferencing software, it's by far the best in terms of features, UX, call quality, feature distribution across platforms (do you know that some like BlueJeans don't allow you to have a separate audio input/output device if the device chosen for one supports both? (I have headphones and a separate mic, i can't have the headphones for output only). With Zoom as long as everyone is on the app and not the browser version, all features work. Teams on Linux or mac is always lagging months behind.

_kbh_ 4y ago

A lot of macOS applications have a privileged helpers (these apps run as root and communicate with the main app) when you wouldn't think they would (teams for example). Most use them to update the application seamlessly without a pop up asking for permission from the users afaik. But yes it does mean you get hilarious stuff you wouldn't expect like privilege escalation to root in teams, zoom, etc.