Skype for Business

Magus

They aren't using the Skype name because they're proud of the fact they bought it and want to show it to everyone, but because it's a familiar brand to most people. Lync simply isn't, and has the same pronunciation as Linq, which doubtless confuses people sometimes.

@CoyneTheDup said:

"FU, desktop users! FU, corporate users! Use your F'ing cellphone to do everything! F your productivity, nobody's going to have a job in this country anyway."

As for this, many people say it. Apparently rectangles are bad for productivity because "I HATE RECTANGLES PRESCHOOL BLAH BLAH COLORS BRIGHT BLAH!" - but if you want productivity on windows, you use search anyway.They managed to make an easier experience for new users, better touch support, and made it faster to get to things (search is clearly faster than it was before).

And now that they've exposed the idea to everyone for long enough that it's only still a shock for the people who only like black and chrome/brushed steel, they have the data they needed for a really good interface - and they've finally finished merging the windows store APIs to the point they said they would.

They did use Win8 as JeffQA, though.

AlexMedia

I got KB2889853 pushed to my machine today, which is a fix for Lync 2013. According to the "Issues that this update fixes" list, the only thing which gets fixed is some bug due to which the Help pages sometimes don't open.

However, if you look further down into the Notes section, you'll see the following:

After you apply this April 14, 2015 update, Lync 2013 will be upgraded to Skype for Business. Get the general information about the new experience in Skype for Business.
You can still use the Lync client user interface after you apply this update for Lync 2013 (Skype for Business). Get the general information about how to switch between the Skype for Business and the Lync client user interfaces for Office 365 users and Lync Server 2013 users.

The update flushed all my "Lync" shortcuts and replaced them with SfB, but if I start it still says Lync. If I change something in my registry I get the all-new Skype experience, including the tour (which looks fine on my machine).

So basically, Microsoft built a hybrid client out of it, having two completely distinct user interfaces in the same application. Awesome!

Onyx

Classic MS tactics on "how not to break backwards compatibility": bolt more shit on!

No wonder they recommend at least 25 GB for Windows install drive. Meanwhile, my entire OS, including all applications (except Steam games) and some extra development shit in /opt is currently at 11 GB. I bet some of that is apt cache, as well.

Yup, apt cache is 2.3 GB. Which is just temporary shit I can delete at any time (and will get cleaned out eventually by itself anyway).