Disruptive Telephony

Skype this week released a “Hotfix” for the Skype 5.0 for Mac OSX. Surprisingly the upgrade/update process is not automated… I chose “Check for Updates…” in the Skype menu of my 5.0 client and it told me I was up-to-date. However, when I clicked on the download link in that Skype blog post, I downloaded the new version and was able to drag it to my Applications folder to do the update.

From a user point-of-view, there don’t seem to be any new features in this release. It really is just a “hotfix” for a number of bugs, including the issue with Skype not letting other applications use the video camera that I affected some folks I know.

Anyway… Mac users who have gone ahead and moved to 5.0 may want to upgrade now (I have on one system and am still on 2.8 on another). The Skype blog post has a few more details on what was fixed.

P.S. If you haven’t been paying attention to what’s new with Skype 5.0 for the Mac, you may want to read about the “Gold” release, the launch of the beta of 5.0 for the Mac or my other Skype-related posts

If…

This morning’s visit to the AppStore on my iPhone brought news that Skype had rolled out version 3.0.1 of its iPhone client. The only news of what was in it was:

You can now make video calls to a wider selection of Skype clients and devices, such as Skype for TV.

It turns out (via a Skype blog post) that what this really means is that Skype has added the higher quality H.264 video codec to the app. As noted, this will let you do a video call with a Skype-equipped TV. (Which you bizarrely could not do from an iPhone before.)

While I don’t personally know anyone with a Skype-equipped TV, I’m looking forward to trying this out to see if it changes the quality of the video calls I make. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve used the iPhone quite a bit for video calls and been impressed so far.

Anyway, if you are an iPhone user, you can head on over to the AppStore and download this new version…

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If you go back in time to September 2008 and recall the whole kerfuffle over the Gogo in-flight WiFi service NOT allowing VoIP calls (which we also covered on Blue Box podcast #83), one of the threads that was floating around was the wish that they would at least allow chat over Skype. If you couldn’t make calls, at least you could have IM conversations.

I didn’t really pay any further attention to the matter and didn’t find myself on planes with Gogo WiFi until this past week… and found that yes, indeed, sometime in the last two+ years Gogo did relax the Skype chat restriction (at least on Delta flights).

The FAQ now clearly states that Skype IM is allowed, while VoIP services are still not permitted:

While I was on a short flight and didn’t feel the need to pay for the in-flight WiFi, it was nice to know that I could have used Skype IM if I had wanted to.

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When I saw that Skype had a blog post up about their effort to recruit as many as 350 new employees, I didn’t expect them to release a video… nor did I expect to be so amused seeing so many of my friends there cavorting around on the video!

As they note, Skype is hiring!

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This week Skype 5.0 for Mac OS X left the “Beta” label behind and was released as a production product. I naturally downloaded it onto the iMac where I’m running Skype 5.0… and found that while some changes were made (and some very good changes, I should add), it’s still a very different user experience from Skype 2.8 and one I’m still not sure about.

I did my usual test call with Jim Courtney, took a good number of screenshots and will write up some thoughts after using it a bit more.

Meanwhile, Jim’s out with his thoughts on the technical side:

Skype for Mac 5.0 Goes Gold: Incorporating Beta Feedback and More

While Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal took a different tack and wrote about the sentiment from Mac users about this new release:

Download: Skype for Mac 5.0 Gold

As Phil notes, the Skype community forums do have areas filled with disgruntled Mac users who are upset that Skype didn’t go far enough in incorporating their feedback.

I still need to work with it a bit more before I jump to that level… but I am glad to see that Skype incorporated some of the feedback. More…