They need to hang the UI designer. I'm a UI designer I spit on the guy doing UI design. His entire video on how it's "33%" more efficient and other bull clearly shows he's one of those "design by statistics" rather than actual clever intuitive design and justifies ****** design with a hundred page document.
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Skype 5 for Mac Exits Beta, Group Video Calling Now Premium Feature
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Beware of giving money to skype...
I was a paying customer for the past 5 years or so with skype in /skype out with automatic refill from my paypal account. Two days ago, somebody somewhere managed to crack into their system or to crack my password (a relatively secure one). Instantly, the attacker started doing hundreds of calls to various african countries. I noticed within 3h when skype kept replenishing my account several times ($25 at a time). I called, reported the problem. They acknowledged somebody was hacking, but refused to cancel the charges. I've rarely seen such a bad customer support. I decided on the spot to terminate my number with them.
Word to the wise: avoid auto-refill with them. They are not professional enough and are quite happy when fraud happens as *they* benefit.
Just my $0.02.
An ex-skype customer.
I was a paying customer for the past 5 years or so with skype in /skype out with automatic refill from my paypal account. Two days ago, somebody somewhere managed to crack into their system or to crack my password (a relatively secure one). Instantly, the attacker started doing hundreds of calls to various african countries. I noticed within 3h when skype kept replenishing my account several times ($25 at a time). I called, reported the problem. They acknowledged somebody was hacking, but refused to cancel the charges. I've rarely seen such a bad customer support. I decided on the spot to terminate my number with them.
Word to the wise: avoid auto-refill with them. They are not professional enough and are quite happy when fraud happens as *they* benefit.
Just my $0.02.
An ex-skype customer.
I wouldn't want to pay that much to video call anybody's nuts, let alone their nuts...
Oh, wait, you meant "they're nuts", didn't you?
Silly Rabbit
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Great Boony: "Get a bigger screen"
you're hilarious
Quote:
Originally Posted by -=XX=-Nephilim
OMG What have they done with the UI!?
Can't I have just a small narrow window with a list of all my contacts?
apparently, getting a bigger screen is the answer
Hey, we all know bigger is better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Great Boony: "Get a bigger screen"
you're hilarious
Quote:
Originally Posted by -=XX=-Nephilim
OMG What have they done with the UI!?
Can't I have just a small narrow window with a list of all my contacts?
apparently, getting a bigger screen is the answer
Hey, we all know bigger is better.
Terrible
I can't believe how terrible this interface is. I will be sticking with 2.8 for now. I can't even find a way to only show online contacts. The sidebar is stupid. It's funny how they made a point of saying how they made the interface smaller. Yeah right, not by much. Still way too much space being taken up. I just want to see my online contacts in a nice compact listing. The ability to show the contact photo or not would be nice too.
I can't believe how terrible this interface is. I will be sticking with 2.8 for now. I can't even find a way to only show online contacts. The sidebar is stupid. It's funny how they made a point of saying how they made the interface smaller. Yeah right, not by much. Still way too much space being taken up. I just want to see my online contacts in a nice compact listing. The ability to show the contact photo or not would be nice too.
Overwhelming is perfect word to describe it. Did Skype miss the memo? I think they did on multiple levels.
I would rather not have to leave the house to get my Mac right now. Is the compact view still NOT compact?
boo! for having to pay for group video calling!
How dare these bastards try to recoup their investment and pay various licensing fees. The anger emoitcon does not do justice to me indignation.
Wow you people.. Now why would they have group video call for free? They are already proving free calls from skype to skype, chats etc. If they offer free GROUP video calling then a lot of companies will start using it and won't have any costs for using it for commercial purpose..
Apple can offer free group calling for Ichat because you bought their hardware. You already paid them. Skype on other hand is not charging for download of software or sale of hardware..
Apple can offer free group calling for Ichat because you bought their hardware. You already paid them. Skype on other hand is not charging for download of software or sale of hardware..
Eugh, the new GUI is absolutely disgusting. I don't understand how they can even say "We've also tightened up the contact list, so that you can see 30% more contacts at once." when the opposite seems to be true. You can see about half as many contacts listed as you could before.
I wanted to give this new Skype a try but it's just too cumbersome. The moronic responses from some people saying "get a bigger screen" are absolutely ridiculous. Many people have Apple's smallest laptops which can only display about 3 contacts with this new GUI and even those of us with larger screens (I have a 30" + 2 20" in portrait) don't want to have to sacrifice loads of screen real estate for an app we don't use all the time - we have larger screens for a reason after all.
