Skype announces it will close in May
I confess that I probably would never have noticed. How are the mighty fallen
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If someone had asked me if Skype still existed, I’m not sure I would have said yes.
Microsoft is a company that I want to root for. But they make it really hard and the bungle so much.
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They integrated the core technology into Microsoft Teams, and Skype is no longer used by individuals. I think the decision makes sense.
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Being one the three most valuable companies in the world (currently) isn’t too shabby.
Exactly the point I was going to make.
For the majority of people Video Calling has become a feature of many other products rather than a standalone product (FaceTime, Whatsapp, Meta Messenger) and with Teams and Zoom
In use I’d be surprised if many people used it.
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I had my last call on Skype exactly five years ago, in February 2020.
It’s a shame, though, that Teams remains an unusable, unstable, user-unfriendly mess that’s difficult to use, navigate, search, and actually use for productivity purposes. At least it’s genuinely cross-platform (it’s equally bad on all platforms).
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But, apart from that …
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Amazing that Skype missed the Zoom revolution. So much bloat, so little time.
I have to confess that I’ve still been using Skype regularly on my iPad. And because I’ve been reasonably happy with Skype, I’ve never bothered exploring the alternatives. What would people recommend using when calling another Mac user?
I use Skype’s local number feature to have a phone number in USA (I’m currently living outside USA). I also use Skype to make inexpensive or even “free” to 800 numbers in USA from outside USA.
The mentioned alternatives, as far as I know, don’t have this generic calling facility and can only communicate inside their own “world”. Or maybe not.
I’m wondering if anyone might be able to advise me of alternative vendors I can switch to now that Skype is going away?
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I use it on a daily basis at work and it’s perfectly usable.
I don’t find it to be any of the things you describe today. This was true 5 years ago though.
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It’s quite broken on iOS. This is what my chats list has looked like ever since the new ‘redesign’. I can’t believe this was actually rolled out (I’m not on preview).
I can’t show you mine because it’s for work, but again, working perfectly on iOS, iPadOS, Windows and macOS. To be honest I have many problems with outlook on Mac, teams just works.
Generally, the only people I call Skype to Skype are our parents.
But I also sometimes have to call numbers back in Australia from Germany, and for that use case I am not sure what else is available? But I adit I never had to look until now.
I think Microsoft announced there’ll be some kind of outbound calling brought into Teams. But on another forum, people are recommending Viber Out as a good option for calling internationally.
Facetime would be my recommendation
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Ugh Teams… Afaik, Viber is basically massive in the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe these days, but I remember it being “OK”.
Skype was mind-blowing in the early 2000s when it first released. But it just…never got better, and was quickly surpassed by other services. I think it really kick-started the modern web video conferencing world we have, but they could not capitalize on their early success. Microsoft didn’t know what to do with it either post-acquisition.
That original Skype ringtone will always live in my memory though.
I was really disappointed with this news. Using Teams as a non-corporate or personal user can be painful—at least in my experience. I’ve run into login loop so often that I now only use it in a browser.
I still use Skype regularly. I used to have a Skype-In number (I tried to buy again earlier this year, but they stopped selling them). I regularly use the ability to call landlines as I can record phone calls and interviews easily. I still have credit for landline calls, but apparently the dial pad will remain active until my credit runs out,
The video calling was the least interesting part for me.
A shame they let it go.
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