"The reason is simply that Skype as a publicly traded company cannot disclose release dates, or describe what features the release will include."

What ABSOLUTE BS!!

So, what you're telling us is that Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and the list can go on forever, can't give us release dates, schedules or feature sets because they are publicly traded? Funny, because they all do, frequently. I am not sure there's a single person here who does not know the release date of Windows Vista for example.

It's this sort of crazy and weird lying to your userbase, treating them as through they're imbeciles who know nothing that really gets up my nose. Enough with the excuses. Release a damn product and you won't keep getting the "People [who] ask us about new features and release dates in the forums, on this blog, via email and via Skype."

Don't ever spout out this BS again, it's an absolute insult to any thinking man's intellect.

Interesting... Can you tell us the release date for Windows Vista, shaneanderson?

"or describe what features the release will include."

we actually already know this... we see in windows version features we can't have access to as we're on mac.

release win and mac version at the same time.

Euh ? Nils allow me.

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Another blog?
By My status Nils on March 29, 2006 in General.

The idea is that we’ll tell you about upcoming product releases, marketing activities, and new partnership, to give you feel for what we’re actually doing at Skype.

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rosnow
Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 200
PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:02 am
Hey All,

Last month we said we'd ship Skype for Mac 2.0 in the second quarter (April - May - June).

We are still on track for that and making great progress.

Skype for Mac 2.0 will support cross platform video, offer an new more compact user interface and be a Universal Binary.

So hang in there everyone, no begging needed, just a little time to get all of this working properly.

- David

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And indeed other publicly traded companies – not all (e.g. Apple) – do announce release dates. I don't mind either way, but I would strongly suggest that you adopt a policy and that you stick to it. Much better to everyone especially you, who will be able to work and get less aggravations from an irate customer base

Best regards

« So, what you're telling us is that Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and the list can go on forever, can't give us release dates, schedules or feature sets because they are publicly traded? Funny, because they all do, frequently.»

So, why don't you tell me what features Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has, and the exact date it will be released? Oh, you don't know? Oh *may* that's because Apple usually doesn't disclose this information early on. We don't know much at all right now about Leopard; we'll know a lot more at WWDC in August because developers *have* to know about this stuff, not because Apple *likes* to tell them. And finally, probably just mere weeks before the release date, we'll know that exact date.

Being hesitant to divulge information about future products is a perfectly common business practice and not something Skype can be faulted for. There are many, many reasons not to do it, and I disagree with Nick that being a publicly-traded company has much to do with it. Small development houses like Panic do just the same. Go ahead, ask developers at random companies, no matter the size, whether their policy permits talking about future releases early on. You'll find that, most of the time, it doesn't, for good reason.

What features? All we excpect is to get Mac version (and Linux) in par with Windows version. Talking about others, nobody, absolutely nobody, the most evil and user unfriendly companies (not talking about them, who "will change the world") included, does not treat other platforms as badly as Skype does. Wow, releasing Windows 2.5 beta while Linux is still at 1.2 and OSX at 1.4 and NO release date of 2.0 must be the World Record? You can be proud of yourselves - you DID change the world.

well, in some years there will be skype linux 3.5, skype mac 5.0 and skype windows 7.5.
or not?? *hope*it would be nice if the releases were on the same day (or even in the same month) but not century....

«nobody, absolutely nobody, the most evil and user unfriendly companies (not talking about them, who "will change the world") included, does not treat other platforms as badly as Skype does.»

ppirita, you know that not to be true. Even if you just look at instant messenger-like applications, you'll easily find a lot of examples. Microsoft MSN Messenger? 7.5 on Windows, 5.1 on Mac OS. AIM? 6.0 on Windows, 4.x or something on Mac OS. Yahoo? 6.0 on Windows, 2.5.3 on Mac OS. ICQ? 5.0 on Windows, 2.x or something on Mac OS. I'm not entirely positive about those numbers, but I am very positive about one thing: all four of them are significantly behind compared to their Windows counterparts, not just in terms of the version number, but in terms of *features*. Of the four, only Yahoo Messenger supports video chat at all, and only does so in significantly worse quality. Not Yahoo and none of the others supports audio. Other features like built-in games, etc. aren't included at all.

