Microsoft Will End Support For Skype Classic In November (techcrunch.com)

Support for Skype Classic 7.0 was slated to end this month, but has been delayed due to customer complaints. Now, according to an announcement today, Microsoft is going to officially end support in November. TechCrunch reports: The company is killing Skype 7 support on the desktop on November 1, following suit for mobile and tablets two weeks later on the 15th. The initial delay was motivated by vocal users unhappy by the changes brought on by Skype 8 in the name of simplification. One user went so far as to launch a Change.org petition asking Microsoft to "Keep the desktop version of Skype alive for professional users." The petition has since racked up in excess of 1,000 signatures, demanding the company keep enterprise features lost in the shuffle. "We're continuing to work on your most requested features," the company writes in an update to the original announcement. "Recently we launched call recording and have started to roll out the ability to search within a conversation. You'll soon be able to add phone numbers to existing contacts, have more control over your availability status, and more."

Comments

RAM use

[tepples]

How about the requested feature of not using as much RAM as a full-on Google Chrome process?

(Last I checked, Skype used Microsoft Electron, a GUI toolkit that is literally a copy of Chromium hardcoded to one website.)

Re:RAM use

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to support an enterprise customer a few days ago who needed the previous version of Skype, but it wasn't available through the software system. So one of the remote techs just installed it for her, but then it just sat there, never getting past the login. Somewhere on the network it's getting firewalled, and skype for business/lync was the correct thing to install.

But hey Microsoft basically stripped Skype of everything that made it useful since eBay owned it. When eBay owned it, it still operated on the Supernode peer-to-peer structure. Microsoft has basically moved this to cloud structure, so skype is utterly useless if ANY firewall exists.

Re:RAM use

[Anonymous Coward]

Electron is maintained by GitHub, not Microsoft.

"Classic" =/= Desktop

[b0s0z0ku]

Skype 8 has a desktop program in addition to a modern/metro crapplet. It even works on real OS's like Windows 7...

Re:"Classic" =/= Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it work in Linux? Skype for Linux in Mint 19 has died and the Update Manager can no longer get it from the server.

Re:"Classic" =/= Desktop

[Luthair]

Skype 8 is a mobile turd wrapped in a window. Where's that apper guy :p

Re:"Classic" =/= Desktop

[WoodstockJeff]

Skype 8 for the desktop is a mobile app that can run on a desktop. It has all the limitations of the mobile version, including making it difficult to manage multiple text conversations.

Nothing to say more: Skype suddenly woke up dead..

[Anonymous Coward]

They are continuing to make skype unusable! ...

Put it on paid support

[xack]

And end it In 2023 along with paid Windows 7 support.

ABUSE by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

The abuse company will be abusive?

Skype Is Dead

[labnet]

I've noticed in my business world, skype is rarely used anymore. It's either zoom or less often google meetings. The Skype UI is confusing, the whole business skype/normal skype was confusing. (Hello windows and windows RT!, and having the same Microsoft login name requiring different accounts because they still have two different back ends that are not fully integrated)

I think, once you become a big fat bloated organization, innovation becomes almost impossible.

Re:Skype Is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. It's gone the way of ICQ... everyone from a certain era will know what it is, and it was really useful a while back, but everyone I used to talk to on Skype has moved onto other services.

Re:Skype Is Dead

[bmimatt]

This is just a (more) aggressive data grab:
- we store everything for you so you can search it
- we let you record everything, we'll also sit on the recording data and mine it for whatever we can
- we let you add contact details, so we can better map out messages and voices to real people ... but we care about your privacy and security.

Then they'll force cortana on it to try processing in (near)real-time.

Fuck Microsoft and the pony they rode in on. I'll be moving my parents to something else and deleting skype in the weeks to come.

Re:Skype Is Dead

[rtb61]

It is not the size of the organisation it is the arrogance of the organisation. Skype users complain, M$ response in crude terms starts like this;

fuck off you do not have a problem, next
fuck you, you caused the problem, next
fuck off some other companies applications caused the problem, next
there might be a problem but fuck off it is free (after market share starts shrinking alarmingly) next,
fuck off and stop complaining the new version is better so shut the fuck up, (market share is halved), next
we sort of fixed it but it really was all the arsehole users fault, (market share is continuing to shrink), next
you can all fuck off we dropped the product not enough people using it.

