#SKYPE CLASSIC FOR MAC MAC OS X#
#SKYPE CLASSIC FOR MAC UPDATE#

More interesting is the ability to join FaceTime calls with a link, including scheduling meetings in advance. Being able to join FaceTime calls with a link, and cross-platform, makes the service much more useful. Hence the similar additions of various mic modes (helpful in a variety of circumstances), portrait mode (fine, but hardly a game-changer), and spatial audio (intriguing, but also kind of off-putting). There’s an awkward sense that Apple somehow feels like this is gauche, that everybody should be perfectly look and sound great at all times, much like the models in their marketing photos. It’s one place that Apple’s design chops feel as though they are perhaps at odds with what people want: big honking pictures of their friends and loved ones (okay, perhaps not their co-workers). The grid view is mostly good-or, at least, an improvement over the previous overlapping squares-but it also feels, especially on the iPad, like the space is somewhat wasted. (And recreating a key part of Zoom’s functionality and appeal doesn’t hurt.) Group FaceTime is better…but could still use improvement. Most important among them: a grid view of all participants and the ability to join a FaceTime call via a link, finally opening up the platform to users of other devices. So in iOS 15, Apple has pushed forward, adding a number of features to improve the FaceTime experience. 1 Despite having added multi-person support to FaceTime a few years ago, Apple’s app never really took off for video conferences. “Zooming” has become the lingua franca for a video conference, achieving a Google-like status.

The now ubiquitous video conferencing service was already gaining in popularity before the coronavirus emerged, but its success stemmed in large part from a “right place, right time” situation of being the remote-chatting solution du jour-five years earlier, it would probably have been Skype or Google Hangouts.

The tech face of the pandemic has undoubtedly been Zoom. iOS 15 attempts to cure some of these ills, and the results are…decidedly mixed. That’s meant a bumper crop of device sales, which has boosted the company’s bottom line to even more astronomical levels.īut it’s also put into stark relief the places where Apple’s technology has fallen short. (I’ll touch on iPadOS features, but for some iPadOS 15-specific considerations, check out Jason’s companion piece.)Īpple has mostly found itself in the odd position of benefiting from the pandemic: with quarantines, lockdowns, and social distancing, people have ended up spending more time at home, working, learning, and, well, not traveling.

#SKYPE CLASSIC FOR MAC UPDATE#

It’s an update that’s got a lot to recommend it, but that’s simultaneously tough to recommend, if only because it’s difficult to point to a single big feature that will make a huge difference in the life of the average user. What’s left is a hodgepodge of interesting ideas and occasionally misguided attempts to prescribe how people should use their mobile devices. So it is with iOS 15, a release that appears with at least one of its most touted features, SharePlay, delayed until later this year, and another impressive piece of functionality-Universal Control-demoed but never even present in the betas. And splashy new features are often forays into unexplored territory rather than making up ground. It might seem like it’s the new kid on the block, but the truth is that iOS has reached the point where any limitations are predominantly choices that Apple has made. The point is: these are mature operating systems, not upstarts still trying to find their way.

#SKYPE CLASSIC FOR MAC MAC OS X#

Fifteen years after Mac OS X was released, it was already on its third name iteration, having evolved to OS X, and then back to macOS. What is there to say about an operating system fifteen years after release? Fifteen years after the classic Mac OS was released, it was just two years away from its successor, Mac OS X, coming on the scene (a replacement effort that had already seen several aborted attempts).

Skype classic for mac