[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
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Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
It's buggy, and it crashes more often than any other app I use. God
forbid you try to change the audio device from speakers to
headphones in the middle of a call. And then if you try to just
call back on your phone, and they want to share their screen, and
you go back to your PC and try to join the call from your PC so you
can see the screenshare (it's not going to work). Seriously, with
all the money and resources thrown at this company and this app,
you'd think it'd be a little more stable, faster, and reliable. I
am literally forced to use this app at work...
Author : TurkishPoptart
Score : 14 points
Date : 2022-09-21 22:01 UTC (59 minutes ago)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's good enough.
| metadat wrote:
| Pretty simple root cause: Bureaucracy combined with lack of
| shared vision.
|
| I support your need to vent, it's undisputably a magnificently
| huge pile of stinky garbage. Given the amount of resources poured
| in, it'd be hard to do worse.
| holografix wrote:
| Everyone saying teams is garbage. It's not. It's like you're
| complaining about the kid who got a C in class. Guess what? They
| passed the exam.
|
| Microsoft brutalised Slack with a C grade app that was "bundled
| for free". For 80% of people, teams is just fine.
| tails4e wrote:
| We use zoom but are switching to teams. As an engineer my
| absoutley must have feature is screen sharing with collaborative
| annotation. I waited with bated breath for the 'active
| annotation' feature that was on the teams roadmap for months to
| be released. And then it was. To my horror it was the epitome of
| bloat. It essentially takes a screenshot of the presenters
| desktop and then starts a whiteboard session. It takes a good 30
| seconds to enable, and as it's a screenshot the screen being
| presented can no longer be interacted with until annotation is
| stopped. The 'active' part of the name active annotation is just
| adding insult to injury. It's static annotation at best. I
| couldnt have imagined a more poorly conceived feature, but here
| it is. Microsoft, please for the love of engineers fix it!
| anm89 wrote:
| Simply put, Microsoft has existed for 30 years with nothing but
| disdain for their customers and it has never once hurt them. So
| why stop now? Microsoft exists because of weak minded people who
| choose it because it's the front runner and are scared that
| choosing anything else may make them responsible for a choice
| they have made(same vein as no one ever got fired for choosing
| IBM, until that wasn't true anymore).
|
| In this sense I think there is almost a stockholm syndrome
| element where the worse it is, the more people trapped in it feel
| that that's what makes it good and enterprisey. If it wasn't the
| only choice why would any put up with it otherwise?
|
| I'm sure in 2043 they'll finally muster up the engineering
| resources to get copy/paste working in Teams though, for the last
| 10 customers on Trillion dollar a year enterprise maintenance
| contracts.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| If you had some concrete examples I might read with more
| interest but TBH this just comes across as a rather emotional
| whinge.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| It isn't because Microsoft lacks good programmers. My guess would
| be that someone believes they need to have every feature from
| slack, zoom, WebEx, meet etc, and also integrate tightly with
| every Skype/SharePoint/OneNote feature, and also run on at least
| four platforms. But they aren't willing to give people time to do
| this.
| peterfarkas wrote:
| This is spot on. I remember thinking that they added so many
| features very early on, even though they were still struggling
| with the most basic ones. And it sounds like they still do.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Absolutely incredibly garbage, how do they have the audacity to
| ship something so bad? The few times I tried to use it for large
| important meetings were a total shit show. I experienced a
| situation where everyone could see and hear only about half of
| the other meeting participants, but not the same set for
| everyone. It was really incredibly confusing for everyone
| involved.
| mikece wrote:
| It certainly doesn't help that it's an Electron app and a fat one
| at that.
| guidedlight wrote:
| I suggest you try the web app version, it's faster and more
| stable.
|
| In fact, I believe Microsoft will replace the desktop client with
| a web app shell.
|
| You can try it out today;
|
| 1. Install the Microsoft Edge Web browser on Mac or Windows 2.
| Log into https://teams.microsoft.com 3. Click ... > Apps >
| Install this site as an app 4. Enjoy!
| listless wrote:
| Desktop version is electron
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Large companies don't seem to be able to produce good software
| consistently.
| metadat wrote:
| What are the exceptions to this proposed rule? I can't think of
| any off the top of my head.
|
| JPL isn't a large company.
| rotifer wrote:
| Java and the JVM from Sun/Oracle. People may not like the
| language (or the company), but it's good, well-engineered
| software.
| metadat wrote:
| Yeah, the JVM is good. But unfortunately Oracle can't
| consistently produce good software.
|
| Java remains a fluke, successful in spite of Oracle.
| guidedlight wrote:
| Oracle database is rock solid.
| metadat wrote:
| Lol, sure- for certain use-cases, it works fine. But the
| only way it stays consistently good is because Big-O
| severely limits the scope.
|
| The Oracle DB internal team culture is just plain
| depressing. Stuck 30 years in the past in terms of
| development practices, little or no innovation is allowed.
| Function names are limited to four or five characters, and
| the source control is literally from the nineties. Maybe
| that's the secret to success: Trap enough H1Bs and use the
| whip.
|
| I suppose it all depends on how you define "good quality".
| Across many dimensions, Oracle is somehow better than
| average.
|
| Maybe it's because, for all it's faults, Oracle does always
| prioritize security what "quality", whatever management
| decides that means.
|
| Sure beats the Google strategy of constantly murdering
| anything that isn't Gmail or Search. Is this even a real
| strategy, or just the lack of one?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I've always had pretty good luck w/ Apple software just
| working and no real hassle. I would say they largely
| accomplish this with minimalism... it has far less features
| than any comparable products from MS, which can be annoying
| if you need those missing features. MS seems focused on
| adding features without extensively testing/debugging, so
| many of them don't work.
| peterfarkas wrote:
| So strange, I had the opposite experience with Apple
| software, particularly with macOS. I always envied those
| talking about the seamless experience - I had quite a lot
| of problems with it. iOS was great.
| JoeMascuve wrote:
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