I like to have a small main Skype contact window open on my right hand screen along with my other communication tools (MSN and Twitter). If I'm having a conversation with someone (audio, text or video) then I want to have a separate window for it that I can move to my primary display where I can give it my full attention. This bloated new interface takes up far too much space when not in use and when it is in use I have to move the whole window around all the time.
If you're having a video conversation with someone then you should really have their video displayed as close to your camera as possible. I'm not leaving a big ugly piece of bloatware at the top centre of my screen!
I wanted to give this new Skype a try but it's just too cumbersome. The moronic responses from some people saying "get a bigger screen" are absolutely ridiculous. Many people have Apple's smallest laptops which can only display about 3 contacts with this new GUI and even those of us with larger screens (I have a 30" + 2 20" in portrait) don't want to have to sacrifice loads of screen real estate for an app we don't use all the time - we have larger screens for a reason after all.
I like to have a small main Skype contact window open on my right hand screen along with my other communication tools (MSN and Twitter). If I'm having a conversation with someone (audio, text or video) then I want to have a separate window for it that I can move to my primary display where I can give it my full attention. This bloated new interface takes up far too much space when not in use and when it is in use I have to move the whole window around all the time.
If you're having a video conversation with someone then you should really have their video displayed as close to your camera as possible. I'm not leaving a big ugly piece of bloatware at the top centre of my screen!
Better? No.
My 2.8 contact list window area is 247x412 px. I can see 21 contacts. In the beta how many? 5?
I consider myself a skype power user, with 30+ chats open at any given time. A force upgrade to 5.0 would cause me to rethink the use of skype as a corporate communication tool.
The unified window theory fails 90% of the time because people multitask.
*disappointed*
My 2.8 contact list window area is 247x412 px. I can see 21 contacts. In the beta how many? 5?
I consider myself a skype power user, with 30+ chats open at any given time. A force upgrade to 5.0 would cause me to rethink the use of skype as a corporate communication tool.
The unified window theory fails 90% of the time because people multitask.
*disappointed*
The thing is I need a way to communicate with my peers, some of which are ignorant about computers. European mid-20s still use ICQ (I only get about some fake authorization request from random bots), your average american parent uses MSN, a small number of Mac users use AIM. The cool thing about Skype is that it's simple, it usually works and the emoticons are the same across the versions and platforms.
I also like how the message history goes back until infinity. I like reading old logs about now-broken friendships/relationships after a while. Shows me what went wrong and what I can do better next time.
I gotta say that the windows version of Skype is a big mess compared to v2.8 on the Mac. I guess now both OS have horrible interfaces.
I remember something called ICQ Lite back in the day. It was the same as the regular stuff but stripped down. They should do that with Skype, i.e. offer a slimmed down interface. 2.8 is pretty close to perfect. Skype shouldn't take up the whole screen (no app actually should, media editing apps are an exception), it's supposed to be an invisible thing that runs in the background. I like having the tiny Skype window in the corner of the screen to see if my loved ones are online. I'd actually love a way to filter the online contacts that are shown in there, make my "loved ones" pink so they stand out in the sea of green. Let me see only the pink ones or, better yet, show me in the menu bar which of them is online.
How dare these bastards try to recoup their investment and pay various licensing fees. The anger emoitcon does not do justice to me indignation.
LOL! Yeah... heaven forbid they try and make some money or pay their developers.
It's about as compact as Jabba the Hutt.
What are they thinking?My only guess is that they're trying to make it more 'corporate' and think that the people they want to use the service will usually have a big Skype window open on their desktop with it being their main use of a computer. They probably don't care about those of us who use Skype only occasionally and so have the main window in a small form factor since we're not the ones who will pay for the conferencing feature.
I can see Skype going the way of the dodo though anyway. In my experience Facetime has always had a faster response time feeling ten times more like a phone call with video rather than the awkward delay that Skype gives.
2.8 Stable Download Location
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15805/skype/
http://www.macupdate.com/download/36701/Skype_2.8.0.863.dmg
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15805/skype/
http://www.macupdate.com/download/36701/Skype_2.8.0.863.dmg
UI workaround - sort of...
I agree that the latest UI is an atrocity but did find a workaround that makes the new Skype bearable. After launching, I get rid of the giant Skype window by typing 'command + 1'. Then I bring up the contacts monitor with 'command + 3'.
