Microsoft's Teams goes native on Apple, retains a human touch

It's been a busy week for Microsoft Teams, as the Windows giant unveiled a version of the platform optimized for Apple Silicon as well as simplified human language translation for scheduled meetings. The Cupertino combination has been a while coming. After all, Apple's chips have been around for a while now and Microsoft was …

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice for all the fruity guys, but what about Linux?

It would seem that the "Microsoft Loves Linux" affair has now turned to M$ two timing Linux with Apple and Linux has found out about it.

Linux is still stuck with a version of Teams which has hardly seen a feature upgrade in the last year. Four video feeds maximum, no blur or backgrounds to filter out the sins of your home office and I'm sure a whole bunch of other things I don't know about because I don't run the Windows or Apple version.

Come clean Microsoft, admit the love affair is over!

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Nice for all the fruity guys, but what about Linux?

Just use the browser. Teams is largely a packaged WebRTC client anyway.

[Maventi]

Re: Nice for all the fruity guys, but what about Linux?

's/the browser/your preferred Chromium front-end/'

Still to this day the only major video conference platform vendor that discriminates on browser engine. In many ways little has changed at Microsoft in the last two decades.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Nice for all the fruity guys, but what about Linux?

'Microsoft and Linux' is all about playing lip service to... well, you fill in the blanks.

The word 'lip' reminds me that anything that MS does is just adding another coat of lipstick on their pet pig.

I would hold out much hope for Teams to improve that mugh. They have the market share and hence, the captive users.

What is the alternative? not a lot.

Slack has its fans but still sucks unless you are a geek IMHO.

[Dave559]

Re: Nice for all the fruity guys, but what about Linux?

I haven't used Slack for videoconferences, so can't comment on that, but as a chat client (website), I much prefer it to Teams.

Teams is afflicted by the unsufferably typically awkward and pointless Microsoftism of endless clicky-clicky-clicky to show the full text of longer messages and messages in long threads, whereas in Slack you can just easily and quickly skim and scroll. It's almost as if they were trying to make it as inconvenient to use as possible (just like AD group properties windows which are uselessly tiny and impossible to resize to see all the information in them). You'd think that a software company of that size might know at least a little bit about usability…

[Anonymous Coward]

Not ever on a Mac

That the abomination called Teams is now also able to infest MacOS makes me doubly happy we have avoided any Microsoft products altogether.

No, no, no.

[David 132]

Hey, Cortana...

Hey, Cortana, what's the English translation for "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Afonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" that I just saw on a road-sign?

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Re: Hey, Cortana...

Mae hwn yn weddol hen ond yn dda !

[AMBxx]

Re: Hey, Cortana...

Ydy'ch chi'n hoffi coffi?

[DrG]

You missed a step...

How about a native win32 version first? Teams is an Electron app and a terrible resource hog (for what it actually does).

Cheers

[MatthewSt]

Re: You missed a step...

Agreed. Sadly I doubt this is a native Teams for Mac, it's just going to be Teams running in Native Electron

[big_D]

Re: You missed a step...

Exactly, the Mac "version" might now run natively on M1 and M2 chips, but it still isn't a native app, it is still Electron.

On Windows, it is an absolute nightmare. I haven't tried it on my Mac, but I suppose at least it will be slightly less of a resource hog, now that it doesn't require Rosetta any more, but I guess that's about all the praise you can throw at it.

[Il'Geller]

After all, didn’t I say that the new AI-parsing is an industrial standard that will lead to a revolution of the entire IT industry? Now everything will change.

[Stormy]

Given that every member of the Welsh government (and every Welsh speaker in Wales) is fluent in English, this is just another waste of money.

[Richard 12]

Two things

Fluent is not the same as Native - to put it in terms everyone here can understand: M1 macOS is fluent in amd64, but there are clear performance and functionality differences between native AArch64 and translated amd64.

Languages have value. The Westminster Government was trying to crush Welsh out of existence until fairly recently - they were actively terrified of it. They wouldn't have done that if it had no value.

[tip pc]

Yuck!

Teams is by far the worst vid client,

Chats is far superior,

I can spin up or join a meet in chats in seconds, yet teams is convoluted. Insists on being authenticated and always starts the video.

Recently having interview, chats wants to authenticate me to my work when I just want to join with the link from the prospective employer, I don’t want outlook calendar being helpful and putting in an entry if what company I’m talking too when I’m meant to be attending a different excuse.

[trevorde]

Still waiting ...

for some decent software for macOS

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Still waiting ...

Please define by what you mean

"decent software"

We'd love to know. Please...