By all accounts I should probably be incredibly excited about Skype’s new 5.0 beta 1 with group video calling. After all, I’m a huge daily user of Skype and make video calls pretty much every day. It would be fantastic to be able to add video to some of the conference calls I do… particularly where I work with a globally distributed team.
I should be excited… but I’m not.
Why?
Because yet again, Skype continues to follow their fractured and fragmented product strategy that I’ve ranted about before:
Skype 5.0 Beta 1 is Windows only.
I would love to try it out and use it… I’d be glad to give Skype feedback… I’d be glad to write about it here, talk about it and show it off on my video podcast… I’d tweet about and promote it on Facebook and other sites… as a fan, I’d love to help Skype promote its services!
But I can’t really…. yet.
You see, I use Macs exclusively these days. In fact, I work for a company of over 140 people… all of whom are Mac users… and all of whom are heavy Skype users. None of us can try this out. Sure… I can fire up a virtual machine and run Windows to try it out… but why bother with the headache?
In his post on the Skype blog, Peter Parkes throws out a bone to Mac users:
Oh, and for those Mac users out there, don’t worry – we’ll be launching group video calling on the Mac later in the year too 🙂
Great… wake me up when you get around to having a real cross-platform strategy, Skype.
P.S. And yes, I realize that Linux Skype users are also left behind…
UPDATE #1 – To be clear, I completely understand why Skype chose to focus only on Windows. Windows has by far the largest market share and when you only have so many development resources you must choose where you focus their development effort. I get that. But Skype is trying to become the ubiquitous communication platform used by everyone. Would Firefox have been as successful as it is if it only focused on one platform?
Other softphone/video/communication clients like CounterPath’s Bria and SightSpeed can come out with at least a synchronized Windows and Mac releases… it would be great if Skype could, too.
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In the past, Skype has added all features on all platforms, so there are two choices:
1) wait for everything to be ready and then launch, possibly losing market share to competitors
2) launch as you have each thing ready, no matter what platform is ready first.
In the current world of rapid and “agile” software development I don’t see how people can’t understand the reasoning. Even Mozilla, your own reference, has separate releases for each OS.
I use Skype on Linux and Windoze and would love to have them be almost identical but understand why stuff can’t be that way all the time.
PING:
TITLE: OMG! Skype Simultaneously Releases (Almost) The Same Version on Windows and Mac OS X
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Telephony
Yesterday I sat in such utter shock that I had to look out my window to see if, in fact, we were witnessing porcine aviation. My brain was having a hard time processing something I had just read online. I…
PING:
TITLE: Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac OS X: A First Look with Screenshots
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Telephony
Could it really be true? Was Skype actually delivering a MacOS X version that was close to parity with the Skype for Windows version? After all the complaining we Mac users have done? Yes, indeed, for better or worse, today…
PING:
TITLE: Skype 5.0 brings Facebook integration, group video – but ONLY if you are on Windows
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Telephony
Skype today released version 5.0 for Windows which looks quite cool…but is also completely unusable to me. First off, Skype 5.0 includes a brand new Facebook integration that wasn’t in the beta program and, per Skype’s blog post, let’s you:…
PING:
TITLE: Skype 5.0 Beta 1 with multi-party video: Phil Wolff gives a tour…
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Telephony
While I may rant about Skype’s multiparty video being Windows-only (or “kvetch”, according to the VoIP Princess), I still do think it is an excellent development. I’m on Skype conference calls quite often and it would be great to add…