When I hopped on Skype earlier today to record a podcast and was greeted with a surprise:
We want everyone to experience the best Skype has to offer – from enhanced quality to better reliability to improved security – and the newest version of Skype is the way to do that. So everyone can benefit from the latest improvements, from time to time we retire older versions of Skype across all platforms, including mobile devices. It’s easy to update Skype; once you do, you’ll have access to the latest features our team has worked hard to deliver.
When we retire older versions of Skype, if you are still on an older version, you would be signed out of Skype automatically and won’t be able to sign in again until you upgrade to a new version. Simply follow the steps below to download, install, and sign in to the latest version, and you’ll be back in Skype in no time.
(In fact, Skype 2.8 was unable to make video calls as of months ago.)
As FaceTime Audio isn’t suitable for podcasts in my opinion, I’m at Microsoft’s mercy for a critical tool in my workflow. While I know that holding onto an ancient piece of software is a sure-fire way to be heartbroken, recent versions of Skype are rather miserable. The UI is bloated, the app is slow and can cause odd audio issues even on modern hardware.
Thankfully, Call Recorder works well with the newest versions of Skype, so podcasters should be set as far as recording, but I’m still cranky.