You'll find the exact same situation if you look at other software categories. Many, *many* software companies are primarily Windows-based and treat Mac OS users as second-choice, frequently citing the (nonsense) market share argument. Fortunately for us Mac users, alternatives often exist, and surprisingly often, they're actually much better. Adium is better at the main feature of an instant messenger (text!) than any single instant messaging application on Windows. NetNewsWire and NewsFire are better feed readers than anything on Windows. And so on.

chucker23n

Indeed. I would add Netscape that was "the" mac browser of choice and now is windows only !

So I was wrong assuming that Skype is worse than Microsoft and that Skype is actally in par with Microsoft in evilness? Is this normal and good thing? Last time I checked Skype was NICE company, doing nice things for nice pepole. When the change happened and why?

BTW, PC-Office was released on 97,00,03 and Mac-Office 98,01,04, next ones will be 07 and 08. Being MS's main product, pretty damn impressive, isn't it ? Messenger and others are Windows counterparts and help sell Windows, the fact that MSN even exists on Mac is a nice gesture indeed? What is Skype's main product?

Wow. So, I see some comments scolding the Mac team, and some defending them, but nothing useful. How about changes that would help? How about some issues you have that could be fixed? You know, something constructive. I'll throw my 2 cents in, or 50, and then provide some feedback on features/fixes.

Reality check: 90% of computers run Windows. Apple's 5-7% user-base tends to be more affluent, and more likely to spend money on software, so profitability per-user in these markets begins to get skewed quickly. As an example, Skype's huge user base in China. Chinese computing is essentially all pirated copies of Windows, and wouldn't pay for a Skype service if their dead dog jumped out of the frying pan and asked them to.

If Skype could conduct such research, or already knows the answer, I'd be very interested to see what percentage of Windows and Mac users are paying for Skype services. Then, what is the total earned from each platform? The results may be surprising or they may show why the company's OSX support became lackluster.

The other thing here is that eBay bought Skype. The development of Skype for Windows has EXPLODED since the eBay acquisition. Prior to that, OSX and Windows clients weren't far apart, and at times had feature parity. I'm sure eBay had and has some plans to use Skype for tie-ins to current and future eBay products (maybe for a small fee, like an "eBay Premium" or something, you could contact the seller of a product via Skype?). I have no idea how much eBay's plans for Skype have affected the overall development and priorities of the product, and company for that matter. But, I do know that demanding they release a fully functional version of a Windows 2.5 equivalent for OSX today will be fruitless as the product doesn't exist. If they had that fully functioning product, it would be out.

The Mac team is at least keeping in contact with the user base. They did release a Universal binary less than two weeks ago for f's sake. You wanna whine, go post on the Yahoo Messenger blog for OSX. Oh wait, you can't, because no such outlet exists. Actually, the creation of the Intel-compatible version likely pushed everything back. Software doesn't switch platforms alone, people have to make it happen. I don't know what language they were writing Skype in (presumably xcode now), or how difficult the Universal binary was to get out. For all we know, the Mac team has been working their arses off to make a product ready for all those Intel iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini users that were likely whining, "why no intel love?".

And, concluding my non-constructive rant, what big feature does 2.5 have? Video? iChat has had industry leading video since October 2003. I haven't seen Skype video, but I would bet my left testicle that iChat 3's 4-way video (that's been out since April 2005) eats up and spits out Skype's offering. Does Skype 2.5 even do multi-way video? And hey, if you can't wait to video chat with Windows users, via Skype, then either get an Intel Mac and put Windows on it, or go buy a really cheap Windows box. Problem solved.

Now on to constructive things:

1-Multiuser functionality:

A-The username drop-down menu has almost no function. It does not remember usernames.

B-The "Sign-in as Another User" option has no function other than to sign out (performs the same function as the "Sign-out" option).

C-When you type in a username, that you have told Skype to remember a password for, the password is not entered. If you click and release on the seemingly useless username drop-down, then it enters the password and logs in. Fix: Either have Skype input the password after the username has been typed, or make the username drop down have a list of users, who when selected, have the passwords input and the program logs on.

D-Allow the user to tell the program NOT to automatically log on, when remembering a password. That would save the user from logging on, then logging back out to change their username (with remembered passwords).

E-The services status bar displays the same amount of SkypeOut funds when switching users to an account with no SkypeOut funds (from one that does).

