UPDATED: Microsoft confirms $8.5bn Skype deal

How to destroy a great product.....

Let M$ buy it.... just great.

By treadmill on 10 May 2011

How to destroy a great product.....

Sell 70% of it to 'a group of investors'. MS can do so much more with this - build it in to Hotmail/Live, finally crack the whip and get a WP7 app out there, better ties with Facebook (MS are involved there too), XBox anyone? Yeah, 'M$' could really screw this one up couldn't they.

By onegin101 on 10 May 2011

Microsoft only good at coercive marketing

In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft doesn't do attraction very well, it's whole marketing meme is based on coercion and locking people in. That's why it hasn't done well with products that people have to want to buy such as the Zune, all their phone systems, and Bing or whatever their search system is called. Just buying into the internet space isn't a panacea.

Users of Web2 companies such as Skype don't expect to have to pay for the usage they make of the various services out there, so all those zillions of names are as robust as the morning mist. While it remains free, they make keep users, but as soon as they try to monetise it losers will stop using it. With Web 2, there's always another one to jump on board.

Even Apple don't do Web2 very well, their Mobile Me service is hardly selling hand over fist. Google make a profit from advertising on an index page and because it is both free, easy and useful it continues to be profitable. Facebook will be OK until they try to charge users, who tend to be young and without much in the way of spending power.

Web subscribers are more than they are made out to be. They certainly can't be relied on, but Ballmer can certainly be relied on to not 'get' these things.

By SwissMac on 10 May 2011

What are they going to do with it?

MS already has Voip, video calling and chat with WLM. They are clearly not buying the technology, so it's just the 660m users and the brand. I dont know how may people use WLM but there will be a significant overlap. How are they going to make this pay?

I suspect the only reason they are doing this is to stop the competition getting hold of it.

By clkenton on 10 May 2011

By SwissMac

"it's whole marketing meme is based on coercion and locking people in" Just like Apple which has proved that that is a totally useless strategy

By Neelly on 10 May 2011

@SwissMac

It costs me £0.014 per minute to call from Skype to landline numbers abroad. Guess what? I don't mind. Not everything on the internet has to be free, cheap enough will do.

By Josefov on 10 May 2011

@SwissMac

Most of what you said is utter tripe. I won't respond to everything you said because it's pointless - you don't listen. However I will say I think they do attraction *very* well... it has the most popular OS's does it not?

By tom502 on 10 May 2011

@Nelly

The Elephant in the room is that people actually go out and buy Macs to use themselves; most Windows PCs are bought by companies, and the employees often feel they need the same equipment as their employer to be able to work at home.

How am I locked in to using any Apple software, or indeed hardware? iTunes, Safari and Bonjour are all cross platform. iPods, iPhones and iPads are cross platform and work better with MS Exchange servers than they do with Mac OS X servers. Apple's database product, Filemaker, is truly cross platorm, but Microsoft's Access is only available on Windows PCs. I can use Windows or OS X on my Macs.

By SwissMac on 11 May 2011

@Josefov

Skype loses money right now, so your 1.4p per minute charge is not sustainable - unless supported by cash generated by the Windows monopoly of course.

By SwissMac on 11 May 2011

@tom

Having a bigger market share in a market where coercion and monopoly behaviour built the 90% share is not an 'attraction' as I said in my reply to Neelly. Windows/Office are the only products Microsoft makes or that has launched in the last ten years that is a market leader, in fact most of their offerings in that time have bombed. Zune, Kin, Bing, while XBox sells a few but makes little or no profit. Kinex does seem to have worked for them though, but one successful product in twenty years is hardly a strong attraction.

Apple on the other hand has created new markets out of practically nothing, and the iPad owns 80% of the tablet market after just 12 months because people really are attracted to it. They want it. They want iPhones. They want MacBooks.

By SwissMac on 11 May 2011

All I can say is...

Thank Gawld that Apple didn't buy it. They may be able to shift a lot of units, but they don't have a great record on relibility. Especially when it comes to networking/connectivity. I don't fancy being half way through an important call, just as the client drops off the network for no apparent reason.

By PaleRider on 11 May 2011

@SwissMac

If I remember well, your argument was that people won't pay for Skype. Not only people already DO pay for Skye but you're also making an assumption that under Microsoft's ownership all Skype's functionality will be paid for. But why would it? Do you really think that Microsoft bought Skype to make profit on the U.K. grannies calling their grandchildren in Australia? I'd say it's daft but, then again, I'm not an expert :>

By Josefov on 11 May 2011

I've never lost a network connection...

...but then I am using Mac OS X Server which is UNIX with a different front end. IIRC UNIX is the most reliable of the current Networking server systems, used to run and maintain the majority of the internet one way or another. Maybe people with Windows servers have had different experiences.

What I was trying to say about the costs was that Skype has many more subscribers who use it as a free service than they have who pay for it, and that if everything had a charge or cost the user base of 600 million would fall substantially. It would be interesting to know how many of those 600 million are currently active, ie have made use of Skype within the last month.

Web 2 users are volatile like the morning mist - and Skype has had three different owners already, none of whom have managed to make any money out of the business. They may be a large mailing list, but that is all.

Skype's Technology may be part of a Grand Plan from Microsoft, but from their track record it's more likely to be a mixture of panic buying and follow my leader copycatting by Balmer. I can imagine him monkey dancing around the Redmond campus when he heard Google might be buying Skype! lol!

By SwissMac on 11 May 2011

SwissMac

For the record, the devices, which keep falling off industry standard networks, are 2x Macbook Pros, 1x Macbook, 1x Macbook Air, 2x iPhones and an iPad (all on latest OSs).

