Skype is dead

Last time when I wrote about Microsoft Skype, I was quite unhappy about it. But I was expecting that Microsoft will fix eventually all these problems. But unfortunately, not only they didn’t fix it, they made it pretty much unusable for me.

Let me explain my setup. I have home and work computer that running Skype with the same account. My iPhone also has Skype with the same account.

And about 2-3 month ago I found following problem on any of my computer: I typed some text and press Send button. Text disappeared from input text box, but it wasn’t added to list of my messages. If I restarted Skype, then I see that message added to list of my messages. Initially I thought that you know, Skype running for quite some time and got corrupted. But even after restart I see exactly the same problem. And sometimes the same problem after next restart. Once I had to restart 3 times. And this happens on my home PC and at my work PC. They have pretty much nothing common.

Again, I was patient and I thought Microsoft will fix it, but few updates and 3 months later and it still there.  

Today I found new problem with Skype of my phone. I found some funny text and decided to send it to my wife. I selected and copied text into clipboard and pasted it in Skype. Skype stopped responding. I thought that it was “spoiled”, so I killed it and started new one. Exactly the same. After 5-6 tries I was finally able to paste text and send it.

Just as summarize, old problems are still there. There are so many usability problems like I cannot right click on person on contact list and call. I have to open that person and then click on call button. There are many places where double click works like selecting screen for sharing and it doesn’t work anymore. I cannot send more than 10 photos at once. Skype still cannot display thumbnails of pictures without cropping them. This task requires junior and 10 minutes of time. And old previous problems I mentioned are still there. None of them fixed.

I found out that less and less people contacted me using Skype. Most moved to different messengers that does not have such problems and do not bring so much negativity. I know that for example Telegram never had split screen. I’m really missing that feature in Telegram, but it was never there, and nobody promised it to me. With Skype I know that it was working great and now it shadows of its former glory and this is angers me.

Once Skype was great application written by people who really knows how to write good application. I remember day I did install Skype. It immediately loved it and I moved many people to Skype. Now it looks like junior doing test projects by developing Skype.

I think I can state that Skype is dead for me. Rest in peace. You will always have place in my heart.