2-SkypeIn:

A-Bring back the feature allowing the user to set the duration prior to calls being sent to voicemail.

B-Allow different outgoing messages to be played for different SkypeIn numbers on the same account.

C-Allow calls forwarded from other accounts to go to a specific voicemail message (see "B").

3-Skype Usability:

A-When browsing profiles using the "Find" feature, while a profile is open allow command+w to close that window. As it is now, that closes all windows behind it, including the main Skype panel, before closing the desired profile window. It's really odd. I have mentioned this several times, and trust it will be addressed in an upcoming release (hopefully the next one?). It's a real hassle to go through profiles currently.

B-When in an audio conference, allow the user to invite someone they have found with the "Find" feature, but that is not currently a contact or authorized. The Windows version of Skype does this now.

C-User notes. iChat allows the user to add notes about a contact. It would be really handy to add that functionality to Skype. Presumably that info would be stored locally (as with iChat).

So those are a few suggestions for now.

Waiting patiently for Skype 3.0 (hoping it will get interesting by 3), but SkypeIn and SkypeOut are the critical services to me, and that is working well. Skype (or the telco's) even fixed the 8898 glitch. Thanks.

So far the best post, skype..osx. Skype devs should keep your comments in mind for the next version.

skype..osx and others, Thank you for all your comments, we have put all of these issues on our bugtraq system. We do take notice of these things, really. If any of you have any other issues that you wish to bring to our attention, please do so here or in the forums..

Please bare with us, I assure you it'll be worth the wait.

OK... a bit more mac feedback -

1. Can we show the current Mood Message in the UI somewhere, so that people don't forget to leave their message set to "I'm out until tomorrow" when they come back.

2. Add "Close all offline" option to the drawer of the message window. If you have 10 people who are now offline but 1 active chat, it's annoying to have to close all the offline ones individually. Close all Read will usually take the active one with it

3. Add isight/cam support for setting profile image.

Video chat / iChat AV... iChat AV is no good because you have to have a .Mac or AOL account. That SUCKS. SUCKS.... SUCKS.

I see that nobody are happy, lol.
OK, to be sure that everybody will be happy in the future it's easy. When Skype launch a new version of Skype, you simply have to launch the same version for all, win, mac, linux, etc... THE SAME VERSION WITH THE SAME OPTIONS IN THE SAME TIME... VOILA, simple... And LIFE is beautyful...

You can tell us about your Skype release plans for Mac. Companies do it all the time, as part of marketing.

However, you choose not to. That's fine. However, pleaes don't try and say you can't, because that's just not true.

#1 feature: Video. Everything else is gravy.

I just want 3 things:

video video and video

Whoever's developing Skype video for Mac - you're helping me see my sister in Thailand, my uncle in Brazil, and my mother in Scotland, none of whom I see enough. So I for one am not complaining. Kudos to you guys for building great products we're desparate to use, and the sooner the better!

Hi,

i just wanted to leave a little message about how Skype (for Mac) has been helping us. I am part of a research team studying hunting by an indigenous group living in a tropical forest in Peru. The team is located in Brazil, the US (occasionally), the UK, and Peru. So we use skype almost exclusively (again, mainly for Mac) to communicate. Thank you. Yo've saved us a lot of money and made the team more cohesive.

Also, we use skypeout to call our fieldsites, which have GILAT satellite phones installed. For some reason, these are not accessible outside of South America on regular phone lines, but SkypeOut allows us to call the villages where we do our work from outside SA. The savings in money and improvement in logistics and safety have been huge. Thank you again.

Sure, we'd love Video. I check for it regularly. Sure, we'd love to have more features. But what you've helped us do already has changed our lives.

Why do all the windows waste some much space? Especially the file transfer window… I have a 20" screen and they’re still way too big.

Thanks to the Skype guys, you're making lots of progress and hope to see the eagerly awaited video calling option come online soon!

Two technical points to the crowd from someone from a commercial background. Skype isn't publicly-listed. Skype, as you'll know, you're a subsidiary of eBay. Secondly, details of release dates and features are indeed a commercial decision and not necessarily one that you're regulated on.

From the point of view of a company, to release your company's trade secrets aren't the brightest idea - someone could copy the idea and put it out there, stealing your thunder. Which is why Apple is so protective of its interlectual property. As for the point of Windows Vista, no one knows when it will be released - even Steve Ballmer this week let slip that there might be yet another delay to the ship out date.