You are on the M$ product to oblivion tread mill, give up early, you will be better off.

Re:Skype Is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Really the NSA paid them for this. Easier to tap now!

Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a long..

[xpiotr]

Skype was revolutionary when it came...
Sold twice by it's creator!
But MS seems to be making Skype worse in each iteration.
FaceTime, FB Messenger, Viber, Snapchat, Telegram, Signal offers the same functionality.
Skype is the next ICQ.

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[fluffernutter]

Can any of these transfer files of any size as well as message? Using Facebook is just plain idiotic for private conversations, at least Microsoft is old world tech before business plans relied on scraping every bit of information off of everyone.

Skype seems to still be the one that works on everyone's machine, can be used for file transfers, and doesn't make you feel as if there are eyes on you. I'm not a big fan of all the fluff they have added, but it is what it is. I can ignore it.

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Uh, I've got bad news for you. Skype was "un-decentralized" by Microsoft when they bought it, ie. everything flows through MS' servers and gets piped straight to the NSA ;)

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[Anonymous Coward]

Can any of these transfer files of any size as well as message?

Well, ICQ can go up to 4 GB, so...

Really to bad!!

[oldgraybeard]

I despise the new version. Just poorly designed UI, takes more area, bloat, etc. I think it will be something I will be moving away from and not recommending. Something I only use when I have to deal with specific clients who require it.

Companies should remember, new features and redesigns often work out poorly for products that should have light footprints, do a small number of things well and not be over loaded with things most users will never use.

Just my 2 cents ;)

Re:Really to bad!!

[ConceptJunkie]

This is really funny, because this complaint could have been made any time in the past 5 years or so and still been perfectly relevant. Microsoft was at the forefront of usability and GUI design in the 90s (IMO) and they've pretty much abandoned everything they learned.

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't know signal offered voice/video chat?

last time I checked it didn't...

original features, please

[Anonymous Coward]

When the desktop app for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux has all the features of the classic one... then maybe I'll care. Until then... we don't use Skype.

Re:original features, please

[uffe_nordholm]

I can't agree more: when MS bought Skype, it didn't take long for Skype to turn to shit. And mostly the UI. I used to use Skype to help my 70+ year old mother when she ran into computer problems, and Skype was my number one choice since she already knew the UI (at least well enough) and she could share her screen with me. That seems to have been removed from Skype completely (at least from the Linux versions), and thus I have no reason to use Skype any more.

On a personal note, I remember when ICQ was still popular, and MSN Messenger was only just starting to get a foothold on the market: one of my friends was adamant that MSN M was better than ICQ, because you could send emojis! And it was prettier! If that really is what people want, then MS has made the right choices for Skype. It's a pity that they seem unable to satisfy the computer-savvy nerds at the same time.

Re:Support for Rapenaugh ended today

[Anonymous Coward]

oooh, wonderful, Golden Showers.

This sucks since we can't get Microsoft Teams...

[greenwow]

to work for everyone yet so we're still stuck on Skype. We have a mix mostly of Apple devices since we publish an iOS app, Windows 7, and Linux that has trouble with Teams. For even the people, like me, that can get Teams to work, taskmgr.exe shows that Teams uses more memory than even Visual Studio or IntelliJ. When Microsoft kills Skype, we're going to have to spend a lot of money and piss off a lot of customers.

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[fluffernutter]

Yeah but I'm not prepared to explain ICQ to everyone I need to communicate with.

Re:Skype, there is a name I haven't heard in a lon

[fluffernutter]

I have no worries about the NSA. I have worries about companies that collect who my friends are. I'm not so egotistical to think the NSA cares about that, but I knoew Facebook does.

landline and postit notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

works for me too. so far we lost AOL, Compuserve, Yahoo Auctions, GeoCities, Scroogle, and now Skype.

Sounds like a bulldozer maneuver to get the world away from the 90's.

