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Skype 5 for Mac Exits Beta, Group Video Calling Now Premium Feature

theelysium said:
iChat is not a service it's just an App. You need to plug in your own service into it. Like AIM, Google, Jabber.. etc. There are tons of people on those services.

There is also Adium http://adium.im/ Which is like an iChat, but has the ability to use more services. So you have no excuse to use Skype.

Again like I said above, "Skype if for people who are ignorant about computers." Which is why you're using Skype.
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There are also tons of people who do NOT use those services, especially overseas, where MSN and Skype seem to be the preference. To be honest, I don't know a single person nationally or internationally who uses AIM, Google, Jabber, but that's just me.
 
Flaws?

Annoying things seem to happen.. when i told skype not to display the contacts sidebar, so that my chat takes all the space and i call someone and hang up, the contacts bar is back!! Plus when i scroll down, than call and hang up, the chat scrolls to somewhere halfway the conversation instead of just staying at the last post!! .. it oddly reminds me of applications from .. u know the makers of this .. other inferior operating system a lot of people use...
 
Horrendous. just horrendous. They forced completely unnecessary changes upon the users without ANY consideration for usability. NONE whatsoever.:eek:
 
Just a question: If I download 5.0 am I stuck with it? Or can I revert back to 2.8? I know the beta allowed it, but what about this version?
 
Why the hell is Skype 5 taking up over 10% CPU while idle? I don't even have any chats open!

When I get home I'm going to Time Machine the old Skype back. ... should have just renamed it before overwriting it.

And why did they jump from 2.8 to 5? lol
 
I have an old G4 powerbook that I use for browsing and web chat (I have an Intel iMac for work etc). The G4 ran Skype just fine. And today it offered me this latest update, so I let it download and install it. Only to find it doesn't run on PPC Macs. So why on earth it offered to let me update to a non working version is beyond me :rolleyes:
 
RoboCop001 said:
Why the hell is Skype 5 taking up over 10% CPU while idle? I don't even have any chats open!

When I get home I'm going to Time Machine the old Skype back. ... should have just renamed it before overwriting it.

And why did they jump from 2.8 to 5? lol
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Steam is an idle CPU hog as well. I tend to avoid running it while on battery.
 
Eidorian said:
Steam is an idle CPU hog as well. I tend to avoid running it while on battery.
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That's true. Though I guess I don't usually leave Steam open unless I'm going to play something lol.

Damn... I can't believe they don't support the Radeon X1600 for L4D Mac, and yet it runs perfectly fine on Windows via boot camp! I thought finally... I don't need Windows to play L4D.... and now I can't play the Mac version until I upgrade my laptop.
 
iWonderwhy said:
There are also tons of people who do NOT use those services, especially overseas, where MSN and Skype seem to be the preference. To be honest, I don't know a single person nationally or internationally who uses AIM, Google, Jabber, but that's just me.
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It just depends on the circles you run in, I guess. I setup myself up with all the services in Adium for work and home. I've yet to run across anyone not using Skype or AIM. Not even 1 single MSN user.
 
rwilliams said:
The vast majority of home computers are not running OS X.
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iChat communicates with a plethora of accounts, such as AIM, Gmail/GoogleTalk, etc. I've used iChat to video conference non-OS X users for years through their AIM or Gmail accounts.
 
Wow, what a whinefest.

First, I can see a big difference between beta 5 and final 5. Skype quite obviously listened to the negative feedback and made some necessary adjustments. It may not be the answer to all your hopes and dreams, but to claim Skype didn't listen to feedback is silly.

Second, companies eventually have to make a profit to exist. It's true! We've developed such a whiney sense of entitlement from all the free online services from doomed business models over the past years. It's really quite pathetic. If you need group video calling is $9 a month really as outrageous as people here imply? Please.

I guess everyone just assumes that everyone can follow the free Google model forever - but without Google's advantage of being able to fuel those "free" products with advertising, data mining, and ultimate world domination. :(
 
RoboCop001 said:
Why the hell is Skype 5 taking up over 10% CPU while idle? I don't even have any chats open!

When I get home I'm going to Time Machine the old Skype back. ... should have just renamed it before overwriting it.

And why did they jump from 2.8 to 5? lol
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Skype is a peer to peer and if you google search - you will see where skype uses your CPU (small %) to support their network when you are not skyping. Some articles say to get around this - quit skype all together and only fire it up for calls. This is why they can have computer to computer be free (or at least it was in the past)

I have been an AIM user for years (before it was AIM and just part of AOL). While I got rid of AOL, I kept my free account for AIM and use it in ichat. And I video chat pretty regularly. FOR FREE. The old company I worked for setup their trillian to work only through VPN, but used AIM accounts. This was good, because when the intranet/network went down we just fired up AIM and kept right on communicating.

I will keep my ichat. I looked into skype in the past and was not that impressed, since I have unlimited long distance calling on both my cell and home phone numbers. I also video chatted with people who only had AIM and not iChat. However, iChat just works that much easier. I think Apple should release iChat for windows users as well. I also use iChat for chatting on Facebook.
 
RoboCop001 said:
And why did they jump from 2.8 to 5? lol
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To get version numbering parallel with the current Windows app.

asdf542 said:
Anyway, I don't think it's THAT bad. I kind of like it and always thought the older Skype GUI was hideous (especially the buttons and drawer chat window). Guess I'm in the minority.
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I'm with you. I thought the older version was kind of a dog design-wise. Not that version 5 is brilliant, but I like it better than 2.8. The final 5 release is much-improved over the beta.
 
The sad part is, regardless of the cost .....

I am sure that the powers that be, will only focus on the moaning of cost which I am sure they anticipated, rather than their own failings at hiring a team that would allow such an atrocious UI.

Skype have seriously lost the plot.
 
Awesome. I hope they fixed that "bug" where Skype attempts to install itself as a log in item by default. It's almost unforgivable for a mac app to exhibit that kind of behavior. Save it for Windows. Shame on them.
 
ouimetnick said:
I hate it. The UI is more bloated.
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Terribly terribly bloated.

Worse, it makes using it as a SkypeOut VOIP tool practically useless. When you call our it opens a video window with nothing in it, and then gives you a text chat input as well. The thing it doesn't give you is the keypad, which you need for menu selection.

Does anyone have a copy of 2.8 they can send me?

UPDATE: saw the link. downgraded. phew. Thanks forum users!
 
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It feels like the UI guy for Windows version of Skype also was nice enough to design a version for Macs too!...great..

I'm personally happy with version 2.8. I usually am the type of guy who upgrades to the latest firmware of whatever and just 'deal' with the things I don't like with the new version. This time, I think I'll stick with 2.8. When I tested out the beta, the main thing I didn't like was how big the contact list was. Even though they say they've slimmed it down, it still isn't as slim as i'd like it to be. Hopefully they change this..
 
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