Companies will usually release details of their products as a marketing point (e.g. Sony and Nintendo recently). Even then, we don't necessarily know when they'll be released (mobile phones are a good example of that).

Anyway, back to the main point of this post - suggestions. Certainly the video calling is the one thing that everyone wants. My gf lives in Shanghai and I'm in London - would love to see her on my Mac if I could - particularly as she uses a PC. (Can't convince her to switch I'm afraid!)

But otherwise, you have a fabulous product out there. Keep it up! And hope you can release v.2 soon!

Being part of another publicly traded company although not a CFO, I think I can respond.

In the US, the SEC is very strict: If you make product announcements and/or release dates, you end up having to report ANTICIPATED INCOME from these products at that time.

In short, if Apple says "Mac OS X is coming this summer" and they slip past the summer, they end up having to file/pay taxes, and having various stockholder earning responsiilities incurred that are costly. Same for Skype. It's a weird law, and my understanding is it's to prevent companies from artificially inflating their stock prices, etc.

That's why exact release dates of new products are rare until the relatively last moment. And prior announcements tend to have lots of leeway (eg expected in 1st half of 2006, etc)

Thanks for the blog...I can't wait for future updates I love Skype!

please please make a beta version available as You do that already with Windows.

Thank You really much.

cheers marco

For some reason I find myself closing drawers all the time. That feature should be rethought or streamlined. Especially for a one-person chat.

Of course, video is sorely needed.

I'm in Spain I did use skype to receive some singing lessons from Denmark and it worked pretty good, but my teacher says video makes them 200% better. Can't wait!!!

just a thought, it'd be really clever if you could create some sort of a testimonial system (one that could be controlled entirely by the user but would show up in their profile)

i.e allow people on a user's contact list to make changes or just to add a section/testimonial to the friend's user profile
this could easily spell the blending of skype into a bit of a social networking site, just added on though and in a very unintrusive way.

I think the big problem here is that the Windows version of Skype is far more advanced than the Mac and Linux version, which makes us feel like second class citizens. I'm not sure that users really want to know all the features in advance, I think what most of us want is feature parity between all versions of Skype. SightSpeed does this now with their versions of software, video, audio, chat, it's exactly the same across every version they have. The nice thing is that I can switch platforms and the software will perform exactly the same way between all computers. It's sooooo much nicer than the Skype experience which is all across the board. If Skype adopted the same policy I would guess that 90% of the screaming would go away.

After the software reaches feature parity across the board (which should be a huge goal for Skype in my humble opinion), then new features such as multi-party video conferencing, SMB class phone rules, interactive desktops can be added. But everything should be on a unified base first.

Just my $0.02

It's June and we're still looking for video support! Other suggestions are nice and good but if us MacBook Pro users don't get video soon, we're going to go crazy! Having that nice cam right there and not being able to use it, argh...

Ok, now it's a long time that no new Skype for mac come out.............. And mac users can wait but not a long time. So please it's time to move and faster than now and give us Skype beta 2.0 like for all, on a mac, developping software is faster on mac than windows (THE ultimate bug OS). So sorry to tell that but if your team is unable to deliver new version of Skype in a short time.... Change the team. YES NOW I'm unhappy. Before, every month we had a new version of Skype, and now we have to wait 1,2,3 or 4 month just for having an universal binary of the actual version... Is that a joke? 1 man was able to completely transform Mathematica in Universal Binary in just a weekend, and Skype 4 month for his small soft... hum hum... In french we say: C'est triste.

Maybe you should spend more time working on your Mac and Linux products...

...and less time on making shady deals with Intel and building artificial anti-AMD limitations into your Windows products.

New at his.Butit is so amazing thatit works. And if u must have video. Go buy a cheap pc, network it and do it...Quite the complaining, it is free afterall...

Please give us the ability to turn off the auto-gain adjustment on skype input volume. I have a USB condenser mic I want to use for podcasting, but skype just keeps moving the volume slider up to 100%. I have to use a different mic that can go through my iMic.

I really find it hard to believe this wasn't noticed in testing, I've seen posts about this issue dating back over a year.

How sweet. The Windows version has reached 2.5 final, so it's out of beta. It has video and other bells and whistles.

