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Comment by lucianof | Hacker News Reader

I switched from Windows to OS X a couple months ago. Everything was bright and shiny until I installed the Skype client. I could literally not believe that this is the same Software I used to love on Windows - there is so much wrong with it (constantly popping up Dial Pad that I never use, inability to resize the Name column, to just name a few). Over time I got used to the annoyances, but it it still one of the worst UIs I've ever seen. Does anybody have an idea how this could happen?

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The "craigslist effect". It's when a product or service with shitty design and severe flaws is the only one that does what it does and starts growing in popularity due to it's monopoly and it's owners think "hey we must be doing something right so lets not change or improve it because we don't have to". A.K.A. "What happens when you don't have competition."

But what's so surprising is that I don't remember the Windows client to be nearly as bad as the one for Mac. I guess they are made by two completely different teams with no coordination on UI issues.

The Mac Skype client was actually quite excellent, too, up through version 2.8. Then Skype jumped the version number to 5.0 and came out with the UI mess that they did. About a year ago I wrote about the issues I had with the 5.x client... and I still have the issue with the lack of multiple windows:

http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2011/04/my-3-main-issues-...

And yes, Skype's clients have historically been made by completely different product teams with the result being a very fragmented product strategy. Different features have been released at different times on different platforms, with the result being that users have very different experiences from platform to platform.

They are trying to get better at this and with their latest 5.x releases are trying to come out on at least Windows and Mac OS X at the same time with similar features.

I downgraded (and therefore "upgraded") back to Skype 2.8.0.866 on the Mac a long time ago. That version actually has a sensible UI compared to Skype 5.

If you search for "Skype 2.8.0.866" you'll find sites that host the original version.

Unfortunately, screen sharing no longer works in Skype 2.8 on Lion.

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