Skype Gone

Skype Is Gone

Skype is gone, guys. Gone and done with. They rolled out the latest upgrade, and I have no idea what to say about the new design and performance.

As they say, bad news has long legs and I’ve heard the first laments a couple of days ago, before it was even official.

But, I never imagined anything could be THAT bad. Have you ever tried to read white or orange font? It burns your eyes to try and decipher through those colors. If you haven’t had the luxury, now you’ve got a chance. Be prepared to fiddle with the contrast on your phones and tablets in order to make the letters out. If you’re wearing glasses, you have my condolences. And to make it even worse, the font colors an’t be changed. The only option left is the black and white. Black and white, good god! What do they think of in Redmond? That we run Skype on Kindle?

The incoming message alert made me jump this morning. Sounds like a retching toad. The Skype notification sounds are well known around the world. You can normally tell the Skype jingle from dozens of other notifications, literally anywhere. I have no idea why they went and changed that. I can understand the new skins, perhap, snowflakes think the blue and white traditional skin is dull and boring, but we, Millennials, feel like something precious has been taken from our very hands. The new alert is okay if you want to start a good old panic in a crowd. It has the effect of a gun shot into one’s ear. Can you imagine having to say, “Don’t panic, guys, it’s just my Skype going off”.

Status dots are what really get under my skin. Why? Because they’re gone, that’s why! What you’ve got is just a twisting colored worm running across the screen if someone is writing to you. It was meant to look like a radio wave graph, but, it just doesn’t. How on Earth can I tell who is online, who is not and who just doesn’t want to be disturbed! You can’t do it at a glance anymore! You have to enter the contact page and see how long ago they were online and by how long you missed them.

I’ve been with Skype for 20 years. I have over 100 personal and business contacts stored in Skype. I used to roll through the contact panel to make sure the contact I want is online (or at least on a stand-by), so that my message wouldn’t be lost into oblivion, but now, I have to spend some more time to tap the contact open, stare at the online info and try to decipher what it means.

It is an unbelievable and wildly unsuccessful change, Microsoft! You killed the most successful messenger and online phone in the world. You killed a legend.

P.S. Don’t hope you can skip the upgrade. When the old version’s life ended, Skype refused to log the subscribers in. The #skypedown hashtag is in trend now on Twitter. Look and see.