All struggle with basic 802.11 networks when WPA is enabled (a very common problem, if Apple's own support forum is to be believed) and GSM/Edge/3G reliability is shocking on the phones (again, I am not alone in this).

Not a Windows server in sight.

By PaleRider on 11 May 2011

Pale Rider

I didn't get you were referring to a wireless network, I thought you were talking about an internal fileserver and ethernet. But even with WiFi I've never had a problem, either at home with Netgear router or at work with Apple Airport Express. Years ago when I still had a PC we had an ISP supplied Alcatel modem and that was the worst pile of junk ever.

I don't Know what system your ISP uses, but some of their routers are problematic. I would try switching your Network to a different channel - WiFi can be interrupted by microwaves, fridges, all sorts of things and if your neighbours are all on the same channel you might have problems with interference. Try channels 6 or 11 as these seem to be relatively less congested.

Routers I have heard of people having problems with are those supplied by Sky, Virgin and BT, and this was apparently due to the non-standard way things had been setup.

But like I said, I've never had a problem with any WiFi or other Network with iPhone, Ipad, Mac mini, MacBook or MacBook Pro in two countries, using three different ISPs and two router types. I just walk in to where I want to go and the WiFi connects automatically, I don't even notice it any more.

If you have some connection problems with setting things up try placing a question on mac4mac.co.uk - there's a guy there who's a bit of an expert with wireless networks and I'm sure he'd help - they even have Windows users there.

By SwissMac on 11 May 2011

Swissmac

Thank you for your considered response. It has been a source of much frustration for me, actually.

All was fine, using my old Netgear AP (I would NEVER use an ISP supplied device) up until a system update around 10.3.8 (IIRC). This seemed to also update the airport cards' firmware, as connection became futzy almost immediately after, and an OS rollback was unable to fix this.

All three laptops routinely fell off the network (I do have more than a little commercial network experience, so have tried all of the usual [and many unusual] fixes) when WPA was enabled. I tried seven different APs, from different manufacturers (nice techy office with plenty of kit to plunder) and in all cases, it was the same story. Apple's line was that it was an error in all of the other manufacturers' implementations of the 802.11 standard(s), which I still do not believe, and found at the time to be uncharacteristically arrogant of them. A sign of things to come, perhaps?

Eventually, I just gave in and bought an Apple Airport Extreme base station to serve as a wifi AP, and of course it all worked flawlessly.

I utterly resent the way in which Apple claimed that all (that I tried) other manufacturers were "doing it wrong", and I feel that the crippled compatibility of a number of Apple devices (three laptops, at the time) with a multiple other manufacturers' devices can possibly even be attributed to a cynically engineered "flaw", aimed to keep the cash flowing.

To this day, our four laptops are only really happy on Apple's implementation of secure wifi, and the iOS devices are strongly following suit.

Sad really, as I have been using Apple kit for donkey's years (as well as DOS/Windows, QNX and Linux systems) and until recent years, it was normally a pleasant experience.

By PaleRider on 11 May 2011

By the way...

It is Apple's iffy implementation of 802.11 which has been the source of my frustration, not your considered response. :-)

By PaleRider on 11 May 2011

Is SwissMac unemployed?

I cannot find any other reason for his having the time to be so verbose. ;)

By SirRoderickSpode on 11 May 2011

Is SwissMac unemployed?

I cannot find any other reason for his having the time to be so verbose. ;)

By SirRoderickSpode on 11 May 2011

Or maybe....

SwissMac is in fact Steve Jobs, and he's at home on sick leave feeling a bit bored.

By SirRoderickSpode on 11 May 2011

Pale Rider

No worries PR, I couldn't post regularly here if I didn't have a thick skin! lol!

The most reliable Router I've used on any platform is Netgear's DG834 series. They just work. Was your reference to 10.3.8 regarding OS X Panther, or firmware for the router? That's quite an old OS and was being replaced in 2005 when there were five or six different implementations of 802.11 wireless. My memory may be hazy here but IIRC Apple went for the implementation that became the standard used today.

You're probably already doing this, but just in case you aren't, when you upgrade your version of OS X (eg from 10.4.4 to 10.4.5) do you use the patch or the Combo version? I always recommend people use the Combo as it replaces all OS files (but leaves your preferences and personal settings unchanged). I once used the patch upgrade and that created some strange issues. The Combo always seems to fix niggly things you can't quite put your finger on.

I do remember there was a time when Windows/Mac wireless networks had to be set up in a particular way, something along the lines of using 13 digit passwords or a smaller number of digits that began with '$' but I never had to worry about the detail as it was never a problem for me so haven't comitted it to memory.

Wireless implementation under OS X Snow Leopard is pretty robust these days, but if you still have PPC chips you can only go as far as Tiger, but that's not bad either IMO.

As I said, if you still have problems, post on the Mac4Mac forum with details and I'm sure you'll get a lot more help than is possible here.

By SwissMac on 12 May 2011

To SwissMac

Hi again. 10.3.8 was indeed the OS X update. The two Macbook Pros from that time were/are Intel, and the Macbook was PPC. All three worked perfectly with all wifi access points they ever encountered until the 10.3.8 update. Afterwards, no go, and wiping and reinstalling 10.3.? from CD did not fix any of them, hence my belief that this update also included a flash for the Airport cards.

As you say, this was a few years back now, but both MBPs and a newer MB have all been unreliable on WPA secured wifi ever since, in spite of receiving all available updates to the current level, including full format/install cycles on major (10.X) releases.

Oh, and I agree - combo updates all the way. Always have done on system X.

By PaleRider on 12 May 2011