Re:Nothing to say more: Skype suddenly woke up dea

[arglebargle_xiv]

Yep. Updated Skype recently to 8, it was essentially unusable. Went back to 7 fairly quickly. Given the choice between Skype 8 and nothing, I choose nothing. Or at least something that isn't Skype.

I ended my usage of Skype

[Tough Love]

Skype has been all downhill ever since Microsoft killed the P2P in favor of centralized spyware. Slack, Discord and even Hangouts are way better. All of them are rampant privacy violations, but Skype is the worst.

Re:I ended my usage of Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype became centralized as it became more popular with phones.. you know, devices that are constantly powered down or try to go to sleep state as fast as possible, and therefore makes them useless as nodes in a peer to peer network. They HAD to go to centralization to even make it viable.

Re:I ended my usage of Skype

[Tough Love]

They HAD to go to centralization to even make it viable.

That is no excuse for dropping the P2P for devices that support it. Microsoft could easily have made it an option but they are more interested in spying, not doing what is best for users.

Skype for smart tv's

[Anonymous Coward]

Still cant understand why Microsoft bricked Skype for smart tv's

This was a selling point for lots of mid to higher end sets, also lots of people bought expensive proprietary camera upgrades just for this.

Re:Skype for smart tv's

[6Yankee]

I bought a combined Skype/landline DECT phone. It wasn't cheap. Skype Certified, it said... And Microsoft killed the API.

Two ways

[DrYak]

The (old, Qt-based) classic Skype is deprecated and isn't supported on Linux at all (won't even connect to the network).

There is an official Beta for Linux, which is basically the Skype Web webapp wrapped together with a Chromium browser engine (Electron).

The webapp also works directly on Chrome and Firefox (apparently Microsoft has somehow ported their code using ORTC to the WebRTC standard ?)

A plugin for the purple engine (as used by Pidgin, but also compatible with several frameworks like Telepathy) that relies on the Web API has been written and functions nicely for Chat, but currently doesn't support Voice and Video (it was started back when Skype Web was ORTC only and needed a binary plugin to work on Firefox. The dev simply hasn't had time to developped that since, but there's no technical limitation nowadays preventing this from happening).

Re:Two ways

[Anonymous Coward]

The (old, Qt-based) classic Skype is deprecated and isn't supported on Linux at all (won't even connect to the network).

I think you meant, Delphi-based classic Skype.

Web Skype

[DrYak]

The web app is basically the new official Skype.

Forget about the desktop application, Skype 8 is just the web app wrapped together inside Electron.

Instead :

  - go straight to https://web.skype.com/ with your browser, at least you won't have to endure their crappy wrapper.

  - use the SkypeWeb lib Purple plugin (either directly into Pidgin, or into something else that is compatible like Telepathy). Though that one doesn't support Voice and Video, only chat.

Again?

[Daralantan]

Haven't they already announced a delay due to user feedback 2-3 other times already?

And nothing of value was lost

[OneHundredAndTen]

For years now.

Migrated off Skype

[iTrawl]

* messages not being delivered
* no option to retry sending an undelivered message
* adding delayed messages to the middle of the conversation (possibly off screen by now) to confuse people when they say "You didn't tell me that" and then scroll and see that the text is there, but wasn't there when the conversation was happening
* can't fetch history easily - the old version could fetch 1 month, 1 year, or all of it; the new version fetches a small chunk when you scroll all the way to the top, and it gets slower and slower as you fetch more
* history search says "nothing found" while at the same time highlighting the word in your chat window; this is more likely if the chat window contains history fetched through scrolling

You'd think that Microsoft don't use Skype themselves, because these things are easy to spot.

Call Recording?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Recently we launched call recording"

Several states might take an issue with that given the laws they have on the books about two-party consent and the lack of confirmation on both sides within skype.

MSFT bought GitHub

[tepples]

Microsoft announced acquisition of GitHub over three months ago. See the press release and coverage on Microsoft's official blog.

Web version.

[antdude]

Web version is lacking a lot of features like export chat conversations. Copy and paste is a pain and formattings are lost. :(

Last post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last post!