The contacts monitor is a tiny window that floats over the top of the screen like growl notifications. It only shows contacts that are currently online and if you want to initiate a chat or call with them, you have to double click their icon, which still brings up the monster window. Yes, it's a flawed workaround but 95% of the time, when I just want to be able to quickly see who's online without hogging a large chunk of screen real estate, it works out great.
YMMV
I agree that the latest UI is an atrocity but did find a workaround that makes the new Skype bearable. After launching, I get rid of the giant Skype window by typing 'command + 1'. Then I bring up the contacts monitor with 'command + 3'.
The contacts monitor is a tiny window that floats over the top of the screen like growl notifications. It only shows contacts that are currently online and if you want to initiate a chat or call with them, you have to double click their icon, which still brings up the monster window. Yes, it's a flawed workaround but 95% of the time, when I just want to be able to quickly see who's online without hogging a large chunk of screen real estate, it works out great.
YMMV
Comparing Apples to Oranges
I sent this to the Mods team, hopefully the edit the article, but in the event they don't, maybe some people will still be reading the 3rd page
Hello,
I see a bit of an outcry on the skype page about the fees, especially as it pertains to other programs offering similar features for free. There are also some who question the hourly limits in place for said service.
I think it only fair that you clarify the story to make note of the fact that what skype is doing isn't directly comparable to iChat, etc.
When you make a multi party video chat on one of the free services, your computer establishes a separate 1:1 vide chat for each one. That means a video chat in iChat with 4 participants requires 4 times the bandwidth as a simple 1:1 call. While this does lead to a higher quality expierience (assuming all party's have better than 2Mb of upload free to use), most people simply don't have the bandwidth and are stuck with truly attrocious quality on each stream.
Skype isn't working like this, rather they are using an MCU technology similar to oovoo (sp?) or sightspeed for buisness. This allows each computer in the conference to directly connect to a server which stiches all the video together and requires only 1 stream in and out of each computer. It also tolerates NAT and other connection issues far better than your multiparty conference relaying on a 4:4 connection to be fully established to work.
Those mcu servers, if purchased, cost between 1000 and 3000 per simultaneous user. That means if skype was anticipating 10'000 users active at any one time, they would have to purchase a system with a value of at least 10'000'000, potentially far more. I understand that it is unlikely they bought a commercial solution. (although I wouldn't rule it out) but even if they built it completely internally, they would still have many millions invested with many more coming due for bandwidth and maintenance of the codebase and physical infastruture.
I have nothing to do with skype, but I buy these services often and this one is neither overpriced, nor are the service time limits anything approaching draconian.
Thanks,
Karl P
I sent this to the Mods team, hopefully the edit the article, but in the event they don't, maybe some people will still be reading the 3rd page
Hello,
I see a bit of an outcry on the skype page about the fees, especially as it pertains to other programs offering similar features for free. There are also some who question the hourly limits in place for said service.
I think it only fair that you clarify the story to make note of the fact that what skype is doing isn't directly comparable to iChat, etc.
When you make a multi party video chat on one of the free services, your computer establishes a separate 1:1 vide chat for each one. That means a video chat in iChat with 4 participants requires 4 times the bandwidth as a simple 1:1 call. While this does lead to a higher quality expierience (assuming all party's have better than 2Mb of upload free to use), most people simply don't have the bandwidth and are stuck with truly attrocious quality on each stream.
Skype isn't working like this, rather they are using an MCU technology similar to oovoo (sp?) or sightspeed for buisness. This allows each computer in the conference to directly connect to a server which stiches all the video together and requires only 1 stream in and out of each computer. It also tolerates NAT and other connection issues far better than your multiparty conference relaying on a 4:4 connection to be fully established to work.
Those mcu servers, if purchased, cost between 1000 and 3000 per simultaneous user. That means if skype was anticipating 10'000 users active at any one time, they would have to purchase a system with a value of at least 10'000'000, potentially far more. I understand that it is unlikely they bought a commercial solution. (although I wouldn't rule it out) but even if they built it completely internally, they would still have many millions invested with many more coming due for bandwidth and maintenance of the codebase and physical infastruture.
I have nothing to do with skype, but I buy these services often and this one is neither overpriced, nor are the service time limits anything approaching draconian.
Thanks,
Karl P
Last edited:
I remember the compact view being nothing more than a large icon vertical list of contacts vs. the Cover Flow like avatar based view. On Windows the compact view is just a status icon sorted list of contacts. There is a default view but it is monstrously huge.
