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Comment by jordache | Hacker News Reader

If that's the nail in the coffin then why is skype still popular? The voice/video/screen share performance is consistently always bad, to the level of unusable.

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Same reason people are on LinkedIn, FB, etc. I don't switch because all the people in my call list are on Skype. Also, I don't have any smartphone, only PC and laptop, so I don't even know or care what kind of apps for iOS or Android there are. ON teh PC I have to use "Skype Classic", which MS would like to get rid of (default download is the app for Windows 10). That app is unusable, and I'm tempted to add "literally" for emphasis but I'll wait until this new meaning of this word is (even) more established and the original one more forgotten :-) For example, in the app I can't even control my online status unless I keep the app open, while old Desktop-Skype lets me choose the status and I can close the window but the service remains available through the taskbar icon. I'm also unable to see a list of my contacts filtered by who is online in the app, which I consider to be as basic as it gets.

"I'm also unable to see a list of my contacts filtered by who is online in the app, which I consider to be as basic as it gets."

It still boggles my mind that someone thought this is a good thing to do.

I read on a KB on MS site when I was trying to figure out how to change that, and it said to see if someone is online send them a message first. I'm paraphrasing of course, but I couldn't believe that that was coming from MS about something so simple as trying to figure out who is online.

I was gently ribbing my friends about their woes and complaints with Skype over the past few years (one in particular had repeated bouts of skype throwing up ads _with audio_) and commenting that my Mac client was just as usable as it's always been.

Alas that that's no longer the case, we've moved all our casual chat (and voice, and video, and screenshare) to Discord and haven't looked back.

I left Skype for Hangouts as soon as they started putting autoplaying ads with audio in my calls. You have to be completely disconnected from the needs of your users to even consider doing such a thing.

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