The Mac version, on the other hand, is stuck at 1.4.0.49. It has no video support, several issues (as pointed out by other fellow Mac Skypers in this post's comments), and Mac users have no idea about when (and at this point, whether) they will get Skype 2, at least in beta.

The Skype staff is clearly diverting from the "free calls for all" manifesto here, going for a more commercial path. This is perfectly okay, since it's a free product anyway and they have to look for money income anyway. This also means, however, that they are willingly losing potential customers.

Look at all the complications to buy SkypeOut credit for two different accounts from the same PayPal account. Look at the fact that Skype is not SIP compatible, so you are forced to keep a computer turned on (which I think it's a pain for SkypeIn) rather than using a SIP phone or a phone with a SIP adapter.
Look at the plain lack of interest the company is showing towards the Macintosh and Linux user base (I said lack of interest, not lack of respect -- some may argue that in this case it's the same).

Someone pointed out that the development of Skype for Windows has boosted since eBay acquired PayPal. I haven't been following the Windows version for obvious reasons, but I believev it is true. eBay, for one, is a Windows-centric company. The eBay tools for preparing auctions off-browser et al were all Windows-only the last time I checked.

What really strikes me is the lack of a Skype 2 beta for Mac whatsoever. The only reason for this is that it's so lagged behind (provided they have started working on it at all, because we have no certain news) that it really isn't decent enough for the public, beta or no beta. Otherwise, they would have released it just like they did for Windows and just like they used to do with the Mac versions in the past.

Now, to avoid making this post completely useless (rants will make you free your soul, but they won't give you Skype 2 for Mac), here is one problem I have with Skype, besides the insane amount of screen estate it takes: the text chat windows seem to grow in memory usage like a cancer. I haven't made accurate tests, but the "feeling" is that the more the conversation goes on, the less responsive the window becomes, to the point that it just lags when updating. Copying text (for pasting in another application) even shows the Spinning Ball of Wait.
Also, having IRC-style formatting ("[hh:mm:ss] foobar" or "[hh:mm:ss] name: foobar", or something to that effect; it should be repeated for every line even when it's the same person writing, rather than using an ellipsis to avoid repeating the person's name) would be very much appreciated. Using pieces of text conversations somewhere else simply becomes a tedious task as you have to reformat the layout manually.

Just my couple of cents.

Skype 2.5 windows is out and nothing for Mac... A the start everybody was happy. Mac users discover Skype with a soft that was the same on mac and pc. But now like for all, all is finished. Developper say we are working on it but mac users stop believe it. Are you really working on a new version? And if yes, when 2007?

Hi there. To all the users posting here, I just wanted to suggest you stop posting here because:

Skype either (1) does not care about our comments or (2) does not read them. There is absolutely NO staff comments here! Summing it up, Skype (aka eBay) does NOT CARE FOR MAC USERS!

There are about a quarter thousand posts in the forums pleading for at least Skype 2.0 BETA (2.5 would be great).

I've sent in e-mails asking for Skype 2.0 for Mac. All they say is that it will come soon. But my definition of soon is not 4-6+ months! Skype, hello??

HELP, PLEASE -- Been using Skype on my Mac for 6 months. About two weeks ago everytime I Skype Out to a phone number it works great for about 3 minutes and then I hear background noise and the call drops. I cannot call back until I close and then restart Skype. Any ideas what i can do? It only happens when I Skype to phones not to other computers

Dear Skype developers,

Please continue the good work in making skype for OSX. Like everyone else, I am looking forward to video as iChat just doesn't cut it for me due to its NAT requirements. I realize that you guys dont want to give a release date as it may cause problems....whatever they may be. However, why not release or even leak a beta (or even an alpha) version? If nothing more, just to show the OSX community that you still love us? No matter how buggy it is, it will still win you market share and offer a valuable bug testing opportunity.

I am very excited to hear that we will be getting video with skype soon.Great news.I love skype and I also use skypeout but it keeps cutting out on me,I have the credit and at the moment I am not able to use it.I hope there is someone out there that can offer me some help.Thankyou.

This is the most worst service ever seen...and known to man. Vonage is much more better than this it adds more features but still it is bad service in the voip world the best is a little hard to setup but still yet it is the best and once done its free anytime of the day/night which is the sip phone.