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How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

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796 points _Microft | 1 comments | 31 Mar 20 11:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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aequitas ◴[31 Mar 20 12:29 UTC] No.22736838[source]▶
Not that I'm in favor of this practice, but the one key feature that conference software must have is: it just works™.

Nothing turns you off more from a conferencing solution than: any problem getting it working right now.

When there is just the slightest issue, one person not being able to join, one person not getting voice to work, bad audio, your entire team is blocked/distracted. Which results in a collective distain for the solution and video conferencing as a whole.

This extends to getting the solution working for greenfield installs as simple as possible. Because who knows which non-tech users from which department all need to join and can't figure out how to set the permission in their browser right or install/use the other browser that is compatible.

So sadly, from a functionality point of view, you want have the software be able to force itself onto the user in the most usable state it can.

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t0mas88 ◴[31 Mar 20 12:36 UTC] No.22736886[source]▶
I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. Because in an enterprise context it is often hard to download an executable and run it with sufficient permissions. While Google and Microsoft both offer a product that "just works" with only a browser. What makes Zoom more "just works" than that?
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1. w1ntermute ◴[31 Mar 20 16:52 UTC] No.22739536[source]▶
As someone who has used a variety of VTC products (Zoom, Webex, BlueJeans, Teams, Skype, etc.) for several years on a daily basis (lots of external VTCs with different companies who use different VTC systems), Zoom is by far the best. The audio and video quality is head and shoulders above the rest (both on PC and mobile) and the interface is dead simple for even the least tech-savvy users.

My company uses Zoom, and there have been many instances where, during a VTC call set up by someone at another company (that doesn’t use Zoom), we have switched mid-meeting to Zoom because there’s something wrong with the other VTC system (someone can’t join, can’t hear, can’t speak, can’t share their screen, etc.). And the other options haven’t gotten noticeably better over the years either.