It looks pretty promising. One question though: what's the deal with the Regular and Compact Contact Views since, as best as I can tell, there's no difference between them?

Do you mean Contact List or Chat drawer view?

In Contact List, the Regular view shows selected contact expanded, whereas Compact view keeps it closed and adds a little arrow to the right of the contact from which you can select actions.

In Chat drawer different views enable/enlarge pictures for the chat participants.

I did mean the Contact list and, yes, now I see what you mean. Thanks.

I like show a separate window comes out when you call someone much more than the drawer. The app looks much nicer too.

Am I missing something here? It appears that the free calls to numbers in the US or Canada are no longer possible since clicking on "Call Ordinary Phones" with an account balance of zero won't let you actually dial any numbers. If you use your call history however, you can dial out then.

Help?

Great Work!
This beta is better than ever Skype version before. I love it!

Only one question, is the video encrypted or not?
I don't find any information about this.

Radionerd,
Well spotted, this is a bug. The dialler should allow you to place free SkypeOut calls promoted by Skype. We are aware of this issue and we'll fix it soon, so stay tuned. Until then, use the quickfilter search area at the top of the main window for entering the country code and the number you want to call. Sorry about that, bugs can happen to any software developer.

priiduzilmer - thanks for the response. I was going to fill out something on your feedback form, but I just couldn't overcome the feeling I was doing something wrong.

Keep up the good work, this latest version is looking great!

We have published a new version with a fix for this, the download pages have changed to show the new version. Thanks again radionerd for noticing this.

maurusarpagaus - yes, video is encrypted on Skype just like calls, chats, filetransfers and other communications.

It looks great.
Also the interface is quite better than the Windows version.
But it's difficult for a normal user to find the video version, even if checking the upgrade. In the download page I didn't found any link to the video Beta. Only for the no-video one. Fortunally there is the blog!!
But... when the sms service also for mac? I can't find it in this new version.

We have a driverless USB CCD VGA webcam product that is natively supported by Mac OSX. No device driver installation is ever required prior to use. It works with Skype Video for Mac 1.5 seamlessly.

Here is the link to this product:
http://www.picoinstruments.com/picowebcam.htm

It is the only USB CCD webcam found on the market that can challenge Apple's iSight webcam as a cost efficient alternative.

Thanks for the work that the team is doing OSX skype. However--one thing that is keeping me from using Skype more is the lack of reliability in producing accurate DTMF tones for conference calls, voicemail, etc. Sometimes it works--sometimes it doesn't. Is there a fix in the works on this issue?

On the page that talks about the new features of mac beta 1.5 it states:

"Better contacts integration View and call your Apple’s Address Book and Microsoft Entourage contacts directly from Skype."

It would truly be a cool feature to have a hook into Address Book, but I was disappointed because you can't call these contacts directly from skype -- you have to import them. So, if you change the info in Address Book it needs to be re-imported into Skype.

On this page what is stated is more accurate regarding this feature.

"Plus you can now call your existing contacts easily by importing contacts from Apple’s Address Book or Microsoft Entourage and calling them directly with SkypeOut."

Any suggestions for easily keeping Skype sync'd with Address Book?

I have never been able to get ringing tones with incoming calls despite frequent advice from Skype technical staff. Is this a problem with all macs or just mine? Michael.

The 1.5 beta for Mac has following problems:
- when someone calls me they are not able to hear me
but then I call them back, I can hear them and they can hear me
- the voice quality has worsened (words are cut-out at the end, various noises) compared to the stable version

I too have poor ring tone quality & volume compared with previous versions of skype. I know on a pc you can change the ring tone - cant find that option on the mac