Skype 1.4 for Mac OS X ships

Still no Firewire audio device support. They make it soooo difficult for podcasters.

Skype Rocks!

I'm originally from Northern California but I live in Paris, France and Skype literally saves me hundreds of dollars per month in phone costs. Skypein is the killer part for me. I pay 30 Euros/year to have a phone number that is local to my friends and family that they can call up any time and neither they nor I are charged a penny more (then the original 30 Euro/month fee) for the communcation and the quality rocks. I recently traveled to Stockholm and stayed with a friend who has broadband. I hooked my computer up to his network and recieved calls via Skype as I would normally all the time that I stayed there. If I want to initiate a call I use Skypeout with it's low fee and tell whomever I'm calling to call me back on my Skypein number. So I usually am charged 2 per call that I initiate. I used to use Voipbuster to call the U.S. for free (via their Sip servers and X-Lite) but now they charge for those calls so I'm back to Skype. Skype soooo rocks!!

-Scott Stevenson

One feature of Skype that I don't hear people talk about a lot is the fantastic audio quality. My parents and I chat regularly via iSight/iChat and it works great, but we tested Skype just to compare quality. I can tell you without hesitation that the audio compression Skype is using is far superior to what iChat is using. The sound was just fantastic. Very, very close to phone quality.

I am really, really hoping that when Skype adds video support to the Mac version, which they're working on BTW, that they will support Apple's awesome iSight camera. That is just the kind of thing to keep long distance grandparents very happy.

I thought it not applicable to my life for a long time as well, but one feature I've found pretty indispensable is their 'SkypeIn'. I travel a lot, and spend a lot of time in Europe - with skypeIn, anyone can dial my 415 number from any land line in the world and it will ring at my computer, where ever i am (or go to voicemail, which serves a notification through my Skype interface as well as downloading it as a .wav file automatically). Further appealing to my geeky side, any shmoe anywhere can get a skype number for whatever country they like -- i took one in America because, aside from being American, 99.9% of anyone who would call me would do so from the states; that being said, i could have got one in Sverige, Denmark, Hong Kong, or any other of the countries with whom they have land line numbers available...
It's like running a sip softphone through your company's PBX across a VPN - except you're not dependent on your company's resources for personal crap.

That aside, the internet-based segment of their data (so all text chats, and all voice chats that don't head over a land line), are encrypted - an additional nicety for business matters.

(Unfortunately, like the java vm, firefox, and a bowl of other things, the Windows version of Skype tends to exhibit noticeably better performance than the osX version - this combined with a better feature set found in the currently-Windows-only-2.0-version means my usage tends to be relegated to my xp machine.)

Skype is a useful way for geeks to stay in touch with the less-geeky in their family. Most of us are content to use IM; lots of people have trouble with or don't enjoy typing. Also, if you have family or friends living abroad, it's either free (Skype to Skype), or cheaper (Skype to land line) than prepaid calling cards. It averages about 2.5 cents per minute worldwide.
It has conferencing, making it useful for business meetings or online gaming with a guild. And a new feature of 1.4, you can foward any Skype call to a land line. Suffice it to say, I use Skype regularly, though I admit I avoided it for the same reasons Dave did: I just didn't get it. You can't see on your cell phone when a certain person is available. You also can't transfer files, or invite 3 others into the voice call (well, without hassle and cost). I even have the Pocket PC version of Skype, and use it from time to time when I'm at a hotspot.
So, of course, for some people, this will be a complete waste, and there's no reason to try to force you or your contacts to use it. But, if any of the above scenarios applies to you, check it out.

A) Skype also comes for mobile PDA's w/some sort of broadband access so you can have free-to-really cheap (that is, little additional cost to your PDA and its wireless broadband service) VoIP functionality, with an international reach in your palm.

B) What's more useful is Skype 2 beta for Mac OS X. It's got all of the above and a little more, not quite up to stuff with Skype for Windows, but very close.

At one level, Skype does little more than what AIM does w/voice chat and video chat (the new Skype for Windows includes video chat). It's the killer (in a good way) international rates for calling mobiles and land-lines around the globe and level of anonymity possible that makes this accessible and useful for many. It also was one of the first services providing all this functionality -- chat, voip w/interntional calling, video chat, low threshold for getting an account (don't even need an email address if you're not buying any service!) -- to be adopted in internet cafes around the world.

In the meantime, the windows version got video too. What's the point in calling it multiplatform if to take advantage of all the features both parties have to use the same platform (windows, specifically)?

At least the Mac version is updated once in a while. The linux version is lagging back much more...

Not a Skype addict either, I always felt weird that my voice communications would one day become dependent of my computer... maybe i'm misled...